words and security

[matthay]

does using certain words either on the phone or on email trigger the call / email to be recorded

are these called hot words - I'm speaking of things like bomb and terrorism

we are having a debate in the office about the plausability of such

thanks in advance

[Kerplunk]

With regards to email. Scanning software can be setup to scan for words and words within images. Once detected you can have it send a copy of the email elsewhere for inspection.

[heathfield]

Big Brother is not just watching you - he's listening too! See here

[Catso]

Who knows?! Quite possibly, though strictly, legally speaking, even the police or MI5 need some sort of permit to monitor communications, they can't (shouldn't) just monitor people at random.

It would be technically feasible, but only if the numbers of people/calls/emails were contrained to a workable number. Monitoring every call or email would just be too big a task.

[boobesque]

MI5 dont scrictly NEED permission. the UK have very slack laws on phone tapping. in USA the CIA need a warant to monitor your communications but here we just need reasonable suspicion

[ugly_bob]

in reality, MI5/CIA can monitor everything -emails, phone calls etc if they so wish, whether they are legally allowed to or not. Everything is heard.

[fo3nix]

If you're afraid you can just use GPG to encrypt your email. That way no-one but the chosen receiver can read it.

[Creamer20]

I had a friend (of a friend of a friend....etc) who worked for bt and they told me that if you say "hot words" like "bomb" "IRA" "terroist" things like that and an AUTOMATED system kicks in...and your call is recorded and monitored AND anaylised for code

Same way on your mobile phone you have voice recognition, they can relate that to phone calls.

Or my bank instead of saying "press 1 for a balance press 2 for banking?" it says "please say" and it recognises what you say....

who know but its perfectly plausible....

and regarding government things.......we mere normal people have got google earth, and can zoom in n our house with such detail (in my case) that i can pick out certain cars parcked outside when the pic was taken.....This is a public service......

Imagine what kind of technology the government have got?

oh yeah and one more thing, i have a friend, whos into freemasonary things and that and he recons the government have all types of gadgets you wouldnt believe, but that there reserved for war, and top secret things.....

xxx

[druiaghtagh]

British and US goverment have(allegedly) Echelon which eavesdrops on all phone ,e mail etc and picks up on key words.

[Catso]

I think you're giving the government (just think about that for a moment - this government, the one with TB in charge, GB and good old JP - this government that seems to have problems even with celebrations in breweries) rather too much credit.

I think you're also overestimating the capabilities of current technology. Googling some data from BT and doing a quick bit of maths indicates that on BT alone, even if the conversations were short and spread equally throughout 24 hours, there would be slightly over 200,000 concurrent conversations. And they are all monitored, are they? And then all the other networks on top of that? And then all the emails? And instant messaging as well, I suppose?

Unfortunately it all rather falls down if, as was reported in the papers a few days ago, you just use simple word substitution.

If the war in Iraq was as well organised and financed as this surveillance, it would have been over long ago.

[fo3nix]

Only a month or two back AT+T in the states was getting into trouble because they had secretly installed monitoring equipment in a few of their major junctions.

Catso: you'd be amazed what technology can do. A lot of conversations, but a lot of processing power can do it. Your ISP already has a number of servers that handles all the traffic you and everyone else using them is downloading/uploading.