The extent to which the US Government is spying on you

[D. Schlenk]

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/09/the-government-is-
spying-on-us-through-our-computers-phones-cars-buses-
streetlights-at-airports-and-on-the-street-via-mobile-
scanners-and-drones-through-our-smart-meters-and-in-many-
other-ways.html


The Government Is Spying On Us Through Our Computers,
Phones, Cars, Buses, Streetlights, At Airports And On The
Street, Via Mobile Scanners And Drones, Through Our Smart
Meters, And In Many Other Ways

Posted on September 23, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog


Take a Peek at How Widespread Spying Has Become

Even now - after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden
and other whistleblowers - spying apologists say that the
reports are "exaggerated" or "overblown", and that the
government only spies on potential bad guys.

In reality, the government is spying on everyone's digital
and old-fashioned communications.

For example, the government is photographing the outside
information on every piece of snail mail.

The government is spying on you through your phone . and
may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when
your phone is off.

As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into
Android's operating system . bugging three-quarters of the
world's smartphones. Google - or the NSA - can remotely
turn on your phone's camera and recorder at any time.

Moreover, Google knows just about every WiFi password in
the world . and so the NSA does as well, since it spies so
widely on Google.

But it's not just the Android. In reality, the NSA can
spy on just about everyone's smart phone.

Cell towers track where your phone is at any moment, and
the major cell carriers, including Verizon and AT&T,
responded to at least 1.3 million law enforcement requests
for cell phone locations and other data in 2011. (And -
given that your smartphone routinely sends your location
information back to Apple or Google - it would be child's
play for the government to track your location that way.)
Your iPhone, or other brand of smartphone is spying on
virtually everything you do (ProPublica notes: "That's No
Phone. That's My Tracker"). Remember, that might be
happening even when your phone is turned off.

The government might be spying on you through your
computer's webcam or microphone. The government might also
be spying on you through the "smart meter" on your own
home.

NSA also sometimes uses "man-in-the-middle" tactics, to
pretend that it is Google or other popular websites to
grab your information.

The FBI wants a backdoor to all software. But leading
European computer publication Heise said in 1999 that the
NSA had already built a backdoor into all Windows
software.

Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and
FBI so that encryption doesn't block the government's
ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and
other Microsoft services.

And Microsoft informs intelligence agencies of with
information about bugs in its popular software before it
publicly releases a fix, so that information can be used
by the government to access computers. (Software
vulnerabilities are also sold to the highest bidder.)

A top expert in the 'microprocessors' or 'chips' inside
every computer - having helped start two semiconductor
companies and a supercomputer firm - also says:

He would be "surprised" if the US National Security Agency
was not embedding "back doors" inside chips produced by
Intel and AMD, two of the world's largest semiconductor
firms, giving them the possibility to access and control
machines.

***

[The expert] said when he learned the NSA had secured
"pre-encryption stage" access to Microsoft's email
products via the PRISM leaks, he recognised that "pretty
much all our computers have a way for the NSA to get
inside their hardware" before a user can even think about
applying encryption or other defensive measures.

Leading security experts say that the NSA might have put a
backdoor in all encryption standards years ago. . meaning
that the NSA could easily hack into all encrypted
communications. And the NSA hacks into encrypted "VPN"
connections.

It's gotten so bad that some of the largest encryption
companies are warning that their encryption tools are
compromised.

"Black boxes" are currently installed in between 90% and
96% of all new cars. And starting in 2014, all new cars
will include black boxes that can track your location.

License plate readers mounted on police cars allow police
to gather millions of records on drivers . including
photos of them in their cars.

If you have a microphone in your car, that might also open
you up to snoopers. As CNET points out:

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.

When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were
listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell
that their conversations were being monitored.

A security expert and former NSA software developer says
that hackers can access private surveillance cameras.
Given that the NSA apparently already monitors public
cameras using facial recognition software (and see this),
and that the FBI is building a system which will track
"public and private surveillance cameras around the
country", we can assume that government agencies might
already be hacking into private surveillance cameras.

The CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher and
other "smart" appliances. As Slate notes:

Watch out: the CIA may soon be spying on you - through
your beloved, intelligent household appliances, according
to Wired.

In early March, at a meeting for the CIA's venture capital
firm In-Q-Tel, CIA Director David Petraeus reportedly
noted that "smart appliances" connected to the Internet
could someday be used by the CIA to track individuals. If
your grocery-list-generating refrigerator knows when
you're home, the CIA could, too, by using geo-location
data from your wired appliances, according to SmartPlanet.

"The current 'Internet of PCs' will move, of course,
toward an 'Internet of Things'- of devices of all types -
50 to 100 billion of which will be connected to the
Internet by 2020," Petraeus said in his speech. He
continued:

Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored,
and remotely controlled through technologies such as
radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny
embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to
the next-generation Internet using abundant, low cost, and
high-power computing - the latter now going to cloud
computing, in many areas greater and greater
supercomputing, and, ultimately, heading to quantum
computing.

***

ITworld's Kevin Fogarty thinks that J. Edgar Hoover, were
he still with us, would "die of jealousy" upon hearing
about the tools soon to be at Petraeus' disposal.

And they're 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're thinking . from 164 feet away.
(In addition, people will probably soon be swallowing
tracking devices for medical purposes)

The government is allegedly scanning prisoners' brains
without their consent at Guantanamo. In the near future,
brain scanners may be able to literally read our thoughts
(and see this).

The government is currently testing systems for use in
public spaces which can screen for "pre-crime". As Nature
reports:

Like a lie detector, FAST measures a variety of
physiological indicators, ranging from heart rate to the
steadiness of a person's gaze, to judge a subject's state
of mind. But there are major differences from the
polygraph. FAST relies on non-contact sensors, so it can
measure indicators as someone walks through a corridor at
an airport, and it does not depend on active questioning
of the subject.

CBS News points out:

FAST is designed to track and monitor, among other inputs,
body movements, voice pitch changes, prosody changes
(alterations in the rhythm and intonation of speech), eye
movements, body heat changes, and breathing patterns.
Occupation and age are also considered. A government
source told CNET that blink rate and pupil variation are
measured too.

A field test of FAST has been conducted in at least one
undisclosed location in the northeast. "It is not an
airport, but it is a large venue that is a suitable
substitute for an operational setting," DHS spokesman John
Verrico told Nature.com in May.

Although DHS has publicly suggested that FAST could be
used at airport checkpoints - the Transportation Security
Administration is part of the department, after all - the
government appears to have grander ambitions. One internal
DHS document (PDF) also obtained by EPIC through the
Freedom of Information Act says a mobile version of FAST
"could be used at security checkpoints such as border
crossings or at large public events such as sporting
events or conventions."

The risk of false positives is very real. As Computer
World notes:

Tom Ormerod, a psychologist in the Investigative Expertise
Unit at Lancaster University, UK, told Nature, "Even
having an iris scan or fingerprint read at immigration is
enough to raise the heart rate of most legitimate
travelers." Other critics have been concerned about "false
positives." For example, some travelers might have some of
the physical responses that are supposedly signs of mal-
intent if they were about to be groped by TSA agents in
airport security.

Various "pre-crime" sensing devices have already been
deployed in public spaces in the U.S.

The government has also worked on artificial intelligence
for "pre-crime" detection on the Web. And given that
programs which can figure out your emotions are being
developed using your webcam, every change in facial
expression could be tracked.

According to the NSA's former director of global digital
data - William Binney - the NSA's new data storage center
in Utah will have so much storage capacity that:

"They would have plenty of space . to store at least
something on the order of 100 years worth of the worldwide
communications, phones and emails and stuff like that,"
Binney asserts, "and then have plenty of space left over
to do any kind of parallel processing to try to break
codes."

***

[But the NSA isn't stopping there.] Despite its capacity,
the Utah center does not satisfy NSA's data demands. Last
month, the agency broke ground on its next data farm at
its headquarters at Ft. Meade, Md. But that facility will
be only two-thirds the size of the mega-complex in Utah.
The NSA is building next-generation quantum computers to
process all of the data.

NBC News reports:

NBC News has learned that under the post-9/11 Patriot Act,
the government has been collecting records on every phone
call made in the U.S.

This includes metadata . which can tell the government a
lot about you. And it also includes content.

The documents leaked by Edward Snowden to Glenn Greenwald
show:

But what we're really talking about here is a localized
system that prevents any form of electronic communication
from taking place without its being stored and monitored
by the National Security Agency.

It doesn't mean that they're listening to every call, it
means they're storing every call and have the capability
to listen to them at any time, and it does mean that
they're collecting millions upon millions upon millions of
our phone and email records.

In addition, a government expert told the Washington Post
that the government "quite literally can watch your ideas
form as you type." (And see this.) A top NSA executive
confirmed to Washington's Blog that the NSA is
intercepting and storing virtually all digital
communications on the Internet.

McClatchy notes:

FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee on
March 30, 2011, that "technological improvements" now
enable the bureau "to pull together past emails and future
ones as they come in so that it does not require an
individualized search."

The administration is building a facility in a valley
south of Salt Lake City that will have the capacity to
store massive amounts of records - a facility that former
agency whistleblowers say has no logical purpose if it's
not going to be a vault holding years of phone and
Internet data.

***

Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior executive who challenged
the data collection for several years, said the agency's
intent seems obvious.

"One hundred million phone records?" he asked in an
interview. "Why would they want that each and every day?
Of course they're storing it."

***

Lending credence to his worries, The Guardian's latest
report quoted a document in which Alexander purportedly
remarked during a 2008 visit to an NSA intercept station
in Britain: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the
time?"

***

One former U.S. security consultant, who spoke on
condition of anonymity to protect his connections to
government agencies, told McClatchy he has seen agency-
installed switches across the country that draw data from
the cables.

"Do I know they copied it? Yes," said the consultant. "Do
I know if they kept it? No."

NSA whistleblower Russel Tice - a key source in the 2005
New York Times report that blew the lid off the Bush
administration's use of warrantless wiretapping - says
that the content and metadata of all digital
communications are being tapped by the NSA.

The NSA not only accesses data directly from the largest
internet companies, it also sucks up huge amounts of data
straight from undersea cables providing telephone and
Internet service to the United States.

After all, the government has secretly interpreted the
Patriot Act so that "everything" is deemed relevant . so
the government can spy on everyone.

The NSA isn't the only agency which is conducting massive
spying.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

The rules now allow the little-known National
Counterterrorism Center to . copy entire government
databases-flight records, casino-employee lists, the names
of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many
others. The agency has new authority to keep data about
innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to
analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior.
Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans
"reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information"
may be permanently retained.

The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian
information to be given to foreign governments for
analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign
governments would be using the information to look for
clues that people might commit future crimes.

"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior
administration official familiar with the White House
debate.

Reason notes:

Gazillions. That's the number of times the federal
government has spied on Americans since 9/11 through the
use of drones, legal search warrants, illegal search
warrants, federal agent-written search warrants and just
plain government spying. This is according to Sen. Rand
Paul, R-Ky., who, when he asked the government to tell him
what it was doing to violate our privacy, was given a
classified briefing. The senator - one of just a few in
the U.S. Senate who believes that the Constitution means
what it says - was required by federal law to agree not to
reveal what spies and bureaucrats told him during the
briefing.

Even if the US government weren't recording all of that
data, England's GCHQ spy agency is . and is sharing it
with the NSA.


Germany, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are also
recording and sharing massive amounts of information with
the NSA.

Private contractors can also view all of your data . and
the government isn't keeping track of which contractors
see your data and which don't. And because background
checks regarding some contractors are falsified, it is
hard to know the types of people that might have your
information.

And top NSA and FBI experts say that the government can
retroactively search all of the collected information on
someone since 9/11 if they suspect someone of wrongdoing .
or want to frame him.

The American government is in fact collecting and storing
virtually every phone call, purchases, email, text
message, internet searches, social media communications,
health information, employment history, travel and student
records, and virtually all other information of every
American.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA spies on
Americans' credit card transactions. Senators Wyden and
Udall - both on the Senate Intelligence Committee, with
access to all of the top-secret information about the
government's spying programs - write:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any
type of records whatsoever . including information on
credit card purchases, medical records, library records,
firearm sales records, financial information and a range
of other sensitive subjects.

Many other government agencies track your credit card
purchases as well. In fact, all U.S. intelligence agencies
- including the CIA and NSA - are going to spy on
Americans' finances.

The IRS will be spying on Americans' shopping records,
travel, social interactions, health records and files from
other government investigators.

The Consumer Financial Protection Board will also spy on
the finances of millions of Americans.

As Washington Monthly noted in 2004, Congress chopped off
the head of the Total Information Awareness program . but
the program returned as a many-headed hydra:

A program can survive even when the media, the public, and
most of Congress wants it killed. It turns out that, while
the language in the bill shutting down TIA was clear, a
new line had been inserted during conference-no one knew
by whom-allowing "certain processing, analysis, and
collaboration tools" to continue.

..Thanks to the Central Intelligence Agency and the
National Security Agency, which had lobbied for the
provision, TIA didn't die-it metastasized. As the AP
reported in February [of 2004], the new language simply
outsourced many TIA programs to other intelligence offices
and buried them in the so-called "black budget." What's
more, today, several agencies are pursuing data mining
projects independent of TIA, including the Department of
Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the CIA, the
Transportation Security Administration, and NASA..Even
with TIA ostensibly shut down, many of the private
contractors who worked on the program can continue their
research with few controls.

The government is flying drones over the American homeland
to spy on us. Indeed, the head of the FBI told Congress
that drones are used for domestic surveillance . and that
there are no rules in place governing spying on Americans
with drones.

Senator Rand Paul correctly notes:

The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly
violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to
personal privacy.

Emptywheel notes in a post entitled "The OTHER Assault on
the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your
Airport?":

http://www.emptywheel.net/wp-
content/uploads/2012/01/Picture-7.png

***

As the map above makes clear - taken from this 2010 report -
DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all
over the country by 2015.

Many police departments are also using drones to spy on
us. As the Hill reported:

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.

***

"Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful
framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse
and invasions of privacy," Chris Calabrese, a legislative
counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said
during a congressional forum in Texas last month.

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's no
longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any
weapons.

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.

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.

The military is paying for the development of drones with
facial recognition software which "remember" people's
faces . and read "malintent".
Moreover, Wired reports:

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..

The systems are being installed in San Francisco,
Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the
Department of Homeland Security in some cases ..

The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a
built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS
data to track the movement of buses and passengers
throughout the city.

***

The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations
with camera images in order to produce synchronous
recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time,
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.

***

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.

RT notes:

Street lights that can spy installed in some American
cities

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.

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.

Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company
Illuminating Concepts, they have a number of "homeland
security applications" attached.

Each has a microprocessor "essentially similar to an
iPhone," capable of wireless communication. 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.

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 "working with Homeland Security" to
deliver his dream of making people "more informed and
safer."

The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports
stadiums, and is deploying mobile scanners to spy on
people all over the place. This means that traveling
within the United States is no longer a private affair.

You might also have seen the news this week that the
Department of Homeland Security is going to continue to
allow searches of laptops and phones based upon "hunches".
What's that about?

The ACLU published a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-
thirds of the American public - 197.4 million people -
live within a "constitution-free zone" within 100 miles of
land and coastal borders:



The ACLU explained:

Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution, the American people are not generally
subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
The border, however, has always been an exception. There,
the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not
apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant
or probable cause to conduct a "routine search."
But what is "the border"? According to the government, it
is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the "external
boundary" of the United States.
As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are
far away from the border, American citizens traveling from
one place in America to another, are being stopped and
harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.
Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland - on
highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona,
and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the
agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship.
Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these
kinds of checkpoints - legally speaking, they are
"administrative" stops that are permitted only for the
specific purpose of protecting the nation's borders. They
cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement
efforts.
However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not
remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the
roads of California and elsewhere in the nation - places
far removed from the actual border - agents are stopping,
interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday
basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.
The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that
the government possesses at the border are spilling into
regular American streets.

Computer World reports:

Border agents don't need probable cause and they don't
need a stinking warrant since they don't 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.

***

Don't 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 track Americans movements, the U.S.
"border" stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border.
Godfather Politics added:

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.

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs
and Border Protection (CBP) have a "longstanding
constitutional and statutory authority permitting
suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at
the border and its functional equivalent." This applies to
electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR "Border
Searches of Electronic Devices" executive summary [PDF]:

Fourth Amendment

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's and ICE's 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.***

The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened
to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on
the "policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating
travelers' laptops, cell phones, and other electronic
devices - even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?"
DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional
rights, so the ACLU said:

If it's true that our rights are safe and that DHS is
doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them,
then why won't 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's rights hidden from the
very public being affected?

***

As Christian Post wrote, "Your constitutional rights have
been repealed in ten states. No, this isn't 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."

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for
the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless
"border" searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney
Catherine Crump said "We hope to establish that the
Department of Homeland Security can't simply assert that
its practices are legitimate without showing us the
evidence, and to make it clear that the government's own
analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new
technologies should be openly accessible to the public for
review and debate."

Meanwhile, the EFF has tips to 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
defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz.

Wired pointed out in 2008 that the courts have routinely
upheld such constitution-free zones:

Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to
search through travelers' laptops, cell phones or digital
cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court
ruled Monday, extending the government's power to look
through belongings like suitcases at the border to
electronics.

***

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the
government, finding that the so-called border exception to
the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable
searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but
also to electronics.

***

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's
confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and
your-of-age partner in adult fun.
International airports are treated as "borders", exempt
for Fourth Amendment protections. As such, 145 airports
should be added to the map above.

Do you still believe that the government is only spying on
bad guys in "targeted" searches?