difficulty accessing and finding files in edgy

[MICHAEL WEAVER]

I am having a bit of a problem accessing or finding files in Edgy and 
don't know why some file names show up in Gnome yet some only seem to 
show up in terminal and trying to copy files from terminal refuses to 
work when I need to copy them to my USB stick.
For example I am having difficulty in setting up Espeak and someone 
asked me if I can copy these config files to him for sorting them out in 
case uncommenting or commenting out lines hasn't worked for example one 
file he needs is speechd.conf which is found under something like 
/etc/speech-dispacher and there was something like one which was 
something to do with espeak.con.
I tried to look on the desktop for my files knowing the files I wanted 
to find but they are not showing up and using the search for files seems 
to give me no results which is a pain because when I entered the 
terminal, went to my home directory and did ls, sure enough was the etc 
directory which I changed to, I then entered speech-dispacher directory 
and there was at least one of the files I was asked to send.
However I can't seem to be able to copy these important config files to 
my USB Stick from the terminal for some reason.
Why am I having this trouble?
I have tried going into properties and looking at permisions tab to find 
out whether these files are restricted despite me being the only user 
and not a thing could I find which was blocking access to these files 
from the Gnome access which I know does allow me to copy files to my USB 
stick.