Another Nail in the Privacy Coffin

\”Are YOU Ready?\”

In this day and age of cheap and smart technology I find that we’re giving up more and more of our privacy a little bit at a time.  It’s like the old frog analogy – if you put the frog in a pan of water and slowly heat it up the frog will stay there until it boils.  If you throw it in hot water it’ll jump around trying to get out.  Well, the water’s getting hot folks!

Here’s a story about police using automated scanners to take pictures of your vehicle and license plates and storing them away for later use when you might commit a crime.  In the following quote they bring in the dreaded “terrorist” word in order to make it ok to do this:

“As the technology becomes cheaper and more ubiquitous, and federal grants focus on aiding local terrorist detection, even small police agencies are able to deploy more sophisticated surveillance systems. While the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that a judge’s approval is needed to track a car with GPS, networks of plate scanners allow police effectively to track a driver’s location, sometimes several times every day, with few legal restrictions. The ACLU says the scanners assemble what it calls a “single, high-resolution image of our lives.”

By what methods can they pry into our private business and track us?  Let us count the ways…

1. Through our phones.
2. From cameras mounted in many public spaces in cities, gas stations, malls, etc.
3. Through the airwaves and internet.
4. From satellites in space.
5. From social networking sites like Facebook.
6. Through police taking pictures of our vehicles.
7. Via credit and debit card transactions.

There are probably more ways than I’m listing here, but you get the picture.  Today’s modern society is rife with people handing over their rights to privacy in the name of terrorism.  Many people are happy to give up these rights so they can feel protected.  Have Americans become so used to being coddled that the thought of some terrorist with a bomb has them so crippled with fear they’re willing to give up all their rights so they can be safe?

The story above says:

“These plate readers are not intended nor used to follow the movements of members of the public,” the department’s statement said.

But even if law enforcement officials say they don’t want a public location tracking system, the records add up quickly. In Jersey City, N.J., for example, the population is only 250,000 but the city collected more than 2 million plate images on file…”

America Too Big For Its Britches

What about America getting too big for it’s own britches in the world community?  Edward Snowden blew the lid off the NSA spying on our allies.  Talk about being a wanted man.

The president said that he’s the end user of this kind of information and if he wants to know what the PM of England is thinking he’ll pick up the phone and call him.  One of two things is going on here and neither one of them is good:  1.  The president is lying through his teeth.  No president has ever done that before eh?  Or 2.  He doesn’t know what the NSA is up to meaning he doesn’t have a tight grip on the government agencies supposedly working for him.

 Forget OPSEC

Most Americans today have no idea about OPSEC any more.  With every move we make being Tweeted, Facebooked, or IM’d, (or blogged – ha!) or somehow or other communicated it’s unlikely that anybody would have a problem tracking us.  My neighbors used to write on Facebook every single move they made. If we drove by and their car wasn’t there we’d check Facebook and sure enough, they’d have their destination for the weekend posted for all to see.

I think in order to fly below the radar you would have to give up your phone, computer access, your vehicle, and anything else that could potentially leave an electronic trace.  Not easy in this day and age.  Imagine giving up your debit card? (You don’t use credit cards do you?)

Don’t get me wrong here because  I’m as guilty as the next guy.   I use my debit card a lot.    If I want to pay for something I just whip out my card and pay for it and I rarely carry more than $40 on me at a time.

I have a “wicked-smaht phone” (as we say in Maine) like a lot of people today.  I use a Kindle quite often and when I’m camping I “rough it” by setting up my phone as a wifi access point and connecting to it with my Kindle.    It would suck to give up the instant communication and access to that giant database called The ‘Net.

It’s just another example of how dependent  we’ve become on technology as a society.  I will say this though:  if the power goes out I’ll be perfectly capable of operating without it.  I’m not so sure about a lot of our youngsters these days though.  It seems the more we become dependent on technology the further away we get from nature.

With all the new gadgets we use the idea of “privacy” is taking a serious hit or at the very least might need to be redefined.

Practicing OPSEC is something you need to do on a personal level.  It doesn’t just mean that you’ve kept quiet about your weapons and ammo stash.  It also means that you’ve got a form of secure communication, you’re not blabbing every move you make to the entire Internet (which we know is monitored by NSA), and you’re conducting yourself in such a manner that people you don’t want to know about your preps don’t know about them.

I know I jumped around a little on this post, but here’s a few points to kick around today.

1.  Are we giving away our rights for the benefit of protection?

2.  Is OPSEC a dying art?

3.  Has technology become so advanced that both privacy and OPSEC have become obsolete?

4.  Do you feel you’re practicing good OPSEC where you live?

I’d be interested in your views on any or all of these questions.

Questions?  Comments?

Sound off below!

-Jarhead Survivor