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Edward Snowden's New Revelations Are Truly Chilling
Submitted by Sophie McAdam via TrueActivist.com,
Former intelligence contractor and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the BBC's Panorama that the UK intelligence centre GCHQ has the power to hack phones without their owners’ knowledge.
In an interview with the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ which aired in Britain last week, Edward Snowden spoke in detail about the spying capabilities of the UK intelligence agency GCHQ. He disclosed that government spies can legally hack into any citizen’s phone to listen in to what’s happening in the room, view files, messages and photos, pinpoint exactly where a person is (to a much more sophisticated level than a normal GPS system), and monitor a person’s every move and every conversation, even when the phone is turned off. These technologies are named after Smurfs, those little blue cartoon characters who had a recent Hollywood makeover. But despite the cute name, these technologies are very disturbing; each one is built to spy on you in a different way:
- “Dreamy Smurf”: lets the phone be powered on and off
- “Nosey Smurf”:lets spies turn the microphone on and listen in on users, even if the phone itself is turned off
- “Tracker Smurf”:a geo-location tool which allows [GCHQ] to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical triangulation of cellphone towers.
- “Paranoid Smurf”: hides the fact that it has taken control of the phone. The tool will stop people from recognising that the phone has been tampered with if it is taken in for a service, for instance.
Snowden says: “They want to own your phone instead of you.” It sounds very much like he means we are being purposefully encouraged to buy our own tracking devices. That kinda saved the government some money, didn’t it?
His revelations should worry anyone who cares about human rights, especially in an era where the threat of terrorism is used to justify all sorts of governmental crimes against civil liberties. We have willingly given up our freedoms in the name of security; as a result we have neither. We seem to have forgotten that to live as a free person is a basic human right: we are essentially free beings. We are born naked and without certification; we do not belong to any government nor monarchy nor individual, we don’t even belong to any nation or culture or religion- these are all social constructs. We belong only to the universe that created us, or whatever your equivalent belief. It is therefore a natural human right not to be not be under secret surveillance by your own government, those corruptible liars who are supposedly elected by and therefore accountable to the people.
The danger for law-abiding citizens who say they have nothing to fear because they are not terrorists, beware: many peaceful British protesters have been arrested under the Prevention Of Terrorism Act since its introduction in 2005. Edward Snowden‘s disclosure confirms just how far the attack on civil liberties has gone since 9/11 and the London bombings. Both events have allowed governments the legal right to essentially wage war on their own people, through the Patriot Act in the USA and the Prevention Of Terrorism Act in the UK. In Britain, as in the USA, terrorism and activism seem to have morphed into one entity, while nobody really knows who the real terrorists are any more. A sad but absolutely realistic fact of life in 2015: if you went to a peaceful protest at weekend and got detained, you’re probably getting hacked right now.
It’s one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as we convince ourselves how cool they are, it’s hard to deny their invention has resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like zombies, encouraged child labor, made us more lonely than ever, turned some of us into narcissistic selfie–addicts, and prevented us from communicating with those who really matter (the ones in the same room at the same time). Now, Snowden has given us yet another reason to believe that smartphones might be the dumbest thing we could have ever inflicted on ourselves.
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OT - But check out "God's chosen people doing God's work", yesterday
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/10/undercover-palestinian-demonstration#sthash.GZl9YFYu
< own a "smart phone"
< don't
Be honest bitchez
I own a Blackberry, so my phone is merely "clever".
It's really simple.
Disconnect the SOB & deny the prying pedo's the revenue.
We all lived before the advent of these monstrosities.
Quite nicely I might add.
Well, well...looks like another bankster fatality.
From SGT. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRp9hHdGy3U
So when the SHTF and nobody pays their cellphone bill then what? I guess dumb asses would still carry them around to take perpetual selfies and to make sure that everybody knows they have one. Other than being able to read books while waiting or having access to information I detest my cellphone. It's not just the authorities who are oppressing people by cellphone you can include everybody else who demands to have 24/7 access to you just because you carry one.
Did you get my email? I called you twice, what are you doing? How come you never answer your phone? The best thing to do is probably to break your phone into a thousand pieces, an antique flip phone might be your next best bet and if you have a smart phone you should probably just claim otherwise and not give the number out.
Ms No, I still have a flip phone only my wife and kids have the number. I carry a book with me when I have to wait for anything. I'm the only one reading and not 50 lbs over weight in any waiting room.
I print out zero hedge articles when I know I have to go sit in some waiting room. After I read them I leave them for others to read.
Anyone who still uses a smartphone on a regular basis gets what they deserve. I have no sympathy... And no smartphone!
Maybe someday Snowden finds his circle of peace and can hold hands with everyone and sing Kumbaya. I hope he sets foot in the US and they immediately tase the upper middle class punk and throw him into a cell with Bubba.
Been a member here about as long as I have and you post this without a /sarc?
You're not MillonDollarBonus where we immediately recognize the sarcasm and parody.
But if that is your honest assessment, and you've been here this long, you've been eating the articles and comments rather than reading them.
Wow, this guy keeps blowing me away by telling things I already knew. What a brave media darling!
I tried to keep an old flip phone and verizon wouldnt let me keep it bc it couldnt be tracked. For my own protection so 911 could find me... called bullshit at the time but rules are rules. I get tracked big deal nothing to see or hear but a bunch of bitching which i assume millions are doing every day. Poeple who are plotting something are probably aware of this or darwin kicks in and wannabees get busted.
Smart phones are kick ass but aholes saw the other use at the speed of light and if you think your flip phone is not at least tracked, you are wrong
Why didn't you just put a different sim card in it, maybe getting it unlocked first?
I've had a phone since Nextel---leave them on a window sill in an empty room ---all the phones I have had have been unused ---most given to me with add on family programs by "loved ones" that feel I should stay "in touch"----sometimes I throw one under the seat of the truck if I'm going a long distance so I can call and say I'll be late-----lol
Buy a shielded case, turn it off and put it inside. If the NSA is that nosy to listen to being perverts , fuck them.
Sounds like the SEC porn addicted perverts with vastly more power.
duplicate
Exactly what kind of case? I read that mylar bags can act to EMP proof the phone, including any blocking any pings emitted by the phone.
In theory, put your phone in the mylar bag, seal it off , and then dial your phone to see if it rings inside the bag.
Amazon sells 'cell phone privacy pouches' that work well. SKA is the manufacturer.
Everything was fine until this fucker blew the whistle!
(sarc)
There are over 7B active mobile phones in the world so although the metadata is interesting, you'd really have to piss someone off to get some personal attention.
We peasants know this. But what if JFK had not been president due to his roaming eye? It is not the mistakes we make, it is how fast we recognize the decision we made was a mistake and back out of it. McCarthy is just one example of what is going on in Wash DC. I frank do not care about politicians' sex lives if they can do their job. Voters are being told to accept nothing less than Christ-like men (and bilking tax payers, destroying policies for lobby groups and taking part in coverups is just par for the course. Activists and journalists, competitors. Extortion and blackmail. Corruption at its finest.
so what ...
put your phone inside a srew-top jar, or a plastic case that shuts tight. who cares if they turn it ON - what are they going to see and hear?
anybody with any brains stopped carrying cellular phones to private meetings a long time ago.
Last week I was meeting with the general manager of a competitor of ours. About half way through the meeting I noticed that my shirt pocket ws heating up. My iPhome had turned itself on, gotten past the password screen and was burning through battery.
Whatever ...
Go Fanboi Go! Hot Nipple Tweaker Feature.
I'm selling lead phone cases.. Gonna make a killing
I am an electrical engineer with 25+ years experience as an RF engineer and a Computer HW Architect. I design cell phones for a living.
So let me give you a tip or two.
Buy a Raspberry Pi here. $35 bucks. But buy the kit on Amazon for $90. It has everything.
www.adafruit.com
Then learn Linux. Then learn Android. PS. ALL of the software to do this stuff is now free. Yes, free. Enterprise quality SW suites are, for the most part, open source and free to the public. Even industry uses these same SW tools so you are not getting the cheap shit.
Go here for an Android IDE (Integrated Development Environment)
www.eclipse.org
It has the quality of SW that carries a $10K licensing fee, and it is free. Industry uses it regularly.
It's actually fun folks and a great hobby that ANYONE with slightly above average intelligence can do. Don't let my fellow technogeeks decieive you. If your IQ is say 110+ plus, then you can do it.
Once you learn Linux and Android and play around on your "PI", then buy the cell phone adapter for the Raspberry PI (you can find it at the same site) and start to learn how to crack (unlock the OS) your phone, manipulate it, and change the source code.
Now YOU have control over your phone. After seeing this, it merely reminded me of what I already "knew" so one of my next missions is to find these hooks and spoof them or disable them. I am thinking that when nosey smurf, or the US equivalent is enabled, I will channel MP3 data into the mic path with a pre-recorded message that is quite insulting and belittling, among other things. With time, learning, practice and patience, I think you will be able to do this too.
Here is another tip. There are so many really well done tutorials online, especially in YouTube ( see here - > https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsa31gkyINsly6N_usaeHrtDPYnwxO-1Y ) that a 10 year old can learn this stuff!!!!
And with it, you get a HUGE bonus. You become EXTREMELY computer literate, well beyond what you think you are today, which in today's digital age is a major advantage.
Warning. Raspberry PI is known to be EXTREMELY ADDICTING to those laymen that start tinkering with it. About as bad as a video game addiction. But in this case, instead of rotting your brain, you'll be exercising it and enhancing it, so that's not so bad really. :)
I am a regular reader here, and having read thousands of comments, I know that there are some very intelligent non-technical folks here. Trust me when I tell you that you can learn this stuff, and it is a skill that will pay dividends beyond what I am talking about. Won't go into too much detail on that aspect, but my fellow engineers and programmers here know what I am talking about and may expound on that.
BTW. I have a buddy of mine that is an accountant that I turned on to this Raspberry PI a year ago, and he can't put it down. He built a web server out of it, and then programmed a stock scanning tool that he created that links to real time market data and he uses it to sift through thousands of stocks to find potential "hits" via his own criteria (vs someone else's pre-cooked methods). Very cool benefits to learning this stuff.
Great informative post! I have an iPhone for work and the company pays for it. Anyone listening most likely is going to hear keyboard clicking and streaming jam band, classic rock and yacht rock music. I had no idea such a thing as a raspberry PI existed. That is so cool! Between work and school and have no time for learning this stuff now, but I would love to get into it in the future and learn those dividend paying skills ;-)
+1 Great post Frankie. I may not ever do this, but, its great to hear about innovations that are geared towards protecting us or enhancing our own security if only because such efforts are in the defense of liberty. Thanks for sharing.
thanks frankie
Sounds fun and all that. I have three or so software copywrites, but I have no interest in cellphones. None. I carry a flip-phone for emergencies. I could give a rats ass what the NSA/FBI/War Criminal government is listening/reading to...an attitude that got me a very personal visit. FBIGUY, yeah, fuck you. NSAGUY, yeah, fuck you.
What gets my ass into trouble is making a post like this on some website or blog. Not a fuckinfone.
Wonder if anyone here on ZH has considered that maybe.... Just maybe...that Google and Facebook was created by and for the government......
@Jmaloy. To quote Aristotle:
Of course we have.
"Go ogle"
Couldn't have made it more blatant if they had tried.
Hilarious bullshit no one cares about
am so afraid they hear my pizza hut order
blame those jihadist conservative muslims
Hey, "why are you so worried if you have nothing to hide", right?
Ughh.
Putin's Bitch is extra chatty this week.
Whats up super troll? You bored or did the kikes send you some extra money to stay up late?
Just get a phone with a removable battery.
Yep, that an easy alternative but somewhat inconvenient. How about limit the .gov's powers as dictated by the 4th amendment in the first place? Wow! What an idea!
I recall back in the late 1970's when a bunch of telephones were pulled off the market. They were the new touch button style instead of the rotary dial phones. An former army buddy of mine was working for the phone company then and I asked what was the big deal? They had passed a law mandating that the mike be able to be turned on without the phone ringing for all new phones. He said only the old fashioned rotary dial phones were safe.
That was in the 1970's! Imagine the shit they have now with the smart phones.
I knew about this a long time ago and it was the NSA that was doing it. Someone must be searching for shit to post to keep in the limelight.
Old hat.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/27/nsa-gchq-smartphone-app-ang...
Easy fix, but cheap older "smart" phones. Get exact duplicates so changing phones is seamless. Activate under assumed name, and get new account new number with new sim chip and hardware randomly. (There is more to this but including NOT keeping contacts stored on the phone, NOT linking to joogle or any other cloud service etc.... but that is common sense)
It's hard to hit a moving target.
PS Don't take or place any pictures info. etc. on there that are a no-no. SSD memory in the phones are so easy to recover info from.
GOV is much like an individual in that when they are doing something wrong, they get paranoid. They then resort to spying for reasons you can easily surmise. It is the natural progression of human nature on a macro scale.
Smart phones, stupid people.
That's why they branded them "Smart Phones".
They should've called them "Freedom Phones", but some of the idiots that use them constantly might've figured it out.
Fucking duh!
manning and snowden were and are both operatives of .gov.....manning changed his sex (supposedly) and both she/he/it and snowden are still alive...the real problems are killed...if they can move the markets like they do (control print) they can make anyone (who is a real threat) go away if need be, don't be fooled...i'm still waiting for snowden to release his data on dicktator obola....if he ever had anything.... as to whether he is who he says he is.....he won't
Everyone who ever wore glasses knows how anoying it is to miss that one nose pad. Every appearance of Snowden he has this broken glasses on. Moskow is no midevil city, this can be repaired in 5 miniutes. So the wears those glasses for branding. What more is a show?
Good, good. You've placed yourself in voluntary self-isolation without them having to pay for your prision cell. That will make them very happy.
But for the rest of us who want to organize to resist them, technology has to be used, not abondoned. The only way to do that is to reclaim the high ground by wrestling private communications back from them. Learn to communicate anonymously on the Internet.
If you are not sure what I mean, get your hands on a copy of Thieves Emporium by Max Hernandez. It's a primer on cyberfreedom and also a great read.
So which is a more overused term to describe things which we are definitely going to be doing nothing about?
Chilling or deeply concerned?
Obama may even put a chip inside your brain, one day
or rather America
It's just like Agent Smith in the Matrix.
More like Maxwell Smart battling CHAOS. Missed it by >< that much. Phone call, let me answer my shoe.
Building and maintaining these capabilities - $hundreds of billions
Hiring someone to SAY you have built and are maintaining these capabilities - $a few million
The Snowden Charade rolls on.
Lists. It's all about lists.
Eliminate government at all levels.
Only then do you eliminate corruption and also make yourself globally competitive in an over-populated world. You immediately address the two most pressing problems that threaten our survival.
A third benefit of anarchy is the introduction of the nearly 4000 patents of free energy that have been suppressed by our corrupt government. Also anarchy does not necessarily lead to chaos as we've been led to believe.
All affairs between men can be addressed through contracts between private paying individuals, guns, shame and the internet.
When this is all over, government and not just central banks, is going to have such a bad name that we're going to see a clamoring for lean, local, individual contracts managing roads,
bridges, title offices and whatever else people see an absolute need for, that the free market can't address on an individual basis.
Snowden ought to brand his own spy-proof phone. Then he could live like a czar in Soche. Instant billionaire.
Smartphones are bad news. They suck. And people are stupid enough to waste their money on these insidious things. I don't have one; there is absolutely NO reason to own one. I'm 64. I have NEVER owned one. And I'm still doing just fine!
It’s one more reason to conclude that smartphones suck. And as much as we convince ourselves how cool they are, it’s hard to deny their invention has resulted in a tendency for humans to behave like zombies, encouraged child labor, made us more lonely than ever, turned some of us into narcissistic selfie–addicts, and prevented us from communicating with those who really matter (the ones in the same room at the same time)."
This, not the NSA, is what you worry about. It is also precisely how the NSA (and the Fed, government, and wretched, shortsighted corportations, for that matter) get away with it: our OWN ego-centric self-absorption. All most of us really care about is the proverbial one square foot around...US.
Trust me, as unsettling and pernicious as NSA monitoring is (and it DOES need to be seriously reigned in), you are far, far more likely to be injured by a narcissistic motorist on a cellphone than be airstruck by "Big Brother" for activities deemed a clear and present danger to the state.
While it may make us feel better to rail against the darker possibilities of national security-claimed snooping, the truth is, we're spending waaaaay too much time on elaborate gizmos today we somehow didn't need less than twenty years ago. And as if that alone weren't bad enough, what we're doing with that capability is worse.
I mean, if YOU didn't constantly splatter yourself all over Face Book, or carry your cellphone everywhere you went, what would they have? Empty cyberspace or the dead silence of your car's glovebox?
NSA?
What the hell are we doing about identity theft and financial account hacking?
How much MORE injurious is THAT?
Our "Borg-like" addiction to not just cellphones, but ALL interconnected technology, is wrecking far more in each of US than the NSA will ever accomplish.
And THAT makes it very, very easy for them...
m
"you are far, far more likely to be injured by a narcissistic motorist on a cellphone than be airstruck by "Big Brother" "
But the txting motorist is being stupid and the 'Big Brother' oppression is evil.
We can't fight stupid but we can fight evil.
The thing about all the information Snowden gave us. I just knew it already. So it doesnt even surprise me at all. He might still work for goverment. The big question is that are they put some kind of a chip on our bodies or not ?? If not I am sure they are already planing.I always say to my friends people who live 200 years ago more free than us. At least they dont need to worry about being fallowed non stop.
Chips are old news
the originals were for pets & animals. This is still done extensively in animal husbandry.
http://www.wnd.com/2000/11/4324/
the human version (which they quit making....riiiiiight)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VeriChip
external chips for tracking
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/10/texas_school_district_to_req...
So a kid has to wear a tag that contains a chip. The school has scanners at every door and up & down the halls. As a chip passes by a scanner the system registers the hit. A student carrying the chip is tracked up & down the halls and through the doors.
----
And you know they want to mandate rfid in our vehicles. With a chip reader at every intersection (all very cheap) they can track every car.
---
article mentions Mexico intent to chip all politicians to help reduce kidnappings (actually it would only help with ID'ing the body)
http://www.cnet.com/news/with-rfid-corporate-might-makes-right/
==========
These chips don't actually have any data. They are just transponders that transmit an encoded number when they are engergized by the right radio frequency. A scanner reads the number and a computer accesses a database that has the information associated with that number.
But once you're chippped.....they've got your number.
SNowden is the elite response to losing the information war. They are "chilling" free digital speech
I saw that coming when the .gov cleptocratic oligarchy refused to give our emails the same constitutional legal protections as our snail mail.
No revelation there.
Moreover, the company that sells and supports your phone, your laptop, and any other data managing device you have wants the same thing.
It is truly Orwellian.
If you have a net connected device today, it and all data on it are not yours, but only temporarily in your possession. Every manufacturer is complicit, and will provide that data to anyone they please, including the government. Their 'Privacy Agreement's are a joke because an agreement is only as good as its compliance monitoring...and you have none.
It is a digital plantation.
They can collude on such Orwellian agendas because the number of producers is relatively small.
The number of producers is relatively small because there are high barriers to entry that did not exist 30 years ago.
There are barriers to entry because of corporatist (fascist) policy in governments around the world.
There is fascism because the most powerful financiers want it, and have leverage enough to force the issue.
The most powerful financiers have leverage to force the issue thanks solely to debt-based fiat currency supported by unaccountable central banks.
" narcissistic selfie–addicts"
Do you ever see these rather fugly people taking selfies and wonder why?????
I do..
Here is a tip for us tinfoil hat types.. Wrap your non-removable battery phone in foil. It blocks the signal. To test it, try callling it. Then you can blackout for a while..
Or just get rid of the damn thing.
I keep a cheap walmart grease pot in the car for my change and a place to drop my phone when I want to secure it. Phone into pot, put strainer in, put lid on. More metal underneath as the coins.
It was reported more than a decade ago that common thieves could eavesdrop on drivers' calls while they sat beside the road with readily available equipment. Surely, government was further evolved in eavesdropping than common criminals a decade ago. Take that knowledge and go forward another decade and you have to suspect the abilities of the government with their spend whatever it takes mentality, have been eavesdropping for a long, long, time. Don't hardly need Snowden to tell me that.
I suspect that most internet connected devices and tools have been hijacked by the .gov cleptocratic oligarchy.
I use Firefox in privacy mode and often ask myself, "Would the NSA/HSA/FBI/SS/BATFe/etc allow a web browser to exist 'for free' that helps hide a users activities from them?"
It surely has been hijacked along with everything else.
dear true activist: i think its really important to keep the news up about all this, but the writers here never give solutions to the scared ones.
so is it like the guy from the creature of jekyll island speech said: as long as you just report but dont give any optouts= fine.
why dont you add links like these in your post:
https://prism-break.org/en/
?
this would be true activism.
Narcissistic selfie addict.....
N.S.A?
Hmmm.