The Hardware Behind Echelon Revealed 344
Whispering Bob writes "Techworld has got an interesting article on the technology behind the Echelon spying networks run by the US, UK, Cananda and Australia. Apparently the super storage and analysing technology used in the US is sold by privately owned Texas Memory Systems. It can deal with one trillion floating point operations per second. Now that's some technology."
Hrm. can't access the site... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hrm. can't access the site... (Score:5, Informative)
They still use ASICS !! (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't they heard of FPGAs ?!
Re:They still use ASICS !! (Score:2)
They didn't ask for MY price ..... (Score:2)
Re:They still use ASICS !! (Score:5, Insightful)
I work on digital system designs clocked in the 150MHz region. No problem at all meeting the timing constraints on a typical 0.13um ASIC technology. We use FPGA's for testing and validation, however, and the latest and greatest FPGA's are maxing out with our designs at around 90MHz.
Now look at the clock speeds on the x86 you are using to browse this page. 3GHz maybe? How fast would this design run on FPGA (assuming it would fit)? Unlikely to reach even 1/10th the speed. Why not say to Intel/AMD/TI "You still use ASICs!?!"
In terms of speed, current FPGA technology cannot get anyway near the performance of a well optimized ASIC design (even with the same core process technology).
How about a new type of slashdot effect... we pick a few random bad words and slashdotters make sure to mention them several times in all phone conversations.
Re:They still use ASICS !! (Score:5, Funny)
Thats a capitol idea, comrad. you are da bomb. Now, if you will excuse me while I nuke a burrito and trim a bush in my back yard. See for several days this bag dad bought has been getting on my last nerve. Gas up the lincon, we are going to kill some time.
Re:They still use ASICS !! (Score:2)
It would more sense to use APPS along with FPGAs for version specific fine tuning.
No wonder they still can't catch Osama Bin Laden
Re:They still use ASICS !! (Score:5, Informative)
secret sharers (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:forget technicalities - see the big picture (Score:2)
Question (Score:5, Funny)
Since it's slashdotted, I have a question: could someone please tell me what is that "echelon" thing we are talking about? It seems interesting with those trillion floating point operations and all that but I don't have much time to search for more info right now because I am very busy building a nuclear bomb for Robert Malda, pseudonym CmdrTaco, Commander in Chief of the Slashdot terrorist organisation, and if I don't give it to him before the narcotic transport arrives and he won't be able to assassinate the president on time, then my arse is going to expericence some serious jihad with his weapons of mass destruction, because how else will he be able to overthrow the federal government and start the violent uprising to destroy democracy and bring Islamic fundamentalism to the US? So, could anyone tell me what's that? Thanks.
Echelon fun .. (Score:3, Funny)
For example, matching voice patterns, it will alert the CIA every time someone utters 'Ana raicha al quaeda' in arabic.
This has been known to cause too many alerts at a time when an earthquake caused a colera epidemic, which caused many arabs to go to the 'sit' (quaeda) frequently.
Echelon has been critizised in the far dull past to lack overlook and control of who enters keywords, so the public wouldn't know whether it has bee
Re:Question (Score:3, Funny)
No. John Kerry, well-known Catholic, has not been elected yet.
For those that didn't already know (Score:4, Informative)
Re:For those that didn't already know (Score:2)
anyway, despite what that tech is used for, it is damn cool tech.
I'd like to think that I could trust the people who it has been designed for, in particular the chief architect and user of the system, the US Govt. However, these past couple of years, with all the shit that's been going on [aintitcool.com], I'm starting to wonder. I mean, they seem to know how to use it to get an advantage for their companies, but they can't use it to stop one of the largest attacks on US soil in the country's histo
Re:For those that didn't already know (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not really an argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Evil they are! (Score:5, Funny)
Mirror (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mirror (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm..never heard (Score:5, Funny)
That damn intelligence war must be really working.
Re:Hmm..never heard (Score:5, Funny)
Full Article text for the impatient or paranoid (Score:5, Informative)
By Chris Mellor, Techworld
You've probably heard about Echelon, the vast listening system run by the US, UK, Canada and Australia that scans the world's voice traffic looking for key words and phrases.
Aside from using the system for industrial espionage and bypassing international and national laws to listen in on people, it is also used to listen out for people like Osama bin Laden and assorted terrorists in the hope of preventing attacks.
All this is out in the relative open thanks to investigative journalists and a European Commission report into the system, concerned and annoyed that the Brits and Yanks has got there first.
It works like this: The calls are recorded by geo-stationary spy satellites and listening stations, such as the UK's Menworth Hill, which combine satellite-intercepted calls and trunk landline intercepts and forward them on to centres, such as the US' Fort Meade, where supercomputers work on the recordings in real time.
But what, you ask, can deal with that overwhelming mass of data that helps our government spy on the world? And how does it work?
Well, a Texas Memory Systems SAM product - a combined solid-state disk (SSD) and DSP (digital signal processor). Woody Hutsell, an executive VP at TMS, said: "Fifty percent of our revenue this year will come from DSP systems, more than last year. The systems are a combination of SSD with DSP ASICs." ASICs are application-specific integrated circuits - chips dedicated to a specific purpose.
TMS has a TM-44 DSP chip which has 8 GFLOPS of processing power - that's eight billion floating point operations per second. The processing uses floating point arithmatic operations to supply the accuracy needed for the analysis. A DSP chip turns analogue signals from a sensor or recorder into digital information usable by a computer. Digital cameras will use a DSP to turn the light signals coming through the lens into digital picture element, or pixel, information.
A SAM-650 product is called a 192 GFLOPS DSP supercomputer by TMS. It is just 3U high and has 24 DSP chips and is positioned as a back-end number cruncher controlled by any standard server - a similar architecture to that used by Cray supercomputers. There are vast streams of information coming from recorded telephone conversations. The ability to have the DSPs work in parallel speeds up analysis enormously. Spinning hard drives can't feed the DSPs fast enough, nor are they quick enough for subsequent software analysis of the data. Consequently TMS uses its solid state technology to provide a buffer up to 32GB that keeps the DSPs operating at full speed.
A cluster of five SAM-650's provides a terra flop of processing power; one trillion floating point operations per second.
Echelon is a global surveillance network set up in Cold War days to provide the US goverment with intelligence data about Russia. One of the main contractors is Raytheon. Lockheed Martin has been involved in writing software for it. Since then it has expanded into a general listening facility, an electronic vacuum cleaner, sucking up the world's telephone conversations. Information about it's existence has been reluctantly revealed, prompted by scandals such as the recordings of Princess Diana's telephone calls by the NSA.
Recorded signals are fed into the TMS SAM systems where the DSPs filter out the noise to produce much clearer signals that software can work on to detect individual voices, perform voice recognition, and listen out for keywords, such as, for example, "Semtex". Decryption of encrypted calls is also a likely activity.
Hutsell says the SAM systems, "are supplied to intelligence agencies and the military though system integrators like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Zeta. It's an intelligence community application involving data from various sources. This is loaded into RAM and then real-time analysis is carried out on
Re:Full Article text for the impatient or paranoid (Score:2)
Re:Full Article text for the impatient or paranoid (Score:5, Informative)
Sam-650 [superdsp.com]
Sam-650 User Manual [superdsp.com]
TM-44 ASIC [superdsp.com]
Solid State Disks [superssd.com]
Echelon... (Score:5, Interesting)
1 Tflops would place it anywhere between place 240 (if it were sustained) or 500+ (if it were peak) on the current top500.
Not THAT amazing.
Also, i dont quite realize how important floating point ops are in a data-warehousing application. They just pile up tons of (faxes/emails/phone recording).
Btw: Remember the story about the 5MW wind-generator a few weeks ago?
The company cant sell in the us because echelon was used to sniff fax messages that were later given to a us company (kenetech windpower) which made a patent. Complete with the original tying errors. (who was it again who said "whats good for boeing is good for america"?)
(story from ZEIT, titles "treason between friends", here http://hermes.zeit.de/pdf/archiv/archiv/1999/40/1
okay... (Score:2)
A dsp cluster... That makes the performance even less impressive...
The grape guys in japan created that much flops per asic...
Re:Echelon... (Score:2)
Re:Echelon... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't give a fratz about fanboix 'trainspotting' about this computing system. It means nothing that its 'not cool'.
Just the fact that it 'only takes' a computer in the 200's region of the top500 to spy on a massive human population is impressive.
Not fanboix whiney trainspotting. Think 'culture, eating itself'.
Moving on
Re:Echelon... (Score:2)
The thing that is amazing is that you have a teraflop in 15U! Just imagine a room full of the things, and that might give you more indication of the amount of processing needed to spy on everyone.
Re:Echelon... (Score:4, Interesting)
Makes you think what kind of advanced computers they have now that no one will find about for another 10+ years...
Re:Echelon... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Echelon... (Score:2)
heh.
And the story you mention is here [slashdot.org].
Re:Echelon... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's 1 Tflop per cluster of 5 boxen - I expect they use many such clusters:
"A SAM-650 product is called a 192 GFLOPS DSP supercomputer by TMS. It is just 3U high and has 24 DSP chips and is positioned as a back-end number cruncher controlled by any standard server - a similar architecture to that used by Cray supercomputers. There are vast streams of information
reason... (Score:3, Interesting)
It doesnt say so exactly, but it looks like those dsp systems could do large-scale speech to text conversion.
And there (with all those FFTs, ect), FPops in general and DSPs could be useful.
Re:Floating point ops? (Score:2)
So you actually thought you were going to get accurate info?
Re:Floating point ops? (Score:2)
Cryptanalysis is very dependent on statistics, lots of statistics. That produces a need for fast floating point arithmetic.
If you look at the biographies of some of the NSA's past cryptanalysts, you can get some hints about the kinds of mathematics that they specialized in.
Re: Stories on Echelon wrt/US commercial espionage (Score:5, Informative)
Others are here [alternet.org], here [wealth4freedom.com], here [maurizioturco.it] and here [wlv.ac.uk] . The journalistic quality varies. You might have to search for "Kenetech".
I was under the assumption that.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Echelon? Easily avoided (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Echelon? Easily avoided (Score:5, Insightful)
actually, you've pretty much hit the nail right on the head.
There's one program out there that turns a normal message into a spam message based on the textual content, and can be decoded by running it through the same program. However, this doesn't go far enough to a degree -- if you create such a message, there's only one way to distribute it effectively and subversively, as to not be detected and your agent compromised:
spam.
Simple steps:
From this, the message is completely lost in noise, and is theoretically disregarded...with all the spammers out there, the noise volume is enormous.
The only problem with this scenario is that your recipients have no measures to contact you again, but you can set up a web log or forum where you talk about kittens or someshit and they'll be able to place padded messages back, or whatever you want to do.
Now -- hopefully, if the national governments hadn't thought about this before, we'll see a "war on spam" where they'll drop a few bunker busters on a few spammers out there :D
Re:Echelon? Easily avoided (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's what the article basically says (Score:2, Funny)
skynet (Score:5, Funny)
Here's to hoping it never becomes sentient.
I wouldn't worry (Score:4, Funny)
botnet (Score:2)
According to that scenerio, sentience would take additional resources provided by virus infected PCs, mobile phones, fax machines and .... oh no, it's Wince, Skynet is Wince, Ahhhh!
slashdotting..? (Score:5, Interesting)
Would it be possible to effectively slashdot their supercomputer? >:P
Re:slashdotting..? (Score:3, Interesting)
Instead, if everyone started encrypting their emails, or for that fact anything we'd send over the internet (to someone), with a 1024-bit or 4096-bit PGP-key(s) ... it'll be a big set back for them. Not that they aren't able to break the encryption ... is just that it'll take them a few seconds to break ONE ${ITEM} ... so if ONE billion people (we are approaching that many no. of users) sent around encrypted ${ITEMS} it'll saturate t
OK, let's have some fun (Score:4, Funny)
"John has a long moustache"
lol
And what about...? (Score:4, Insightful)
And does this listen on to the internet communications (modem beep beep blonk sounds) also?
And finaly, what do they use this information for? Would the use it against a politician if it posed a threat for them (aka blackmailing them) or someone else?
The world is more and more terrifying every day.
So, if Echelon is also in the UK... (Score:2, Funny)
* = Accident as in... Remote controlled, no pilot, full speed against military installation.
** = On paper, at least. There might be a small error on the flight manifest... Or 400 small errors.
*** = Play the terrorist card; not only does it draw away suspiscion, it also garners support.
Besides, what's this who deal about spy satelite? Don't they know it's
Echelon in theory and practice (Score:5, Interesting)
The word lists used by Echelon are highly classified (which of course makes sense if the goal is to keep people such as terrorists from knowing what words to avoid using). However, this also means that public oversight is impossible. Some information does get leaked to us outsiders from time to time, but always as unconfirmable rumors.
Here's a few of those that seem likelyest to have at least a grain of truth.
1. Echelon lists include lots of specific words that are used by people with training, and few general words widely used by the public. Words such as "Explosive" or phrases such as "Blow Up" won't get a hit, but more specific terms, i.e. "PETN", or "Semtex", may be on the list.
2. The list is updated, both by a general review board every few months, and immediately if a particular concern warrents it. (This rummor is apperently the only thing about the system that has been officially confirmed by testimony before congress in an open session).
3. The list is largely focused on detecting Nuclear weapons tech. It looks for correct technical names of bomb components, among other things. Lately, this has been expanded to focus more on bio-weapons.
4. The list includes names of some public officials. Rumor has it that Attourny Generals and FBI and CIA directors have had their names placed on the list to help protect them. Janet Reno was supposedly kept on the list for a year after she left office because of concerns right-wing U.S. domestic terrorists were especially likely to target her. People running the system are reluctant to put public figures on the list, because they get too many false positives to wade through.
5. The system looks for multiple hits and grades them algorythmicly. Several entries in the same phone call, particularly entries that are logically related, will add up to a conversation that crosses a critical threshold and is brought to the attention of a human supervisor.
It's easy to see some ways this could be abused. For example, it could be used to help protect all the presidential candidates in an election year, but just looking for the candidate's last names would generate billions of fales positives. So, in order to 'protect' all the candidates, it would be necessary to monitor for less well known information, like the names of various campaign advisors, private addresses, or other such info, which would give the people running the system a lot of leeway in listening to calls made by the opposition during their run for the office.
Echelon spookwords list (Score:2, Troll)
just paste them in a couple of random emails every week....
Rewson, SAFE, Waihopai, INFOSEC, ASPIC, MI6, Information Security, SAI, Information Warfare, IW, IS, Privacy, Information Terrorism, Terrorism Defensive Information, Defense Information Warfare, Offensive Information, Offensive Information Warfare, The Artful Dodger, NAIA, SAPM, ASU, ASTS, National Information Infrastructure, InfoSec, SAO, Reno, Compsec, JICS, Computer Terrorism, Firewalls, Secure Internet Connections, RSP, ISS, JDF, Ermes, Passwor
Re:Echelon spookwords list (Score:3, Interesting)
"White Yankee" should be "Yankee White", which is an old codeword for "for the president's eyes only"
Re:Echelon spookwords list (Score:2)
Re:Echelon spookwords list (Score:3, Interesting)
It also tells you roughly when that version of the list was created. Because Furbies contain embedded electronic devices, and because Furbies communicate with each other, they fell under the rules for bringing in portable electronic communications devices -- and were declared a no-no in secure areas. (Which makes sense; someone could hide a bug in a Furby and it would be nontrivial for the Furby owner or t
economic espionage (Score:4, Insightful)
You left out one major item. Economic espionage, which is why the EU investigated the program in the first place.
A lot of european contractors kept finding themselves underbid or business stolen from them- when everything was secret and there was no explanation except eavesdropping. Further, it was only US businesses that seemed to benefit from this mysterious information-providing god.
I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you happen to be a U.S. citizen or resident, it is unlawful for the U.S. government to monitor your communications without a warrant. This is no problem for Echelon, the Canadians or the Brits will do it for the U.S. It is one giant loophole for the governments involved to spy on their own people as well as anyone else.
I don't really have that much to hide but I do value my rights and my privacy so that bothers me. I know that the powers-that-be justify this as being part of the defense of the free world, that this is a necessary component on the war on terrorisiom and that such draconian measures are justified to keep us safe. But, if I have to give up my rights, my privlidges as a resident of a free country, I can't accept that explaination. Simply because the tool has become a tool of a different kind of terror. It is a took used by a represive government, used against it's own people.
I fear a repressive regime in my own country far more than I fear Osama Bin Laden and his henchmen.
So many of the changes made since 9/11 have played into the hands of terrorists. The changes have made the way we live, the way we travel, and the way we do business much more restrictive and expensive. Airport security is probably the most glaring example of this. We aren't anonymous travelers just getting from place to place anymore. We are electronically monitored, our travels documented. Those TSA agents and airport police aren't free - every traveler and every citizen pays for them.
Echelon is worse than that in some ways. We don't know if or when our conversations and other communications are monitored. It is hidden from our view, shielded behind a digital curtain of secrecy. If it is used against us, we will probably never know.
Some people probably say: "What's the big deal if it is also used to catch drug dealers anyway? They are just criminals." I can understand that position but have to say that it is a pretty narrow view. The truth is that you can't make two wrongs make a right. A regime that turns it's military against it's own people isn't very far from being the enemy. This is the kind of thing that the Gestapo did in Germany. It is just wrong.
I'm glad to think that I live in a free country. I'm just not sure that we are as free as we think we are. I'm afraid that we already have our own version of "secret police."
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're even trying to legalise Extraordinary rendition [blogs.com] so they can send suspects to countries that practice torture for interrogation. It's illegal for us to kick the shit out of suspects but it's not illegal in those countries that we wanna invade.
As long as nobody gives a damn, it'll keep getting worst.
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's unfortunate that you felt it necessary to make this statement. Whether or not you (or I, or anyone else, for that matter) have anything to hide is irrelevant to this discussion. The Constitution of the United States of America codifies the primacy of individual freedom that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and should not be abridged. The Constitution is the Law of the Land. Period. End of discussion.
also,
I do not understand that position at all. "Just criminals"? The basis of all freedom is the freedom to break the law. The true horror of Echelon is that it is yet another attempt by weak-minded, fear-filled fools who do not understand this to drag us further down the path of Tyranny in the name of Security. Echelon makes the assumption that we are all criminals.
When we have effectively legislated all thought in a misguided attempt to prevent ThoughtCrime, we have ceased to be a free society. The idea that the interests of the State take primacy over the interests of individuals has a name...it's called Fascism.
.
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to the implementation of freedom-crushing systems like Echelon.
Our forefathers understood that there are some things in life than are more important than life itself. I don't need or want my life to be saved by deluded do-gooders like you who seem to think that a false sense of safety and security justifies severe restrictions on my freedom.
Here's a couple of well-worn quo
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, and the dialog usually goes something like this:
"You can't do that. It violates Article--"
"But it's drugs."
"Oh, OK."
rj
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Only after a couple of years, it is used when it is found convenient.
Probably the bankers are guilty as hell,
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably the bankers are guilty as hell, as all bankers are,
Considering noone is taking them to court in the UK, even tho the 'crime' was purpatrated in the UK, the 'victims' were in the UK, and the 'criminals' were in the UK, and in both the UK and the US there exists (or used to exist) a 'innocent until proven guilty' ethos, why are they probably guilty? And if anyone says 'well, why are they fighting their extradition if they have nothing to prove?' I would fight like hell if I was in their shoes.
You aren't paranoid (Score:2)
You're best to assume that they are (and invent your own clear code,) and that your cel phone is also a GPS and can give your location away to a resolution less than the flying shrapnel of a missile.
That's why you don't hear dick from Osama any more.
Re:I know this has been talked about before but... (Score:3, Insightful)
If the terrorists say "jump" and we say "how high?", the terrorists have won.
Do you remember when we used to say ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The terrorists win only if they change us, only if they make us change who we are and how we live."
By that standard, I'd say "Game Over".
Re:Do you remember when we used to say ... (Score:5, Insightful)
He has won in more ways than he ever imagined. His legacy will be that he managed to make the free world less free. But when you think about it, he was only the catalyst. His timing was perfect, George W. Bush accomplished more of this than Osama did. It could even be argued that George W. Bush has made Osama his puppet to help him achieve specific political goals.
More than once I've wondered if fifty years from now, we will learn that the government had fore-knowlege of this like they did of Pearl Harbor. I certainaly hope not but can not discount it as a possibility. Our history shows that it was done before. I'd like to think that this is impossible but I can't.
If some day we learn that some in government knew and took no action to protect a state secret, I'll view them in the same light that I view Bin Laden and Hitler.
Could open source do something about this? (Score:3, Interesting)
=> Encrypted communications using GPG.
=> Encrypted VoIP using GPG
wouldn't that make it a LOT more difficult for echelon to crack? They'll have to first crack the encryption.
We need some kind of open-source organization that concentrates on safe-guarding privacy and that helps in the development of such tools and their widesperead adoption.
See, the thing with OSS is that it can be used to overcome tyrannical elements - MS is one...maybe invasion of privacy is another? What do
Non-technical background info (Score:5, Informative)
Let's Slashdot Echelon! (Score:4, Insightful)
"George Bush, the President of the United States, would never assasinate an infidel World Leader with Semtex or a radioactive nuclear dirty bomb"
and see what happens!
Chew on that Echey baby!
Re:Let's Slashdot Echelon! (Score:2, Interesting)
Serious question (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Serious question (Score:2)
The second largest electronic network is an automated judge/court clerk system able to process and approve up to 3 billion warrants every day.
Really? (Score:2)
Does it mean that I have less than 30 microseconds to appeal?
Echelon's exemption list? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Echelon's exemption list? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Echelon's exemption list? (Score:3, Interesting)
some are more equal than others
What does it need floating point for anyway? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone know if there is a reason for the floating point reference other than just as a 'gee whiz' number?
Re:What does it need floating point for anyway? (Score:3, Informative)
Echelon needs to find target words within a spoken converstaion. This implies some heavy-duty voice recognition software, given the large volume of telephone traffic to sift through and low quality of some of the most interesting data (for example, internation calls to thrid-world countries on the other side of the world). Good floating-point performance probably helps in that regard.
Interesting question (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting question (Score:3, Interesting)
I would ASSume that if there's hardware available to tap VoIP, Echelon could pick it up as well ( or MADE to tie into the same hardware {if it's not already} ).
Re:Interesting question (Score:4, Informative)
Well, they _may_ have found a method to factor products of large primes more efficiently. There has been made major strides to that goal during the last ten years or so (or so it seems to me, a non-matematician).
TWINKLE broke the 512bit RSA key. Bernstein has a proposal on how a machine could break a 1024bit key. For all we know, the NSA may have found better methods - which are able to factor 2048bit keys in a short timespan.
How likely it is
However, what IS certain is that pure bruteforcing is out of the question. Whatever the paranoids may believe, not even the NSA sit on fast enough computers to break into a single SSH session if they use todays public knowledge on algorithms. Not even all the worlds computers combined would be able to break into such a session with reasonable time. Breaking into lots of them in parallell -- "yeah right".
Code words / amatuers (Score:2)
How Is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
What about "codewords" (Score:2)
If a "terrorist" uses genreic words in their e-mail to decribe weapons or tactics then to cover all possibilities do they just monitor all e-mails and conversations of certain persons? Sure an Osama Bin Laden is on the list but what about some person they only "suspect" of terrorism.
The fourth amendment (Score:4, Insightful)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Violating my fourth amendment rights and eroding my civil liberties is a much greater threat to my national security than any WMD is.
I read something everyday that makes me want to quit being an American.
Echelon in the late 1970's (Score:4, Interesting)
In the late 1970's I worked for a defense contractor that built specialized signal processing computers. The NSA was a major customer. We tried to find other applications, like oil and gas exploration, but nobody else was buying.
My job was to write microcode assemblers and then write the microcode that handled I/O. My description of the hardware is here [bway.net].
Up to 24 voice grade channels (8K samples per second each) arrived time and/or frequency multiplexed onto a single data channel. The system detected the presence of the subchannels, determined the type of modulation being used, and ran them through the appropriate demodulator algorithm. I don't know what happened to the data after that.
We didn't use custom chips. A cabinet full of Schottky MSI chips was enough for a three processor system. The system's speed was due to parallelism, not high clock rate.
By the way, one of our computer rooms was built inside a big metal box that was suspended from the roof on cables. When it mattered, all external connections except for power were unplugged. We were too cheap to pay for a shielded air-conditioning system, so tests lasted a maximum of 20 minutes.
Where did this article come from and why. . ? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article was published in "Techworld" which is an affiliate (one of many) of InfoWorld Media Group, which in turn is a limb of IDG. .
IDG is one of those earth-flattening corporations which dominates everything. Look at their track record [idg.com]. Interestingly, they're not just interested in owning all the computer publications in the world. They also have their fingers in Brain Research [idg.com]. --Which looks on the surface to be a bit of PR angling, but 350 million worth? Whatever. Creepy.
.
Huge publishing conglomerates have mandates and agendas, (whether they realize it or not), so IDG publishing articles about Echelon is interesting to say the least.
By contrast. .
Slashdot is owned by OSDG. (Open Source Data Group)
From the OSDG website [ostg.com]
OSDG is in turn owned by VA Software [vasoftware.com]
VA Software appears to have its morals lined up nicely. That is, their goal appears to be data sharing and the facilitation of collaborative creative efforts. As the much maligned, (and biblically misrepresented), Christ advised, "Judge the Tree by the Fruit it Bears." This is one of the most outstanding bits of advice I have ever heard. Flowing all the way down this particular chain, Slashdot allows peculiar guys like me to speak my mind in forum on taboo subject matter. I have an enormous amount of respect for that.
Here's an article written by Carl Redfield [cisco.com], a guy way up at the top of th
Re:need a mirror (Score:3, Interesting)
> it won't work either. Why slashbots insist on linking to these is
> beyond me. Have they ever worked
Two in about the 20 times I've tried. it's Just Not Big Enough.
Funniest bit is some of us are mirroring sites on home DSL/cable links, and they stay up longer than the coral cache.
Re:need a mirror (Score:2)
clueless (Score:2, Informative)
Um, no that would be a ADC. A DSP is a Digital Signal Processor, which is basically like any other processor just built to do certain types of calculations very fast.
Re:Cananda? (Score:3, Funny)
Our home and native land1
True oatriot love in all thy sons commadn.
WIth glowing hearts we see thee rise.
The true north strong ansd free!
from far and wide,
O Cananda, we stand on gaurd for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Cananda, we stand on gaurd for thee.
O Cananda, we stand on gaurd for thee.
Re:Cananda? (Score:4, Funny)
It plainly marques four my revue miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word and weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write. It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid. It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite. Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it. I am shore your pleased two no.
Its letter perfect in it's weight. My chequer tolled me sew.
Sauce Unknown
(Reader's Digest)
Re:nice article for guys who love Star Treck movie (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Insightful)
Not for text matching, but for numbercrunching. Numbercrunching as in RC5-72. I think you get the idea...
Excuse me? floating point operations to run RC5? I don't think you get the idea..
Re:Amazing (Score:3, Informative)
Project: RC5-72 The project to crack a message encrypted with the 72-bit RC5 cipher.
I hope this clarifies my point.
Not very much. Because
Re:One minor detail... (Score:3, Insightful)
Was "believed" put in there because somebody wants it to sound Really Scary(TM) because it's "believed" rather than "publicly known", or was it put in there because somebody was unaware of SELinux? [nsa.gov]