Anonymous Coward writes "Proposals for a new definition of human rights now before the European Parliament, writes Duncan Campbell in Telepolis, would ban ECHELON and update data protection rules to latest developments in telecommunications technology." Compare and contrast to the United States, where the only legislative proposals before Congress are to increase government spying on the citizenry. Hey, the FBI says "If there's going to be a Big Brother in the United States, it's going to be us. It's going to be the FBI." What more is there to say?

ckolar writes, "Duncan Campbell's report on Echelon has been delivered to the European Parliament's committee for Justice and Home Affairs and is available online. " This is the study that was commisioned by the EU - very interesting reading.

gaijin|dog writes, "According to this article, the U.S. and UK are to be sued over Echelon. From the article "The British and U.S. governments are to be sued in France after claims that they have spied on French companies, diplomats and Cabinet ministers. French MPs claim to have evidence that the European Airbus consortium lost a Fr35 billion (£3.5 billion) contract in 1995 after its offer was overheard and passed to Boeing." " Now, I'd rate the probablity of actually getting said money at just about the same as, say, Rob and Heather Graham dating,

Juln and many others noted that EPIC filed suit against the NSA for failing to respond to their FOIA request. Both EPIC and the House Committee which supposedly oversees the NSA have asked for documents about the extent of their domestic spying and ECHELON activities, and the NSA has refused to provide information to either. Sounds like it's time to remind the spies who runs this outfit. The story is available at many major news sites.

coldfusion writes "The American Civil Liberties Union in conjunction with EPIC and others has just launched Echelon Watch, a site which tracks developments about the intelligence gathering organization. The site does a good job of collating all of the information that has spread in the last few months. It also contains a 'write to Congress' component." Update: 11/17 09:30 by J : Baccus just informed us that the NSA has applied for a patent on Echelon-related (tapping) technology.

The BBC news is reporting (thanks to aspodf for the link) that Channel 4 News alleges that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been intercepting all phone calls between Britain and Ireland for the last 10 years. A similar article in The Independent presents similar information as fact. Apparently, the tower was used to scan every single message between Britain and Ireland for certain key words (sort of like Echelon), and the tower is now up for sale by the MoD.