An international day of protest designed to jam the US-led communications spy system Echelon was a "rousing" success according to its organisers, who claim that the cyber-demonstration helped to raise public awareness about the surveillance system. Jam Echelon Day took . . .
An international day of protest designed to jam the US-led communications spy system Echelon was a "rousing" success according to its organisers, who claim that the cyber-demonstration helped to raise public awareness about the surveillance system. Jam Echelon Day took place on October 21, and encouraged members of the Internet community to send out as many email messages as possible, containing so-called trigger words that the Echelon system is believed to pick up on. The event was organised to raise public awareness about the Echelon intelligence system--its organisers claim that there was never an intention to overload the system.

"If every single email user in the European Union sent the entire trigger word list on 21 October, Echelon wouldn't feel the impact," said Michael Tettering, joint organiser of the event. "The truth is, they are geared way beyond our ability to actually create an impact."

The link for this article located at CNet is no longer available.