Point of clarification: Wiretaps or surveillance?

Tue, 12/20/2005 - 8:32pm — lambert

Since I've been absent from the fray for almost 24 hours:

Point of clarification before I return to my sick bed with the second volume of His Dark Materials--

In King George's latest in a long train of abuses and usurpations, is it Echelon surveillance that's at issue, or Echelon wiretapping?

Atrios seems to be pounding on wiretapping, but I'm wondering if that's because it's especially easy to catch Bush lying on that one.

However, Echelon can monitor a lot more than voice, which is what wiretapping does. IP traffic ("the internet"), for example.

UPDATE Here's an Echelon primer from WaPo; and here's Wikipedia. Oddly, we run into a numerical discrepancy right away. WaPo says 650 million intercepts a day; WikiPedia over 3 billion.

lambert's blog

Help Corrente ...

... keep the heat on!

Subscribe to make a monthly payment and keep the hamsters who keep the mighty servers turning in kibble.

No PayPal Account required! Thank you!

Search

Today in Health Care Reform

Recent blog posts

Yeah, let's just wait...
2 hours 33 min ago
for all practical purposes
2 hours 54 min ago
Your link doesn't work for me.
3 hours 9 sec ago
Are you that out there on the edge?
3 hours 43 sec ago
Robot Chicken and Titan Maximum
5 hours 9 min ago
You mean 'Senate Majority Leader,' right?
5 hours 15 min ago
Nothing wrong here....
5 hours 37 min ago
Also, perhaps the process they're most idiotic about
7 hours 6 min ago
Many such things are true, I imagine
7 hours 19 min ago
You still have an opponent to contend with.
7 hours 44 min ago

I support Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Per capita health care spending (2007):

United States: $7290
Switzerland: $4417
France: $3601
United Kingdom: $2992
Average of OECD developed nations: $2964
Italy: $2686
Japan: $2581

-- Bob Somerby

The text of HR676 (Medicare For All) as PDF (30 pages). The FAQ. Compare HR3200 with HR676.

Medicare for All would save $350 billion a year (study in New England Journal of Medicine).

In 2003, a young Illinois state senator named Barack Obama told an AFL-CIO meeting, "I am a proponent of a single-payer universal healthcare program*." -- Bill Moyers.

* Medicare For All.

Random Links

[Advertising]

Contact lambert_strether [dot] corrente [at] yahoo [dot] com (lambert strether) for all your pony needs. Overt and covert displays of realism ("cynicism") available at customer option.

Chat box

18:13:19 lambert With the caveat that Grayson is Stoller's boss. So.
18:12:59 lambert Simple answers to simple questions: Yes.
18:00:47 BDBlue That's true on healthcare, but I was talking about the Fed bill. When the WH surrogates try to water it down, will the blogs fall in line?
16:32:33 lambert They'll pass something, anything. They need to declare victory.
15:40:03 BDBlue Re VL's post on the A-list, it will be interesting to watch the discussion of the bill on the blogs as the WH inevitably tries to kill it via various surrogates. Will we see the veal pen in action? And I agree this bill is potentially huge.
13:36:52 lambert Agree on Ron Paul and the Fed.
13:23:52 brucedixon interesting.... Glen tells me that neither the fake "jobs summit" nor the familiar wailing of conyers about his being disappointed with the prez are the big story. the most important thing happening in DC right now is the Ron Paul bill which wd require the Fed to be audited.
13:57:03 brucedixon I think my colleague Glen Ford is writing on it this week in BAR so I will just co-sign whatever he says.
22:03:36 Valley Girl I'd sure like Bruce Dixon's take on the Conyers comments. Just emailed him.
21:03:43 lambert Thanks, Jeff.
18:16:03 Jeff W lambert, I wrote to NOW about that Elizabeth Warren video not playing and got a response of sorts back, which I sent to you as a private PM. Just FYI.
02:28:28 hipparchia the first thing they told us my volunteer training: humans are natural born rescuers.
00:18:34 lambert One more study... [url]
23:57:37 lambert Joe Bageant is god. [url]
01:00:54 lambert The actuary was a whistleblower under Bush, too. [url]
00:47:48 hipparchia that's ok, jason stands ready to help smear the actuary quoted in that wapo article [url]
23:16:16 lambert Elders under the bus on Medicare, naturally. [url]
20:11:01 lambert 19:49:09 +100
20:10:18 lambert Capitalism in a world where we will throw as many taxpayers under the bus as necessary....
19:49:09 hipparchia elizabeth warren for president!