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I first heard about the Echelon/5 eyes network on 60 Minutes some time in the early 90's. I remember controversy about it flagging people for mentioning "bomb"

I first heard about the Echelon/5 eyes network on 60 Minutes some time in the early 90's. I remember controversy about it flagging people for mentioning "bomb" in phone calls, so I would say I did hear about it from the main stream media. People still called it a crazy conspiracy theory when I brought it up, but I usually attributed that to them not watching enough news, not watching too much.

rhino369 10y ago
I'm still pretty sure the stories about flagging calls for mentioning keywords in the 90's were urban legends. The sort of computing power to do that didn't exist then. It's a conspiracy theory pasted onto a kernel of truth (Echelon). Even after snowden there is a lot of the same stuff going on. The stuff he leaked sure didn't show that the NSA was doing some sort of active analysis on all communications. Though at least now it's probably within the realm of technical possibility.