{"id":15930,"date":"2017-03-20T14:42:59","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T18:42:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/?p=15930"},"modified":"2017-09-14T17:57:27","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T21:57:27","slug":"vault-7-confirms-youre-right-to-be-paranoid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2017\/03\/20\/vault-7-confirms-youre-right-to-be-paranoid\/","title":{"rendered":"Vault 7 Confirms, You’re Right to Be Paranoid"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n

Vault 7 Confirms, You’re Right to Be Paranoid<\/h2>\n

On March 7, the transparency\/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled \u201cVault 7.\u201d According to the\u00a0New York Times<\/a><\/em>, Vault 7 consists of \u201cthousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [US Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stranger Than Fiction<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the documents are authentic \u2014 and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity \u2014 every paranoid thriller you\u2019ve ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical Surveillance State. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell\u2019s 1984<\/em> don\u2019t come close to the reality of the CIA\u2019s surveillance operations.<\/p>\n

In theory, the CIA doesn\u2019t spy on Americans in America. In fact, digital traffic pays no heed to national borders, and the tools and tactics described have almost certainly been made available to, or independently developed by, other US surveillance agencies, not to mention foreign governments and non-government actors.<\/p>\n

Bottom line: You should accept the possibility that for the last several years anything you\u2019ve done on, or in the presence of, a device that can connect to the Internet was observed, monitored, and archived as accessible data.<\/p>\n

Paranoid? Yes. But the paranoia is justified.<\/p>\n

Even if \u201cthey\u201d \u00a0\u2014 the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, some random group of credit card thieves or voyeurs or whatever \u2014 aren\u2019t out to get you in particular, they consider your personal privacy a technical obstacle to overcome, not a value to respect.<\/p>\n

All the Skeletons<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve got nothing to hide you\u2019ve got nothing to fear? Everyone has something to hide. Somewhere, sometime, you\u2019ve said or done something you regret or wouldn\u2019t want the world to know. And you probably said or did it within a few feet of your smartphone, your laptop, or your Internet-connected television. Maybe nobody was listening or watching. Or maybe someone was. The only plausible conclusion from the Vault 7 disclosures is that you should assume the latter.<\/p>\n

Vault 7 confirms that as a State entity, the CIA answers to philosopher Anthony de Jasay\u2019s description of the State as such. Just as a firm acts to maximize profits, the State and its arms act to maximize their own discretionary power. Even if it doesn\u2019t do some particular thing, it requires the option, the ability to do that thing. It seeks omnipotence.<\/p>\n

The abuses of our privacy implied by the WikiLeaks dump aren\u2019t an aberration. They\u2019re the norm. They\u2019re what government does.<\/p>\n

Reprinted from Libertarian Institute<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n


\nThomas Knapp
\n<\/a><\/h5>\n

Thomas L. Knapp, aka KN@PPSTER<\/a>, is Director and Senior News Analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism<\/a>\u00a0and publisher of Rational Review News Digest<\/a>. He lives and works in north central Florida.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vault 7 Confirms, You’re Right to Be Paranoid On March 7, the transparency\/disclosure activists at Wikileaks began releasing a series of documents titled \u201cVault 7.\u201d According to the\u00a0New York Times, Vault 7 consists of \u201cthousands of pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the [US Central Intelligence Agency] to break into smartphones, computers and even Internet-connected televisions.\u201d Stranger Than Fiction If the documents are authentic \u2014 and WikiLeaks has a sterling reputation when it comes to document authenticity \u2014 every paranoid thriller you\u2019ve ever watched or read was too timid in describing a hypothetical Surveillance State. Even the telescreens and random audio bugs of George Orwell\u2019s 1984 don\u2019t come close to the reality of the CIA\u2019s surveillance operations. In theory, the CIA doesn\u2019t spy on Americans in America. In fact, digital traffic pays no heed to national borders, and the tools and tactics described have almost certainly been made available to, or independently developed by, other US surveillance agencies, not to mention foreign governments and non-government actors. Bottom line: You should accept the possibility that for the last several years anything you\u2019ve done on, or in the presence of, a device that can connect to the Internet was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1245,1678,2506],"class_list":["post-15930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","tag-nsa","tag-surveillance","tag-vault-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}