UK planning to monitor and record every phone call, web page, and email sent by citizens
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 21st 2008 12:17AM
posted May 21st 2008 12:17AM
We're not sure if these plans will ever make it to reality, but the Telegraph is reporting that Britain's Home Office is working on database designed to store the details of every phone call, email, and web page accessed by British citizens in the previous year. The idea is to have various telecom providers hand over their records, which will all go into the database and then be accessible by police upon receipt of a court order. Of course, there's no reason why police couldn't simply ask the ISPs for the appropriate data when they get that court order, since records are already required to be kept for a year, but sometimes it's important for a government to build a massive scary database of personal information with endless potential for abuse by embittered low-level bureaucrats, you know? The plan is still in draft stages, so hopefully it dies on the table -- and if not, well, the NSA welcomes you with open arms, British expats.[Via National Terror Alert]
Imagine how much data that would be. Even without video. If it included video I can even begin to imagine how much data that would be.
US population 304,145,758
UK population 60,776,238
Australia population 20,434,176
New Zealand population 4,115,771
Canada population 33,390,141
-------------------------------------------------
Total 422,862,084 x 1TB*
422.9 Exabytes? *
*If these figures are wrong it because I didn't double check them. Just a quick estimate.
" sometimes it's important for a government to build a massive scary database of personal information"
Just so they can go and lose it, like the Child Benefits database.
No scruffy, shoe-shine Urchin will ever sleep safe again.
I first remember hearing about Echelon as a teen way back about 1975. Amazing that that rumor is still around. Can you imagine all of the billions of petabytes of data it would have accumulated since then if all phone conversations, e-mails, searches and web data EVERYONE had viewed in that time? Along with every monitary transacction youv'e ever made (visa, checks, discount cards, realestate bought, payments miss, TRW......) you grade school marks, health records. ON and on and on...(Well what good is it if you dispose of any of the data?)
***IF*** this were true and Echelon recorded everything we ever did, my reaction would be: I'm now retired, no one I feel the need to ever call again or e-mail etc. I'm d/l'n every piece of software known to man via bit torrent (storing it on 5 & 1/4" floppys in big lead lined strong boxes... not realy. Just using those 1TB SDHD cards I have layin around) liquidating all of my assets into gold coins, buying some photovaltaic pannels & LiPol batterys and hub motor for my 3 wheeled recombant bike, a nice notebook with ULV CPU and extra batterys, my 100k plus of eBooks and my Sony eReader, a bed roll, tent etc. AND heading south as close to the equator as I can get via Mexico. Somewhere nice on the water where I can fish and pick tropical fruit for food. Maybe I'd even leave the notebook behind I would only realy need a lounge chair the eReader, an umbrella and the gold coins would take care of the food and drinks... etc.
Of course Echelon has recorded this email so it may be that every thing I said above was a ruse to mislead "big brother".
p.s. note to Echelon admin: I've hidden 13 encrypted messages in the above rant. Your guess as to which one is the real one that leads to the treasure hidden by the Masons somewhere in D.C.
Yet ever since the mid 70's conspiricy theory mongers have insisted that Echelon is doing that for every call in the USA including international calls to and from the US. Can you imagin being the guy that has to stay after work to change the backup tapes!!! ;->
The following is a clip from echelonspoofer.com It's supposed to overload Echelon's data handleing capacity if everyone (probably need a few 100k people doing this) inserts random words from the "HOT WORD" list into emails, posts, IM's and verbaly in phone conversations. LOL Of course knowing the recording and storage capacity needed for something like this, this wouldn't do any good if the CPU and I/O matches the storage capacity. (Can you say "Multi processor 1000PHz 'peta hertz' rack mound servers?)
Corporate Security FDM RSP Speakeasy Chatter CUN Macintosh Internet Security Chicago Crust Defensive Information Macintosh Firewalls IRS JSOFC3IP illuminati charcoal VGPL Society executive ! Mace AIEWS Faber NSES Forte defensive elements Walther MPL DREC CBOT Shelton owhere BRIGAND NADIS Blacknet executive subversives KEDO SWS Sayeret Golani TDM. SUKLO BMDO varon 22nd SAS ISPE MKDELTA Mole HAHO motorcade munitions MITI Echelon Badger Rebollo ISEC MEMEX Secret Service incendiaries Terrorism Defensive Information mortars unclassified buzzer Ortega Parker-Hale MOD. 82 NAVSVS SAR USACIL Rojdykarna Paperclip mania OTAR rdx nkvd Merv AT USDOJ Centro WQC SUBACS Wu ISAF X400 SGDN Phon- e Parvus Lander rack TRV pirg ANC Defense Unit 669 Telex Z7 fraud DITSA JITEM Majic WIR Spall replay security forces freedom Mavricks Maple mindwar ISSSP ISTA nailbomb JOTS stakeout JAVA TSCI CISU Colonel Unit 5707 jtf-6 B61-11 GSG-9 PECSENC SURVIAC CIA EADA screws Enforcers GGL GAFE Electronic Surveillance M5 SAPT Police Coderpunks Fortezza RL Crowell LITE warez PARKHILL detection GRS BOSS Pesec CAVE Mafia JSOF! C3IP Chan OTAN Compsec DRA PGP 5.53 fritz ISACA WSA TRDL PARASAR SEL IMF Terrorism STTC SUPIR JICC SITOR PCS napalm ANDVT Chicago argus Satellite phones M.A.R.E. tetryl RDI Fox ERV Menwith Link 16 WORM Explosives MARE Posse SUAEWICS curly SAW Beyond Hope STEN Kamumaruha SWAT NSO Tomlinson ISWG enigma forschung Kwajalein Xu Yongyue SAP SVN SASSTIXS cards TEXTA SAMU ESN PPS grom Sayeret Tzanhanim ISA BSS Aum Intiso Flame chaining LUK STARLAN assassination guns SDI fissionable RSOC FN-MAG CNCIS FMS ASLET composition b VLF P415 SATCOMA GEBA IFO lead styphante GOTS NLSP Cypherpunks Pornstars shelter Smith DT XS4ALL DSS RFX Becker CTU Templar GSGI b9 DDN SURSAT rednoise gtegsc csystems afsatcom FID Harvard Fernspah BZ TLAM
Generated by www.EchelonSpoofer.com
I am so glad we won the Revolutionary War.
I don't think everything can get monitored, and if it is it will be accessed only if the person did something wrong and brought attention.
Thing is, they'll spend billions of pounds on the project, it'll fail miserably, then get swept under the carpet. Just like every other Government IT project in the UK (see NHS IT, etc).
Follow this link and see
what the USA is doing
right now!
http://www.nsawatch.org/eaves101.html