PRISM - "THEY" DO KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY - PRISM
George Orwell's 1984. 

In yesterday's blog - CAMERON CALLS IN THE TAX HAVENS  - I warned that “They” know who you are, where you live and what your tax-haven assets are. 

Today we learn about PRISM, the US National Security Agency program that gives the FBI and other government bureaus access to all past and present telecommunications data. PRISM was kick started by President George W Bush in response to the destruction of the World Trade Center. Starting with Microsoft in 2007, all the ISP’s, telephone companies and, I guess, microchip makers have been obliged to give PRISM direct access to their data. The US administration denies that it has a “backdoor” into all the internet and telecoms companies. While admitting they can intercept or recover all texts and conversations in full – they deny that they do; claiming to only track the To & From traffic addresses.

“They” justify PRISM as stopping terrorists; which is in welcome contrast to the UK’s ludicrous justification of stopping lone paedophile murderers who are motivated by internet porn. PORNONET STATISTICS .  The UK’s equivalent to PRISM is GCHQ, a massive listening and interception complex, of about 2,000 people, at Cheltenham.

Also in the news is the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, which is suspected of launching global cyber-attacks and perhaps intercepting internet and telecoms traffic. I guess that Chinese made computers and phones have built in interception circuits. Far-fetched paranoia? No, not really. 15 years ago top BT telephone engineers said they did not know what the tiny circuits did or how to make the vital microchips used in all UK telecoms equipment, bought from the Far East.  In 2005, BT employed Huawei to modernise the entire UK’s telephone network.

What the USA, UK and China are doing is almost certainly being done by Russia, the EU and most developed nations. The Cold War has become the Snoopers War - in which the right to privacy of all citizens is merely inconsquesential collateral damage.

BIG BROTHER is well and truly established in all major governments worldwide.  So what will happen next? I think that the vital need for private communications in government, defense, industry, research, commerce and human relationships, will drive a new industry to create bug-free devices; and the ever creative geeks will create an alternative internet – Internet2 – free of surveillance and most of the junk.  In the meantime, remember - THEY DO KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE – and they are listening.