People familiar with the Federal Bureau of Investigationās programs say that the use of hacking tools under court orders has grown as agents seek to keep up with suspects who use new communications technology, including some types of online chat and encryption tools. The use of such communications, which canāt be wiretapped like a phone, is called āgoing darkā among law enforcement.
That, coupled with what I see as being implied by the information in the article; that it is already (an admitted) standard practice for security agencies to intercept and record the data, not just meta-data, of our communications and personal information, makes for a troubling thought.
If there are efforts underway to catalog and store data on anyone who falls under the broadly encompassing category of āsuspiciousā, then might not āgoing darkā be considered suspicious in and of itself?
Just yesterday:
Preparing for a trip, I thought Iād download some news-podcast-related āappsā on my new tablet. I started with NPRās.
When I hit the Install button, a little window popped up explaining the facilities the app would need to access. Most of them were common sense, but . . . my phone calls?
Now, ignoring the fact that this isnāt a phone tablet, why would a news streaming app need to know about who was calling me and vice-versa?
I checked a bunch of other news apps. Fox News, NBC, the local NPR stationās app. All required āPhone Callsā access.
For cripes sake, WHY?
Androidās app permissions arenāt very fine-grained. Itās so when a call comes in, the app knows to pause the audio and when you hang up it knows to resume playing.
Yesterday had a story about how the NSA is redefining words like surveillance. Today beings news of the FBI redefining bugs as features.
āWhatta country!ā
If someone would make a basic smartphone with a hardware switch for the mic, Iād buy it.
You didnāt explicitly mention the risks to all of us inherent in the undermining of the rule of law. If the FBI are abusing their power and refusing to be bound by their laws, it destabilizes the struggles for fair and honest policing worldwide.
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