Our government watches and listens to most everything we do, at least, to most every email, text, and electronic communication, and to every conversation we have by telephone or computer, and it knows where we are most of the time. If the idea of freedom contemplates privacy, then freedom is gone, and the idea that we are a free people is nothing more than illusion.

::::::::

Our government watches and listens to most everything we do: at least, to most every email, text, and electronic communication, and to every conversation we have  by telephone or computer, and it knows where we are most of the time. If the idea of freedom contemplates privacy, then freedom is gone, and the idea that we are a free people is mere illusion.

On December 1, 2011, WikiLeaks released 287 files which it has dubbed "The Spy Files" (click here) detailing some incredible investigative work done by the website Privacy International over the last year involving the manufacture and sale by about 160 companies of services and software to primarily national intelligence agencies with the capacity to render individual privacy and nearly all communications subject to government eavesdropping, censorship, manipulation, editing, tracking and targeting. The commercial software, security, and surveillance companies are incorporated in 25 different countries and most will sell to any regime or private corporation willing to meet their price. According to Julian Assange, the Spy Files were released for the purpose of "documenting the relationships among intelligence agencies and monitoring software developers whose products have been deployed surreptitiously but very, very widely in smart phones and computers." click here

Assange is widely being credited with the revelations in the Spy Files due to the fact he led a panel discussion on espionage and digital security on December 1 in London in which he basically stated that virtually all governments "spy on their own citizens and on foreigners using surreptitious spyware on computers, cell phones, GPS devices and other modern electronic devices." click here Steven Murdoch, University of Cambridge, added that intelligence agencies spy on all individual citizens not because of their involvement in crime or terrorism, but because the intelligence agencies believe the information gathered may prove useful sometime in the future. The implication is, of course, that the information might someday be used for blackmail, although Murdoch does not go so far in his allegations.

It probably comes as no surprise to most progressives that the Spy Files reveal the American NSA and CIA at the front of the line to purchase the most sophisticated surveillance available. Even now, the NSA is building a 1.5 billion dollar facility in Utah just for the purpose of storing such data forever.

Although Assange is getting most of the credit for these revelations, the real hero here is the website Privacy International (click here) and the investigative reporter, Eric King, and his sponsor, the human rights group, Reprieve International, that successfully posed as legitimate international buyers of this sophisticated software for a year in developing their report, "Big Brother Incorporated." According to the panel discussion, the reporters were very surprised how easy it was to gain access to private briefings, confidential reports, technical specifications, and information on other buyers.

The services offered and the capabilities of the software involved are truly mind-blowing. Vendors have websites and offer international meet and greets. The Hacking Team and Gamma Group are examples. One service offered is tapping into high capacity optical fiber networks at submarine cable landing stations. The same service is offered for tapping into land based Internet gateways. In both of these situations, the software used can isolate a single information flow, send it to a land based decryption center for further analysis, and then store it for later use. Additionally, other programs take control of cell phones, even when they are in standby mode, eavesdrop on conversations, take photos of the user and his or her surroundings through the cell phone's camera, record every keystroke of the key pad, monitor email used on the phone, read all text messages, change text messages so the recipient receives a different message from the one the sender sent, use voice recognition to identify the parties to a conversation, and use GPS to locate and, possibly, target a particular phone. In this latter case, when the software developer, Rich Zimmerman, for the GPS locater learned that individuals were targeted by their phone's GPS signal for a missile strike, he is said to have reacted in amazement that the CIA was killing people with his software "that doesn't work." WikiLeaks 

Finally, but not least, some of these companies now, according to The Register, "offer to target and break specific international commercial communications satellites, including Thuraya (covering the Middle East), (click here) (take a moment just to watch this website, then consider the power to buy the tools to hack the satellite) Iridium satellite phones, and Marlink's VSAT. Commercial satellite intercept was previously the almost exclusive turf of GCHQ and NSA's Echelon satellite interception network." click here

Whatever can be said about cell phones can be equally said about computers. Moreover, the spyware sold to governments or corporations for intrusion into computers cannot be discovered by commercial security software like Norton Utilities, McAfee, or similar products, and it successfully defeats system restores. Whatever can be accomplished on a cell phone can also be accomplished on a computer, except that normally a computer holds much more sensitive files than a cell phone. If you are connected to the Internet, just presume you are infected because, if Assange and his panel are correct, you almost certainly are.

Evidence found in Egypt, Libya, and certain other countries, indicates that these regimes were using some of the software at issue, if not the highest levels obtainable nor the most sophisticated. According to the work of Privacy International, the Western democracies are the governments which seek the most and best surveillance equipment and software on the international market.

Anyone who paid close attention to the rapid lose of our civil rights since the 911 attack should remember an early DARPA project termed Total Information Awareness. The TIA program embodied an initial attempt by the US government to do openly what we discuss here it does surreptitiously. TIA was created in the Homeland Security Act in early 2003 to be managed by DARPA, but when details of its massive collection of information on innocent American citizens came to light, Congress was forced to kill the project officially in late 2003. The acronyms TIA and DARPA did not go well together in the American mind. The problem, however, was that while in existence TIA had already purchased the hardware and software for its mandate. The project was therefore merely shifted from DARPA to the NSA where it continued to grow and expand with the ever increasing sophistication of new surveillance software. (click here and Truthout has an ongoing article starting at click here)

For many, then, the news that our government is spying on us very closely may not come as a great revelation. We knew it from the Total Information Awareness program, from the Sibel Edmonds case, and almost instinctively. What is new is that instead of collecting terabytes of information and sifting that data for key words or information, the software exists now to keep track of each one of us. Now we are each a target, each located, each heard, each known intimately if they care to look, each subject to blackmail be there a single skeleton in our closet: perhaps a porn site once visited, a Marxist website once read, an intemperate email, a poem over lost love, so many things we have put on our computers. Even if we did not do it, they can do it for us, entering keystrokes when we are not even home, or not even using our Blackberry, turning us into pedophiles, terrorists, tax cheats, or whatever monster they need to disappear without much question or care from our family and friends.

One might reasonably question why governments of democracies would feel the need to keep such a close watch on their citizens. I am sure many different opinions abound. Most likely, though, the democratic state has learned through history that democratic peoples are quickest to rise up when their system fails them, so that the state, knowing that crises will come, prepares in advance as much as it can. It hardly took a fortune teller to predict the collapse of 2008, and the inevitable rise of both a reactionary right and a radical left. Anyone with a basic understanding of macro-economics, or political economy, and history, knew that another great depression was coming and that the state was preparing for it. Clinton knew it when he entered into NAFTA, just as Ross Perot had told us he would, and just as Ross Perot had predicted, we gained nothing but empty manufacturing sites. Bush knew it when he entered further trade agreements, and when he ran up unsustainable debt through two unfunded wars, the largest social program ever passed unfunded, and tax breaks that were also unfunded. The government had good reason to perfect its surveillance techniques knowing the likely outcome of all of these policies. The same policies led to WWI and WWII and the economic disorder that preceded them.

Knowing we are under surveillance, the most important questions arise when we consider the changing nature of surveillance technology in light of the Arab Spring and the OWS movements. A number of factors must now be considered. First, can the government effectively take over a mass movement by controlling the social media that serves as its medium? Second, can the government effectively shut down a mass movement dependent upon the social media as its primary medium for the exchange of information? Third, can the movement manipulate the government since the movement knows the government is listening in to its every electronic communication? Finally, how closely must we watch what we say and what we text or email considering that almost undoubtedly a record of our conservations is being kept for at least our entire lives?

As to the first question, can the government effectively take over a mass movement by controlling the social media that serves as its medium, the answer is probably no. Although the state may be able to change what an individual texts, no evidence exists the state holds the power to change thousands of individual text messages at once. Moreover, the social media is so broad, ranging from Facebook to Twitter to Linked In, etc., and so fast in its changing comments on live stream, that it is hard to imagine sufficient state power to sway the masses from the general direction of their discussions.

What we actually discuss here is whether the state can co-opt the direction of a popular uprising into the existing institutions which ultimately lead to maintenance of the status quo. An excellent example of this type of possible re-direction occurred on November 17, the second anniversary of the OWS movement, after it had been evicted from Zuccotti Park a few days earlier and planned a nationwide day of action for the 17th when the New York OWS planned to actually occupy Wall Street directly. This plan grew into a worldwide day of action with Americans taking the lead. A march of thousands descended upon Wall Street in the morning, encountering fairly stiff resistance from New York police. Then word suddenly came that the unions were under way to join the occupation of Wall Street, and victory seemed assured. The police guarding Zuccotti Park surprisingly then opened the barriers that had prevented the Occupy Movement from retaking their usual ground earlier, and abruptly from somewhere the call went out that Zuccotti Park was open and OWS could and should return there rather than complete their plan of day long protests directly in front of the villains that profit from inside knowledge of the Bulls and the Bears. In the Twitter information stream, people were desperately pleading for the movement to forget about Zuccotti Park and push forward, but somehow the voices heard were those demanding a retreat to the familiar park. Someone attempted to co-opted the OWS that day, but it probably was not the government and it was not the result of surveillance technologies. Somehow the day of occupying Wall Street ended in re-occupying Zuccotti Park, the path of least resistance, at least for a large segment of OWS. But there is a lesson in the events of that day.

Taking over a mass movement to change its direction takes more than the ability to cut into the information stream and occasionally mislead and misinform. It takes boots on the ground, the building of relationships, and an apparent commitment to the cause. However, building a mass movement where unrest already exists might be very possible with the new surveillance tools available to the western democracies. The state can identify the discontented, make sure they link up with one another, supply the ideological framework for revolution or rebellion, easily slip in informants or special operatives, supply the right world publicity for the rebel's cause, supply the arms for a violent rebellion, dehumanize the existing state, and even run military interference for the rebels. This is particularly easy to do for a government over its own people, as both President Bushes proved with their invasions of Iraq. click here It now appears possible, though, for an outside state actor to build such a movement within another society from its inception into maturity and onto victory as many believe occurred in Libya. This scenario represents one of the greatest dangers of the new surveillance technologies: invasion from within by a domestic, surrogate rebellion.

Second, we asked can the government effectively terminate a mass movement dependent upon the social media as its primary medium for the exchange of social information? Again the answer is probably not; at least, not yet. These actions the U.S. government can probably do: (1) Shut down the Internet, (2) Use the National Emergency Alert System over radio, television, and the Internet to spread false information about the movement, or about an alleged outside threat that would dissipate the movement, (3) send mass emails or texts directly to movement members containing disinformation from an apparently reliable source that causes the movement to act in a way that damages its public credibility. What the government probably cannot do yet is shut down all cellular telephone traffic because so many businesses are completely dependent upon cellular communications, including many military and intelligence functions. The latter tend to use specialized satellites, but not in all cases, and businesses would be devastated by a prolonged shutdown of cellular functions. While the complete shutdown of cellular services is not inconceivable, such an action would likely come only after a mass movement is well under way. By that time, other means of communication should be in place to sustain the movement. Nonetheless, in the event of surprise, progressives, like families, should have preplanned meeting places in case of communication emergencies.

Third, we ask whether a mass movement can manipulate an eavesdropping government through the knowledge that the eavesdropping is occurring. This is the classic Hollywood scenario in which the little guy turns the tables against the villain by making certain the antagonist hears only misinformation and acts upon that information while the hero successfully executes his or her completely different plan. This action is possible but would be exceedingly difficult. To avoid tipping off the government, the movement would have to severely limit the number of people who knew of the actual plan. The rest of the movement must believe in the false plan until a sudden change occurs at the last moment. This type of action would violate many of the new democratic values the OWS movement has come to adopt. An alternative scenario is to use the social media to sow many false actions in the eavesdropper's ear, causing it to waste resources day after day defending against protests that never occur, except, of course, until the one that does occur. This tactic would not require that the movement itself be misled since the tactic can be debated and accepted or rejected and then implemented with a go or stay order each day a few minutes before the protest is scheduled to occur. It takes the police much longer to prepare than it does the mass movement so they must prepare each day in case that day the actual protest does develop.

Finally we reach the question of how important it is to carefully watch what we say, text and email, knowing that our texts and emails will be preserved for our lifetimes, or that our conversations could be overheard by our own smart phones in standby mode. On this issue, activists would do well to read about the trial of the Chicago Seven after the Democratic National Convention of 1968, for it is in the nefarious conspiracy laws of the federal government and all of the several states that danger lurks in every discourse. click here While the definition of a conspiracy may differ a little from state to state and oftentimes for different offenses in the federal statutes, the most widely used meaning is an agreement by two or more people to commit a crime or to perpetrate an illegal act where at least one overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy is carried out by one member of the conspiracy. It matters not that a defendant withdrew from the conspiracy, or if the ultimate aim of the conspiracy is legal, if an illegal act was contemplated to accomplish that aim. In the latter case, for instance, each individual in a group that agrees to steal a truck of food and distribute the food to the homeless, or to camp out on the lawn of a foreclosed home to prevent the owner's ejection, is guilty of the separate and distinct crime of conspiracy so long as one member of the conspiracy commits one act in furtherance of the conspiracy. It is important to remember that "conspiracy" is a crime unto itself: the very act of coming to an agreement to commit a crime is a crime, and in some jurisdictions not even the overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy is required as proof of the conspiracy to convict. click here

Conspiracy charges are notorious for shutting down political movements. One reason is that planning nonviolent activities often involves forming an agreement to violate the law, and under Federal law, depending upon the type of facility being protested, or planning the crossing of state lines to engage in the illegal nonviolence, the conspiracy can easily be defined as a felony. Moreover, evidentiary rules in conspiracy cases appear like something out of the dark ages. Every conspirator is liable for the acts of every other conspirator whether he or she consented to that act, knew about that act, or even knew the ultimate aim of the conspiracy. As the courts frequently state it, the left hand of the conspiracy need not know what the right hand is doing. For instance, if OWS planned a massive act of civil disobedience by blocking the entrance to Congress with over 100,000 representational war dead, and one protester robbed a convenience store in his home state to get the money to travel to Washington and participate, all 100,000 protesters are technically guilty of that robbery. They all agreed to the same illegal act and all are responsible for whatever any conspirator does in furtherance of the conspiracy. Additionally, while the statements of co-defendants are normally inadmissible evidence in criminal trials since they violate the defendant's right against self incrimination (the defendant is forced to take the stand if co-defendant testimony is introduced), the statement of a co-conspirator is admissible because it is part of the crime to be proved. The only good thing about conspiracy charges is that if you are facing them you know you are winning the political struggle.

Concluding then, OWS should presume at all times that Big Brother is listening and reading and knows exactly to whom it listens and reads and exactly where they are located. Presuming this, OWS should be careful not to use words indicating agreement to violate the law, but to couch their language in speculative terms, questions, thoughtful imaginings, and such. OWS should presume that they could lose a large part of their social medium at any instant, and make plans for such an event, for it will certainly, eventually come. Finally, if at all possible, OWS should develop plans to use the governments eavesdropping against it. Nothing could better protect against surveillance than making it expensive and worthless.

Total Information Awareness is a tool of a totalitarian state. To find that the NSA and CIA are the most prolific consumers of state of the art surveillance tools, and that they use those tools on their own citizens just in case they need the information later, ought to tell us what to expect in the way of future social change if America's 1% gets its way. We all know something dark and foreboding is coming. We feel it in the air. Many believe it will be total economic collapse. For the first time, Americans will go to the local grocery store, and the shelves will be bare. No law in this universe states that the food at Publix or Krogers or whatever chain dominates your region will always keep coming because of the "invisible hand" of capitalism. You have only your faith, and if you are paying any attention, your faith in the "invisible hand" that allegedly regulates our system should be shaken to the core. The 1% understand that an empty belly is the womb of revolution. That is why they watch us. They watch and listen and prepare.

Authors Bio:

Former Senior Editor Opednews, retired criminal defense attorney, married, father, majors in Political Science and Political Philosophy, Phi Beta Kappa, Summa Cum Laude, Juris Doctorate with Honors.