You decide... Well over twenty years ago when I worked as a rookie U.S. Federal Agent in Miami, I watched George Orwell's 1984 and thought it was merely an entertaining movie. Today in 2006 I look back and can sayit was nothing less than prophetic thanks to President Bush and his "Patriot Act", This law, in my humble opinion should be more aptly named the "Citizen Control Act" and with good reason.
Fortunately I am no longer employed in the dark world of government law enforcement, but even back in the 1980s we had the technology of "infinity microphones" and the like that would allow us to dial into any American home at whim over regular telephone lines and listen into any conversations that may be going on within 30 feet of the family's telephone - without ever making it ring. By law, court orders were required, but few agents bothered with the paperwork. After all, who would know? I recall speaking with a DEA agent assigned to night shifts that was so bored staking out a suspect that was seldom home, that he dialed around town at random to get his jollies listening in to dozens of American bedrooms for an assortment of grunts, groans, and quite a few family arguments.
That was then and this is now. Technology has come a l-o-o-o-n-g way my friends. Today our friendly feds actually have the ability to reside right in your house full time 24-7-365 via your family computer. Of course they're on the lookout for terrorists mind you, but oversight is not a strong point of the Patriot Act. With a quick search our "homeland security" boys and girls can quickly get a detailed summary of all your e-mail traffic as well as a list of every web site you ever visited, or a listing of your banking and credit card transactions, or any other on-line activity you ever pursued,including any and all searches you ever made on a search engine. In fact, they can and do sureptiously insert "key logger" programs into your computer that will monitor and record every single key stroke youmake and automatically send them a "detailed report" on a regular basis. Considering, that they already had the ability to monitor your phone and cell conversations, and can get your life history from just your social security number, what real privacy do you have left in this "land of the free"? Not much actually.
But getting back to your home computer No need to wonder how they can get into your computer that you think is well-protected with firewalls and an assortment of "anti-spyware" software because I will tell you. We all have programs in our computer that require periodic updates whether it be an anti-virus program like Norton, McAfee, etc. to Microsoft Internet Explorer and even on-line games. In fact you will often regularly see messages that say "automatic update in process" or something similar when you are on line. Well the truth of the matter is that ever software manufacturer that wants to sell their software in U.S. markets must allow "back door entry rights" for U.S. law enforcement to basically hitch a ride on their download highway right into your computer. Those that don't cooperate find themselves in court or banned from U.S. sales like PGP was for years before they were bought out by Netcom. Your Symantac, Microsoft, or Browser update downloads always appear the same on the screen whether they carry government spyware or just the regular updates.
Once an individual has been targeted for surveillance, the federal IT wizards will hack their way into their computer and conduct a "program inventory probe" collecting a list of every program installed on that particular computer. From this point they merely create a phony software update or patch which becomes the vehicle to install their industrial strength spyware, which by the way will not be detected by any commercial spyware that John Q. Citizen can buy off the shelf since those software manufactures also agree not to carry nor register government spyware profiles or "fingerprints" in their software. The government's "sniffer" spyware is so well advanced that it can sit quietly unnoticed in a computer for years and as soon as it detects one of dozens of key words or phrases (i.e. "infidel American pigs", "bomb", etc.) the cavalry is called in for an early-morning raid. The FBI's "Carnivore" was the first generation of such spyware but it is already antiquated and replaced with cutting edge programs that will even take snapshots and videos for the feds if your computer is equipped with a camera. Their capability would make your head spin in awe. This is great stuff for keeping tabs on real terrorists. But what about patriotic Americans like yours truly?
Here's where I have a problem with the Patriot Act. Thousands of federal agents are given arbitrary authority, without court orders to decide who they want to target with this wonderful spy technology. All these agents work for supervisors who as they climb the management ladder, eventually become political appointees who are indebted to those who appointed them for years.
Once you even begin to mix politics with law enforcement we start getting abuse and selective targeting. Today for example, polls now show more than 60% of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq and as citizens become angry with the news of dead relatives killed in the war, invisible weapons of mass destruction, or related prisoner abuse or contract scandals. They begin to voice their dissent in their circle of friends, coworkers, or even a letter to the editor (like me). This American who has every right to express his displeasure or support for the status quo suddenly finds themselves on a growing list of "dissident suspects" which are now running into the millions. If your views become too well known you suddenly have Uncle Sam living in your computer. Thousands of authors of books critical of U.S. foreign policy don't belong to a single terrorist organization, yet their computers are, scrutinized, infiltrated, and carefully monitored. This intrusion is excessive to the point of being criminal, not to mention a huge waste of tax-dollars. What the FBI did to Martin Lutehr King in the 70,s is now being repeated en masse to more than ten million Americans who our outspoken about a variety of U.S. foreign policies.
But it can get worse - much worse. Passive surveillance is just one capability of Uncle Sam that most people will never even notice, but let's take an over-zealous agent who is hell bent on making a name for himself with a host of convictions. There is nothing but his own conscious from stopping him to actually downloading something more than spyware into a "suspect's" computer - like incriminating or fabricated evidence for example, even something unrelated like child pornography that is still grounds for arrest or imprisonment. Whether the suspect is a genuine terrorist or a political activist, the outcome would be the same - prosecution and prison.
But the potential for abuse does not end there. Imagine that these over-zealous or misguided agents decide to monitor the offices of defense attorneys, human rights organizations, or even university libraries with a minority report mentality looking for "future potential suspects". Or consider the infiltrated computer given to a relative, sold at a flea market, or traded-in for a new model. Does the new owner deserve to be monitored too? Too sinister and far-fetched you say?
John Lennon, Martin Luther King, and Jesse Jackson would prove you wrong as the government surveillance boys were on them for years like white on rice - and for nothing more than being active war protesters. This spy technology poses a genuine threat to freedoms of U.S. citizens in ways that could easily transform our "democracy" into a bonafide oligarchy in less than two decades at the current erosion rate of our privacy rights. :ess than a decade ago we learned that the government was sending agents to public libraries across our country to keep tabs on who was signing outr books on such topics as socialism, labor unions, and politcial reform. The privacy invasion is growing bolder with time.
As for your computer, there are only a handful of ways that you can make life difficult for hackers and feds alike. First and foremost, stopping using Explorer as your browser which is the easiest to exploit. Mozilla's Firefox is far safer. Off the shelf spyware is great for keeping petty hackers at bay, but not the feds. For them you need professional help in the form of commercial "intrusion detection software" that quickly detects sniffer activity and preferably those not manufactured in the U.S. without the "back doors" mentioned above. Multiple firewalls are good but an external firewall device like Alpha Shield or Watchguard are even better. When it comes time to upgrade your computer, consider a MAC as a safer replacement. The new MACs can run most PC programs anyway. Of course, dial up users are a bit less vulnerable than high-speed which leaves the door open 24/7, so if you have high-speed, disable your connection whenever you are not actually on line. This is not a guarantee the snoops won't get in, but at least you limited their window of opportunity. Lastly, if you have a choice between DSL and cable ISPs, go with the cable ISP since current laws make it harder for the feds to access your computer through TV cable lines than the telephone lines used by DSL.
Indeed, If you are an activist of any sort, even an environmentalist, a animal rights volunteer, member of the ACLU or similar organization, a convicted felon, of Arab descent, wrote any anti-war letters or material, or rant regularly at the local pub, you can safely assume that your computer was already compromised and seek out a professional IT tech to scrub it clean for you. Even writing an article like this one would do the trick. Paranoia? No, actually I stay in touch with a few old friends still with federal law enforcement and I'm told this is now standard operating procedure because of 911.
In the old days, federal agents would go to mob weddings and collect license plate numbers. Today they drive through parking lots of Mosques and hang out in millions of computers - with or without probable cause or court orders. The movie "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise may yet turn out to be just as prophetic as Orwell's 1984 if current enforcement trends are not curbed immediately. But public fear, whether real or created, gives momentum and motivation to those in government who now believe privacy has become a luxury and no longer a constitutional right. Those who write our laws should not have to violate the constitution and the privacy of millions just to find a few dozen bad apples that could routinely be identified if inter-agency rivalry was eliminated and agents learn how to properly share information with one another.
It's a sad day in America when we have to put our government in the same category as hackers. On thing is certain, we must all actually start reading those "privacy policies" and "terms of use" agreements on our search engines, ISP service contracts, browsers, and e-mail providers before even their disclosure of cooperation with government snoops is outlawed.
On a related note, U.S. Magistrate James Orenstein, upheld our constitutional rights to Privacy in November of 2005 when he ruled that the FBI could not use our cell phones as tracking devices without a warrant proving a crime was in progress or about to be committed. Unfortunately, President Bush disagrees with Judge Orenstein and made sure the new Patriot Act allows our G men to track even "people of interest" by their cell phones. Surveillance cameras, cell phone tracking, and now computer infiltration. Are chip implants the next "security measure" of the Bush administration? Hopefully, the Democrats in the House and Senate might restore some sanity to Washington and privacy for the rest of us.
The recent law suit brought against Google by the U.S. Justice Department demanding their client search records and the recent revelation that the U.S. government has been spying on even our allies for years (most recently Canadian citizens and their banking records), quickly identifies the mind set of the Bush administration. Any and all means apparently justifies the end result even if it means trashing our rights as law-abiding and patriotic citizens. Unfortunately, we now have a do as we please government and only one thing stands in their way - your vote. I urge you to use it wisely before you too have FBI agents knocking at your door asking why you talk so much politics at the local tavern or in a chat room.
If and when we get a new, less onerous government, we'll need some major legislative "revisions" to the Patriot Act to restore some of our privacy and civil rights. Law abiding citizens cannot be presumed to be anything but simply because they do not agree with politicians, foreign policies, or pray to a different God. In the 1970s and 80s our government used the IRS to keep Americans "in line" with "random audits" that were later exposed by Congressional investigators. Today our politicians have upgraded their tactics with the Patriot Act which just might soon prove be the greatest oxymoron in U.S. history.
UPDATES:
On March 17, 2006, Federal Judge James Ware in a San Jose courthouse ruled in a compromise decision that the URLs of 50,000 web sites selected by the government (mostly porn, gambling, and politically-charged web sites). The government argued that 50,000 web sites "was not enough" but in reality entitled Uncle Sam snoops to spy on some 40 million Americans whose only crime might be an urge to play a little online poker, peruse some sexy models, or see what an opposition candidate has to say about global warming or the war in Iraq.
In September of 2006, homeland security officials admitted to ABC news that a "few dozen" American citizens were wrongly placed on a "No-Fly" list because of "faulty internet surveillance".
Encouraged by the Google ruling, inside sources now say the feds have their eyes on AOL and Oracle. If citizens don't unite with a few class-action law suits and soon, Privacy will inevitably become extinct in America this decade. Indiscriminate domestic spying is simply un-American, unethical, and just plain wrong. Clip this article and send it with letters to your House and Senate representatives and ask them where they stand on this issue.
On January 3rd, 2007 President Bush signed his latest executive order which amounts to giving federal and state officials the authority to interecpt, open, and read the mail of anyone within U.S. territory including American citizens with no links to terrorism. Hello! Can you say "Gestapo"?