[Premium-Rx] Re: FCC

[Ben Dover]

Hello Dave.

>> It was my understanding that they are now tied in to the Echelon system.
 I 
heard an interview with an FCC official who was describing their remote 
monitoring capabilites before 9/11 on SW and it sounded like he was 
describing part of Echelon.  Anyone know? <<


I don't know if the FCC is part of ECHELON now, but it wouldn't surprise me
one bit.

However...  a few years back during Defense Department base closings and other
budget cuts I ran into some rather interesting items that got very little
mention in the news.

The military was doing all sorts of bizarre things to protect pet systems and
projects. My particular favorite was the Navy admiral who had the gall to 
go before Congress and try to defended the Trident missile submarine
program by 
claiming the boats were an effective weapon for use in the War on Drugs!!!

Presumably, he was referring to a Trident boat's ability to listen to and
track
surface vessels with it's SONAR systems, and he WASN'T talking about nuking
the
coke fields of Columbia!!!  


About the same time, the Navy offered the use of a system called WHITE
CLOUD to
the FCC. WHITE CLOUD is a network of radio intercept / DF satellites ("Little
LEOs") that are intended to monitor the movements of enemy ships by means of
inferiometry direction finding. The offer was just a line or two in a
newspaper
item, and I never saw anything about the FCC accepting or rejecting the
offer.  

After a web search on WHITE CLOUD and reading the Federation of Concerned 
Scientists item on the system, paranoia set in; for months thereafter I was
EXTREMELY careful about the language I used on the ham bands!  ;o)


73's,

Tom, W9LBB