Phone Surveillance

[DrFaroohk]

Not sure what thread this belongs in, if anyway, but here goes...


In several bits of fiction I've come across, a few movies, books, etc....there exists this government computer thing that is constantly scanning the phone lines, every phone line in the country or the world, listening to every conversation. Most of what people say it ignores, but if it picks up on things like "terrorist" and "hijack an airplane" it will record the conversation and notify the appropriate people to listen in and figure out what, if anything, is going on.

I'm pretty sure that's just fiction, but I didn't know if possibly such a thing exists.

[Pedersen]

Echelon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON) is the network. Enough evidence has been gathered that it seems like yes, it does exist, and does function as advertised.

[Greenday]

Phone calls are definitely monitored. The only question is who is doing it? FBI? NSA? CIA?

[Boozy]

My vote is for the NSA. They're real shadowy bastards.

Every time someone gets "made", or there's some failure to keep something confidential...it's inevitably the CIA or the FBI. You never hear about the NSA.

[Pedersen]

Actually, Echelon is an international setup. Australia, New Zealand, UK, US, and Canada all participate. Each country has their own equivalent to the NSA, and each one participates fully in the monitoring of these communications.

Rumors that I have read (but not taken the time to confirm before posting this) include that the NSA watches the UK comms, and the MI5 watches the US comms (to avoid pesky legal issues that would prevent them from acting on information obtained by spying on their own citizenry). When they find something interesting, they pass it on to the other side, which then has the ability to act on it.

Go ahead, read that link I posted. It's got references to explain how people have figured out what they have, and if you read enough, you'll know that George Orwell just had his year wrong.

[Slytovhand]

And they monitor websites, forums and chat rooms... often setting up 'fake' alts...


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