Anybody remember "Jam Echelon Day"?

[jim3775]

I do. Back in 1999 a bunch of people on the hacktivism mailing list decided to put out the word to everybody to essentially spam messageboards and send tons of email containing keywords that would trigger red flags in the electronic monitoring system. It essentially became a big spam-fest with huge lists of keywords appearing on hundreds of message boards. It don't know if it accomplished anything (i suppose it raised awareness of the echelon system) , but they tried it again in 2001.

Here is a wired news story about it:

According to the message, participants were encouraged to "pass a few of the keywords sought by the Echelon systems by phone, fax, or email to someone else in hopes of first making a blip of protest on the Echelon radar and later, perhaps, even crashing the system."
...

Last fall, the Washington-based conservative public policy think-tank Free Congress Foundation sent a detailed report on Echelon to Congress, but the system has not yet been debated on the floor. The foundation hopes that Thursday's efforts will help make that happen.

Lisa Dean, vice president for technology policy at the Free Congress Foundation considered Jam Echelon Day a great way to focus attention on the issue.

"I agree that Thursday's campaign is unlikely to jam Echelon. But this is an extremely effective and clever PR campaign that the hackers are putting on. Because Americans largely don't know what Echelon is. And then all these reputable people like Bob Barr are talking about Echelon."

This news story points out something interesting, back in 1999 conservatives were concerned about privacy intrusions and the 4th amendment. Not anymore.

[Dave Reynolds]

1. I just tried it a little while ago,

and got jammed instead.

[Gman]

2. Bob Barr reputable?

[jim3775]

3. It was a spokeseperson from a conservative group saying that n/t