Carnivore and it's big brother

The Carnivore project was officially dropped earlier this week by the FBI.Carnivore was a system that could monitor internet activity on individuals already under investigation. This is very similar to a wiretap on a phoneline. It was retired as they are now using other commerical software to conduct this type of investigation.

But apparently there is another system running that our government denies even exists, called Echelon. Echelon is the world's most sophisticated network monitoring system, and is designed and coordinated by the United States NSA(National Security Agency), and also used by British and Allied Intellegence agencies. The Echelon system is used to intercept ordinary e-mail, fax, telex, and telephone communications carried over the world's telecommunications networks. It is a network that captures massive amounts of data from satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic traffic, including communications to and from North America. Echelon is a 24/7/365 monitoring network that can monitor several types of communication through many different networks. No search warrant or any other type of court order is needed in order for your communications to be monitored. Heck, they probably already are. There are not many details that have been released about the Echelon system so we have no idea if it is being used illegally to spy on citizens or not. There is much more information about the Echelon system out there provided through the links in this article, and I'm not going to repeat much more of it. I guess this is just a reminder out there to all those people who think their communications are really private...