Our subject today (as in the preceding post, which is also quite good, and in which I do my Colin Clive impersonation) is the surveillance state. You think you've heard it all? Think again...
For example, the government is photographing the outside information on every piece of snail mail.
The government is spying on you through your phone...and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off.
As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into Android’s operating system … bugging three-quarters of the world’s smartphones. Google – or the NSA – can remotely turn on your phone’s camera and recorder at any time.
The government might be spying on you through your computer’s webcam or microphone. The government might also be spying on you through the “smart meter” on your own home.
The FBI wants a backdoor to all software. But leading European computer publication Heise said in 1999 that the NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows software.
And Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and FBI so that encryption doesn’t block the government’s ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and other Microsoft services.
(And leading security experts say that the NSA might have put a backdoor in all encryption standards years ago. … meaning that the NSA can easily hack into encrypted communications.)
“Black boxes” are currently installed in between 90% and 96% of all new cars. And starting in 2014, all new cars will include black boxes that can track your location.
License plate readers mounted on police cars allow police to gather millions of records on drivers...including photos of them in their cars.
A security expert and former NSA software developer says that hackers can access private surveillance cameras. Given that the NSA apparently already monitors public cameras using facial recognition software, and that the FBI is building a system which will track “public and private surveillance cameras around the country”, we can assume that government agencies might already be hacking into private surveillance cameras.
The CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher and other “smart” appliances.
Private contractors can also view all of your data … and the government isn’t keeping track of which contractors see your data and which don’t. And because background checks regarding some contractors are falsified, it is hard to know the types of people that might have your information.Believe it or not, I've given you just a fragment of this incredibly important article. The list goes on and on and on. Lambert at Corrente coined the term "linky goodness" to describe a post heavy on HTML citations -- but in this case, the phrase "linky badness" might serve better.
And top NSA and FBI experts say that the government can retroactively search all of the collected information on someone since 9/11 if they suspect someone of wrongdoing...or want to frame him.
The American government is in fact collecting and storing virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches, social media communications, health information, employment history, travel and student records, and virtually all other information of every American.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on Americans’ credit card transactions.
If people only knew. If people only knew...
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