PRIVACY
After fueling the Internet conspiracy circuit from the shadows for years, Echelon - the codename for the National Security Agency's reported global monitoring system - may finally go public this spring. The unlikely leader of the effort to expose the government snoop network is US Representative Bob Barr, the conservative Republican from Georgia, who worries that the program is "unfettered, unregulated, and unsupervised."
Barr expects to hold hearings on Echelon before the House Committee on Government Reform in late spring or early summer. He's responding to a growing mound of documents proving the existence - but not the extent - of a system many believe routinely intercepts email, phone, and fax transmissions around the world using keyword searches and voice recognition.
In January, Jeffrey Richelson, a senior fellow at the National Security Archive, an unrelated nonprofit research agency, uncovered the first known government documents to name Echelon explicitly and posted them at www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv. The disclosures, Richelson says, reveal a rather limited capability and "don't offer any proof that Echelon is a worldwide collection system." (He doesn't rule out that such a system exists under another name.) Others also question the NSA's ability to sift through massive amounts of information.
Privacy rights advocates, on the other hand, maintain that as long as Echelon remains hidden, the government can abuse the system. Barr, a former CIA analyst, agrees. "My presumption is that what we know publicly," the congressman says, "is probably a very conservative view of Echelon's capabilities."
But even hearings that conclude Echelon is limited and abides by federal law will likely do little to stem the online Echelon fervor. Says Richelson: "There will always be those who believe it's operating in the most sinister way."
MUST READ
You've Got Security
Spying on the Echelon Spy Network
Web of Celebs
Social Climber
The Ultimate Hiring Machine
Zen and the Art of the Deal
Dear Everybody: I'm Dead
People
Jargon Watch
Peace-Over-IP
Laser-Accurate Forecasts
Burn, Baby, Burn
The C2G Portal Play
Sissyhood Is Powerful
Raw Data
