Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Real Reality]

The nation's three mobile phone companies have submitted details on nearly one million mobile phone calls to the prosecution and intelligence agencies. The submitted documents contain information on dialogues, locations of callers, birthplaces of callers and other personal information of subscribers. This means one out of every 34 mobile phone subscribers has been subjected to the search as there are a total of 35 million cellular phone subscribers in Korea. The cases break down to 613,794 for SK Telecom, 261,702 for KTF and 111,842 for LG Telecom.

The revelation has caught the nation by surprise as the spy agency and other law enforcement authorities were found to have engaged in systematic searches for phone conversation.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200402/kt2004021722324210440.htm

[humanuspneumos]

Another political trip-wire to add to the whole mess. I wonder how many staff members of those telecom companies spent hours pouring over conversations to take out the names of "contributors" with high stakes in it all. Surely names of politicians and high ranking organized criminals wouldn't be so asleep as to not know this was happening or going to happen before they got a chance at bribery.

[maxxx_power]

The United States among other nations has massive listening stations that monitor cellular phone, radio, and other forms of electronic communication.

Just remember that whatever you say on a cellular phone is not secure, if you are worried about such a thing.

[Eunoia]

Yeah, that's hardly surprising. I remember reading once somewhere that the American NSA has the capability to moniter every electronic communication on a global scale; telephone, cell phone, email, fax, text message, internet surfing habits: you name it, they can track it.

[ryleeys]

They can, but that doesn't mean they do.

The EP3 spy plane that went down over China was reading Chinese emails, but the NSA won't spy on American citizens without a specific warrant. The potential political downfall if caught is too great.

[maxxx_power]

[Eunoia]

[ryleeys]

I am not naive. The NSA, CIA, DIA, FBI, ATF, etc. will not spy on American private citizens without a warrant. They will spy on other nations' private citizens or perhaps American businesses without a warrant, but they do not spy on private American citizens without a warrant. The myth that they do comes from paranoia and the fact that they don't have to make the warrant public notice.

[maxxx_power]

[weatherman]

Koreans are having a hard dysfunctional time braking away from their authoritarian past. The concept of control over others really is pervasive, and my take on it says that it is perverse showing a lack of honor among a society where people don't trust each other.

[funplanet]

NSA cannot and will not knowingly monitor the communications of US citizens. They are bound by USSID, the United States Signals Intelligence Directive, as well as other federal laws and guidelines...

How do I know? been there, done that...anytime they are intercepting SIGINT (signals intelligence) and learn that a US citizen was involved, the tapes and records had to be purged both locally and at NSA and all kinds of paperwork filed attesting to all the particulars with a chain of command signed off all the way up...the system worked...if the intercept involved citizens of other countries and a US citizen happened to be involved as well, the transcripts and tapes were purged of the KNOWN US CITIZEN...
the key is....the person or persons involved are US citizens...

now....there is nothing illegal about the British GCHQ or other intel agencies to intercept the communications of US citizens...

as for the FBI, I can't say but I do know they have gotten into some deep sheet in the past for it...but NSA tries very hard to follow the spirit and the letter of the law...