A court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a “roving bug.”
Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.
“The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them,” James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. “Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone’s location to within just a few feet.”
Bell South has been issued more than 16,000 subpoenas from government agents and 636 court orders for customer information.
The White Housepushed Congress to grant retroactive legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that have allowed government agents access to their customers’ private phone call data. The law ends any possibility of a lawsuit against phone companies alleged to have violated federal privacy laws by handing over customer data to the government.
Mike Frost spent 20 years as a spy for the CSE, the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Agency; he recently spoke about the Echelon program. Frost is the only high-ranking former intelligence agent to speak publicly. Frost showed installations where operators can listen in to just about anything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATMs. According to Frost, baby monitors offer a great wealth of information gathering for intelligence.
These instances of Big Brother sound familiar, don’t they? Funny thing is, they are not new. Each one of the above examples happened between 2000 and 2007. Recently, the Obama administration has been under fire for its wide-ranging eavesdropping and surveillance. However, the seeds to this were planted a decade ago.
Where was the outrage? Where was the press coverage from the so-called “liberal media”? Where was the “oh my God, the government is into everything” reactions? It is almost comical to watch the very same people who voted for, supported and pushed for this type of “Big Brother” surveillance in the name of “National Security” and “Patriotism,” get so up in arms now.
What’s so different now? Could it be because a different person now holds the controls to these tools? Could it be because now they feel threatened?
I wrote back in 2007 that these types of surveillance, investigations and operations were gross violations of our civil rights and needed to be stopped — and I was tarred and feathered. I was called un-American among many other unprintable things.
In the post 9/11 days, many of you were willingly handing over your civil rights in the name of security. It was somehow an-American and unpatriotic to disagree with these types of privacy invasions. Fast forward to 2013 and all of a sudden government-sanctioned are looked at a little bit different.
Forgive me if I laugh in your face and say “I told you so.”
In 2006, six Republican senators — including Mike DeWine of Ohio, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine — introduced and pushed through the Terrorist Surveillance Act. This law eased the restrictions on the president to conduct surveillance of “suspected terrorists.” No one batted an eye. We just stood by, enveloped in our flag and allowed President Bush and his cronies to have their way.
Later in 2006, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn.) introduced the National Security Surveillance Act of 2006. This granted “retroactive” amnesty to all warrant-less surveillance conducted under presidential authority.
Think about that for a second. Now you have no wherewithal whatsoever to fight your privacy being invaded and the government has carte blanche to listen to whoever they want, wherever they want, without any repercussions.
The Protect America Act is riddled with privacy-invading, Big Brother-type authority. Why did we allow this to happen in the first place? Now President Obama and his administration are doing exactly what always happens with this type of legislation — they are taking one step further.
This is the fundamental problem when you start chipping away at these types of laws. We say to ourselves “Oh, it’s OK this time, because this in an extenuating circumstance.” It’s ALWAYS an extenuating circumstance!
Our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to privacy and right to not be subjected to unlawful searches and seizures are not gray areas … or at least they shouldn’t have been. Ironically, if everyone fought as hard for these amendments and rights, we probably wouldn’t have to fight so hard for the Second Amendment. You wouldn’t need a gun to fight “the government” as I heard so often during the gun control debates if we had stood firmer on real violations to our person.
We have lost sight of what makes this country great. We allowed these intrusions to happen. All one has to do is look at the names given to all of the civil rights violating legislation hammered through during the last decade. Names like Patriot Act, Terrorist Surveillance Act, Protect America Act sound like the “American” way right? Wrong, they couldn’t be any further from our true origins than if you take away our guns.
This is why chipping away at these inalienable rights is the problem. It’s a slippery slope. It’s this word this time, and another the next. It’s this religion is bad this time, and another the next. It’s search is OK this time and another the next. Before we know it, we look back and can’t recognize our own rights.
So this administration took it a step or so further than the last, what do you think the next administration is going to do? Another step further out onto the abyss? Two steps?
Remember this people, please: any legislation that is set up to use against another group of people, can and — history has shown us — will be used against the very ones that put into to place in the first place. The Obama Administration is wrong in using these types of tools. However, no one had a problem when we caught the Boston bombers or captured Osama Bin Laden.
The Bush Administration was wrong in its introduction and implementation of these types of legislation. However, we were scared and wanted to wrap ourselves in the security of the American flag.
The only problem was it wasn’t an American flag we draped around ourselves.
Richard Clark is the universal desk chief for Halifax ENC; his column appears in this space every Sunday. You can reach him at 910-219-8452 or at Richard.Clark@jdnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at kpaws22.