ECHELON: The Secret Global Surveillance Network

Until Edward Snowden revealed the extensive global surveillance carried out by the US security agency, the NSA (National Security Agency) and other government spying agencies, ECHELON was just a name or rather a codename whose meaning was unclear to the public.

Designed and coordinated by NSA, ECHELON is a system used to capture and virtually analyze every phone call, email, fax, internet downloads, and telex message sent anywhere in the world.

Monitored transmissions are said to include up to 3 billion communications on a daily basis. These are transmissions of both public and private organizations.

The system is operated by the NSA in conjunction with the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada. All these organizations are bound together under a secret agreement whose terms, conditions, and texts remain a closely hidden secret even today.

ECHELON Targets

ECHELON was primarily designed for non-military targets, unlike most electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War.

These targets include organizations, governments, businesses, and individuals in virtually every country around the world. The surveillance basically affects anyone communicating between and sometimes within countries anywhere in the world.

How Does ECHELON Operate?

The ECHELON system does not operate like other government spying agencies. It’s not designed to snoop on a particular email or fax message.

Rather, this system gathers huge volumes of data indiscriminately through an extensive system of radio antennae and particular satellites that closely monitor satellite communications. There are also sniffer devices that gather internet communications derived from data packets.

The system then filters out important information by use of computers (the computers identify and extract messages of interest to the organizations from a huge volume of information).

To make the filtering process easy, the system is designed to automatically identify messages/information containing pre-programmed keywords. These keywords contain target names, localities, subject, including others.

Various interception facilities have been established all around the world to eavesdrop into all international telecommunications networks. By linking all these facilities, ECHELON provides the involved organizations with the ability to tap into virtually any communication network around the globe.

According to various reports, ECHELON helped the US government learn of the plans to bomb the World Trade Center a few months before it actually happened. It’s not known how much information was intercepted by intelligence gatherers but since it was not prevented, we could assume the details were either unclear or insufficient.

Although the system has possibly stopped many attacks, the invasion of privacy has not been taken lightly by private organizations and the general public.

All That You Need To Know About Cloud Computing

The entire world of cloud computing refers to the ease which can be enjoyed in the field of hosted services. Cloud computing is one of the justified methods which may help you to make the best use of the freeware or the software from the reputed online corporations. Apart from all this, one of the prime and common complains about cloud computing is the risk which is pertained with this method. You may be locked out with the applications as well as the data which are present with you! In other words, you may end up saying that there is no security with this option!

This article is mainly deal in various ways which can cut your risks and your troubles that are related to this method.

One of the best features of these services is that you can access all the applications, your files, and services at any instant. It is so obvious that you need the internet connection to access these files and services. Apart from all these facilities, you also need to store your data and applications on the server. For storing your documents online, it allows you a web space to store the documents and files. It also allows you to edit and delete your documents and files. Once you have finished your editing, you can access documents online.

These internet applications are very beneficial to each and everyone. Most of the applications and services are executing successfully on the net. Large data can be stored on the web server. Companies can save a lot of money by purchasing the art servers for keeping the client's large data and various applications. Internet servers can easily handle the complex tasks of any business processes and provide the best quality facilities to their users.

Try to stay slow and concise when you are making your plans and steps. You may face the requirement of a financial statement when you are making the plan. I want to inform you that the cloud computing is one of those fields which can help the PC patrons to jump into the permit to use the computer applications without investing their funds in the freeware!

It is not only essential in saving money but also saves a lot of time. It provides the flexibility related to the accessibility and availability. All the implementation details are best handled by many cloud computing providers while the businesses can only focus on providing the quality services to their clients and an individual user so that they can use several cloud services at their best convenience. So one day we will all make use of several cloud applications.

Traveling at the speed of internet - 4G Technology

Technology can evolve faster than you can blink your eyes and it might seem difficult to keep track. Together with the new development of technology comes new words and phrases which can create a language barrier. Surely you have seen or heard about the term 4G. This simply stands for fourth generation of mobile network and the LTE that is mostly found at the end stands for long term evolution, which is the category of 4G technology.

4G Explained

As technology evolves and improves they try to provide a non-backward harmonious technology so it will be of better quality, even in the worst case scenario.

Earlier generations of wireless mobile telecommunication technology ran on different circuit-switched telephony and is not supported by the new 4G systems. The 4G candidate systems was upgraded by adopting OFDMA multi-carrier transmission and FDE (frequency-domain equalization) schemes. This allows you to transfer very high bit rates despite multi-path radio broadcast. Additionally the high bit rate was enhanced by smart antenna arrays for MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) communications.

4G uses OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing) instead of TDMA (time division multiple access) like 3G did. This means that the OFDM is a digital modulation which separates the signal into numerous narrowband channels that run at different frequencies where the TDMA splits the channel into time periods and has multiple users take turns. It’s needless to say that the OFDM is more effective than the TDMA.

4G networks meet standard requirements named IMT-advanced (International mobile telecommunications advanced) with peak speeds of 100 Mbps (megabits per second) for high mobility communication and 1Gbps (gigabit per second) for low mobility communication. Please note that this is the optimal rate it can operate at and should not be expected to operate at this speed constantly. There will always be factors that play a role in the speed it operates as, like coverage of signal for example.

In order for you to take advantage of the improved telecommunication technology you will need a handset with a modem that supports the new frequencies because the 4G networks uses different network frequencies to transmit data.

Advantages

What is the advantage for me? Faster internet, the 4G network allows users to exchange data at 100Mbps where 3G can offer data exchange of 3.8 Mbps. 4G also offers better coverage even in the outer lined areas that are not easily found on the map. This includes country side areas where there previously was no coverage. This means that you can be more mobile with your wireless mobile telecommunication technology.

To conclude this article about 4G technology it is clear that the only constant is change. Faster internet means saving time, less stress and irritation waiting for a page to load. It gives you freedom to go to places off the map with the potential to have access to exchange data there with the increased coverage enhancements of geographical areas. 4G LTE ultimately offer users trustworthy and faster broadband data for all their devices.