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Whistleblower Exposes How Government Spies On Cell Phones… and More (Videos)

Tuesday, December 22, 2015 16:53

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(Before It's News)

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Let’s make some clear REAL quick. It’s far from just your cell phones DC is using to spy on you. Just to name a few, as you’ll learn below your cell phones can hear every word you say, even when they are OFF, the CIA says our appliances will be spying on us despite the fact the CIA should not be operation domestically, back in February it was learned that Samsung smart televisions are eavesdropping on their owners in literally Orwellian fashion, and the same DHS Secretary Who Approved The Targeting U.S. Citizens With Drones, has allowed for Homeland Security Drones to Fly Above Looking For Civilians Carrying Guns. This the country you grew up in?

The government and their lapdogs in social media have made a point the last few years going around taking down videos that make them look bad, and in some instances, when you’ve struck one too many nerves of truth that they don’t want getting out, they shut down and terminate your account completely.

Speaking as a person that just happened to, it stings, but it’s all the more reason those of us in the alternative media need to continue to report stories like this one. The video below is one that used to be as easy as typing in “Shep Smith Cell Phone,” but good luck finding a copy of it these days, because Big Government does NOT want people knowing things like this. Perhaps what may disturb you most about the video below, is this video was shot almost a decade ago. It was uploaded to YouTube in 2009, but the original video aired several years prior. I know, because I covered it.

How Uncle Sam Spies on Your Cell

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With technology advancing, and now Paul Ryan lending his assistance to our lack of privacy by helping fund the worst anti-privacy bill since the Patriot Act, you can bet the farm government is using laptop cameras and who knows what else these days. Just recently in the San Bernardino shooting, Obama violated the rights of TENS OF THOUSANDS of innocent Americans by intercepting their cell data without a warrant. Furthermore, remember when David Petraeus was head of the CIA, he slipped and made the remark that the CIA (who shouldn’t even be operating domestically), would soon be listening to households through their dishwashers, refrigerators, and other household smart appliances and TV’s.

CIA Spying Through Home Appliances

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Derrick Broze of Activist Post writes:

The release of a secret U.S. government catalog of cell phone surveillance devices has revealed the names and abilities of dozens of surveillance tools previously unknown to the public. The catalog shines a light on well-known devices like the Stingray and DRT box, as well as new names like Cellbrite, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Stargrazer, and Cyberhawk.

The Intercept reports:

Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before.

Anti Media has reported extensively on the Stingray, the brand name of a popular cell-site simulator manufactured by the Harris Corporation. The Electronic Frontier Foundation describes Stingrays as “a brand name of an IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) Catcher targeted and sold to law enforcement. A Stingray works by masquerading as a cell phone tower – to which your mobile phone sends signals to every 7 to 15 seconds whether you are on a call or not – and tricks your phone into connecting to it.”

As a result, whoever is in possession of the Stingray can figure out who, when, and to where you are calling, the precise location of every device within the range, and with some devices, even capture the content of your conversations.

Both the Harris Corp. and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) require police to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDA) related to the use of the devices. Through these NDAs local police departments have become subordinate to Harris, and even in court cases in front of a judge, are not allowed to speak on the details of their arrangements. Due to this secrecy, very little has been known about how exactly the Stingrays work.

The bit of publicly available information was disclosed through open records requests and lawsuits filed by journalists and researchers. This new catalog provides even more detail about how the devices operate.

We already knew that Stingrays drain the battery of a targeted device, as well as raise signal strength. We also knew that as long as your phone is on, it could be targeted. Some newer details include the fact that the Stingray I and II will not work if the user is “engaged in a call.” Also, the device can gather data from phones within a 200 meter radius. And the next generation Hailstorm device is even capable of cracking encryption on the newer 4G LTE networks.

A number of the devices in the catalog are Digital Receiver Technology (DRT) boxes, also known as dirt boxes, which can be installed in planes for aerial surveillance. DRT was recently purchased by Boeing. We first learned of dirt boxes in late 2014, when the Wall Street Journal revealed a cell phone monitoring program operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, using Cessna planes mounted with Stingrays. AntiMedia has also reported on surveillance planes equipped with thermal imaging technology.

Other devices include:

Cellbrite: “a portable, handheld, field proven forensic system for the quick extraction and analysis of 95% cell phones, smart phones and PDA devices,” capable of extracting “information such as phone book, pictures, video, text messages, and call logs.”

Kingfish: a Stingray-like device that is “portable enough to be carried around in a backpack.”

Stargrazer: “an Army system developed to deny, degrade and/or disrupt a targeted adversary’s command and control (C2) system,” which “can jam a handset and capture its metadata at the same time it pinpoints your target’s location. But watch out — the Stargazer may jam all the other phones in the area too — including your own.”

Cyberhawk: which is capable of gathering “phonebook, names, SMS, media files, text, deleted SMS, calendar items and notes” from 79 cell phones.

Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the Intercept that the use of these tools is part of the militarization of the police in the U.S.: “We’ve seen a trend in the years since 9/11 to bring sophisticated surveillance technologies that were originally designed for military use — like Stingrays or drones or biometrics — back home to the United States.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, NSA, and U.S. military declined to leave a comment with the Intercept regarding the catalog. Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesperson, told the Intercept that the Department “uses technology in a manner that is consistent with the requirements and protections of the Constitution, including the Fourth Amendment, and applicable statutory authorities.”

The Intercept notes that Raimondi worked for Harris Corp. for six years prior to working for the DOJ.

Secrecy surrounding the use of these devices has been a contentious topic of debate for several years. Truth In Media recently reported that four members of the House Oversight Committee sent letters to 24 federal agencies including the Department of State and the Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding answers regarding policies for using the controversial surveillance technology.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, ranking member Elijah Cummings, and Reps. Will Hurd (R-Texas) and Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), as members of the committee’s IT subcommittee, issued requests for information related to the potential use of stingrays.

Chaffetz also recently introduced the Stingray Privacy Act, which would expand newly established warrant requirements for the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to all federal, state, and local agencies that use the cell-site simulators.

In September, the DHS joined the DOJ by announcing warrant requirements for the use of Stingray equipment, but those rule changes have come under fire for possible loopholes which may allow the continued use of surveillance equipment without a warrant.

“Because cell-site simulators can collect so much information from innocent people, a simple warrant for their use is not enough,” Jennifer Lynch told the Intercept. “Police officers should be required to limit their use of the device to a short and defined period of time. Officers also need to be clear in the probable cause affidavit supporting the warrant about the device’s capabilities.”

At this point, it’s painfully obvious that America is the home of the Police-Surveillance State. Awakened hearts and minds everywhere should continue to educate themselves and their communities about the dangers of these tools. We should also support initiatives to create technology that can defend against the prying eyes and ears of Big Brother. Privacy is a dying notion in a nation of fools determined to be safe rather than liberated. If you give a damn, now is the time to stand up and be heard.

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CELL PHONES ARE JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

Jay Syrmopoulos of the Activist Post writes:

In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA.

The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA.

Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent.

The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation.

The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package.

According to a report by Wired:

It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

Originally, the CISA anti-privacy legislation was shelved after a public outcry against the bill, but corporations soon realized the bill would provide them with legal immunity for sharing customers’ private data with the government and began a renewed effort to pass CISA.

“They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”

By including CISA into the government’s overall spending package, it meant that for anti-privacy legislation to be defeated the spending bill had to also be defeated, which would have meant a government shutdown beginning next week.

“Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans’ security and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers’ private data with only cursory review.” Sen. Ron Wyden said of the insertion of the CISA into the spending bill.

WHEN DID PEOPLE STOP BELIEVING IN FREEDOM?

Truthstream Media reported:

Almost every college student we asked today said that it is fine to give up their privacy to the government if it will keep them safe, especially from terrorists.

Whether you believe in their ideologies or not, people used to fight for what they believe in with greater conviction in this country. Once upon a time, people actually stood up for their natural rights and protested. Now people are quietly going about their day just hoping to stay off the radar, or worse, they have been taught and actually believe that giving up liberty for a sense of security is a good trade off “to keep them safe” with misguided lines like “I’m not doing anything wrong so I have nothing to worry about.”

Ben Franklin said it best when he said a person who would trade liberty for security is a fool and will end up with neither. Tell me, when did it become cool to not like freedom? Just to name a few freedoms we have sacrificed for “alleged” security are cell our cell phones spying on us, which was covered above, any privacy we had in our own homes, by the CIA’s own admission it will be spying on us through our appliances, even watching television can no longer be done in peace as we learned that Samsung smart televisions are eavesdropping on their owners.Those are the G rated privacy violations. What about the DHS Secretary Who Approved The Targeting U.S. Citizens With Drones, and Homeland Security Drones Flying Above Looking For Civilians Carrying Guns. Do you trust the same government running the IRS targeting conservatives with drones above?

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