Isn't Israel Supposed to be our Allies?

[Humus]

I'm definitely with DemoCoder on this. Most of the Echelon stories are nothing but modern big brother myths. For instance taking this little quote from the third link from the top of K.I.L.E.R's little google search:

The ECHELON system gathers all of these transmissions indiscriminately, then distills the information that is most heavily desired through artificial intelligence programs. Some sources have claimed that ECHELON sifts through an estimated 90 percent of all traffic that flows through the Internet.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's far from possible to analyse 90% of all Internet traffic. Not only doesn't anywhere near close to 90% of the traffic pass through nodes that could possibly be controlled by such a system (I hardly doubt for instance that there are any nodes accessible by this system on our campus network). But then how realistic is it that even if it had access to 90% of the traffic that it would be able to even process this staggering amount of information? Not only would it require an extreme amount of processing power, but it would also know what to look for and be able to interpret any data. Unless data comes in plain text it's extremely hard or even impossible at times to know how to interpret these random IP packets. If I zip and password protect a file and send it over the Internet it would be impossible for this system to figure out what's inside the .zip, if it would even be able to tell that it belongs to a zipped file at all.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

If ECHELON really did analyse 90% of the internet, wouldn't that make my pings in games over 10000?

 

[Willmeister]

I doubt Israel gave patriot tech to China. That sounds a bit wild to me. Israel is so dependant on US diplomatic and financial support it couldnt do without. It might try a few things like its cooperation with South Africa which woulnt affect it adversely or involve any real selling of intelligence or tech from its biggest ally...

Israel might sell this technology if America wanted. Remember, Israel has been used repeatedly by the USA as a third-party to sell weapons that they would be legally barred from selling to directly. Israel was the route by which the USA kept the Iranian army with parts (I'm not just talking Iran-Contra here) in it's war with Iraq, and also was the third-party that sold American weaponry to apartheid South Africa...

 

[CosmoKramer]

I think it is important to remember that the internet is an american (military) invention and they should know their own system better than anyone.

 

[Willmeister]

Unless every network administrator is secretly on the NSA payroll, the US military had effectively lost control of the Internet years and years ago.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Unless every network administrator is secretly on the NSA payroll, the US military had effectively lost control of the Internet years and years ago.

You assume every "network administrator" knows everything there is to know about the Internet.

 

[Humus]

I think it is important to remember that the internet is an american (military) invention and they should know their own system better than anyone.

The base internet technologies could hardly be more open and visible. If there would be some sort of technical secrects related to internet technologies then these would get lost unless they had some sort of insider control over every single third party network equipment manufacturer that were to implement these hidden technologies. It's quite an absurd thought really.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Can I crack a Navy joke please?

Go right ahead. I'm not in the Navy... never have been. I just design the stuff they use.

You are right, things like Roswell New Mexico do
I know more technological things exist BD but please don't say we have warp drives or lasers the size of flies that can cut open the earth any second.

No, I'm not about to tell you that. They'd kill me if I did. Seriously, the truth about military technology is typically somewhere between what most people would have expected and what the paranoid fantasize about.