Puppet MastersS


MIB

Flashback CIA patching ECHELON shortcomings

Relax, it's for your own good, and the sake of your children.

A core objection to paranoid rants regarding the US National Security Agency (NSA) electronic eavesdropping apparatus called ECHELON is the simple observation that spooks trying to use it are literally buried in an avalanche of white noise from which it's quite difficult to extract anything pertinent.

But now the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), no doubt with some assistance and guidance from NSA, is making strides towards cracking that little inconvenience.

The CIA's Office of Advanced Information Technology is developing a number of data-mining enhancements to make life easy for those who would eavesdrop on electronic communications, Reuters reports.

First up is a computer program called Oasis, which automatically converts audio signals into conveniently readable, and searchable, text.

Eye 1

Is "Prism" news? or is it ECHELON?

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© Van Rhijn Arial Photography
By now most people have heard the "new" disclosure of "Prism;" but for the most part there is little or no mention of the possibility that this program is virtually identical to ECHELON which was reported years ago; in fact it was exposed before the attacks on 9/11 or even when George Bush was inaugurated president. Anyone that takes a close look at this would almost certainly come to the conclusion that they're very similar if not virtually the same thing and perhaps that the biggest thing that is news isn't that the program was exposed but that they're covering it in a high profile manner, and that they're making a major appeal to emotions that is getting much more attention.

(This has been cros-posted on Open Salon)

The vast majority of the coverage in the commercial media about this clearly seems to imply that this program is a few years old and that it was created after the attacks on 9/11; yet this almost certainly isn't true. ECHELON was created first and then after 9/11 they passed laws that made it legal without reminding the public that this was already in place. This was previously reported in several outlets, including an article in the National Geographic although none of them were nearly as high profile as the coverage that is going on now. The way they covered it in the past was, mostly to ignore it when possible or to refuse to acknowledge or deny the existence of this program. Some other countries admitted that they participated in it; but it received so little coverage that only a fraction of the public knew about it. One notable exception was when it apparently appeared on 60 Minutes in 2000 (for transcript of segment see http://cryptome.org) and there wasn't nearly as much hype surrounding it nor was the whistle blower threatened with prosecution as Edward Snowden is now being threatened. Mike Frost disclosed most if not all the same material that Edward Snowden covered except for the possibility that they have apparently been searching Google and Facebook, but these two companies weren't nearly as big, if they existed at all at the time. Expanding the program to cover this would have been predictable and the way it was described was a blanket surveillance program that would have covered most if not all internet activity anyway so even though they didn't directly report on this they did so indirectly.

Headphones

Flashback New Echelon disclosures

"Black programs," in which technology is covertly developed and deployed, have long been standard fare for the government of the United States. The term has almost become synonymous with the aerospace firm Lockheed-Martin, whose "Skunk Works" facilities undertook the "black programs" that brought us such revolutionary aircraft as the U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, and, most recently, the F-117 Stealth Fighter. But the U.S. has not confined its black programs solely to the development of aircraft. That fact is becoming abundantly clear as Echelon, perhaps the blackest program of all, is dragged kicking and screaming into the light.

Echelon is the name given to the super-secret SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) collection network allegedly operated by the most secretive of all U.S. agencies, the National Security Agency (NSA). But it is not simply an American endeavor. Also taking part in the massive eavesdropping scheme through a diplomatic construct known as the UKUSA Alliance are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Together they operate a system that is reputedly capable of recording every digital transmission relayed throughout the world each day, including telephone, FAX, and e-mail messages. According to the International Herald Tribune, the system has the capacity to "record up to 2 billion telephone messages daily." What's more, using "dictionary" computers, the system can search all the collected messages for keywords, easily and quickly identifying those messages with intelligence implications.

Telephone

Flashback UK Government tapped ALL telephone messages between Britain and Ireland since 1989

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© UnknownThe messages were scanned for key words
The UK Government tapped all telephone messages between Britain and Ireland during the past 10 years, it has been alleged.

Channel 4 News said a tower in Capenhurst, Cheshire, was used to intercept all telephone signals between Ireland and the UK from 1989 to when it closed down earlier this year.

The 13-storey windowless tower used electronic equipment to collect and store all faxes, e-mails, telexes and data communications, the programme said. Their contents were then allegedly scanned for key words and subjects of interests.

The report said the tower was situated in north-west England, directly between British Telecom towers sending messages to Ireland.

Channel 4 said sources told the programme that "although the primary justification for building the tower was anti-terrorism, the information it gathered was also of economic and commercial significance".

Eye 1

British equivalent of PRISM program exposed: GCHQ's Tempora taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to 'all' world's communications

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Secret document detailing GCHQ's megalomaniacal (and physically impossible) ambition to 'master the internet'
British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal

Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).

The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.

One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.

GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.

Comment: Same as it's always been...

UK monitors all Irish phone calls
BBC, Friday, July 16, 1999

Does no one remember Echelon?

See also: PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel


Take 2

Act II: 'The Ed Snowden Supremacy' - NSA whistleblower flies to Moscow

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NSA whistleblower left on Aeroflot flight to Moscow, Hong Kong government confirms, two days after US charged him with espionage

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has flown out of Hong Kong, where he had been in hiding since identifying himself as the source of revelations on US surveillance programmes - despite a US request for his arrest.

The 30-year-old had previously said he would stay in the city and fight for his freedom in the courts. But the Hong Kong government confirmed that he left on Sunday, two days after the US announced it had charged him with espionage, saying documents filed by the US did not fully comply with legal requirements. It also said it was requesting clarification from Washington on Snowden's claims that the US had hacked targets in the territory.

Snowden had been at a safe house since 10 June, when he checked out of his hotel after giving an interview to the Guardian outing himself as the source who leaked top secret documents.

Comment: Great show, Powers That Be! Beats Hollywood anyday, a real movie in real time!

All together now...


PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel


Handcuffs

FBI calls destruction of GMO sugar beets in Oregon 'economic sabotage'

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In a breaking development, the FBI confirms that 1,500 GM Sugar Beet plants were destroyed this month in Oregon, in what they are calling an act of "Economic Sabotage."

When GM pollen blows into a non-GM farmer's fields and irreversibly contaminates his crop with 'biopollution,' who does the law side with? Historically, Monsanto. Also, it's not called 'economic sabotage' but rather 'copyright infringement,' and the victim not the aggressor is threatened with economic ruin.

When Monsanto's unapproved and therefore illegal GM wheat is found years after open field trials growing freely in an Oregon wheat field, the entire state crop's export fate is held in limbo, jeopardizing the present and future living of thousands of farmers and their dependents, with Monsanto receiving little more than a reprimand, followed by rapid USDA assurance that despite a lack of approval their GM wheat is "safe."

Given the unfair rules of the game, no wonder some folks in Oregon, having been treated much like feudal peasants lately, are taking things quite literally into their own hands.

MIB

Flashback Stifling dissent through COINTELPRO: 'Progressive academic' and key figure for over three decades in British 'radical' environmentalist movements... turns out to be an undercover police agent

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Bob Lambert, right, posed as an activist with the environmental group Greenpeace London while working undercover as a police officer.
Lambert, an expert on Islamophobia, posed as environmental activist then ran police spy unit that infiltrated anti-racist groups

An academic and prominent supporter of progressive causes has been unmasked as a former spy who controlled a network of undercover police officers in political groups.

During his current career as an academic expert on Islamophobia, Bob Lambert has regularly spoken at political rallies to promote campaigns against racism and fascism.

However, in his previous career as a special branch officer, which lasted 26 years, he ran operations at a covert unit that placed police spies into political campaigns, including those run by anti-racism groups. The unit also disrupted the activities of these groups.

Lambert became head of the unit after going undercover himself.

Since becoming an academic three years ago, he has made no secret of the fact he was a special branch detective between 1980 and 2006, working on what he describes as "countering threats of terrorism and political violence in Britain".

Comment: Today it transpires that Lambert was instrumental in arguably the biggest waste of activists' time in the whole history of British activism:

COINTELPRO: 'McLibel' leaflet was co-written by undercover police officer Bob Lambert

Lambert's and all the other snitches' job is too vector anyone who gives a damn away from the the root issue that unites us all: psychopaths rule our world.


Stormtrooper

COINTELPRO: 'McLibel' leaflet was co-written by undercover police officer Bob Lambert

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Bob Lambert posed as a radical activist named Bob Robinson. Yet another UK government snitch is exposed in yet another phony environmental activist front.
McDonald's sued green activists in long-running David v Goliath legal battle, but police role only now exposed

An undercover police officer posing for years as an environmental activist co-wrote a libellous leaflet that was highly critical of McDonald's, and which led to the longest civil trial in English history, costing the fast-food chain millions of pounds in fees.

The true identity of one of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" is Bob Lambert, a police officer who used the alias Bob Robinson in his five years infiltrating the London Greenpeace group, is revealed in a new book about undercover policing of protest, published next week.

McDonald's famously sued green campaigners over the roughly typed leaflet, in a landmark three-year high court case, that was widely believed to have been a public relations disaster for the corporation. Ultimately the company won a libel battle in which it spent millions on lawyers.

Lambert was deployed by the special demonstration squad (SDS) - a top-secret Metropolitan police unit that targeted political activists between 1968 until 2008, when it was disbanded. He co-wrote the defamatory six-page leaflet in 1986 - and his role in its production has been the subject of an internal Scotland Yard investigation for several months.

At no stage during the civil legal proceedings brought by McDonald's in the 1990s was it disclosed that a police infiltrator helped author the leaflet.

Comment: See also:

COINTELPRO in the UK: Undercover British police officer was pivotal in extreme actions of environmental campaigners

COINTELPRO in the UK: Undercover Police officers stole identities of dead children to become 'anti-capitalist hippies'

COINTELPRO: British prosecutors suppressed key evidence to protect undercover 'environmental activist'

Protest movements are crawling with COINTELPRO: Sixth police spy unmasked in British protest movement

How to Spot COINTELPRO Agents


Red Flag

False-flag alert! British government simulating poison gas attacks across London Underground

London underground users will be gassed by an "odurless, colourless, tasteless" gass in an alleged simulation of such an attack on the London Underground.... "just in case" it really happens.

Recorded from BBC London News, 14 June 2013.


Comment: Remember this 'terror drill'?