to these companies.


ECHELON is a staggeringly comprehensive and highly secret global spying
system. Around the world there are networks of spy stations and spy
satellites which can intercept communications anywhere on the planet.


P18
Over the last 10 years a lot has been heard in New Zealand about the dangers
of 'bureaucratic capture', about senior officials controlling their ministers
rather than the other way around. The area of government activity described
in this book is the ultimate example of bureaucratic capture.

Politicians, whom the public has presumed will be monitoring the intelligence
organizations on their behalf, have been systematically denied the information
required to do that job.

If a democratic society wants to control its secret agencies, it is essential
that the public and politicians have the information and the will to do so.


P113
Good encryption systems, such as PGP, developed privately by American Phil
Zimmerman, are publicly available, although they are still used only by
relatively few people in the know.

The UKUSA agencies have been attempting to curb the spread of this technology,
which is a major threat to their influence, so far without enough success to
stop it.

It remains to be seen how much the public can find a technological answer to
maintaining privacy in a world with systems like ECHELON.


*** end of 'Secret Power' excerpt



************************************************** ****************************


Throughout the Cold War, the United States government pounded into us again
and again how Russia and China were evil because they monitored and controlled
the political expression of their people, had sham laws and sham courts, all
dedicated to maintaining the power of the all-important State.

How the philosophy of communism was the rights of the individual were
subservient to the needs of the State, as determined by the State.
i.e. the antithesis of constit