nice catch. that date of 1998 is a Big Fucking Deal. the Patriot Act was passed in October 2001. the narrative we have all be lead to believe is that NSA only ramped up domestic mass surveillance in 2001. but why would NSA have a protocol for exfil across passive sensor hops in 1998? passive exfil only works if you have sensors mirroring backbone traffic at all the biggest upstream meetme rooms. but NSA supposedly wasnt legally allowed to install Boeing Narus mirror routers at ISPs until 2001.

what this 1998 date means is that NSA TURMOIL--passive sensor ingest, had to exist PRIOR TO 2001.

this even screws Bill Binney's narrative that the system he designed--THINTHREAD, which he says would spy on all traffic without violating our privacy laws, was built in 1999-2000. THINTHREAD was ultimately canceled and Hayden chose STELLARWIND instead.

but this screencap show FASHIONCLEFT already existed in 1998. therefore NSA has been spying on the whole Internet for waaaay longer than the official narrative says.

i was one of those conspiracy theorists ranting on USENET about ECHELON back in 1998. turns out, we were RIGHT.