Wikipedia: Echelon/Talk

This article contains what sounds to me like some very fantastical claims. How, exactly, is this supposed to work?

I don't doubt the existence of Echelon, mind you. I'm just questioning whether it is really possible for it to be intercepting everything in the way that is claimed. The sheer bandwidth required inside the system would be staggering.

And how, exactly, are these deep space satellites supposed to be sniffing fiber optic packets?

How much of this article is actually confirmed, and how much is just sheer slashdot-style fear mongering?

Note well! I am opposed to the existence of anything even remotely like this. I'm just asking in my role as an encyclopedist whether or not this information has been validated! I'm not advocating on behalf of echelon I just thought I'd say that. --Jimbo Wales

I know that the information seems controversial. Here are some links on the subject:

[1] [2]

WojPob (BTW: if you don't like it - delete it! you're the boss)

I'm only the boss in a very limited sense. This is wikipedia, everyone is the boss. :-) I may do some research and tone it down a bit. The ACLU has a site about it, with more reserved claims. --Jimbo Wales

: Satan's greatest achievement was to to make humanity believe that he doesn't exist -- WojPob*

I actually drove past GCHQ in Cheltenham (I'd got lost!) a few weeks back - this is the UK headquarters for this snooping - and I was amazed at the scale of new building work going on there...it looks to be equal in size to all the existing buildings (so far as could been seen from the road) British Telecom is one of the contractors, according to the builders notice board, so it looks like they'll soon have a lot of extra bandwidth to feed to the extra gear in all that new space. After all, if you want to sniff fiber optic packets, it's simpler to just get the major telcoms provider to run their cables through a government installation than mess about with satellites....

is that quote originally from Bryan Singer's "The Usual Suspect", or d'ya have it from somewhere else?

Wathiik

I paraphrased it myself, but I think it sort of stuck in my head from somewhere, might have been the "Usual Suspects" - I dont know. WojPob.

Yes, that's The Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world he didn't exist." --KQ

: Well, it was mentioned there, but I think the idea is much older...

Apparently one major misunderstanding is the sentence with the deep space satellites. I didn't mind because there are more installations mentioned than te satellites in this sentence, so I arranged the means to the sniffed pathways myself. But it's true, this sentence probably needs to be written in two separate ones.

This article presents Echelon as a secret spy network. Due to its nature, the information presented here cannot be confirmed by independent sources. It may be the result of a desinformation campaign. Echelon should be refered as an hipotetical network. As it is now, the article violates the NPOV.

Check out the report by the European Union's parliament that's linked at the bottom of the page. Eschelon is pretty much confirmed to exist now, the only details that are still uncertain are its exact capabilities and uses.

This is a controversial issue with no possible independent confirmation. European Union's parliament is not an independent source, bet an intereted part. Being a controversial and unverifieable issue, information must be atributed to sources. Joao