![\"Big](\"http:\/\/shtfplan.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/big-brother-watching.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yes, Government Spooks May Be Listening<\/strong><\/p>\n The Obama administration has been caught spying on the Verizon phone calls of\u00a0tens of millions<\/em>\u00a0of Americans.<\/p>\n But the government has sought to \u201creassure\u201d us that it is only tracking \u201cmetadata\u201d such as the time and place of the calls, and\u00a0not the actual\u00a0content<\/em>\u00a0of the calls<\/a>.<\/p>\n That claim is patently absurd.<\/p>\n The American government is in fact collecting and storing virtually every\u00a0phone call, purchases, email, text message, internet searches<\/a>,\u00a0social media communications<\/a>,\u00a0health information, employment history, travel and student records<\/a>, and virtually all other information of every American.<\/p>\n All<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0U.S. intelligence agencies \u2014 including the CIA and NSA \u2014\u00a0are going to spy on Americans\u2019 finances<\/a>. The IRS will be spying on Americans\u2019\u00a0shopping records, travel, social interactions, health records and files<\/a>from other government investigators.<\/p>\n As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency \u2014 William Binney \u2014\u00a0explained<\/a>, the NSA is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and\u00a020 trillion<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0communications of all types per year.<\/p>\n Binney says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.<\/p>\n Binney further explains that he set up the NSA\u2019s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect\u2019s communications could be decrypted. But the NSA now collects all data in an\u00a0unencrypted<\/em>\u00a0form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen\u2019s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government\u2019s current system is being done for political \u2014\u00a0not practical<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 purposes.<\/p>\n Binney says that if anyone gets on the government\u2019s \u201cenemies list\u201d, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn\u2019t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him. This includes whistleblowers, activists or even\u00a0government insiders \u2026 like the head of the CIA<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indeed, whistleblowers revealed years ago that the NSA was vacuuming up\u00a0virtually all Internet communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n In addition, the amount of money and effort the government is putting into spying on Americans using\u00a0a wide variety of other technologies<\/em>\u00a0tends to discredit any notion that the government is exercising restraint in monitoring our phone calls (which are\u00a0already<\/em>\u00a0being tapped) for content.<\/p>\n For example, the government is\u00a0flying drones over the American homeland<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0spy on us<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senator Rand Paul\u00a0correctly notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Emptywheel\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0in a post entitled \u201cThe OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?\u201d:<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n As the map above makes clear\u2014taken from\u00a0this 2010 report<\/a>\u2014DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill\u00a0reported<\/a>:<\/p>\n At least 13 state and local police agencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cDrones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,\u201d Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month.<\/p>\n He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it\u2019s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons.<\/p>\n He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time.<\/p>\n A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Moreover, Wired\u00a0reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations\u2026.<\/p>\n The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases \u2026.<\/p>\n The IP audio-video systems can be\u00a0accessed remotely via a built-in web server<\/a>\u00a0(.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The systems use cables or WiFi to\u00a0pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time<\/strong>, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n RT\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities<\/p>\n America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.<\/p>\n With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.<\/p>\n Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they havea number of \u201chomeland security applications\u201d attached<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Each has a microprocessor \u201cessentially similar to an iPhone,\u201d capable of by Text-Enhance” href=”http:\/\/rt.com\/news\/big-brother-street-lamps-286\/#” target=”_blank”>wireless<\/a>\u00a0communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is\u201cworking with Homeland Security\u201d to deliver his dream of making people \u201cmore informed and safer.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Cell towers\u00a0track where your phone is<\/a>\u00a0at any moment, and the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, responded to\u00a0at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests<\/a>\u00a0for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And \u2014 given that your smartphone\u00a0routinely sends your location information<\/a>\u00a0back to Apple or Google \u2014 it would be child\u2019s play for the government to track your location that way.) Your\u00a0iPhone<\/a>, orother brand of smartphone<\/a>\u00a0is spying on\u00a0virtually everything you do<\/a>\u00a0(ProPublica notes: \u201cThat\u2019s No Phone. That\u2019s My Tracker<\/a>\u201c).<\/p>\n Fox news notes that the government is\u00a0insisting that \u201cblack boxes\u201d be installed in cars<\/a>\u00a0to track your location.<\/p>\n The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports stadiums, and is\u00a0deploying mobile scanners<\/a>\u00a0to spy on people all over the place. This means that traveling within the United States is\u00a0no longer a private affair<\/a>.<\/p>\n You might also have seen the news this week that the Department of Homeland Security is going tocontinue<\/em>\u00a0to allow\u00a0searches of laptops and phones based upon \u201chunches\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n What\u2019s that about?<\/p>\n The ACLU\u00a0published<\/a>\u00a0a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public \u2014 197.4 million people \u2014 live within a \u201cconstitution-free zone\u201d within 100 miles of land and coastal borders:<\/p>\n The ACLU\u00a0explained<\/a>:<\/p>\n Computer World\u00a0reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n Border agents don\u2019t need probable cause and they don\u2019t need a stinking warrant since they don\u2019t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to\u00a0track Americans movements<\/a>, the U.S. \u201cborder\u201d stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics\u00a0added<\/a>:<\/p>\n But wait, it gets even better! If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a \u201clongstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.\u201d This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR \u201cBorder Searches of Electronic Devices\u201d executive summary [PDF<\/a>]:<\/p>\n Fourth Amendment<\/strong><\/p>\n The overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and longstanding, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects. We conclude that CBP\u2019s and ICE\u2019s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights\/civil liberties benefits. However, we do think that recording more information about why searches are performed would help managers and leadership supervise the use of border search authority, and this is what we recommended; CBP has agreed and has implemented this change beginning in FY2012.***<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on the \u201cpolicy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers\u2019 laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices\u2013even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?\u201d DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional rights, so the\u00a0ACLU said<\/a>:<\/p>\n If it\u2019s true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won\u2019t it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public\u2019s rights hidden from the very public being affected?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n ***<\/p>\n As\u00a0Christian Post wrote<\/a>, \u201cYour constitutional rights have been repealed in ten states. No, this isn\u2019t a joke. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole. If you are in ten states in the United States, your some of your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been made null and void.\u201d<\/p>\n The\u00a0ACLU filed<\/a>\u00a0a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless \u201cborder\u201d searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said \u201cWe hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can\u2019t simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government\u2019s own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the EFF has\u00a0tips<\/a>\u00a0to protect yourself and your devices against border searches. If you think you know all about it, then you might try testing your knowledge with a\u00a0defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Wired\u00a0pointed out<\/a>\u00a0in 2008 that the courts have routinely upheld such constitution-free zones:<\/p>\n Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers\u2019 laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government\u2019s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment\u2019s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company\u2019s confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Going further down the sci fi Big Brother rabbit hole, Verizon has applied for a patent that would allow your television to\u00a0track what you are doing, who you are with, what objects you\u2019re holding, and what type of mood you\u2019re in<\/a>. (And some folks could conceivably be spying on you through your tv using\u00a0existing technology<\/a>.)<\/p>\n And they\u2019re probably bluffing and exaggerating, but the Department of Homeland Security claims they will soon be able to know your adrenaline level, what you ate for breakfast and what you\u2019re thinking \u2026from 164 feet away<\/a>.<\/p>\n Indeed, technology has made pervasive spying\u00a0more possible than ever before<\/a>.<\/p>\n TechDirt\u00a0notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n In a\u00a0radio interview<\/a>, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who\u2019s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime\u00a0has\u00a0more data on the average American<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0than the Stasi ever did on East Germans<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Postscript: This is not some \u201cpost-9\/11 reality\u201d. Spying on Americans started\u00a0before<\/strong>\u00a09\/11<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n And the national security boys can choose to share U.S. civilian information with federal, state, local, or\u00a0foreign entities<\/strong>\u00a0for analysis of possible criminal behavior,\u00a0even if there is no reason to suspect them<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/em>And many say that\u00a0<\/em>the spying\u00a0isn\u2019t being done to keep us safe \u2026 but to crush dissent<\/a>\u00a0and to\u00a0smear people<\/a>\u00a0who uncover unflattering this about the government \u2026 and to\u00a0help the too big to fail businesses compete against smaller businesses<\/a>\u00a0(and\u00a0here<\/a>).<\/p>\n Note:<\/em>\u00a0Here\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>a full report card<\/a>\u00a0on how well the government has been balancing civil liberties with other concerns.<\/em><\/p>\nThe\u00a0Other<\/em>\u00a0Types of Spying the Government Is Doing On Us<\/h3>\n
\n
![\"http:\/\/www.emptywheel.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Picture-7.png\"](\"http:\/\/www.emptywheel.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Picture-7.png\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/privacy\/spying\/cfz_map\/Image-Map.gif\")
<\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n