Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!mcvax!ruuinf!piet
From: piet@ruuinf.UUCP (Piet van Oostrum)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: long-distance monitoring
Message-ID: <411@ruuinf.UUCP>
Date: 18 Apr 88 13:01:26 GMT
References: <48*nat@drao.nrc.cdn>
Organization: Univ of Utrecht, Dept of CS
Lines: 24
In-reply-to: nat%drao.nrc.CDN%ean.ubc.ca@BUITA.BU.EDU's message of 14 Apr 88 02:30:00 GMT

Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.47.9 of Mon Mar 21 1988 on ruuinf (hcx/ux)


In article <48*nat@drao.nrc.cdn> nat%drao.nrc.CDN%ean.ubc.ca@BUITA.BU.EDU (Natalie Prowse) writes:

   It has recently come to my attention (from a very reliable source), that
   long-distance phone calls from Canada to the U.S. are monitored.  According
   to my source, a U.S. agency runs several Crays which do speech recognition
   and analysis, monitoring calls between Canada and the U.S. (and other 
   countries too, I would suppose).  This  system searches for specific 
   keywords and records conversations which contain information which would
   be of interest to this (and other?) government agencies.  Having not been on 
   the net that long, I am curious as to whether or not this has been discussed 
   before.  Is it true, partially true, or a complete falsehood (an "urban myth")??  
   It certainly is possible, which disturbs me greatly.

   If it is true, will my message be intercepted on the net, and never reach 
   this list??.....

I heard rumours (or read in the paper) that Great Britain has a similar
system for (what they call) overseas calls (nice to live on an island :-).
Maybe this is even used for all transatlantic calls from Europe?

-- 
Piet van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, University of Utrecht
Budapestlaan 6, P.O. Box 80.012, 3508 TA Utrecht, The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-30-531806              UUCP: ...!mcvax!ruuinf!piet