Ever since former CIA agent Edward Snowden leaked secret surveillance techniques, the world has become a more dangerous place. This is true mostly to intelligence agencies around the world, especially United States and United Kingdom. The business of combating terrorism will never be the same again. But it’s a total different stories to the average Joes’ and Janes’.

 

You may not realize this but you may be spied on every day by the same government that you’ve voted in to, well, administer your country. But instead of managing the country, your government found out that it was a freaking good idea to spy on the citizens, especially if you belong to the opposition camp. And they can do it fairly easy thanks to social media such as Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Britain’s top counter-terrorism official has been forced to reveal a secret government policy justifying the mass surveillance of every single Facebook, Twitter and Google user in the United Kingdom. And chances are high that other countries are adopting such spying activities as well without their citizens realizing it. And you basically can’t do a single damn thing to the government even if you know it.

 

So, how does a “fully democratic” UK government is “immune” from legal challenges by its own citizens for spying? Well, technically they can’t because under British law, spies shouldn’t be spying on internal or domestic communications, but the same restrictions don’t apply to external/foreign communications. So here’s the trick.

 

According to Charles Farr, the director general of Security and Counter Terrorism, who were “made to talk” during an Investigatory Powers Tribunal a month ago, he revealed that the intercepting of tweets, Google and YouTube searches and Facebook posts was permitted by law due to their classification as “external communications”.

 

That’s right, the UK government is hiding behind a fancy phrase called “external communications” to justify their domestic spying practice. External communications was classified as those sent and received outside “British Islands”, regardless of whether it passes through the British Islands during transit.

Since Google and other web services’ data centres are generally located within the US and elsewhere in Europe, this means a search made by an internet user in the UK is likely to involve a communication to an overseas web server. Google’s response to the search would therefore be sent from the overseas server, creating two “external communications”.

 

Thanks to Snowden, Americans and the world know how United States government had started tons of surveillance programs, including a secret program called PRISM – since Sept 11th 2001. PRISM is a tool used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to collect private electronic data belonging to users of major internet services like Gmail, Facebook, Outlook, and others.

In a nutshell, NSA can request data on specific people from major technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and others. NSA can also use “upstream” wiretaps method – pulling data directly from undersea telecommunication cables. In short, they will know the actual date and time you fart, if they wish to.

 

About 3-days ago, Malaysian government dropped a bombshell when Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Nancy Shukri says the Public Prosecutor has the right to allow the police to intercept a communication should he or she feel that this may contain information on the commission of an offence.

Nancy openly declare that under Section 116C of the Penal Code, her “government” reserves the right to tap phone calls of Malaysian citizens. So, was that an admission that her government was the hidden party that always hack opposition MPs phones during every single election – without fail?

 

Did Malaysian government decide to take a step forward by abusing what was supposed to be a tool to sniff for terrorism, but instead to spy on opposition parties as well as citizens who didn’t vote to them instead? The next time you post on Facebook or send that email using Gmail or Hotmail, remind yourself that the government is actually reading every single words you’ve drafted.

The solution – don’t use Gmail, Facebook, Outlook, Hotmail, Twitter and whatnot. If you must talk or text, use highly secure phone communication that even US secret agencies have problem hacking, such as “Silent Circle” solution.

 

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June 19th, 2014 by financetwitter

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