Today as Americans turn-out to vote in both state and federal midterm elections, very few voters are aware that we’re also celebrating the 62nd birthday of the N.S.A. which was founded in 1952, 3 years after George Orwell published 1984.
The N.S.A.’s purview is signal intelligence — they monitor information and data from around the world with an eye toward counterintelligence while also protecting the data and information of the U.S. government from being hacked or gathered in a similar manner — it’s all a bit of the Spy V.S. Spy set-up, but more data versus data, code versus code.
Of course, that’s the definition on paper. In real life the N.S.A. has demonstrated it understanding of its mission to be much more far-reaching than this simple description might seem to imply. Here’s a bit o’ the Wiki…
NSA surveillance has been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, such as its spying on prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders or economic espionage. In 2013, the extent of the NSA’s secret surveillance programs was revealed to the public by Edward Snowden. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts the communications of over a billion people worldwide and tracks the movement of hundreds of millions of people using cellphones. It has also created or maintained security vulnerabilities in most software and encryption, leaving the majority of the Internet susceptible to cyber attacks from the NSA and other parties. Domestically, it contributes to mass surveillance in the United States by collecting and storing all phone records of all American citizens. Internationally, in addition to the various data sharing concerns that persist, research has pointed to the NSA’s ability to surveil the domestic internet traffic of foreign countries through “boomerang routing”.
If you studied up on the gubernatorial candidates running in your state today, well done. If you’ve weighed both sides of a ballot proposal or considered the opinions of a third-party candidate you get a gold star. But, in the end, what difference can any election possibly make in a country whose constitution has had its legs chopped off by influence, wealth and the false omniscience of self reflexive voyeurs who justify their right to look with the same technology that makes it possible — “We look because we can,” they say. And they do.
Look at this…
Stay Awake!
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