| In an interview last month, Frank
Church, chairman of the Senate committee which is investigating the CIA, issued
an oblique but impassioned warning, that the technology of eavesdropping had
become so highly developed that Americans might soon be left with "no place to
hide". That day may have arrived. Newsweek has learned that the country's most
secret intelligence operation, the National Security Agency, already possesses
the computerized equipment to monitor nearly all overseas telephone calls and
most domestic and international printed messages. The agency's devices monitor a great deal of telephone circuits, cable lines and the microwave transmissions that carry an increasing share of both spoken and written communications. Computers are programed to watch for "trigger" words or phrases indicating that a message might interest intelligence analysis, when the trigger is pulled, entire messages are tape-recorded or printed out. That kind of eavesdropping is, however, relatively simple compared with the breakthroughs that lie ahead in the field of snoopery. Already it is technically feasible to "bug" an electric typewriter by picking up its feeble electronic emissions from a remote location and then change them into words. And some scientists believe that it may be possible in the future for remote electronic equipment to intercept and "read" human brain waves. Where such capabilities exist, so too does the potential for abuse. It is the old story of technology rushing forward with some new wonder, before the men who supposedly control the machines have found how to prevent the machines from controlling them. |