It’s not paranoia if people are out to get you. The NSA clearly is made up of people, so this week’s revelations that the Obama administration and congress have authorized large-scale surveillance for the NSA with a program entitled PRISM should have conspiracy theorists everywhere saying, “I told you so.”
President Obama today not only acknowledged the existence of the program today but strongly defended as necessary.
“They make a difference in our capacity to anticipate and prevent possible terrorist activity,” Obama said. He added that the programs are “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government and they do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens and U.S. residents.”
The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track foreign targets, according to a top-secret document obtained by The Washington Post.
According to this document the NSA is actively engaged in data, “Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.”
It begs the question how does one avoid being the victim of this NSA snooping?
- For starters, ditch your Verizon subscription. As the UK’s Guardian reported this week. The NSA receives all the meta-data Verizon has for every phone call made buy subscribers. This includes both participants phone numbers, location, and more. Plus, the content of every text message sent over their networks. Maybe, just get rid of your mobile phone altogether, one can assume other wireless providers are doing the same thing.
- Move to a shack in Montana and begin writing your manifesto on a typewriter. For all of Ted Kaczynski’s perceived “craziness” he was accepted to Harvard University at the age of 16 and a received a Ph.D in mathematics from the University of Michigan. It might be extreme but get off the grid and don’t send mail bombs, that will surely keep the NSA off your back. At the end of the day “Crazy Uncle” Ted made some valid points about surveillance.
- If a cabin in the woods is too extreme, well, get off of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple. I’m guessing terrorists have avoided these for some time and are more likely to used WhatsApp, the Japanese messenger LINE, Canadian messenger Kid, or Korea’s KakaoTalk. In the time I’ve spent typing those four, two more have probably sprung up.
I think the cabin is still best.
