It's 1998; do you know where your packets are?

Wed Sep 30 23:39:43 UTC 1998

	This isn't entirely operational in nature, but if true does 
somewhat have an impact on what we are operating.  You can find the 
entire text at www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/15295.html
but here are a few snippets to give you an idea of what it's about.

"In October, Europe's governing body will commission a full report into 
the workings of Echelon, a global network of highly sensitive listening 
posts operated in part by America's most clandestine intelligence 
organization, the National Security Agency. "

"Echelon is reportedly able to intercept, record, and translate any 
electronic communication -- telephone, data, cellular, fax, email, telex 
-- sent anywhere in the world. "

"Echelon intercepts Internet traffic at the transport layer, such as the 
TCP/IP layer, so the system doesn't care too much what it is or where it 
came from," said Pike. "For analog traffic, such as telephone 
conversations, it uses automatic voice-recognition technology to scan the 
conversations." 

Seems far fetched (but not *that* far), but worth a read.

Barry

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