Cyprus-Forum.com

[b0g]

A few weeks ago on tv (ANT1) i was watching a program called "Enopio tou laou" and they were discussing about the Global electronic spy network (ECHELON) and how they are thinking of bringing this system in cyprus.I dont know how many of you know what Echelon is so heres a brief description:

Echelon is a global network of wiretaps, data-sniffing and general eavesdropping systems enables the U.S. government and the U.K too intercept digital communications.This means that ECHELON is capable of recording all email messages and all telephone conversations - regardless of who is making them.The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs.

A more detailed description can be found using google


Now that you know what echelon is and what it does i'll get to my point.
This global spy network has monitoring stations around the world.The main stations are at Buckley Field, Denver, Colorado; Pine Gap, Australia; Menwith Hill, England;Bad Aibling, Germany and Cyprus. The satellites and their processing facilities are exceptionally costly (of the order of $1 billion US each)
I imagine cypriots can guess where this monitoring station is in Cyprus and who runs it.At the Akrotiri Military Base at Dekeleia of course,operated by the British.This is why they installed that 500.000 WATTS gigantic antenna.The area which they installed it is one of the most important ecosystems of Cyprus and the meditterrenean and the antenna is destroying it.

This system is in violaton of all basic human rights and the victims are you ,me and every single person on this planet that uses Telephones (ground lines and digital cell phones).internet and im pretty sure they can zoom in on you where ever you are from those state-of-the art multi milllion dollar satellites that surround our planet.

I dont know what we the people can do to fight back,i dont think there is anything to do,the world is ruled by terrorists,and no one can do anything about it.Not by Al qaueda or Bin laden or whatever but from those who are our leaders and who claim they want world peace but all they do is create wars and kill innocent people including there OWN PEOPLE.

Peace out.


EOF

[Svetlana]

Cyprus has been part of the ECHELON network for many years; it is a vital location for the West to monitor: North Africa, the Near and Middle East, Russia/Turkey etc.

It gathers information both from its own satelittes but also 'spies' on other commecrial and militry satellites.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I listed 'monitoring ECHELON' as my hobby in my Public Profile on this Forum!

All a very fascinating subject - but I suspect monitoring my cell phone would bore them to tears!

Lana

[Michael Coumas]

Well commented Svetlana, brief, concise and to the point.
bOg - I appreciate you have only just noted this from a TV broadcast but there is nothing too secretive in the monitoring of telecom’s traffic, and nothing too much to be fearful of unless you are up to what general society classes as no good. It has been going on for a lot of years. If this kind of information is in the public domain you can guesstimate that it will be in the region of 10 or more years out of date. Now if you knew what is being worked on today then that will astound you.
Some 15 to 20 years ago I was overseeing the sub sea laying of the Netherlands - UK fibre optic No.8 cable which if my memory serves me correctly could carry at least 100,000 bytes of information down each pair if fibres per second. I thought this at the time to be amazing but in fact it was just average. I only mention it to show there are far more amazing things going on that we could ever imagine & what we do know is generally old news.
Best regards

[devil]

Echelon could not care less what you do, unless you start sending messages, by whatever means, that would involve security. For example, every word, whether in plain language or decyphered, has a score. The communications are monitored by automatic systems and 99.99% of them are never read (and are passed through without even being able to be read or listened to by a human, so that the secrecy of communications is still sacrosanct. Now I could well imagine that some words, possibly like bomb, Bush etc. have higher scores. When a message has a high score, it is passed on to an automatic parser which determines whether the "red" words are used in a context that could mean something sinister. Only then are they vetted by a human. Now this message possibly has a few "red" words, but it will never be read by the FBI or whoever, because it won't pass the parser, even if it passes the vocab test. In the case of e-mails, the header contents are also surely analysed.

That having been said, the total ignorance concerning the antenna at Akrotiri (which is nowhere near Dhekelia) is laughable. As an electronics engineer, I can state categorically that there is no danger to humans or ecosystems posed by it (other than the mechanical obstacle to migrating birds) and Echelon uses receivers, not transmitters, anyway. I don't recollect any outcry when radio and TV transmitters or even mobile phone fixed stations were installed for the benefit of the public. Let me try and explain simply that radiation, to be dangerous, must be ionising. That is to say that it must separate the positive and negative ions of whatever is absorbing it. If it is passing through air, it will cause some oxygen molecules to change their bonding and split the two atoms apart. The free radicals then combine with other oxygen molecules to form toxic ozone molecules. This is what you can smell near a UV lamp if the ventilation is poor or where there is sparking in free air. Electromagnetic radio waves are NOT ionising (there is a possibility of slight ionisation occurring close to dirty or damp insulators due to corona discharge, but this is very local and is not radiated). If they were ionising, you would have no radio, TV, mobile phones, satellite communications or any other form of radiocommunication. To go one stage further, light, whether from the sun a light bulb or a fluorescent tube, is also electromagnetic radiation of a somewhat shorter wavelength. Is that dangerous at normal levels? If you stand naked in the sunlight, you absorb much more energy than you would do at 2 wavelengths from any omnidirectional radio transmitter antenna operating at hundreds of kW.

At Rugby, England, Fort Collins, Colorado, Kekaha Kauai, Hawaii etc., you have standard frequency stations with massive antenna farms that make Akrotiri look like a speck. The power to the antenna at Rugby is 750 kW. Even more powerful is Cutler, Maine at 2,000 kW, Jim Creek, Washington at 1,200 kW and various others considerably more powerful than Akrotiri. I don't know the dates of installation, but the Rugby one (close to a number of large cities, Rugby, Leicester, Coventry etc.) started, I believe, in 1923 for world-wide standardisation of time for navigational purposes. Have you seen the inhabitants of these cities start to grow green whiskers or have an undue rate of illnesses? Of course not. The Akrotiri affair is a purely political one fomented by ignorant ecopoliticians who have not a single grain of technical knowledge and very little intelligence, to boot.

[Piratis]

The communications are monitored by automatic systems and 99.99% of them are never read

They are not saved either?

Now this message possibly has a few "red" words, but it will never be read by the FBI or whoever, because it won't pass the parser, even if it passes the vocab test.

If this is the case, then the terrorists can simply avoid using the "red" words. There should be something more than just that.

In any case, if what Devil says has some weight, then the people do have a way to react. A world wide campaign were people would call each other, email each other etc, and say that they plan to place bombs etc. This would mean a lot more data will need to be examined, so much that they will not have the human capacity to do it and their whole system will collapse. Just imagine if instead of 0.01% the 1% of the messages will have to be examined!

[devil]

The communications are monitored by automatic systems and 99.99% of them are never read

They are not saved either?

Now this message possibly has a few "red" words, but it will never be read by the FBI or whoever, because it won't pass the parser, even if it passes the vocab test.

If this is the case, then the terrorists can simply avoid using the "red" words. There should be something more than just that.

In any case, if what Devil says has some weight, then the people do have a way to react. A world wide campaign were people would call each other, email each other etc, and say that they plan to place bombs etc. This would mean a lot more data will need to be examined, so much that they will not have the human capacity to do it and their whole system will collapse. Just imagine if instead of 0.01% the 1% of the messages will have to be examined!

I'm not an expert in Echelon but it's obvious that only the wheat is saved, not the chaff. Can you imagine the storage capacity required to record every phone call and every e-mail? No, the chaff will not be saved.

Of course, Osama is not going to say in an open message anything like Ahmed, take 1 tonne of TNT in the back of your truck, put in two detonator circuits for double security and wire them up to a double pole single throw switch. Add a few bags of nails for good measure, drive to the Americal embassy and throw the switch. Good luck, see you in Paradise with your 72 virgins. Best regards Osama, Al Qaida Netwoeks Ltd! He would more likely encrypt something like: Please accept my order for one tonne of tomatoes in two lots to be delivered to the usual address. Hassan, Veggies Ltd..

I have some experience of Bayesian mail sorting. Just to show you how accurate this can be, let me explain that I do beta testing for a Taiwanese firm making video editing software. I also give support to the same software on a net list. I use a Bayesian mail sorter to separate the mail from the list server and concerning beta testing. Despite the fact that there are many words used in common, the sorter never makes an error distinguishing between the two mailboxes, not even when messages come from the same person. This is because it is context-sensitive. If I can do this on a very ordinary PC, I'm sure the security services can be remarkably accurate concerning the real significance of Hassan's order for tomatoes, with their supercomputers.

I don't believe that it is clever to play with the security guys. In the first place, you may be placing peoples' lives at risk if you try to overload the system (denial of service). Secondly, I'm sure that their systems are programmed to capture hoax messages and your IP number will be recorded. Thirdly, these guys have no sense of humour. If you f... with them, they may start f...ing with you, in spades.