On 8/28/07, Don Gould <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Christopher Sawtell wrote: > > AFAIK Orcon is effectivly just a retailer for Telecom and I'm quite > > certain that if the NSA wanted some particular traffic on 'our' > > Telecom network monitored and forwarded to them it would just happen. > > > > Sovereignty be damned. > > Are our telecommunications laws so lax that we allow international > security agencies to intercept traffic without a New Zealand court > order? See:- http://home.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html <blockquote> Executive Summary
In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today. </blockquote> So the short answer is a very definite "Yes". Never ever say anything via the international telecoms systems that you don't want the world to know all about. It's now fairly well known that the initial efforts in Afghanistan were so successful was largely due to the enemy not fully understanding the above sentence. It's also my belief that PGP has, to some extent anyway, been broken by the spooks. Nick? > > Orcons only gets the Layer 2 level of the DSL from Telecom which is > delivered to them on a fibre ATM link. > > Application services such as mail are delivered off Orcons own equipment > that is located in Auckland, not in Australia (as Xtra's mail is now > located it would seem). Now Totally and Utterly OT ( interesting none-the-less ) -- Sincerely etc. Christopher Sawtell
