File spoon-archives/anarchy-list.archive/anarchy-list_2000/anarchy-list.0007, message 49


Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 02:39:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jamal Hannah <jah-AT-iww.org>
Subject: Echelon and on-line surveillance (fwd)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Jul 2000 04:58:03 -0700 (PDT)
From: "[iso-8859-1] Danyl Strype" <strypey-AT-yahoo.com>
Reply-To: DIYWeb-owner-AT-egroups.com
To: mayday2k-AT-onelist.com, a-act-AT-egroups.com
Subject: [a-act] Fwd: Echelon and on-line surveillance


--- kubhlai <kubhlai-AT-proweb.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> En regarde de the email most recently sent to us by our
> francophiliac 
> comrade, and prefigured at regular intervals by similar
> ones in the past 
> on the subject of Security Service monitoring of keywords
> in emails, 
> faxes etc.....
> 
> the idea of "saturating" the airwaves with emails
> containing assemblages 
> of the said keywords in order to waste the Security
> Service bandwidth is 
> a non starter.... in fact its shooting oneself in the
> foot and here is 
> why....
> 
> The monitoring system works not by drawing the attention
> of a security 
> service employee to the specific document containing the
> keyword, but by 
> compiling a statistical map of where the said keywords
> repeatedly occur. 
> By studying such frequency maps, and changes in it over
> time, and by 
> trawling for certain combinations of keywords (much on
> the same 
> principles as many Internet search engines) the agencies
> are able to 
> detect the general flow of attention to certain subjects
> on a demographic 
> basis. Properly analyzed on this basis, such statistics
> can tell 'Them' a 
> lot more than you might imagine -- a lot of it of
> political rather than 
> policing usefulness. 
> 
> This is not to say that they do not have the theoretical
> capacity to zoom 
> in upon a specific email message and have a real live
> person actually 
> read it, but this is very much an exception rather than
> the rule. How do 
> I know this? Think about it for just one moment -- how
> many personnel 
> would they have to employ to read every email, fax.
> phonecall containing 
> a keyword if they read them purely as a random response
> to a certain 
> string of letters or noises? A computer can filter an
> electronic signal 
> but it cannot *understand* it, it cannot place you under
> arrest..... It 
> can however easily (in particular - QUICKLY) match
> recurring strings, or 
> ignore combinations of words which make no sense. THESE
> are the things 
> which it is easy to program a computer to do....
> 
> Secondly. The deliberate transmission of keywords is
> actually 
> COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE. Use that brain cell once more -- The
> agency wants to 
> know the general virtual-location of radicals : Only
> radicals will make a 
> habit of retransmitting such keywords in order to launch
> a 
> "counter-attack on the agency", therefore these messages
> do exactly what 
> the agency wants them to do -- track radicals... DOH!
> 
> Moreover, because such deliberate artificial and
> unnatural assemblages of 
> keywords are easy to pull out of the statistical data,
> they can monitor 
> their incidence on a statistical GEOGRAPHIC basis... ie
> the spread of 
> such documents reveals to them *WHO ASSOCIATES WITH WHO*.
> This is the 
> cream on the pint so far as the system is concerned --
> being able to 
> create maps of human relationships is just gold-dust when
> some real-world 
> event sets them hunting for a specific individual.....
> Such supposed acts 
> of self defence actually turn the needle in the haystack
> into "needle" in 
> a search engine.... 
> 
> Moral -- if you act like a fucking machine you will lose
> to the machine 
> every time...
> 
> You might care to bear that thought in mind next time you
> receive an 
> email from some campaign or other (or ostensibly from
> some campaign or 
> other?) asking you to "Forward this email to your MP or
> Congressman or 
> Monsanto....." Such email chains are an absolute GIFT to
> the monitoring 
> agencies...... (and you have to wonder...... but no they
> wouldnt surely?)
> 
> Thirdly, (and here's the irony of it all). Any radical
> considering 
> blowing up Parliament or whatever is hardly dumb enough
> to discuss the 
> manufacturing of the explosives over the Net. No one on
> the J18 
> discussion list was obliged to submit any evidence of
> their academic 
> qualifications but no one was dumb enough to make plans
> to hit any 
> particular institution or even to meet in some particular
> place over the 
> List which any Tom Dick or James Bond might have been
> monitoring (which 
> of course they would not need half a dozen satellites to
> have achieved 
> since they could just sign on the discussion list...). So
> is it likely 
> that this is the technology they would use to target that
> kind of 
> activity? The only anarchists they could identify by that
> method would be 
> ones who are so devoid of gray matter that they would not
> be worth 
> identifying in the first place.....
> 
> Which of course suggests a final characteristically
> miserable 
> reflection.... What hope is there for any kind of
> political activity, 
> what purpose is there for any kind of electronic or other
> association 
> between radicals, if the general level of comprehension
> of how the world 
> arounds them works is so poor? We're all computer users
> here....do we 
> really understand so little about how they work? We are
> all anti State 
> here, do we really study so little about the tactics and
> strategies of 
> social control? We are all paranoid about political
> repression  here... 
> does anyone comprehend the basic methodologies of mass
> manipulation? 
> 
> If we aren't prepared to think like soldiers, as if there
> were a war on 
> an we are IN it, how do you suggest we are ever going to
> get a shot at 
> winning it?
> 
> If the technical understanding of how the computerized
> world in which 
> this List exists is so poor, what is the point of it? Its
> only effect is 
> to send a big "I AM HERE" message to the wrong people....
> Its a liability 
> for anyone who means it for real....
> 
> kubhlai (sober and fed up this evening)


===="...there is a distinction not between revolution and reform but on the one hand between the kind of revolution which installs a different gang on rulers or the kind of reform which makes oppression more palatable or more efficient, and on the other those social changes, whether revolutionary or reformist through which people enlarge their  autonomy and reduce their subjection to external authority." - Colin Ward, 'Anarchy in Action'

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