You have heard about the Ashley Madison Hack.
A dating website that helps married people cheat has been hit by hackers who threatened to release information about millions of customers…
So far, though, it isn’t easy to find the exposed cheaters online. That could change soon if the hackers decide to publish the information on a public website.
Brian Krebs, the blogger who first reported the breach, said the hackers were threatening to release all Ashley Madison’s customer records if the website isn’t shut down
What people don’t understand is the power of information these days, or the realization by government of the power of information. We have intelligence agencies operating domestically, spying on American citizens, just to get that information. You thought because the CIA and NSA aren’t supposed to spy on US citizens that nobody is doing it? Don’t be silly. The FBI is our premier Domestic Intelligence Agency, and it uses all of the techniques the CIA and NSA use, from technical surveillance, to real life spies inserted into crucial points in businesses where sensitive data is located.
In the wake of the National Security Agency spying scandal, the American Civil Liberties Union shifted attention Tuesday to the FBI with a report that described the bureau as “a secret domestic intelligence agency…”
Developing technologies have enabled the FBI to collect and analyze vast amounts of information about countless Americans without any suspicion of wrongdoing, the report says.
“Protecting law-abiding citizens is really the concern here,” said Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “Once upon a time – before 9/11 – the government could not go collecting information about Americans unless it had fact-based reason. That principle has fallen to the wayside…”
The report says the secrecy surrounding the FBI has prevented constitutional oversight and that its exemption from the Whistleblower Protection Act has suppressed internal accountability.
Think about that – there is no whistleblower protection because if there were, there would be whistles being blown, and the whole thing would be brought down. If there was anywhere that you would want whistleblower protection it would be an area inherently likely to evolve into a secretive cabal illegally gathering blackmailing intelligence on innocent American citizens, and thereby gaining undue influence over our elected leaders through blackmail.
“…searches through commercial or government databases and tasking informants to gather information about individuals.”
I would bet everything I have in this world, that at least one domestic LE agency, and maybe several, have sworn agents undercover as Network Administrators, employed by Ashley Madison (as well as every other hookup, gambling, and other deviant website). Those agents are periodically dumping everything from the servers onto thumb drives for delivery to their handlers (as they collect two salaries, one for employee, and one for spy). That information is then data mined for intel on anyone who the FBI was looking at, or might want to pressure into cooperation. Whatever isn’t used is archived into a master database which new targets are run against.
I will bet those master databases, with every bank transaction, credit card purchase, phone call, text message, cell phone location log, email, fax, facebook post, facebook contact, tweet, private dating profile, sexual preference, and every website ever visited would astound us.
If you have any aspirations of someday entering politics, or making a difference somewhere, know that everything you do is now under the microscope, and searchable decades later. This is not only being used for Law Enforcement. Get anywhere that you have a position of power, and you may end up blackmailed by our own LE apparatus, or whoever it is behind the scenes that pulls LE’s strings and has access to all the data.
Thanks in no small part to George W. Bush, the Constitution as we know it might as well be toilet paper. There is no Fourth Amendment. Government can intrude anywhere they want without a warrant, so long as they can’t be caught. The people sworn to protect it view it as an enemy, and the people in power want no part in protecting it.
Watch your back, and keep your nose clean.
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