- In Moscow, VICE co-founder Shane Smith's in depth interview with controversial NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden serves as the backdrop for a story on the state of government sponsored surveillance both at home in the US and around the world.—e0state
- The ongoing discussion concerning the surveillance of the US government on its citizens was brought to a tipping point when a judge ordered Apple to help the FBI break into a terrorist's phone. As stated by Edward Snowden, this help turned out to be superfluous which demonstrated that the FBI could hack into any similar device, not only that of a terrorist. When a phone is hacked, phone calls and user history can be extracted, and the camera and microphone can be remotely activated on command.
But one doesn't necessarily have to hack a device to obtain valuable data. With an International Mobile Subscriber Identity-catcher (IMSI), which are readily available on the internet, a close approximation of someone's position can be determined through the extraction of metadata. Although these devices were initially mounted to airborne planes to locate terrorists in Nepal, they've later shown to have been used on surveillance planes during BLM-protests in Baltimore and are now used by police departments all over the globe.
These and similar sorts of spyware are now being sold by European companies to oppressive regimes where they help suppress the opposition. With systems like these already in place, the door is opened to such a political reign in the US. All it takes is one individual that decides to use it to its fullest potential. Everything bad you might have expressed about that person could be tracked, leaving you to be dealt with accordingly.
To make matters worse, after the department of Snowden, the white house assigned two independent commissions to research and review the application of mass surveillance. The conclusion was that since 2001, not a single terrorist attack had been prevented through its means. When the net is cast to wide, there is simply no way to extract the information you are looking for. The commissions advised an immediate shutdown of the program and provided 42 points of reform. Of these points, the president adopted no more than three as "they would limit the exercise of executive power".
As Snowden points out, it would be merely impossible for a president to shut down the program entirely. Because when a terrorist attack does happen afterwards, the political opposition will surely know what and who to blame for it.
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