It was the latest in a long line of apparently futile online protest movements. On Thursday October 21 1999, internet users were urged to drop trigger words into their email so as to overwhelm Echelon, the massive surveillance project which is said to keep track of all electronic communications into and out of the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Echelon is said to be a joint project between the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its counterparts in the other countries. The effort to jam it was timed to coincide with Stop Police Brutality Day. Just be sure to sound as subversive as possible, organizers urged their supporters. There isn’t even any need to write a cohesive paragraph or sentence. Echelon’s computers does not understand the language anyway [sic]. It only knows to look for certain words. By doing this we can at least temporarily jam the global surveillance system.
But could they? I think it will cause a lot of laughter up at the NSA, to tell the truth, the Electronic Privacy Information Group (EPIC)’s Wayne Madsen told AP. If they seriously think they’re going to bring the computers at NSA to a grinding halt, they’re going to be seriously disappointed. Duncan Campbell, who wrote a report documenting Echelon’s routine surveillance activities for the European Parliament, agreed. It will not, in fact, have any effect on their operations, he said. Jam Echelon Day earned a certain amount of attention from the press, so the self-described hacktivists who put it together may have succeeded in raising public awareness. But as far as thwarting the NSA’s surveillance activities – what’s wrong with simply using encryption?
