Internet whistleblower website WikiLeaks was back Monday after being inaccessible for over a week. The victims of a massive Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack, WikiLeaks servers were getting hammered. This came on the heels of the publication of documents revealing details on the United States Government’s low-key TrapWire program.
TrapWire is a spying network created by Virginia-based Arbaxas, a consortium of CIA, NSA, and Pentagon agents (among others). What TrapWire is designed to do is employ the most sophisticated facial recognition technology available to keep an eye on, well, everyone.
Is it time to start worrying? David Seaman from Business Insider seems to think so. From an article he wrote August 10th:
“TrapWire is the name of a program revealed in the latest Wikileaks bonanza—it is the mother of all leaks, by the way. TrapWire would make something like disclosure of UFO contact or imminent failure of a major U.S. bank fairly boring news by comparison.”
That sounds pretty ominous, doesn’t it? But why would our Government want a vast spy network to peer into our lives every day? Surely they have a good reason, right? Well, that depends on your definition of “a good reason”. Did the U.S. Government have a good reason for wiretapping Americans’ cell phone calls without a warrant? They must have had a good reason, or else why would they have made it legally impossible to sue the Government, in addition to the wireless carriers who allowed it (AT&T and Verizon)?
I don’t know about you, but regardless of the fact that my day to day activities involve walking to get my hair cut, or taking a leisurely stroll to buy a bottle of moderately-priced Scotch, I don’t feel at all comfortable with Uncle Sam knowing what I’m up to at all hours of the day.
Perhaps you shouldn’t be posting it all to Foursquare and Twitter, then.
You’re right. If I were really concerned about my privacy, I’d knock off all the social check-ins. There’s a clear difference there, however. When I’m broadcasting a check-in, I’m doing it consciously, knowing exactly who will or will not be able to view said information. What the U.S. Government is doing with TrapWire is committing taxpayer-sponsored breach of privacy.
Couple this with the NDAA, domestic use of drones, and the increased attacks on freedom of speech and protesting, and you’ve got a good recipe for some delicious civil unrest and government oppression.
Does anyone else get the feeling that the noose is being slowly tightened?
