Jam Echelon Day a "rousing" success

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://hongkong1.cnet.com/news/singapore/story/0,2000027481,38027945,00.htm

[Would this have been anymore successful had they been blasting Burger
King and McDonalds ingredient lists over the Echelon spookwords? :)  -WK]


By Wendy McAuliffe
Thursday, October 25 2001 10:11 AM 

An international day of protest designed to jam the US-led
communications spy system Echelon was a "rousing" success according to
its organisers, who claim that the cyber-demonstration helped to raise
public awareness about the surveillance system.

Jam Echelon Day took place on October 21, and encouraged members of
the Internet community to send out as many email messages as possible,
containing so-called trigger words that the Echelon system is believed
to pick up on. The event was organised to raise public awareness about
the Echelon intelligence system--its organisers claim that there was
never an intention to overload the system.

"If every single email user in the European Union sent the entire
trigger word list on 21 October, Echelon wouldn't feel the impact,"
said Michael Tettering, joint organiser of the event. "The truth is,
they are geared way beyond our ability to actually create an impact."

The existence of Echelon was confirmed by the European Parliament in
May. A lengthy investigation found sufficient evidence to suggest that
the spy system--a US-led venture that has support from the UK, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand--is used for global industrial espionage.
The activists who coordinated the protest day from www.cipherwar.com,
claim that Echelon does not monitor internally in the US. "An email
campaign would only be effective to, or within, the European Union,"
said Tettering.

It is impossible to judge the impact that the campaign had on Echelon,
but Tettering and his co-organiser Scully report that in the last six
months almost 50 mirrors of the site have been posted around the
world, in 11 different languages.

"For us, success is measured by our assessment of our ability to bring
the existence of Echelon before the general Internet user. On those
merits alone, it was a rousing success," said Tettering.




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