Re: (en)Echelon-Hacktivism-Crash CIA & GCHQ computers

[Fish Eye <fisheye@barrysworld.co.uk>]

[: hacktivism :]

Originally posted on another mailing list by Mark Bowyer:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/991011-000001.html :

(Not just news of this, but why it might fail - Mark)

                Scheme to crash US Echelon net snoop ops hatched

  The world is invited to overload the US National Security Agency's
electronic
eavesdropping network, known as Echelon, on 21 October.  Place keywords
which
are believed to trigger a response from the system in your outgoing
e-mail
messages and faxes, and over it goes -- at least, that's the plan.

  The jam-in is rumoured to be the brainchild of Linda Thompson, a
constitutional rights attorney and chairwoman of the American Justice
Federation, a dubious outfit with ties to several paramilitary groups in
the US,
according to the Anti-Defamation League.

  Should enough people participate, liberal sprinklings of such words as
militia, weapon, manifesto, terrorist, bomb, Special Forces, Delta
Force,
Mossad, MI5, revolution, and the like sent out in millions of e-mail
messages
will bring the NSA temporarily to its knees.  Or so the theory goes.

  It sounds like great craic to us, but after following a tip posted at
Hacker
News Network, we're persuaded that the event is likely to be a flop. 
Not
because we doubt Echelon's existence, but because the NSA appears not to
track
keywords at all.

  According to an NSA fact sheet, their preferred method of information
sorting
and retrieval is "totally independent of particular languages or topics
of
interest, and relies for guidance solely upon examples provided by the
user.  It
employs no dictionaries, keywords, stoplists, stemming, syntax,
semantics, or
grammar."

  A patent-number graciously provided at the end of the document led us
to more
detailed information.  "The present invention uses a pattern-recognition
technique based on n-gram comparisons among documents instead of the
traditional
keyword or context-based approach," the patent information specifies.

  We're not a hundred percent sure what that all means, but we sense it
spells
bad news for "Jam Echelon Day".  The mindless insertion of keywords
being urged
upon would-be participants looks like a mere exercise.

  Unless a tremendous number of messages contain such linguistic
"patterns" as,
"the forty pounds of heroin you ordered is on its way via speed-boat,"
or "we're
holding Chelsea Clinton at gun-point in a van parked beneath the
Brooklyn
Bridge," or "we will blow up a kindergarten tomorrow in protest of
Northern
Ireland's imminent occupation by Naval commandos of the Holy See," one's
e-mail
is unlikely to be honoured by interest from Echelon.  Nuts...  ®


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