Emails
A mate of mine is absolutely convinced that all email ytraffic is monitored and that "they" have specialist software that scans your emails for keywords. If a set amount of keywords crop up, you "go on a list" and someone will read every email you send from then on.

To prove this theory, he sent two emails to himself (but to a different account, if you see what I mean). The first one conatained all the "keywords" like "bomb", "assasinate", "Iraq" and so on, the second said "hello world" and was sent a couple of minutes later.

When the one containing the keywords arrived first, he merely stated that this proved that the scanning software had got more sophisticated.

I just think he's a mental.
(ScousersPet, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:20, 22 replies)

This one isn't a huge leap
from Google scanning emails to tailor their adverts, which does actually happen (Unless I completely misunderstood).
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:26, closed)

I'd agree
that it wouldn't be difficult, but again it fails on the keeping it secret part.

How many people, like ISP's etc, would have to be compliant? Hundreds if not thousands of companies and their employees.

And nobody says anything?

Nah.
(username failed moderation, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:35, closed)

Oh I'm not saying it happens.
Just that among all the things people believe according to the answers this week, this one doesn't seem particularly crazy.

I may go back and prod some 9/11 theorists with sticks now though, because they are fun.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:49, closed)

Agreed and
agreed.
(username failed moderation, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 11:55, closed)

Erm....not all ISPs have to be in on it...
When it comes down to it Global Area Network (GAN) links that carry the traffic between continents and the such like aren't that many and tapping into these is not beyond the abilities of governments.

Also in terms of the ISPs you only have to get the REALLY big ones to agree to catch the majority of traffic, and in the case of like BT here, a lot of the smaller ISPs end up routing over BT's network to a degree anyway, so you would catch them that way.

There was a case on something similar in the States, and as much as I hate to link to Suckipedia, it was the quickest reference I could find:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepting_v._AT%26T
(repooc, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 13:53, closed)

I don't see the difference.
You're still talking about a lot of people being involved.

And even then, you're not catching all of it.
(username failed moderation, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 14:25, closed)

It doesn't require a lot of people to do this sort of thing, outside the organization that's doing it....
That's kinda the point....I think you'd be surprised how few you can actually set this sort of thing up with.
(repooc, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 14:30, closed)

No I wouldn't
more than would ever keep it secret.
(username failed moderation, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 14:31, closed)

Who said it's secret?
Gaz me if you'd like to discuss, to save everyone else on this thread, it's simpler than you think....

But also, this sort of stuff isn't being kept secret very well either.
(repooc, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 14:35, closed)

Hi Julian
Nice to see you're posting on B3ta.

www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/dec/02/julian-assange-iphone-blackberry-gmail-surveillance-screwed-video
( rob, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:31, closed)

Not really.
I see people have mentioned Google above.

In the words of our resident socially-inept IT bod, "You can't ever delete anything from a computer".

Privacy's for paedos, anyway.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:45, closed)

^^ What Spango said ^^

( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:48, closed)

Yeah but even if someone did.
I personally wouldn't give a monkeys testicle as the only emails I send are puerile or work related.
( The Mock Turtle ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:47, closed)

^What The Goat said^
I think that anyone who puts anything significantly conspiratorial in an email is an idiot - like these people who download pron at w**k and then go "What did I do wrong?" when they get fired - they're idiots.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 9:55, closed)

Not sure I'd fancy the job....
With c. 300,000,000,000 e-mails sent on a daily basis (that's close to 100 trillion a year) any computer trying to extrapolate particular key-words would really have it's work cut out.
( Hunter Stockton was murdered by a bicycle wielding axolotl,.,.,.,., Wed 7 Dec 2011, 10:11, closed)

google are rather good at dealing with problems of this scale
I think if I wanted to find a company with enormous experience in dealing with making keyword interfaces to huge amounts of data in almost realtime then it would be them.

I'm just pointing out similar problems have been tackled and we're all using them everyday.
( rob, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 10:21, closed)

Not really....
Depending on the length of the word list, scanning any text document for specified strings is pretty fast. Also they wouldn't be using standard servers for this, they'd be mahoosive clusters with like a 1000 quad core processors or something like, making the actual scanning a trivial thing.

I thought we all knew that Echelon and Carnivore were a reality anyway?
(repooc, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 13:23, closed)

Err
Your mate is right. This has been going on for donkeys years.

Echelon

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence%29

I thought everyone knew about it.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 12:05, closed)

Yup,
old news.

Osama bomb 9/11 semtex banana skins
*waves to Echelon*
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 12:56, closed)

Don't forget....
Carnivore as well, although it was smaller scale and more targeted apparently, and has now been superseded.
(repooc, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 13:24, closed)

It must have been well known for a while
It was mentioned in a "Professional Issues" lecture I went to as part of an engineering degree back in 2001 or 2002 as an example of data security that most people overlook. It appeared to be the only thing the lecturer had heard of since the glory days of IBM.

A year or two later the EU (or a similar European organisation) issued a report on how it was being used for industrial espionage and I suspect it took them a few years to put that together.

A more interesting conspiracy was Phorm: BT let a company called Phorm do deep packet inspection on some users' internet access and lied about it. I gather the aim was to improve targeting of adverts - the best bit for the tin foil hat brigade: one of the directors was Sir Norman Lamont, Baron of Lerwick.
( ElParrot, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 22:21, closed)

You'll know that he's not mental
when you see him being hustled into a car with a black bag over his head, bound no doubt for Gitmo.
(the other guy not the one that gave you coochie warts, Wed 7 Dec 2011, 23:47, closed)