Cloakers

Mental Floss have put together an excellent list of the ways the US government is known to be spying on the communications of private individuals.

The information is “based on the public statements of the former director of the National Security Agency, Justice Department attorneys, and others involved in NSA operations—as well as confidential information provided to the authors and verified independently by officials..”

So take the list to mean the bare minimum. But also keep in mind that, officially:

• “only three dozen or so people inside the NSA have the authority to read the content of FISA-derived material, all of which is now subject to a warrant”

If the government intercepted and read every communication that mention “Al Qaeda” or “bomb”, they would need many thousands of staff. So there’s no need to be too paranoid. Here’s my summary of the ways you are likely to catch the eye of the NSA:

• you actually are a terrorist, or know one
• if you regularly call people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Yemen – or email people living in countries that are terrorist havens
• your IP address is associated with bad guys – they may have spoofed it, randomly
• if you are a lawyer working for bad guys (!)
• you are connected in some way with defense secrets
• you have worked in or near a war zone
• your premises are shared with bad guys – like the same office building

Perhaps the most interesting possibility on the list is this one:

If you are of Arab descent and attend a mosque whose imam was linked through degrees of association with Islamic charities considered to be supporters of terrorism, NSA computers probably analyzed metadata from your telephone communications and e-mail.

Just about everything else on the list is an automated process. There’s no way the NSA knows who visits a mosque unless they spy on the mosque and follow those who come and go. And then find out your phone number and email address…

I would treat mosque-goers as an example, rather than unique. If you are associated with a group that the government has any suspicions about, you could be spied on. That could be anything like anarchists, communists, gun nuts, survivalists and religious fundamentalists.

Yet again we see tracking and surveillance technology being used because good people have nothing to hide.

One area that is set for growth is kid tracking – after all it is the responsibility of parents, guardians and pseudo-guardians (like school teachers) to always know the whereabouts of their children. So start with kids, then apply the same technology to employees, then to citizens.

A district court judge for Bexar County, Texas, has granted a temporary restraining order to prevent Northside Independent School District from removing a Hernandez from John Jay High School’s Science and Engineering Academy because she refused to wear a name badge designed to use a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chip to track students’ precise location on school property, the Hernandez’s attorneys announced today.

…“Regimes in the past have always started with the schools, where they develop a compliant citizenry. These ‘Student Locator’ programs are ultimately aimed at getting students used to living in a total surveillance state where there will be no privacy, and wherever you go and whatever you text or email will be watched by the government,” Whitehead warned.

[Source: CNS News]

Of course it makes sense to keep an eye on school kids. But technology should only be deployed where there is a clear benefit to a widespread problem – not just because we can.

Given that New York City is still terrified, I don’t blame them. Manhattan is the obvious target still, and so the authorities are doing their very best to keep track of who comes and goes. Huffington Post reports:

… install license plate reader cameras “in every lane of traffic on all of the bridges and tunnels that serve as entrances and exits to Manhattan.”

Soon, no one will be able to drive onto or off of the island without potentially being recorded.

Currently, Kelly said, the NYPD has “complete” coverage on the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges and the Battery and Holland Tunnels. License plate readers will be commissioned for additional bridges by this summer. The devices can quickly scan license plate numbers and submit the time and place they were captured to a database.

If they leave it at that, I guess the trade-off is a fair one. The Powers-That-Be will know when anyone enters or exits Manhattan, meaning your or I as well as potential terrorists. Criminals will need to keep this in mind when concocting alibis!

The concern is that this sort of monitoring will continue to expand, until ultimately your whereabouts is always known unless you use some form of cloaking.