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Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Potential Bad Guys Is Sadly Uninformed

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Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Potential Bad Guys Is Sadly Uninformed

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.

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“).

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.

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.

And 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 leading security experts say that the NSA might have put a backdoor in all encryption standards years ago. … meaning that the NSA can easily hack into encrypted communications.)

“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.