New documents released as part of the Snowden leaks show that the surveillance state of the NSA is far more insidious—and complete—than even previously known. You’re already aware that your phone metadata is being collected and stored, that the NSA can identify you from that data, and even that they can decrypt all your phone traffic, listen to it, and store that too. Your emails, web traffic, If that wasn’t enough to make you angry, then you don’t understand what liberty is.
The new information, however, is even more staggering:
In fact, the only thing the NSA doesn’t currently have access to is in-flight communication—and they’re working on that part.
Do you understand what this means? Your iPhone, the one you might even be reading this article on, is already hacked. It is sending everything you do to the federal government. Your contact list, your texts, your websites, your emails. Every single keystroke you type, whether it be on your computer or your iPhone, is recorded and stored and cataloged. Your bank information is compromised. Your credit card numbers. Your daily activities. Every single thing that you do is being watched. They know who you talk to, what you read, what you watch, what you buy. It is fact. It is absolute. They can do it, and they are doing it…to you.
For those of you still laboring under the misconception that it’s necessary to keep the country safe, let me remind you that the recent judicial Ninth Circuit decision in favor of the NSA’s abuse of power relied on claims in the 9/11 Commission Report that aren’t even in the report. That means either the judge didn’t even bother reading the evidence, or (more likely) he just did what he was told. Considering it was the 9th Circuit, that’s not surprising.
The peripheral question is whether all the tech companies knew about it. As Meghan Neal pointed out, they’ve denied involvement…but then again, we’ve since seen that those denials weren’t exactly truthful.
Here’s the bottom line: If they know everything you read, eat, think, and do, it is a very easy thing to simply criminalize some of those things. They’ve already done some of that. Conservative groups have been targeted for auditing by the IRS, individuals have been arrested for legally carrying firearms, farmers have been raided for producing and selling raw milk. Simply living your life in accordance with the Constitution is now illegal.
How much more of this will you allow?
GWB says: I agree that the NSA doing this to Americans is wrong – but the leaked info doen’t say that is what is happening in these cases. I want the NSA hacking terrorist’s computers, catching spies by putting up bogus cell phone towers, and knowing exactly what porn Kim Jung-Un is surfing. This is their job.
Let’s not get in the habit of throwing out the baby with the bath water. As long as the NSA is turned outward, where it should be focused, I don’t care if they are tracking Murkel’s bloomers or counting Amadamnutjob’s bowel movements, as long as 1) they’re not wasting time, effort, and money, and 2) they don’t get caught. Only when they turn those energies inward do I care about warrants and the 4th Amendment (and all the others, too).
Seriously, if you didn’t know they were doing this stuff, then you simply haven’t been paying attention to spycraft in the last score of years. Nor to cybersecurity in the last dozen. The outrage here is NOT that they are intercepting computers and bugging them. The outrage here is that they can turn that capability on US because of some un-demonstrated good they are supposedly achieving in the GWoT.
I apologize, Kit, if your point was merely to try and shake off some complacency among folks who say “Well, at least all they can do is X.” But your post seems to be outraged at the capabilities, as well – and, frankly, those aren’t surprising in the least. Again, sorry if I ranted wrongly.
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