Tag Archive for spying

Government Announces Deployment of Orwellian “All Seeing Eye” Total Surveillance System over Washington

July 28, 2013 Uncategorized Comments Off on Government Announces Deployment of Orwellian “All Seeing Eye” Total Surveillance System over Washington

Today news widely broke that the Army will be deploying blimps over Washington, DC for what it claims is a pilot program for its missile defense system.  The high tech blimps are sophisticated stationary surveillance and targeting platforms known as the JLENS or specifically, the Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System made by Raytheon Co.  The problem is that Washington is at most under a minimal threat if under any threat of a cruise missile attack at all.  Thus, one should question the true motives for installing a roughly $450 million surveillance system over DC.  Our analysts believe that the system’s true mission has little to do with air defense and everything to do with monitoring, surveilling, and recording the movements of individuals and vehicles in real time, around the clock, 365 days a year.

The JLENS consists of a pair of blimps.  One of the aerostats carries a powerful long-range surveillance radar with a 360-degree look-around capability that can reach out to 340 miles. The other carries a radar used for targeting.  Operating as high as 10,000 feet for up to 30 days at a time, JLENS is meant to give the military more time to detect and react to threats, including cruise missiles and manned and unmanned aircraft, compared with ground-based radar.  However, the system has more than one use and can carry a wide ranging payload of highly sophisticated surveillance equipment and weapons.  Its manufacturer says JLENS “enables commanders to defend against threats including hostile cruise missiles, low-flying manned and unmanned aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles, large caliber rockets and moving surface vehicles such as boats, SCUD-launchers, automobiles and tanks.”  The problem with this statement is that cruise missiles, tactical ballistic missiles, drones, and large caliber rockets pose no threat to DC and SCUD-missile launchers and tanks have never rolled down the streets of America.  Considering this, the last couple capabilities are of note; in particular, boats and automobiles.  In this small admission, you find the real use of these aerostats that will soon begin appearing all over the U.S.

Contrary to what the government claims, this Orwellian system has the combat proven capability to track, analyze, and record the movements of every single vehicle in and around the DC metropolitan area.  Similar systems have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify, track, and kill insurgents and it is now being deployed above the streets of America.  This “All Seeing Eye” can map the ground and identify even the slightest changes to the terrain such as a footprint or tire track in a field.  It also can identify, track, and destroy targets from points far beyond DC to include areas from New York down to North Carolina.  In fact, not only can the system map and store the movements of your car, but it can zero in on your license plate and even your face.  Using facial recognition software and integrated search algorithms it can identify single individuals and unknowingly track them indefinitely through their day.  The detail of the camera and radar systems are so precise that one could clearly identify if an individual is openly carrying a firearm or peer into your windows to see what you are having for dinner.  In fact, using thermal and infrared sensors, the system is capable of actually seeing into your home and through foliage.  Acoustic sensors can be tuned to the point it can identify a single gunshot and locate its origin or allegedly even record a conversation 10,000 feet below using high tech directional microphones.  Integrating data, the system is capable of compiling mountains of data that can then be mined and used to construct entire daily routines of individuals without their knowledge.

In short, the JLENS provides the government with the ability to track, follow, and record your every move feasibly throughout your entire life.  Misused, this system can obliterate perceived Fourth Amendment protections in your home as its technical capabilities allow it to pierce the privacy of your home’s walls miles away and see inside and listen to your conversations.  Further, in the wrong hands, the information this system gathers can be used for a host of draconian purposes to harass political dissidents in manners far worse than witnessed with the on-going IRS scandal.  This all raises serious civil liberty and privacy issues that must be addressed.  No court would allow the government to set up a thermal camera to persistently look into your home and record conversations spoken in private with sensitive equipment without probable cause and a warrant sworn before a judge, but this is EXACTLY what this system can and will do to every single household and person within thousands of square miles around the blimps location.  The government knows this and so is blatantly lying to the public about the JLENS’s true purpose.  The government wants the blimps in place across the US before the public realizes what is going on.  The government is in a full scale false information campaign to desensitize the public to this level of “total” surveillance.  Not since Orwell’s prescient novel has the US come so close to a total surveillance state, but fiction is now fact.

Please contact your representatives and demand that JLENS be scrapped and funding for the unnecessary system be cut.  Express your outrage and spread the word about what JLENS really is being used for.  Get on talk shows, blog, and write to your local papers about the system’s true capabilities.  The US doesn’t need to be spending a half “b”illion in your tax dollars to watch your every move. Resist the surveillance state now before it is too late!

 

By Guiles Hendrik

July 26, 2013

All rights reserved

 

For more reading:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/dc-blimps_n_3651676.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/01/us-usa-blimps-raytheon-idUSBRE91018320130201

http://rt.com/usa/army-raytheon-jlens-blimps-594/

http://www.army-technology.com/projects/persistent-threat-detection-system-us/

How to Protect your Privacy in the World of Smart Phones

October 26, 2012 Big Brother, Liberty and Freedom, News and Intelligence, Special Skills, Surveillance State, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures Comments Off on How to Protect your Privacy in the World of Smart Phones

You are being watched.

Spy technology has advanced at an incredible pace.  Capabilities today make Cold War era spy tradecraft not only obsolete, but silly.  However, perhaps the most remarkable espionage gadgetry ever employed against a target has been self-inflicted.  Our digitized world of wireless communications and uploaded lives has given intelligence collectors a bonanza of information that only a couple of decades ago they couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams.  Imagine the capability to turn on all of the phone cameras in a given area such as an airport or even a city and run facial recognition software to identify a targeted person?  This technology exists and is in use today.  This rapid advance in spy technology has not only been used by intelligence agencies, but criminals, media outlets, police, and marketers.  This growing obsession to acquire your personal information has made you a target for collectors of all sorts.  If you value your privacy and do not want to be completely vulnerable the following tips will help you protect yourself when using a smart phone.

First, understand that anything you do electronically can be monitored if you carry and use a smartphone.  This includes tweets, posts, purchases, bank transactions, text messages, conversations, pictures, and where you go.  Your smart phone can also communicate with other wireless enabled devices to trade information from your pocket or purse without your knowledge.  Even more Orwellian is the fact all of these data are mined and run through algorithms to create profiles of you.  These profiles are used for everything from learning your shopping habits and targeting marketing to flagging you as a terrorist.  Of course some of you are saying “well I have nothing to hide so I am not worried.”  If you think you have nothing to hide and are that dumb or naïve, read closely.  This is important to you and you DO have a vested interest in privacy…that is unless you wouldn’t mind a thief knowing your credit card numbers and when you purchase a new TV, a pedophile knowing when and where you drop off your kids, an ex-girlfriend or spouse reading your emails, your family photos being posted on the world-wide web, your private medical data being made public, or being placed on a terrorist watch list.  Oh, and for those that think you could never be falsely placed on a terrorist watch list or no fly list, suffice to say we all know algorithms “never” make a mistake or fail.  Just ask around how the late “Senator” Ted Kennedy wound up on a no fly list!

The bottom line if you insist on using a smart phone, but want to maintain as much of your privacy as possible, follow these rules:

  • Don’t take pictures with anything that transmits a wireless signal or GPS tags it;
  • Don’t store pictures on your phone or take any pictures you don’t want others to see;
  • Remove the battery when not in use;
  • Always remove the battery from the phone during private face-to-face conversation;
  • Don’t speak about sensitive issues over the phone;
  • Cover your phone’s camera with a Band-Aid when not using it;
  • Disable and do not use Bluetooth devices;
  • Use complex passwords;
  • Do not store passwords on your phone;
  • Encrypt data
  • Do not download or enable GPS software on your phone;
  • Use rechargeable throwaway phones bought with cash;
  • Don’t conduct financial transactions over a phone;
  • Avoid using email on a phone;
  • Never auto update your position to social network sites;
  • Avoid downloading social media to your phone;
  •  And make sure others around you employ the same safeguards.

Following these rules will go a long way in protecting your privacy.  Disregard them at your own peril.  For example, everyone should know that with the right gear, wireless conversations via a Bluetooth device (Wi-Fi) can be listened to from well over a mile away under the right conditions.  With scanners, your entire cell conversation can be listened to anywhere it is in range of repeating towers.  Further, a phone can be turned on remotely to listen to your conversation, record conversation, film video, take pictures, and then send them to the hacker.  To protect this in your home, the simplest fix is to pull the battery out of your phone.  However, to be completely sure, you can also place your smart phone in a metal box that shields it from any electronic transmissions.  The thicker the metal the better, just make sure the inside of the box is lined with something non-conductive such as cardboard or plastic and it closes tightly.  Otherwise, you may inadvertently make a bigger antenna for your smart phone if your phone is in direct contact with the metal.  You can use aluminum foil layers to add to the shielding capability of the box.  Test this by sealing your phone tightly in the box and then attempting to call it or connect to it with Bluetooth.  If that fails, you have effectively shielded your phone.  Just place a box by your door and drop your phone in it when you come into the office, car, or your home.  Establishing this pattern will prevent much of your unwanted eavesdropping.

For those that want maximum security, but can’t do without a cell phone, use the lowest tech disposable phone you can find.  Buy it in cash and anonymously activate it.  Never place the battery in it or turn it on near your residence.  Not even once.  Only place the battery in the phone and use it when ready and in a public place so that you maintain location anonymity.    Never use a data plan or attempt to use it for instant messaging, chat, tweets, or email.  Never store personal numbers or any other information on it.  Instead, keep a hand written black book of contacts.  Change the phone regularly or use it only once for the most sensitive conversations.  When done with the phone, wipe it clean and place it in a public trash can or leave it on a bench for someone else to pick up and use.

Using spy lingo, your phone is a literally self-implanted bug that is better than anything the KGB could have ever hoped to plant on a person.  It tracks, it listens, it records, it takes pictures and video, and it even reads your email!  Ultimately, your best privacy will be to totally unplug from digital items, but in today’s world, that is nearly impossible within the United States and Europe.  Nonetheless, being cognitive of your digital signature and taking smart precautions will go far to protect your privacy.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/oct/2/new-software-uses-smartphone-camera-spying/#.UIhuLJT9WXk.email