Because I'm sick of answering the
question
"What does the NSA is WATCHIN
mean?"
I'm explaining it here

theNSAisWATCHIN
theNSAisWATCHIN = the NSA is watching
The NSA is the National Security Administration. They oversee and monitor, among other things, the internet. They supposedly do this with a program called Echelon, which is rumored to be able to sort through email and instant messages as well as other means of internet traffic and communication for certain keywords with an eye toward national security.
End of simple explanation.
More In Depth

What is The NSA?
From
Their Website
The NSA (National Security Agency) is the Nation's cryptologic organization. It
coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S.
information systems and produce foreign intelligence information. A high
technology organization, NSA is on the frontiers of communications and data
processing. It is also one of the most important centers of foreign language
analysis and research within the Government.
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) is a unique discipline with a long and storied
past. SIGINT's modern era dates to World War II, when the U.S. broke the
Japanese military code and learned of plans to invade Midway Island. This
intelligence allowed the U.S. to defeat Japan's superior fleet. The use of
SIGINT is believed to have directly contributed to shortening the war by at
least one year. Today, SIGINT continues to play an important role in maintaining
the superpower status of the United States.

As the world becomes more and more technology-oriented, the
Information Systems Security (INFOSEC) mission becomes increasingly challenging.
This mission involves protecting all classified and sensitive information that
is stored or sent through U.S. Government equipment. INFOSEC professionals go to
great lengths to make certain that Government systems remain impenetrable. This
support spans from the highest levels of U.S. Government to the individual
warfighter in the field.
NSA conducts one of the U.S. Government's leading research and development
programs. Some of the Agency's R&D projects have significantly advanced the
state of the art in the scientific and business worlds. NSA's early interest in
cryptanalytic research led to the first large-scale computer and the first
solid-state computer, predecessors to the modern computer. NSA pioneered efforts
in flexible storage capabilities, which led to the development of the tape
cassette. NSA also made ground-breaking developments in semiconductor technology
and remains a world leader in many technological fields.
NSA employs the country's premier codemakers and codebreakers.
It is said to be the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States and
perhaps the world. Its mathematicians contribute directly to the two missions of
the Agency: designing cipher systems that will protect the integrity of U.S.
information systems and searching for weaknesses in adversaries' systems and
codes.
Technology and the world change rapidly, and great emphasis is placed on staying
ahead of these changes with employee training programs. The National Cryptologic
School is indicative of the Agency's commitment to professional development. The
school not only provides unique training for the NSA workforce, but it also
serves as a training resource for the entire Department of Defense. NSA sponsors
employees for bachelor and graduate studies at the Nation's top universities and
colleges, and selected Agency employees attend the various war colleges of the
U.S. Armed Forces.
Most NSA/CSS employees, both civilian and military, are headquartered at Fort
Meade, Maryland, centrally located between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Its
workforce represents an unusual combination of specialties: analysts, engineers,
physicists, mathematicians, linguists, computer scientists, researchers, as well
as customer relations specialists, security officers, data flow experts,
managers, administrative and clerical assistants.

What is Echelon
Echelon is a program set up by the NSA (National Security Agency) which acts as
an international spy network allegedly set up to listen in on civilians'
electronic communications. It scans email messages and other web based data
transfer for certain keywords with an eye towards national security. Echelon is
an eavesdropping network operated by five English-speaking countries (the U.S.,
the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). ("Echelon" is supposedly the
network's codename, but the term is often sloppily used in the press to describe
several different systems and technologies.) The network developed from a Cold
War need to intercept and monitor foreign satellite communications. Reportedly,
Echelon has evolved into a system capable of intensively monitoring the
Internet. The system is spearheaded by the secretive signals and communications
intelligence agencies in the U.S. and UK, the National Security Agency and the
Government Communications Headquarters.
The Echelon system relies on a set of "dictionaries," lists of keywords that
flag messages worth reading. These keywords might include controversial topics
or names of world leaders or telephone numbers - but there is no public
information available on what these keywords are. The name of the game is
selectivity, because the ability to process every message sent does not yet
exist. What's more, the ability to intercept every message does not exist - and
while accelerating technology will help the spy agencies with processing
messages, it will make intercepting and decrypting messages more difficult.

THE FBI Version of Echelon
It has a sister internet wiretap program in operation at the FBI - called
Carnivore or DCS1000 over there. It is called Carnivore because of its ability
to find the 'meat' in vast amounts of data. The system helps the FBI investigate
possible criminals. It has been used about 25 times since its first use in early
1999. First, the FBI must get a court order giving them permission to snoop on a
suspect. FBI agents then install special equipment on the computers of a
suspect's Internet Service Provider (ISP). Carnivore software intercepts all the
Internet activity of a suspected criminal under investigation and sifts through
the individual packets of data (e-mail, Web visits, etc.) to sort out relevant
material. Reportedly, Carnivore does not search for keywords (as Echelon
supposedly does), but scans the headers on Internet transmissions and sucks up
the messages directed to or from the suspect.

A Carnivore By Any Other Name
Carnivore now goes by the less beastly moniker of DCS1000, drawn from the work
it does as a "digital collection system." The investigative agency built the
tool to monitor the Internet communications of suspects under its surveillance,
but the system, housed on computers at Internet service providers, also can
collect e-mail messages from people who are not part of an FBI probe.
A spokesman for the FBI denied that the name change stemmed from worries that
the name Carnivore made the system sound like a predatory device made to invade
people's privacy. But the Illinois Institute of Technology, which last fall
issued an analysis of the system at the request of the Justice Department,
recommended that the name be changed for just that reason, according to an IIT
analyst.
"We had a concern that it wasn't a good name for the system," said the IIT's
Larry Reynolds. The group thought the name should be dumped, he said, "because
of the very definition of the word."
The name change is the latest development in the controversy surrounding the
surveillance tool, which came under public scrutiny last summer when privacy
advocates began to decry it. In September, the Justice Department picked the IIT
Research Institute to perform a government-sponsored technical review of the
software.
The rechristening is part of an upgrade that incorporates other recommendations
from the research group, according to Paul Bresson, a spokesman for the FBI. "It
isn't because we were worried about negative privacy publicity. If it was, we
would have changed (the name) months ago," he said. "This (system) is not
something that remains static."
The upgrade was supposed to be coordinated with a Justice Department report on
DCS1000 scheduled for release prior to Janet Reno's departure last month as
attorney general, Bresson said. He did not say when that report will be made
public.

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