

Americans, Everything You Do Is Monitored - edw519
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-everything-you-do-is-monitored_05052011

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orthecreedence
Title should be "EVERYONE, everything you do ONLINE is monitored." Also,
webcams don't switch themselves on. This is ridiculous.

First off, the government doesn't give a rat's ass about you. You are not even
a number on a list. You are a number in a number. You are incredibly obscure
and tiny; you are the molecule to their galaxy. So are they monitoring you in
the 1984 sense? No. You are not the type of person the government cares about
monitoring. You are not a special and unique snowflake. Get it through your
heads. Nobody cares that you have a realdoll or a foot fetish. Nobody cares
that you actually like the Backstreet Boys. In fact, nobody cares that you are
radically anti-government...but even if you are, use Tor!! It's that easy.

Secondly, what people don't seem to realize that the internet isn't some place
where you get stuff for free. You ask for things and generally get them, but
you exchange information in order to do so. People want to have their cake and
eat it too. If you want complete privacy, unplug your computer and don't use a
cell phone. You don't have to be a government agent to tap into a radio
frequency or sniff TCP traffic. Anybody can do this! If you really cared about
communicating anonymously, you'd use SSL and Tor for everything. Nobody can
decrypt SSL, and if you use Tor, it's very difficult to tell where a specific
piece of information came from.

I don't get why people have this idea in their heads that everything they do
online is or should be private. This is a _public network_. Use at your own
risk. Anyone who really wants to can look at anything they want. If you really
have something you need to hide, then encrypt and obscure your communications.
Problem solved.

Also, this is more of a problem for people in the middle-east than Americans,
if you asked me.

(written by an American)

~~~
MacSlavo
Thanks for posting the rebuttal to the article I wrote over at SHTFplan. While
I won't disagree with your assessment that "nobody cares," it's become
increasingly clear that all digitally processed data is being fused into
complex 'social network' like databases. The Fusion centers mentioned in the
article do just this. They aggregate data looking for flags. No, there isn't a
person sitting around listening specifically to your phone calls, or
specifically monitoring your internet traffic or emails... It's all plugged
into digital monitoring systems. You really don't matter.... until you're
flagged.

We can play this game all day long, but the fact of the matter is that systems
like this do exist. Operation Echelon, as I pointed out in this article, is
designed for this specific purpose and has been used extensively in over 15
countries in Europe in the 1990's, and has likely expanded by now. This is
verifiable and confirmed by the US and British governments - just look it up -
don't be scared. Computers ARE listening to your conversations utilizing
speech recognition technology. And if you happen to say a keyword, or string
of keywords, the conversation is flagged and dispatched for human analysis.
This is FACT, not tin foil stuff.

With regards to cell phones and the comment from "fredu golon" here in your
rebuttal, again, this is not science fiction. This is CONFIRMED by the FBI as
early as 2006. It's called "Roving Bug" technology and it is active in most
every cell phone that comes to market:
<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html> . While the 'camera' side of
this is unconfirmed, it's obvious that the technology is possible and likely
in use right now.

Likewise is the technology possible to monitor microphones and cameras on your
home PC... It's as simple as accessing your network. While I certainly don't
know how to do it. And you don't know how to do it. Are you really of the
thought that top-level intelligence agencies do not have this capability? And
if they do, how long before the technology is integrated with monitoring
systems so that computers can, at the push of a button, listen to entire
networks of users having conversations at home? My view is that the purpose
Fusion networks and centers is exactly this over the long-term.

I have no paranoia or delusions about what's going on here, and I realize I am
but a speck of dust on a beach of billions of digitally-connected internet and
cell phone users. The point here was not to necessarily suggest the YOU,
specifically, are being monitored, but that the system as a whole has the
capabilities to do so and is actively doing it right now.

Call it tin foil, that's fine. But the evidence, some of which was cited
above, simply cannot be denied.

Thanks.

Mac Slavo www.SHTFplan.com

~~~
orthecreedence
Thanks for your reply. While I don't deny the existence of flagging of voice
and text communications (this has been a well-known fact for years), my point
was not "no, they aren't watching." My point was "yes, they are watching...but
who cares??" If you have something you want to hide from the government (or
other organization), encrypt it.

Also, even having access to my home network (which is firewalled once by my
router, and again by my computer) there is still no way to just "flip the
switch" and monitor my webcam. I would have to

a. have a port available PUBLICLY through both firewalls that allowed someone
to connect and view a live stream of my cam (which would require streaming
software running in the background, AKA I'd have to purposefully turn it on)
or

b. have a trojan installed unbeknownst to me that somehow figures out, in
every model of laptop, how to turn on the camera but disable the "camera is
on" hardware light, connect to a remote server (without the operating system
knowing about it (not bloody likely)) and send a stream of everything
happening. There would have to be a standard API implemented by _all_
PC/camera manufacturers that allows this trojan to do this, which has also
been kept entirely secret (impossible, if more than one organization is
involved) and also the trojan would have to be installed on all computers and
ignored by all virus scan software. The trojan would also have the ability to
open a hidden connection that the operating system would allow but not report
as an active connection.

Like I said previously, this is ridiculous. Perhaps this could MAYBE happen in
Windows/Mac (good luck keeping this secret), but not an open-source OS like
linux. So yes, maybe you don't know how to do it, but I do...and I'm telling
you that I would have to purposefully allow it to happen. Please don't spread
misinformation just because you think it may be possible or because you saw it
in a movie.

Also, note that at no point did I call you paranoid or mention a tinfoil hat.
I simply stated my disagreement to your main points, which you have still not
argued against:

1\. You are on public networks here. Your computer is connected to the largest
public network in the world...consider it a free for all. Your cell phone
transmits information using radio waves...meaning anybody ( _anybody_ ) can
listen in.

2\. Nobody cares what you are doing or saying. You'd have to actually be
planning some sort of attack to become any sort of priority on a keyword
monitoring system. Which brings us to

3\. If you really do want to hide something -- from the government, from
corporations, from _anyone_ \-- you have to encrypt it if you are going to
send it over public channels. Airwaves are public, the internet is public.
Don't expect free privacy.

~~~
orthecreedence
I'd like to point out that although I believe my arguments stand, it _is_ very
important that people do realize that monitoring is there, so if they do have
a problem they can take steps to prevent it.

Mac, I think it's a valiant cause to create awareness, and I admire that
you're doing that. However, I feel that you are using scare tactics more than
factual evidence. That's not to say you don't have factual evidence, but you
are also writing to invoke a feeling of fear, which isn't necessary, and in
most cases causes more harm than good.

This isn't a hopeless situation, we just need to be aware of how we
communicate and who's listening...and also be aware of the fact that although
some of us may be extremely privacy-conscious, most people (at least in
America) just want to buy shit off Amazon and browse Facebook and they don't
care who's watching.

It's like monitoring a fish tank ;).

------
vipivip
Life could be better in another planet.

