How the NSA Can Use Metadata to Predict Your Personality

Patrick Tucker
Defense One
March 29, 2014

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The president and congressional leaders want to end NSA bulk metadata collection, but not the use of metadata, which may even be expanded. From a technical perspective, the question of what your metadata can reveal about you, or potential enemies, remains as important as it was since the Edward Snowden scandal. The answer is more than you might think.

First, the background. On Thursday, the Obama administration released a brief statement on ending the collection of metadata and limiting, slightly, the circumstances under which metadata could be accessed. The timing was in keeping with a self-imposed deadline to create legislation to address NSA bulk collection. The statement said “the government will not collect these telephone records in bulk; rather, the records would remain at the telephone companies for the length of time they currently do today.”

Two leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, Reps. Michael Rogers, R-Mich., and Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., are also putting forward a proposal, called the “End Bulk Collection Act,” which would likewise seek to switch the collection of bulk metadata collection from the NSA to phone companies.

The companies would be required to keep the data no longer than 18 months, as opposed to the 5 years it is currently held by NSA. But the House bill would also increase the circumstances under which the government could access metadata, from probable cause to the far more nebulous “reasonable articulable suspicion.”

In a USA Today op-ed from last July, Ruppersberger argued that the practice of collecting metadata was benign. But is it?

“The phone-records tool is not some wildly intrusive surveillance program. In reality, what we are talking about is collection of ‘metadata,’ not content. No names, no addresses and absolutely no conversations,” he wrote.

Recent research shows that the sort of metadata the NSA uses in its investigations is actually highly personal.

A group of researchers from the MIT Media Lab found that your metadata — including, but not limited to, the way in which you use your phone, how you make calls, to whom, for how long, etc. — can serve as an indicator of your personality.

Here’s how they figured it out. The researchers, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, Jordi Quoidbach, Florent Robic and Sandy Pentland, had 100 students fill out surveys to determine their personality along five distinct personality types:

Neurotic: Defined roughly as a higher than normal tendency to experience unpleasant emotions
Open: Defined as broadly curious and creative
Extroverted: As in, looks toward others for stimulation
Agreeable: As in warm, compassionate, and cooperative
Conscientiousness: Self-disciplined organized and eager for success

These types are in keeping with the so-called Five Factor Model of Personality, a widely used method for describing personality traits. Once the researchers had the survey data to show how each of the subjects fell along the spectrum, they examined the subjects’ phone records between March 2010 and June 2011, well within the new 18-month window. Specifically they looked at these metadata elements:

Basic phone use including the number of calls

Active user behaviors, as in the number of calls initiated, and the time it took the subject to answer a text

Location, or how far the subject moved, the number of places from which calls have been made, and other indicators of so-called radius of gyration

Regularity of calling routine

Diversity, defined as the ratio between the subject’s total number of contacts and the relative frequency at which he or she interacts with them

Once the researchers had values for these behaviors they ran the result through a machine-learning algorithm to determine how each one refers to personality type. De Montjoye is careful to point out that there isn’t a one-to-one matchup between a specific observed behavior and a specific personality. So if your radius of gyration, for instance, is particularly large, that doesn’t serve as a clear indicator of neuroticism. Rather it’s the combination of behaviors and the strength of the data available that allows the model to come up with predictions.

“We let the algorithm determine the right mix,” he said. “Each indicator is useful but is conditional on all the other indicators. That doesn’t mean each one is causal or that people who travel more are neurotic. Let’s say that the relationships between A and B are not linear, if you do a linear progression you see no relationship; you do a quadratic progression, you do see how A can predict B.”

The model, in other words, can’t tell you which behavior to change to make your personality less predictable.

Here’s what it can do: predict personality type much better than random guessing. When they looked at how the model’s guesses for each subject’s personality (as revealed by the survey) compared to random assumptions, they found that the model performed much better at predicting all of the personality types, about 42 percent on average but as high as 63 percent.

The paper was published in the Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction.

“We see a lot of comments along the lines of ‘It’s only metadata. It’s not personal. And it only gets personal when a human looks into it,’said de Montjoye. “We wanted to show an example at a small scale of what you might be able to do” with that data on how long calls last, when they are made, and where.

“At the end of the day, the vast majority of the use of this data is extremely positive,” said de Montjoye, citing the utility of metadata in city planning, emergency response and other areas. He said he wanted to help researchers and the public develop a better “understanding of what can be done as well as the limits of privacy. This is really why we do this.”

From a national security perspective, the use of metadata remains a powerful tool for finding links between people, including potential enemies. However, despite the reassurances of Ruppersberger, President Barack Obama and others that the data isn’t “personal,” it lends itself easily to creating windows into private lives.

 

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Experts Confirm TSA Wasted A BILLION DOLLARS On Kooky Behaviour Monitoring

Program is based on “little more than a cultural fiction”

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
March 25, 2014

Conclusions drawn by behavioral science experts have confirmed that the TSA has wasted close to $1 billion on training screeners to look for suspicious body language and facial expressions at airport lines.

The New York Times reported the findings this week, justifying criticism already raised by the Government Accountability Office last year that TSA’s “behavior detection officers” were a waste of taxpayer funds.

“The common-sense notion that liars betray themselves through body language appears to be little more than a cultural fiction,” Maria Hartwig, a psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, told the Times.

From eye movement to sideways head movements, every perceived aspect of body language that has thought to be indicative of lying or wrong doing has been found to be an unproven theory only.

“There is no Pinocchio’s nose — no one cue that will always accompany deception,” said Leanne ten Brinke, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley and an expert in eye-movement studies.

“When you’re lying or cheating, you know it and feel guilty, and it feels to you as if your emotions must be leaking out through your body language,” noted Dr. Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago. “You have an illusion that your emotions are more transparent than they actually are, and so you assume others are more transparent than they actually are, too.”

The Times report notes how study after study over the last 60 years has provided no evidence at all to suggest that deception can be recognized through body language. In fact, there is essentially no more probability of finding a dishonest person through such methods than there is from randomly picking someone out of a crowd.

Yet the TSA still spent a billion dollars on such a program, and even defended it, despite the fact that there has not been one case of the program identifying a single person who has done wrong.

As the GAO pointed out, fewer than 1 percent of the more than 30,000 passengers a year who are identified as suspicious end up being arrested, and that not one single offense has been linked to terrorism.

From $50 million uniform contracts to $200 million mothballed useless body scanners, the TSA continues to be exposed as a colossal waste of money, as well as a den of corruption and misconduct.

Of course, the behavioral analysis program provides a magnificent excuse for TSA gropers to grab anyone they choose to pull aside and harass. All they need do is say that the person looked shifty, a technique that the agency is increasingly deploying OUSTIDE of airports, on the streets and highways.
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.
This article was posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 1:23 pm

Homeland Security Exercise Targets “Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny”

Leaked documents reveal plan to counter online dissent during martial law

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 24, 2014

Leaked Homeland Security documents obtained by Infowars reveal details of a joint DHS/FEMA national exercise set to take place this week, one of the components of which revolves around an effort to counter online dissent by a group called “Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny,” which is disgruntled at the imposition of martial law after an earthquake in Alaska.

The document again underscores the federal government’s obsession with characterizing libertarians and conservatives as some kind of extremist radical threat.

The document (PDF) was leaked by an individual affiliated with Stewart Rhodes’ Oathkeepers organization and passed on to Infowars. It is entitled National Exercise Program – Capstone Exercise 2014 – Scenario Ground Truth.

The document is intended for “U.S. Department of Homeland Security Trusted Agents Only” and is “disseminated only on a
need-to-know basis.” Even the role players involved in the exercise itself are prohibited from seeing the files.

The exercise is designed to evaluate readiness in preparation for a catastrophic incident, natural disaster or major act of terrorism. Some of the scenarios which will be in play during the exercise include a series of earthquakes, tsunamis and a nuclear weapons accident.
On page 125 of the document, a scenario is outlined whereby a group calling itself “Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny” responds to “The U.S. Northern Command mission of Defense Support to Civil Authorities” (or the imposition of martial law) by launching a protest campaign on social media and potentially engaging in cyber attacks.

According to the scenario, the campaign is driven by suspicion that “the government is responsible for the Alaska earthquake and a “hacktivist” manifesto.”

“The U.S. Northern Command mission of Defense Support to Civil Authorities has led to increased activity by some anti-government organizations,” states the document. “Currently, the most vocal organization is Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny; using social media, they advertise anti-U.S. rhetoric focusing on the Department of Defense as well as to recruit like-minded individuals to join their “cause”.

“While some Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny members are capable of conducting adverse cyber operations, the greatest threat is current government employees sympathetic to their cause,” the document adds. “It is believed that there are employees within US Northern Command, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, National Guard, and Defense Information Systems Agency that may support Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny doctrine based on individual comments on social media sites. Free Americans against Socialist Tyranny sympathizers may include both former and current members of the military with training on satellite communications, computer network defense, network operations, as well as military command and control.”

The scenario also suggests that Northern Command members sympathetic to Free Americans Against Socialist Tyranny may attempt to hack the North American Aerospace Defense Command as a form of retaliation.
This is by no means the first time that the Department of Homeland Security has characterized anti-big government Americans as domestic extremists.

A study funded by the Department of Homeland Security, details of which emerged in 2012, characterized Americans who are “suspicious of centralized federal authority,” and “reverent of individual liberty” as “extreme right-wing” terrorists.

As we have exhaustively documented on numerous occasions, federal authorities and particularly the Department of Homeland Security have been involved in producing a deluge of literature which portrays liberty lovers and small government advocates as extremist radicals.

The document also mentions the threat posed by “disgruntled military and Department of Defense civilians,” which ties into the talking point, repeatedly promoted by the DHS and other federal agencies, that returning veterans pose a major domestic terror threat.

The Capstone Exercise 2014 document makes it clear that a key part of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA’s preparation for the aftermath of major catastrophic incidents in the United States is centered around combating online dissent which will be sparked as a result of federal authorities and military assets instituting martial law, or what the document refers to as “Defense Support to Civil Authorities”.

This is particularly chilling given reports that emerged in 2006 concerning a nationwide FEMA program under which Pastors and other religious representatives were trained to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for a declaration of martial law, property and firearm seizures, and forced relocation.
The fact that the DHS is focusing its cyber security efforts during a major national exercise not on targeting foreign state actors or terrorists but on combating online dissent by conservatives is sure to increase concerns that the federal agency once again has libertarians, patriots and small government activists in the crosshairs.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Monday, March 24, 2014 at 9:28 am

Rand Paul “concerned about who is truly in charge of our government”

Warns of “dystopian nightmares” coming true 

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
March 19, 2014

Libertarian Kentucky Senator Rand Paul warns in a speech today that he believes US spooks and shadow government agencies are ” drunk with power”, and that elected representatives are privately afraid of those operating behind the curtain.

In a scheduled appearance at the University of California-Berkeley, Paul will address the continuing domestic spying controversy.

In prepared comments Paul notes “I am honestly worried, concerned about who is truly in charge of our government. Most of you have read the dystopian nightmares and maybe, like me, you doubted that it could ever happen in America.”

“If the CIA is spying on Congress, who exactly can or will stop them?” the comments also state. “I look into the eyes of senators and I think I see real fear. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think I perceive FEAR of an intelligence community drunk with power, unrepentant, and uninclined to relinquish power.”

see video here.

The Senator is set to continue on the track that saw him win CPAC’s GOP presidential nomination straw poll recently. During his CPAC speech, Paul slammed the NSA, urging “If you have a cell phone, you are under surveillance… I believe what you do on your cell phone is none of their damn business.”

The Berkeley speech, which takes place at 3:30 p.m. Pacific Time, comes in the wake of the latest revelation that the NSA recorded 100% of phone calls in an unnamed foreign country, using a program dubbed MYSTIC, and a tool called RETRO — for “retrospective retrieval”.

The Washington Post reported the findings yesterday, garnered from leaks by Edward Snowden. NSA documents state that the program is essentially a “time machine” that opens a door “into the past,” allowing a replay of the voices on any given call, without the need for prior identification of the person on the line.

The NSA continues to argue that it is within the law for it to operate such programs in foreign countries, however, MYSTIC did not exempt US citizens living there.

“Ubiquitous voice surveillance, even overseas, pulls in a great deal of content from Americans who telephone, visit, and work in the target country,” The Post reports. “Present and former U.S. officials … acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving Americans would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.”

The report also states that the NSA has previously considered expanding the program to other countries, and may already have done so.

Appearing remotely during a recent TED event, Edward Snowden declared that even bigger revelations regarding the NSA are on the way. Snowden acknowledged that every NSA spying program we are learning about now was planned before the 9/11 attacks, and that the event only served to provide justification to expand and implement more surveillance programs.

Snowden said hat he is concerned with exposing “one of the dangerous legacies we’ve seen in the post 9/11 era,” adding “They’re making the Internet fundamentally less safe for Americans. Is it really terrorism we’re stopping? Do these programs have any value at all? I say no. Three branches of the American government say no.”

“The bottom line is terrorism has always been a cover for action—it provokes an emotional response,” he added. “The NSA asked for these authorities back in the 1990s. But Congress and the American people said no, said it’s not worth the risk to our economy. But in the post 9/11 era, they used secrecy and the justification of terrorism to start these programs in secret.”

Also appearing at the TED event was Tim Berners-Lee, one of the pioneers of the internet. Berners-Lee praised Snowden as a “hero”, while Snowden said that he supported Berners-Lee’s recent call for an Internet “Magna Carta.”

“I grew up in the Internet,” Snowden said. “I believe a Magna Carta for the Internet is exactly what we need. We need to encode our values in the structure of the Internet. I invite everyone in the audience to join and participate.”

Other activists seeking to battle the NSA’s domestic spying have recently targeted the new monolithic Utah data center, promoting a campaign to cut off the water supply to the facility. Because this is actually quite a good idea, and it has garnered interest from lawmakers, it has not gone unnoticed by those who are “drunk on power”, as Rand Paul describes them.

The NSA is now actually arguing that its water bill should be declared top secret and that it should not need to declare how much water is being pumped into the Utah facility as a matter of national security.

“By computing the water usage rate, one could ultimately determine the computing power and capabilities of the Utah Data Center,” wrote the NSA’s associate director for policy and records, David Sherman in anundated letter written in response to a request for the information from The Salt Lake Tribune. “Armed with this information, one could then deduce how much intelligence NSA is collecting and maintaining.” Sherman argues.

Documents uncovered by the Tribune have indicated that the NSA facility could use between 1.2 and 1.7 MILLION gallons of water PER DAY.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department’s Inspector General, who is supposed to oversee the NSA’s activities and ensure they are within the law, admitted yesterday that he had no idea that the NSA was collecting bulk metadata on Americans’ communications.

“From my own personal knowledge, those programs, in and of themselves, I was not personally aware,” Anthony C. Thomas said.

Thomas also announced that the Pentagon has no intention to investigate the matter. Thomas said he was “waiting to see the information that the NSA IG (inspector General) brings forward with the investigations that are going on, and what we often do not want to do is conflict.”

That is some valuable oversight from the executive branch!

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

 

This article was posted: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 at 12:55 pm

TSA Agents Confiscate Jimmy Choo Perfume Over Grenade-Shaped Bottle

Glass container ‘could have been perceived as a threat’

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 18, 2014

TSA agents at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport confiscated an $83 dollar bottle of Jimmy Choo perfume because it was contained in a grenade-shaped glass bottle.

Preparing to board a flight to Denver, Colorado, frequent flyer Lois Lewis was shocked when explosives experts were called in to inspect the 60ml container as TSA agents shut down security throughout the entire Southwest Terminal while the substance was analyzed.

“They said if as a passenger you were to get on an airplane and [ … ] wave this around people could maybe construe that as you making some sort of a threat,” said Lewis, who was ordered to provide a copy of her ID and give up the perfume.

But the story didn’t end there. Upon arriving in Denver, Lewis purchased another bottle of the distinctive perfume and packed it in her check-in luggage for the flight back. However, when she retrieved her bag she noticed it had been searched and the perfume had been removed from its plastic bag.

Lewis called for TSA agents to be “logical” when dealing with the threat posed by bottles of expensive perfume, while the TSA itself doubled down, asserting the decision to confiscate the glass container was correct because it could have been perceived as a threat.

This is by no means the only example of TSA agents defying common sense to confiscate items that pose zero threat whatsoever.

Back in December, TSA agents confiscated a two-inch long toy pistol from a sock puppet monkey.

Perhaps if the TSA concentrated on catching bad guys rather than targeting Jimmy Choo perfume, the skies would be a lot safer. As we have exhaustively documented, most of the federal agency’s policies seem to be focused around demeaning and needlessly harassing travelers rather than providing sensible security.

The most recent example involved loudspeaker announcements that threaten travelers with arrest if they makes jokes about TSA security procedures.

An August 2013 Government Accountability Office investigation into the TSA found that there had been a 26% increase in misconduct by TSA screeners since 2010.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

 

This article was posted: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 at 12:17 pm

John McAfee’s New Cognizant App Puts an End to Spying

Infowars.com
March 15, 2014

John McAfee speaks with David Knight regarding a new development to combat government snooping.

TSA Agents to Eyeball Bus Passengers During ‘Security Exercise’

Bus riders interrogated during similar drill in 2012

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 13, 2014

Illustrating again how the federal agency has long since expanded its operations outside of airports, bus passengers in Pittsburgh will be eyeballed by TSA agents during a “security exercise” involving multiple agencies that begins today.

see news report here.

“The Port Authority said today they are working on a joint training exercise with the Transportation Security administration, which will include TSA agents, Port Authority Police and first responders,” reports CBS Pittsburgh.

The exercise is being led by the TSA Mass Transit and Passenger Rail Division, but authorities have refused to release any details, asserting only that passengers should expect to see “increased security” at bus and transit stops.

Far from restricting itself to the nation’s airports, the TSA routinely conducts exercises as part of its involvement in over 9,000 security checkpoints every year. Back in 2011, we reported on a TSA drill that covered three states and 5,000 miles.

During an “anti-terror exercise” in 2012 which involved TSA agents riding on buses in Houston, passengers were interrogated about their behavior and journey details as well as being subjected to random bag searches.

The community responded by attending a Houston METRO board meeting in numbers to protest against what they saw as nothing more than a “pretext to harass people.”

The METRO board were even presented with a copy of the constitution in an ironic gesture meant to make the point that having government agents harass travelers on buses as they try to go about their business is a violation of the 4th amendment and an onerous abuse of federal power.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

 

This article was posted: Thursday, March 13, 2014 at 10:35 am

Homeland Security Snipers Terrorize Confused Residents During Raid

DHS agents train weapons on innocent neighbors

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 11, 2014

Department of Homeland Security snipers trained their weapons on frightened residents during a raid on a nearby apartment in East Williamsburg, with neighbors complaining of how they were “utterly confused and frankly terrorized” during the incident.

The combined federal/NYPD drugs bust started in the early hours of Sunday morning when a low flying helicopter startled East Williamsburg and Bushwick residents, before streets were blocked off, preventing people from going home.

“Witnesses spotted a big Department of Homeland Security truck as well as DHS agents toting machine guns as they raided 221 Devoe Street,” reports the Gothamist.

While the raid unfolded, DHS snipers aimed their guns at residents in nearby buildings, causing panic and confusion. “I literally had a flashlight-gun pointed at me from a sniper on top of the black armored truck the first time I opened our window to see what was going on,” said one neighbor.

“What woke us up was a cop yelling ‘POLICE!’ outside and hearing some sort of scream,” he added. “Then I noticed the flashing lights of the armored black truck so I peeped out the window. There were two snipers on top of the armored truck with flashlight-guns and one of them pointed at me immediately. If I was them and I was doing my job, I probably would have pointed it at me, too, but at the same I wasn’t even in the building they were looking at. He immediately pointed it away but needless to say, I was terrified because I could have been picked off instantly.”

DHS officials admitted that they were involved in the raid but declined to elaborate, while the NYPD had no comment.

The increasing militarization of the Department of Homeland Security and its closer ties with local police departments has stoked increasing concerns that the war on drugs is being used as an excuse to turn America into a police state.

View more images of the raid courtesy of HB/Gothamist below.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

 

This article was posted: Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at 11:07 am

You Read It Here First: Government Spies On Innocent People Via Webcams, Laptops, Xbox

Latest Snowden Leak confirms story Infowars first broke EIGHT YEARS AGO

Steve Watson
Infowars.com
February 27, 2014

The latest revelation concerning mass government spying confirms an issue that Infowars has been covering for close to a decade. British and American governments are spying on people in their own homes via web cams, laptop microphones and devices such as the X-box.

The London Guardian has the details in a report based on information leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The British surveillance agency GCHQ, with help from the NSA, actively spied on nearly 2 million Yahoo users via webcams built into their computers. The documents show that the agency intercepted millions of images as part of a secret program codenamed OPTIC NERVE.

The report also states that Americans were almost certainly targeted as part of the bulk collection of data, and that there is no law to prevent such activity in Britain.

The documents show that images were collected from webcams at regular intervals, one image every five minutes, and were used by the spy agency to trial automated facial recognition programs.

The Guardian describes the process as “eerily reminiscent of the telescreens evoked in George Orwell’s 1984.”

The documents dub the practice as “bulk access to Yahoo webcam images/events”, and spies working at GCHQ compared it to a police database of mugshots. “Face detection has the potential to aid selection of useful images for ‘mugshots’ or even for face recognition by assessing the angle of the face,” the papers read. “The best images are ones where the person is facing the camera with their face upright.”

Essentially, the spy agency appear to have been building a huge digital database containing the faces of Yahoo users.

The documents advise employees at GCHQ on how to use the system, noting “[I]f you search for similar IDs to your target, you will be able to request automatic comparison of the face in the similar IDs to those in your target’s ID”.

In one presentation contained within the documents, more technologically advanced systems, such as iris recognition cameras, are discussed as potential surveillance tools. The paper even chillingly states “think Tom Cruise in Minority Report”.

The documents state that Yahoo users were specifically singled out because “Yahoo webcam is known to be used by GCHQ targets”.

The papers also note that a large quantity of the data collected contained nudity or sexually explicit imagery. The spy agency seemingly made no effort to prevent the collection of such images.

Yahoo described the practice as “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy,” and strenuously denied having any knowledge of the program.

Infowars first reported in 2006, EIGHT YEARS AGO, that innocent people were being spied on through their computers. We specifically described the practice as Minority Report style technology, as the GCHQ had done.

We have since covered the issue consistently, warning that “Hundreds of millions of Internet-active Americans will all be potential targets for secret surveillance.”

Of course, some quarters dismissed our reports as “conspiracy theories”, while worried internet usersquestioned whether the reports were accurate.

The GCHQ program was seemingly not limited to Yahoo user web cams either. Another presentation within the leaked internal papers discusses the capabilities of the Xbox 360′s Kinect camera, saying it generated “fairly normal webcam traffic” and that it was being evaluated as a potential surveillance tool.

We have also documented the potential use of Xbox for surveillance purposes, noting that Skype calls made on the devices can be intercepted. We have also warned that the ‘always on’ camera of the new Xbox One, which is so powerful it can see through clothing, is wide open to abuse by hackers and government agencies.

According to the leaked documents, the OPTIC NERVE program began as a prototype in 2008 and was still active in 2012. There is no indication that the program has been deactivated.

Security expert Bruce Schneier writes that this latest revelation highlights how there is no distinction between actively spying on a person and what he called “Eavesdropping by algorithm”, in other words, automated computer surveillance. The NSA and the Obama administration have attempted to argue that what they are doing cannot be called “spying” or even “collecting” data, because when the data is gathered, a person is not looking at it. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper still uses this explanation to claim he never lied to Congress when he answered ‘no’ to the question “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

The fallout from the OPTIC NERVE program, the creation of facial recognition databases, and the fact that spooks provably looked at images of people, even NAKED images of people, highlights the fact, Schneier argues, that the “NSA’s definition of ‘collect’ makes no sense whatsoever”, and that our governments are indeed actively spying on us.

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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, andPrisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.

 

This article was posted: Thursday, February 27, 2014 at 11:18 am