Who is listening to your phone calls

With all the uproar recently about the invasion of privacy connected to the activity of the National Security Agency (NSA), and ?data mining?, there are a lot of facts, most of which are unknown (except to those of us who are interested in, and try to keep up with the ?spooky? stuff). The point to be made here is that ?data mining? is not a President Bush invention and is not new. GWB is due some credit, but not that much.

First, the NSA was established by classified presidential directive in 1952 by President Truman and as far as I know is yet classified today. The mission of the NSA was to conduct signal intelligence (SIGINT) and communications security (COMSEC). The mere existence of the NSA wasn?t publicly known until the late 1950?s.

The network established to carry out the mission, now over 50 years old, came to be known as ?Echelon?. This consisted of a large array of listening and reception stations, all aimed at several satellites locked into a ?stationary? orbit. These targeted satellites carry most of the civilian telephone and fax traffic from all over the world., including within and from and to the US.

The term ?data mining? is not new. In fact ?data mining? was the primary focus of a program called ?Able Danger?, initiated in 1999 by President Clinton. Able Danger collected hundreds of thousands of terabytes of data via SIGINT prior to 9-11.

Able Danger was discussed at length during the 9-11 Commission Hearings, and in heated debates following the release of the 9-11 Commission Report, particularly in the debate about various intelligence agencies not cooperating or sharing information.

So all of the hulla-balloo about ?recent? secret government activity spying on private citizens is a bit overblown, particularly as it tends to imply that it is something new.