While paper copies of the report have been made public, in the last three weeks, it has begun to be reproduced on the Internet by civil liberties advocates and is now available from several Web sites. According to the report, in the last few years many governments have spent huge sums on the development of new technologies from surveillance systems to paralyzing weapons for their police and security forces. Outmatched by the speed and complexity of technological innovation, the fear is that these controls have been quickly weakening in recent years. The report paints a frightening picture of an Orwellian world. Parabolic and laser microphones can detect distant conversation, even behind closed windows.
Stroboscopic cameras can individually photograph all the participants in a march.
Among the more futuristic scenarios portrayed in the study, robots called neural network bugs, built like small cockroaches, can crawl to the best location for surveillance. Researchers are now working on controlling and manipulating real cockroaches by implanting microprocessors and electrodes in their bodies. Cameras used for traffic monitoring can easily be adapted to security surveillance. The most explosive section of the report discusses the Echelon system. Wright says the system works by indiscriminately intercepting industrial quantities of communications and then siphoning out what could be valuable, using artificial intelligence aids and keywords searches.