Echelon is the name of the sophisticated system whish pays attention to everything. It watches TV, listens to readio programs, surfs the net, and taps its fingers while listening to phone calls. For all the news that the NSA has been the target over during the last few months you would think that this was something new. In fact, it was created during the Clinton Administration (aka. Carnivore [that is the system not the administration]) as a logical response to the capabilities and needs of modern intelligence gathering.
The topic usually has 2 noisy sides:
- Bush bad, wiretapping bad, Og not expect government listening.
- We need to do this and to disagree is to be a terrorist.
When I noticed that the Berkley Grok Podcast was going to talk about it I almost didn’t listen. It is an odd podcast with 2 Ph.D. level scientists acting like sophomores by joking about the abbreviation for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doing questions and answers in barely intelligible impersonations of genericized celebrity voices (Agent. Smith, Yoda, Bruce Lee, Ahnold Schwar…, and others), and doing adolescent jokes about different people in the Grokatron 3000 (formerly known as Deep Blue). I figured it would be more of the same that I hear from everyone else.
However, it was a very factually based discussion devoid of the usual political smackdown that usually controls this topic.
UPDATE: Speaking of . . . There is a nifty Government Data Gathering news story template available if you are interested.
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