Upper Echelons

So a few comments about this New York Times piece on NSA surveillance of telephone calls within the US. First, there's apparently a judge in DC who sits on the "Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues." Career Services definitely never told me how cool being a judge could be.

More importantly, though, the article makes it seem as though this is a new, limited program. In fact, the Echelon program has been operating for over a decade. If I remember correctly, it records every phone call made in an English-speaking country and then uses computer software to scan for certain buzzwords. Human monitors then listen to the conversations the computers pick out. The system is run out of the UK and is a cooperative venture among the intelligence services of the major English-speaking countries.

I didn't read the whole article, because it's long and boring, but I don't think it makes mention of Echelon. Instead, it has lines like this:

"While many details about the program remain secret, officials familiar with it say the N.S.A. eavesdrops without warrants on up to 500 people in the United States at any given time."

In fact, of course, Echelon eavesdrops without warrants on up to 300 million people in the US at any given time. The data isn't admissable in court, I presume. It's intended for the actual prevention of terrorism and assassination.

So I guess one of 2 things is true. Either the NY Times is credulous and naive, or this is a clever bit of counter-intelligence, or both. In any case, don't be fooled. Echelon is listening.