Things that go bump in the night

Seeing as how there has been quite a bit of talk about spies I thought I might discuss actions recently taken by the NSA (National Security Agency). The purpose of the NSA is basically to collect information (phone calls, e-mails) from foreign countries and protect our information from being collected by foreign countries.

While all intelligence agencies basically do the same thing, each has a separate focus. Intelligence agencies collect, interpret, plan and conduct. Collection of information can be as simple as getting copies of all foreign publications or as complicated as placing an agent within a foreign intelligence agency. The spies we just released to Russia were attempting to infiltrate our intelligence agencies by finding college students who they believed might join one of our agencies.

Lets talk about that for a second. Have you ever wondered how someone becomes an intelligence officer or a spy? You have probably seen movies where they are recruited; but, most of the movies are flawed and inaccurate. Firstly, most analysts are very logical. It requires a very objective type of thinking, unemotional. The ability to separate oneself from a situation, calm.

The next aspect would be loyalty and commitment. One also needs to be able to keep secrets and to not be overly influenced by personal wants or fears. The ability to think clearly in the face of extreme risk. The vast majority of intelligence officers are observers rather than participants on the ground; however, a small number are field agents. They have a slightly different makeup. They must be actors and capable of killing without any emotion. The field agents usually have "handlers", people who monitor their activities and give them direction.

The NSA is mostly, of what we know, techies. They are interested in obtaining information using technology. They have most of our spy satellites. Think of them as our own national peeping Toms. Theoretically they are limited to spying on foreign communications, on occasion they have forgotten this. It is claimed that as early as the early 1970s they could use a satellite to look down your fireplace and tell you if it needed to be cleaned.

At one point in time the NSA was so secret that their emblem was a secret. It is now believed that it is the picture of an eagle holding a key. One consortium created by the NSA is the Biometric Consortium. They are interested in being able to identify you based on your physical attributes. Think of being able to know who made a phone call based on their voice or being able to know who you were based on a satellite picture.

I may have bored some readers; but, I felt like talking about this and am getting to the reason why. Please bare with me.

One of the things that the government wants to see in the future is called "Smart Grids". In and of itself it sounds like a good idea. It is the monitoring of the electrical use of every appliance and everything drawing electricity. It also promotes the use of green technology and claims it can reduce the amount of wasted energy through transmission. While not everything I write is exciting, I do hope the readers enjoy the fact that I write on a wide range of topics.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is interested in converting to smart meters and has already purchased 9,000 as a trial. Google is a big proponent of smart meters and allows you to obtain the technology for free online. The Obama administration is committed to smart meters and has funded the conversion of 18 million within the United States.

The use of smart meters allows you to shut off appliances or change their settings while away from home over the internet. It also allows the power company to do the same. Your use of appliances is very unique. Think about what you do during the day, if I know your electrical fingerprint, I can tell if you are having a party of a partner at your house. These concerns are very real and a few organizations are attempting to address them, such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

In the past electrical usage has been used to identify people growing marijuana. I am not taking a position on marijuana, what I am saying is that electrical usage can and has been used by police to determine what you are doing, with a smart grid much more information will be available.

Now we get to where the two things intertwine. The NSA has created a program called the "Perfect Citizen". An interesting name to be sure. They have committed $100 million dollars to the project. The NSA is claiming that the project does not involve monitoring usage but is only concerned with the electrical grids vulnerability to attacks. Their very craftily articulated statements are intentionally misleading.

Lets start with the simple things. The name of the project is "Perfect Citizen", are they looking for perfect citizens oversees? They are not supposed to be monitoring people in the United States AT ALL, that is the job of the FBI and law enforcement. They are supposed to only be concerned with foreign countries. Do you really think the name of the project was chosen at random? It doesn't work that way. Why is the NSA looking at the safety of the United States electrical system, that is the job of the Energy Department. The NSA is an intelligence gathering organization.

I hope you begin to see the fallacy of the story being given by the NSA. Their mission is to collect information not be in the energy business unless it is to collect information from foreign countries, not our own. If an intelligence collection agency is involved in energy use then they believe it will give them information that will be useful.

It is important that we see the amount of monitoring that is going on in the world. It is important that we understand how our privacy and our concept of privacy has been eroded. Few of us even understand how much information can be collected by us. Recently a consumer group "sniffed" the wi-fi networks of a number of politicians to make the point. They did this to prove that Google's Street View program was a privacy violation as Google had sniffed the wifi networks throughout Europe and got caught in Germany.

Now lets look at Google again. They have handed over e-mails to the government without letting the people involved know it and are involved in picture mapping the world. In addition, "tagging" (labeling pictures with the name of the people or places) of all pictures allows data mining down to the person. If you add to this the use of biometrics, it sure looks like Google is working with the NSA. At least PC World thinks something is up.