Echelon?

Hey folks,

You know I’ve been pointing out the reality of Echelon, before it became, and is slowly becoming
news. VERY slowly. Why?

Everyone is making a big deal over the Administration’s "Warrant less wire tapping" of the American people. Some Senators, on both sides, want you to believe that every time you pick up the phone, "Big Brother" might be listing in. This makes no sense what so ever and is merely politics at it’s best.

The Echelon program, http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html , has been in existence, and still is, for years. It reached it pinnacle during the Clinton administration. As a matter of fact, a lot of these Senators that are NOW against the "concept" of phone companies, turning over people’s phone records to the Bush Administration, voted into law the Phone companies OBLIGATION to do just that, in response to President Clinton signing it into law.

Now with each day that passes, it turns out that certain stories, that some up and ran with, may be false. Phone companies that were reported to be forced to turn over the records, and this is what we are talking about, not actually listening in, are saying that they were never asked, forced to, or in any way did, give their customers phone records over to the Government. How do some counter this fact? I love this. One story I heard is

"AT&T has a technician who has reported that he observed splitting equipment being installed on the West Coast which could split the communications in half, making a duplicate copy. So please, don't jump to premature conclusions that the USA Today article was all erroneous."

Who is he? What is his name? Is he or was he employed there when He made the statement? Does he, meaning we, have proof of this? The story went from all the phone companies, except one, turned over records to the Government to "SPY" on you, to one guy that may or may not exist, that may or may not have seen some equipment.

Today is the day folks, today is the day it begins. U.S. President George W. Bush's nominee for CIA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, faces a grilling today over the administration's "domestic spying program" that has raised all this "to do". I’m sure that he will be hammered by questions at a Senate confirmation hearing about his role as architect of Bush's "domestic spying program", you know, one of the measures to protect us after the September 11 attacks.

But what is funny is, they are COOPERATING.

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, said, "It's an ongoing process. They're obviously pretty forthcoming, we just have to learn more about it." there are some though, like Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin who said that they have some "40 or 50" questions about the program that had yet to be answered.

Make no mistake about it. This is not going to be about the CIA. This is going to be another Bush attack. This will be used to try to scare more of the public into thinking that there is a little person on the other end of their phone conversations. Listening with bated breath.

Do you think he will be confirmed? Well, it all depends on how he answers the barrage of questions that will be thrown at him on this one topic. I hope he, and he should, ask THEM about their role in Echelon. A far more intrusive program than getting some phone records.
Peter