[Clips] Thank You for Wiretapping

[John Young]

The proponents of NSA snooping are getting their drawers twisted,
some calling Echelon Clinton's baby, with Drudge and Limbaugh and
other wing-nuts linking to a CBS 60 Minutes cursory report, and 
others of the war lovers disavowing it, while the WSJ cheers for 
what it does do not understand, ignorantly accusing others of 
misunderstanding.

Duncan Campbell wrote a long report on Echelon for EPIC in
June 2000 which the "privacy" org refused to publish, claiming
NSA does not spy on Americans. We asked EPIC in January 
2005 for permission to publish the report but never got an answer.
Here it is, entitled "Signals Intelligence and Human Rights -
the ECHELON report:"


http://cryptome.org/sigint-hr-dc.htm

Campbell carefully reviews all technical, political and legal
aspects of Echelon and NSA's global interception programs,
and there is meat there for all sides of the current superficial
spitting contest -- WSJ and the NYT and WashPo could learn
from Campbell. He cites 70s eavesdropping reports from all 
of them which seem to have been ignored in the shallow
recent accounts.

Campbell's principal conclusion is that NSA and its backers 
have lied consistently about what it is doing, from the Church
Committee hearings in the 70s on through 2000, and likely
have lied since then as a matter of policy, lied to Congress, 
lied to the public, and perhaps lied to its backers so polished
and encrusted is its concealment.

Porter Goss, along with Bob Barr, both CIA dudes, tried to
pry open NSA's box in the late 90s and had no luck due to
the blind faith that NSA could do no wrong, or at least could
do no wrong in the eyes of overseers.

To be sure, what NSA siphons about US corporate, governmental
and political corruption could silence the most frightened of
WSJ-adoring malfeasors, a trick learned from Hoover. Don't

spy in the US, too much villany in the homeland of winner take
all markets.

What NSA has on the Times, WashPo and WSJ top dogs would
be wondrous to read.