“Echelon <— nobody believed this existed in the 80s and 90s” The Puzzle Palace came out in the early 80’s and 2600 was on the library shelf not much later. It

“Echelon <— nobody believed this existed in the 80s and 90s” The Puzzle Palace came out in the early 80’s and 2600 was on the library shelf not much later. It was widely believed that telegram and international calls were intercepted. I knew lots of crackpots before then who insisted every domestic call was recorded and was printed speech-to-text into some giant filing cabinet, where, they couldn’t say.