August 10, 2007

How do they watch you? Let me count the ways. With the new surveillance law being voted in by a weak-kneed Congress, the useless AG, Gonzales can now listen to any conversation or read any email without a court order. I have several additional comments to be made on this subject. Let’ s consider a means by which you can be spied on without a warrant. The first is by using your very own television set to listen to you. Sounds fantastic? Another nutty blog idea? Think again. Here I am quoting from an in-house memorandum: ‘The methodology of using a commercial television set connected to a cable network system being used as a transmitter as well as a receive, allowing other parties to hear conversations conducted in the vicinity of the set utilizes the medium of a digital oscillator installed in television sets. This use is only for a set itself connected to a cable system. The additional use of a cable box connected to the television set is the only means by which the set can be used to listen to nearby conversations because these boxes are designed to feed back information through the cable system. This feedback makes it possible for a subscriber to cable to use his telephone to call the cable company for the inclusion of a special program to the subscriber’s system. The cable company is automatically able to ascertain the telephone number from the call and using that information, send the desired program to the television set via their network and the box. The subscriber code of the subscriber matches the data on the subscriber’s box. This makes the use of the box as an instrument of clandestine surveillance possible.. It is then possible for such information to be fed into other channels, including investigative ones. The use by private parties of the cable system to obtain clandestine information in this manner would be difficult if not impossible but the NSA and FBI techniques in other electronic surveillance matters are more than sufficient to ensure electronic eavesdropping. The solution to this problem? Simply unplug your set from the cable system before saying anything in the vicinity of your television set. Another helpful suggestion to concerned readers is to have absolutely nothing to do with the Internet II system. It is thoroughly, and officially, compromised. If you know anyone communicating with you using this system, put them on the block. Also, if you read a story in a large paper such as the New York Times, about a “scientist” who has “invented an absolutely secure telephone scrambling” system that has the government spy agencies “very concerned” because it is completely unbreakable, don’t even think about using it. Stories like this are deliberate plants, done with the eager cooperation of the paper, and designed to sucker people into thinking that the “wonderful new system” is secure. In actuality, it has a trapdoor big enough to permit a Mac truck to drive through it and the seller always notifies competent authority who his privacy-seeking customers are. In my next posting, I will discuss a completely fool proof method for conducting conversations on the telephone that doesn’t require any equipment and is completely safe and simple.