It Turns Out CIA is Not the Only One to Spy on You
Grete Mautner
Journal-Neo.org
12.05.2018
In an attempt to establish total control over the people, intelligence agencies have been collecting all sorts of data on every citizens in their respective countries, which remains the primary goal of those bodies, as the task of retaining power through all means possible remains the ultimate goal of all political elites. These duties have been successfully performed by such American agencies as the CIA, FBI and a host of other specialized agencies. To this end, a wide arsenal of tools and means both legal and semi-legal have been at play. But there’s little doubt that without the assistance of social network owners the deep state would be unable to amass the unprecedented amount of personal data they have already collected. So it must come as no surprise for anyone that Western intelligence agencies played no small part in the creation of those social network, as even today those agencies carry on taking advantage of those networks to pursue their own goals.
It’s noteworthy that on top of semi-official and semi-legal but yet well-established instances of social networks providing sensitive data of their users to American intelligence services, the Trump administration is now planning to start officially collecting personal data of all individuals who applied for a visa to enter the US.
This proposal implies that a person applying for a US entry permit will be required to provide his a list of his or her accounts on social networks on top of the travel record for the five past years and usual info. Among the accounts an individual is bound to reveal that are mentioned in the draft submitted by the State Department, there are not just Facebook and Twitter, but those registered in Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit and YouTube. Those new surveillance measures can potentially be affecting well over 14.7 million individuals a year.
However, American intelligence agencies are not just collecting data in Western social networks, they’ve also been trying to infiltrate those that operate in Russia, China, Iran – the states that were described as main opponents of the United States in the latest revision of the US security strategy. As early as in 2015, American authorities announced their intension of creating special units that are going to operate in Russia-based social networks – starting from “Odnoklassniki” and “VKontakte” and ending with Russian segments of Facebook and Twitter. The primarily goal of this so-called media department of the CIA is the collection of profiles of Russian citizens along with all sorts of operations in this segment of the Internet.
In recent years, the popularity of social networks has increased noticeably. Thus, according to the conclusion of NATO experts, 62% of US citizens base their judgment on the info obtained on social networks, with 44% using Facebook alone to form their opinions. Social networks have had giant growth spurts over the past couple of years, and it seems there’s one for everyone: from dogs to moms to book-worms to shoppers. It’s now a sort of a norm to spend one’s time in social networks, so there’s no wonder that there’s sites that creates lists of all social media available to the general public.
Last April, CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg testified in the US Congress, revealing a lot of curious facts about operations of the tech giant he runs, but he nevertheless refused to disclose all the capabilities that social networks provide the West with, allowing governments to exercise total control over the population of their states.
Social networks have not just become giant monopolies, those are enormous non-transparent manipulative tools, but as the Cambridge Analytica affair shows that can be manipulated by outside players. Thus, the enormous amount of personal data accumulated by social networks, that can be at times highly sensitive, remains out of the boundaries of legal relations which turns them into a new Data Bonanza for intelligence agencies and predatory businesses.
By now everyone has beome aware that Facebook is spying on you. In the practice of this network, there was even a function of automatic facial recognition, which the European Union demanded to bring down as early as in 2012. And recently their programmers have empowered their robots with simple text and video event recognition capabilities. The social network even in 2015 began testing a technology that allowed the system a person when in pictures event if he chose to turn his back on the camera. The hit percentage was surprisingly high – more than 80%. But it goes much further than that, as Facebook collects data about your clothes, posture and physical constitution. That is, you are identified automatically on any pictures and nobody is going to go as far as to ask your permission.
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