Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail

Viewing Single Post From: The NSA May Read My Mail
codebreaker11235	Sep 11 2005, 02:06 AM
Just registered Posts: 3 Group: New Members Member #9 Joined: September 9, 2005	As private citizens I do not think that we need to resort to having to use encryption methods in all of our emails. Although it is within the power of the NSA, GCHQ, or any other Signal Intelligence agency to intercept our private communications, as it should be; i know i would be rather upset to find out that that task was outside their ability. However, I do not worry that they are reading mine or most other private citizens emails, phone calls, etc. The reason I am confident with this is because of the intelligence problem of processing. Signal Intelligence agencies are already backed up and overloaded in terms of processing and analyzing all of those communications. The NSA just doesn't have the man-power to handle all of the COMINT and SIGINT coming from priority targets. Given this, it wouldn't be logical for those few analysts to waste their time scanning all the emails containing such things like family updates, that billy broke up with sharon, or that mr. jones is going to be late for his meeting. This is where ECHELON comes into play. This scans communications looking for key words. Unfortunately that list has to be extremely limited. The usual example is that is looks for communications containing the word 'president'. But, if you think about this every time someone expresses their political opinion, or someone's son or daughter is elected to the student body president, or even president of some other school club, those analysts are once again bogged down. Not only that, but in order to keep ECHELON from becoming backed up, since it is just a network of computers, and does have a processing limit, it only focuses on certain routers and paths where it is most likely for a target to communicate through. In order to keep this from becoming too lengthy and getting more into things that are probably better suited for other debates I'm going to end it there. So my vote goes for the second, that yes, they can read my emails, they have no reason to, and if they do find one, I hope they find no reason to forward my name onto the FBI. My vote would register, but I misclicked and apparently null voted :unsure: as a sidenote, just out of curiousity, why is it that you seem to annoyed with talking to Americans on such matters. I'm just curious so I can try and catch myself from causing any annoyance in the future. Just PM me so not to take up space on this board


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