Reply #32: ECHELON and domestic spying. [View All]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
"Before the September 11, 2001 attacks and the legislation which followed it, US intelligence agencies were generally prohibited from spying on people inside the US and other western countries' intelligence services generally faced similar restrictions within their own countries. There are allegations, however, that ECHELON and the UKUSA alliance were used to circumvent these restrictions by, for example, having the UK facilities spy on people inside the US and the US facilites spy on people in the UK, with the agencies exchanging data (perhaps even automatically through the ECHELON system without human intervention)."

Now call me a conspiracy theorist but I doubt that the WH was not involved in 9/11.
So really AQ is the least of their problems.
So who are they really spying on?
DU, Cindy Sheehan or any other organization from the opposition.
My bet is that since *&Co have always been in this for the money, that a lot of commercial spying is going on.
Some years ago Airbus complained that Boeing had stolen a contract from them because they had spied on secret internal communications obtained through the ECHELON system, while it was not close to ever being proved it signals that that kind of thing is actually going on.
It could also be used to monitor news organizations and politicians. I wonder if Fitzgerald still sends e-mails.