Chapter 70. PHO pages 302 - 305
"Brown took Milgrim to a dim, steamy Vietnamese restaurant, one with no English signage whatever."
Chapter 70. PHO
Surprised to see the turquoise shipping container from street level, Brown tells Milgrim that the IF’s family hasn’t been communicating in any way making Brown wonder if his earlier musings about using the NSA or ECHELON (instead of a Russian-speaking junkie from the East Village) wasn’t already being done. [308 characters]
Turquoise keeps reminding me of the US edition cover art colour scheme.
Brown's surveillance operation may have started originally before he or his superiors had arranged access to what would woulld be illegal NSA mobile phone telecommunications interception, but which have now come on stream. The National Security Agency (NSA) cliams not to do anything illegal in the USA.
- 10 Couldn't the Agency simply ask its allies to provide them with information about U.S. persons?
We have been prohibited by executive order since 1978 from having any person or government agency, whether foreign or U.S. conduct any activity on our behalf that we are prohibited from conducting ourselves. Therefore, NSA/CSS does not ask its allies to conduct such activities on its behalf nor does NSA/CSS do so on behalf of its allies.
However this would appear to still allow the NSA to share intelligence from allies like the UK's GCHQ, who are routinely intercepting communications anyway, for their own purposes, not specifically at the behest of the NSA.
This is something, of which ECHELON is only a part and which has been going on since the1948 UK-USA agreement, which also includes ties with the equivalent spook agencies in Canada (Communications Security Establishment), Australia (Defence Signals Directorate) and New Zealand (Government Communications Security Bureau).