Thread:JoshuaFlynn/@comment-5122856-20140208172847/@comment-24459455-20140208210400

Whipsnade wrote: JoshuaFlynn wrote: Yep, it's actually extremely diverse and far reaching.

However, don't view the corporations as innocents, take a look at this:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/your-iphone-is-tracking-you-and-has-been-for-a-while/9985

Ask yourself why Apple (and Google with Android) would want to table an entire database of your every known whereabouts if they supposedly find the idea of a surveillance dragnet so 'shocking' and 'offensive'?

Most hardware on the lower level doesn't actually turn off even if the software says to the contrary and even if GPS wasn't working, there's something known as 'cell tower triangulation ' which can be used with any phone (even non-smart phones).

Want to get creepier? Try CELLDAR :

"The radical new system, which has outraged civil liberties groups, uses mobile phone masts to allow security authorities to watch vehicles and individuals 'in real time' almost anywhere in Britain.

The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked.   "

Sound familar? It might do. It was the same technology represented in the first Dark Knight movie. It should only be used  to protect sensitive installations such as ports,  airfields, the perimeters of a nuclear power stations or at military bases. CELLDAR intrinsically targets civilian mobile phones for 3D object movement analysis, so it is not and can not be restricted to any military areas (I believe military installations prohibit mobile phones as a de facto security measure and use military radios and military comms instead?).

It was clearly never designed to be restricted as it targets such a broad base, especially as it's a form of visual tracking. Anyone close enough to a nuclear base to warrent a mobile track could probably have visual contact via eyes. Ports again have their own security and likewise airfields. It's clearly a mass-tracking tool with no problem to solve and ergo no real purpose and thus no real reason to exist (it might look cool, maybe, but so does a rocket launcher. Do I carry a rocket launcher with me because it looks cool?).

The biggest problem we face isn't the tracking of itself, but blackmail, not necessarily of the individuals (which is likely to occur), but of the politicians, of the people who control resources, food, water, money, you name it.

And it gets worse. Because Edward Snowden was a good guy. Imagine if the information he had access to had been leaked secretly and quietly to a malicious group. Imagine if the Chinese dictatorship got some dirt on say, the US president, or the head of the NSA, or a pharmaceutical company. Suddenly you can curry influence, small favour here, small favour there and the video of you being corrupt doesn't air.

No evidence supplied it prevents terrorism, or, more specifically, how exactly that would work (do they prise open and read a million emails and hope to catch someone saying 'bomb'?). A sledgehammer to whack an invisible ant.