Panopticon of global surveillance

[Magda Hassan]

Beyond NSA spying: It isn't just phone calls and emails
by gjohnsit Jul 11, 2013 6:10pm PDT
Everything you put out on the internet, whether it is text messages, phone calls, emails, or web browsing, is being collected by the NSA.
That much is proven. Only the amount of data that is being analyzed is up for debate.
However, it doesn't stop there.

Don't be evil
Remember when the Google executive proclaimed that Google was "not in cahoots with NSA"?
Boy they must have had quite the laugh at Google headquarters. It turns out that Google is doing far more than just letting the NSA peek at their servers.

Google spokeswoman Gina Scigliano confirms that the company has already inserted some of the NSA's programming in Android OS. "All Android code and contributors are publicly available for review at source.android.com," Scigliano says, declining to comment further....
NSA officials say their code, known as Security Enhancements for Android, isolates apps to prevent hackers and marketers from gaining access to personal or corporate data stored on a device. Eventually all new phones, tablets, televisions, cars, and other devices that rely on Android will include NSA code, agency spokeswoman Vanee' Vines said in an e-mailed statement.

The code is to enhance security. Right. Because the NSA is all about helping people keep their secrets. The Android operating system is on 75% of all smart phones and tablets. Chances are you are already using one.
"Your privacy is our priority"
Chances are if you use a computer at home or work then you use a Microsoft Windows machine.
Microsoft blazed a trail with corporate cooperation with the NSA.
All the way back in 1999 people have known that Microsoft put a backdoor into their Windows operating system for the NSA.
However, the extent of Microsoft's complicity was only revealed yesterday.

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.The documents show that:
Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

So if you are using a Microsoft product, whether it be Skype, Hotmail, or Windows, and you take every security measure to ensure your privacy, the NSA can still break your encryption. What these Microsoft and Google measures indicate is that the spying efforts go beyond just what you voluntarily send out on the internet. These are backdoors into your smart phone, tablet and home computer. If the NSA wants, and your phone or computer is turned on, they can check out the information on our hard drive whether you have encrypted it or not.
The FBI wants a backdoor to ALL software.
So then turn your phone off. That should be enough, right? Wrong.

The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when the cell phone is turned off. A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a "roving bug." Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.

Government computer spying isn't just a passive thing. They have become very assertive, and that includes creating computer virus.

Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010 [i.e. the U.S. and Israel], according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.
Flame can gather data files, remotely change settings on computers, turn on PC microphones to record conversations, take screen shots and log instant messaging chats.

That the government is actually developing computer virus is amazing. Not for who they design the virus for, but because virus spread in unexpected ways. There is virtually a 100% chance that innocent and unintended people are going to get infected. After all wars governments use the technology they developed for commercial purposes. Well, the cyberwar has just started.
German police have already been caught using trojan virus to spy on people and take control of their webcams.
Hackers have started doing the same thing.
So you live in the stone age. No computer or cell phone? Then you are safe from spying, right? Wrong.

Surreptitious activation of built-in microphones by the FBI has been done before. A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors' OnStar to snoop on passengers' conversations.

OK. So you don't have a modern car either. That should deter spying, right? Wrong.

After signing up with the German smart-meter firm Discovergy, the researchers detected that the company's devices transmitted unencrypted data from the home devices back to the company's servers over an insecure link. The researchers, Dario Carluccio and Stephan Brinkhaus, intercepted the supposedly confidential and sensitive information, and, based on the fingerprint of power usage, were able to tell not only whether or not the homeowners were home, away or even sleeping, but also what movie they were watching on TV.

A really detaled smart meter can see what TV shows you watch and scan for copywrite protection on your DVDs. Smart meter energy usage is used to bust pot growers. Insurance companies could use the information from a smart meter to determine dietary and obesity trends or uses of a specific medical device. It doesn't stop there. Private security cameras can be accessed
Why?
Why do these big technology companies help the government's spying efforts?
Many people like to imply that they are being forced to cooperate with an obtrusive government, but they are kidding themselves.
One ex-CIA agent says that the CIA helped bankroll Google at its start. Is that true? It's hard to say, but what is known is that the CIA and Google have abusiness partnership called Recorded Future.

It's not the very first time Google has done business with America's spy agencies. Long before it reportedly enlisted the help of the National Security Agency to secure its networks, Google sold equipment to the secret signals-intelligence group. In-Q-Tel backed the mapping firm Keyhole, which was bought by Google in 2004 and then became the backbone for Google Earth.

Google has been working with our spy agencies for a very long time. It doesn't sound like Google or Microsoft need to have their arms twisted. Big companies have financial reasons to cooperate with the government's spying.
Wall Street banks spied on Occupy protestors with tax-funded monitoring centers. Plans for the center were created years before the protests.
It is estimated that 23,000 representatives of private industry are working with Homeland Security and the FBI to collect information on other Americans.

In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials. "There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate Total Information Awareness program (TIPS), turning private-sector corporationssome of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customersinto surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI," according to an ACLU report titled "The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society."

So called "Fusion Centers" have been set up all over the country, run by the DoJ and Homeland Security.

Participation in fusion centers might give Boeing access to the trade secrets or security vulnerabilities of competing companies, or might give it an advantage in competing for government contracts. Expecting a Boeing analyst to distinguish between information that represents a security risk to Boeing and information that represents a business risk may be too much to ask.

And that is a clue as to why corporations are tripping over each other to help out our spy agencies.
There is evidence of CIA and executive branch officials acting on information about top-secret authorization of coups to front-run markets. Selling insider information 5 minutes before the general market gets it can make someone a lot of money. A lot of money.
This includes things like Federal Reserve minutes.

"At this time, we do not know whether there was any trading related to inadvertent early distribution of the minutes," a Fed spokesman said.
More than 100 people, primarily congressional staffers and employees of trade associations, had received the minutes of the Fed's March policy meeting around 2 p.m. on Tuesday -- about 24 hours before their scheduled public release.
The minutes, which suggested policymakers were nearing a decision on tapering their bond purchases, pushed prices for U.S. government debt lower and helped lift the dollar to a four-year high against the yen after they were released broadly Wednesday morning.

The most obvious case of someone using insider information from an intelligence agency to front-run the markets was the infamous airline shorts made the afternoon before 9/11.

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.
An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.
The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.
Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.
After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.
At least one Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the SEC shortly after the attack.

This much is well known. No one ever came to collect on those short positions, so we'll never know for certain who placed them.
What isn't as well known is the SEC response.

This letter is in response to your request seeking access to and copies of the documentary evidence referred to in footnote 130 of Chapter 5 of the September 11 (9/11) Commission Report.
*
We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.

I have long suspected that the SEC was the most incompetent agency in the government, but now I'm thinking it is by design. However, the most obvious way that corporations can benefit from the government is through police-enforced protection from protestors and activists.
For instance, protesting against fracking can get you labelled a terrorist. So can distributing counterfeit DVDs and cigarettes. In fact the act of selling mixed CDs can bring in SWAT teams.
Videotaping animal abuse at a factory farm is now considered a terrorist act.
9:00 PM PT: How much does it cost the taxpayer for the government to spy on you? A lot.

AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Congressman Edward Markey.Meanwhile, email records like those amassed by the National Security Agency through a program revealed by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden probably were collected for free or very cheaply. Facebook says it doesn't charge the government for access. And while Microsoft, Yahoo and Google won't say how much they charge, the American Civil Liberties Union found that email records can be turned over for as little as $25.
http://m.dailykos.com/stories/1222870