Mentioned in the latest Jason Bourne movie blockbuster, the Bourne Ultimatum, Echelon is very real and actually exists. It's monitoring international email and telephone communications right now, as you read this. To find out more, do read on.

By acting together, people can defeat government attempts to eliminate freedom and privacy by introducing their Constitution eroding new laws and dictatorial powers.

If EVERYONE installs and uses PGP encryption for all email communications, irrespective of how trivial or important they are, government eavesdrop projects will be flooded with unreadable and uncrackable messages from everyone, anywhere. Their powers will effectively be neutralised and made useless. PGP is FREE, relatively easy to install and compatible with all popular computer systems. Once you start using routinely for all email communications you can relax in the knowledge that the snooping agencies can no longer intercept or read your private messages.

American fascism is now going too far. People need to act. No longer can ordinary citizens sit and watch their freedom, privacy and democracy being systematically taken from them. IT'S YOUR DUTY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

• A Face Is Exposed for AOL Searcher No. 4417749 - Buried in a list of 20 million Web search queries collected by AOL and recently released on the Internet is user No. 4417749. The number was assigned by the company to protect the searcher's anonymity, but it was not much of a shield.
  Source: New York Times [3rd Apr 2008]
• CIA and Google Team Up Again For More Spying - Google is supplying the software, hardware and tech support to US intelligence agencies who are in the process of creating a vast closed source database for global spy networks to share information. Google is selling storage and data searching equipment to the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency, and other intelligence agencies, who have come together to build a huge internal government intranet.
  Source: Info Wars [31st Mar 2008]
• Tax man given web snooping powers - Tax inspectors are to be given intercept powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) that were originally intended to assist in the war against terror.
  Source: Computing [11th Feb 2008]
• Hundreds of lawyers 'bugged on prison visits' - The full scale of a nationwide policy to bug British jails can be disclosed today after a whistleblower revealed that hundreds of lawyers and prison visitors had been secretly recorded.
  Source: The Telegraph [9th Feb 2008]
• Phones tapped at the rate of 1,000 a day - Britain is in danger of becoming a "surveillance state" as authorities including councils launch bugging operations against 1,000 people a day. Councils, police and intelligence services are tapping and intercepting the phone calls, emails and letters of hundreds of thousands of people every year, an official report said.
  Source: The Telegraph [29th Jan 2008]
• Bush Order Expands Network Monitoring - President Bush signed a directive this month that expands the intelligence community's role in monitoring Internet traffic to protect against a rising number of attacks on federal agencies' computer systems.
  Source: Washington Post [28th Jan 2008]
• Home Sec in anti-terror plan to control entire web - UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has decided to mount a push against cyber terror, in which the internet itself will somehow be modified to prevent people using it for terrorist purposes.
  Source: The Register [18th Jan 2008]
• UK spooks deliberately leaked 'Squidgygate' tapes - The infamous "Squidgygate" tapes of Princess Diana speaking intimately with an alleged lover were recorded by the Government Communications Headquarters and deliberately leaked over the public airwaves, her former bodyguard told an inquest panel looking into her death.
  Source: The Register [10th Jan 2008]
• The 2007 International Privacy Ranking - Each year since 1997, the US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have undertaken what has now become the most comprehensive survey of global privacy ever published. The Privacy & Human Rights Report surveys developments in 70 countries, assessing the state of surveillance and privacy protection.
  Source: Privacy International [31st Dec 2007]
• Campaigners hit by decryption law - Animal rights activists are thought to be the first Britons to be asked to hand over to the police keys to data encrypted on their computers.
  Source: BBC News [22nd Nov 2007]
• NSA has backdoor access to Windows Mobile smartphones - "This includes wireless wiretapping of ›smart phones“ running Microsoft Mobile.Microsoft remote administrative privileges allow ›backdooring“ into Microsoft operating systems via IP/TCP ports 1024 through 1030."
  Source: Cryptome [1st Nov 2007]
• Democratic Concessions Are Expected on Wiretapping - Two months after vowing to roll back broad new wiretapping powers won by the Bush administration, Congressional Democrats appear ready to make concessions that could extend some of the key powers granted to the National Security Agency.
  Source: New York Times [11th Oct 2007]
• UK police can now force you to reveal decryption keys - Users of encryption technology can no longer refuse to reveal keys to UK authorities after amendments to the powers of the state to intercept communications took effect on Monday (Oct 1). The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) has had a clause activated which allows a person to be compelled to reveal a decryption key. Refusal can earn someone a five-year jail term. (yeah right, over my dead body!! - Ed.)
  Source: The Register [7th Oct 2007]
• FBI's Secret Spyware Tracks Down Teen Who Made Bomb Threats - FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and report back to a government server, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Wired News.
  Source: Wired [6th Oct 2007]
• Point, Click ... Eavesdrop: How the FBI Wiretap Net Operates - The FBI has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device, according to nearly a thousand pages of restricted documents newly released under the Freedom of Information Act. The surveillance system, called DCSNet, for Digital Collection System Network, connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies. It is far more intricately woven into the nation's telecom infrastructure than observers suspected.
  Source: Wired [6th Oct 2007]
• Justice Official: Details of Surveillance Program Tightly Guarded - Only four top officials at the Justice Department were given access to details about a warrantless surveillance program that Justice lawyers ultimately determined was partially illegal, a former department lawyer testified today [2nd Oct 2007].
  Source: The Washington Post [2nd Oct 2007]
• Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones - Officials from the top of Government to lowly council officers will be given unprecedented powers to access details of every phone call in Britain under laws coming into force tomorrow. The new rules compel phone companies to retain information, however private, about all landline and mobile calls, and make them available to some 795 public bodies and quangos.
  Source: Daily Mail [30th Sep 2007]
• Iraq fiasco creeps into NSA surveillance controversy - The battle over domestic electronic surveillance returned to prominence last week with fresh hearings in Congress and the usual Cheney administration demagoguery. In a clear attempt to shape the debate, on Wednesday the President took to the bully pulpit at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade to demand that Congress stop pussy-footing around and make the six month FISA statute passed in August permanent. Chop, chop.
  Source: The Register [25th Sep 2007]
• NSA to defend against hackers - or in other words, take over the internet... - From electricity grids to subways to nuclear power plants, the United States depends more than ever on Internet-based control systems that could be manipulated remotely in a terrorist attack, security specialists say. The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the "Cyber Initiative." Details of the project are highly classified.
  Source: Baltimore Sun [23rd Sep 2007]
• Collecting of Details on Travelers Documented - The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
  Source: Washington Post [22nd Sep 2007]
• Bush prods Congress to extend domestic spying law - President George W. Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to expand the government's domestic spying powers permanently, saying a failure to do so would leave the country vulnerable to another terrorist attack.
  Source: Reuters [19th Sep 2007]
• Bush Gets 6 Months Big Brother Dictator Powers - 6 month window gives government carte blanche to impose any surveillance policy and for it to remain legal in perpetuity [Aug 6th 2007]
• New Law Gives Government Six Months to Turn Internet and Phone Systems into Permanent Spying Architecture [Aug 6th 2007]

• Echelon - Exposing the Global Surveillance System (Sep 1998)
• Listening In - The U.S.-led echelon spy network is eavesdropping on the whole world, by Jason Vest
• The new space invaders: Spies in the sky - by Peter Goodspeed, National Post, Sat Feb 19th 2000

• Beginners Guide to GnuPG
• Configuring GnuPG on Mac OS X
• Installing GnuPG for Windows and Thunderbird
• Peter van der Linden's Guide to Linux - A Lesson in Encryption, Part 1

• Echelon Research Resources - a comprehensive research site
• DigitalGlobe successfully launches Worldview-1 - Press release of the launch of the world's highest-resolution commercial satellite imagery product, capable of collecting up to 290,000 square miles per day of half-metre imagery.