Can You Hear Me Now?

I don't want to turn this into a conspiracy blog, but occasionally you may notice certain themes popping up. A particular interest of mine, both professionally and philosophically, is privacy; I think privacy is a curious marker that reliably indicates how a culture interprets the role of the individual against the requirements of the collective. America, ostensibly, is all about the individual and protecting them from the dictates of the group. At least in theory.

The "collective" is a strange construct because it doesn't really exist. There are no "rights" for groups, for example, just individuals. A semantic distortion. And the "morality" of these collectives, be they government agencies, corporations, or political factions are really the checks and balances in the behavior of individuals that constitute these groups.

And when a group has a certain power over individuals, regardless of the stated mission and higher causes behind the group's formation, there is a long history of individuals in these groups exploiting their power.

The pragmatic recognition of this prompted a specific safeguard being built into our very constitution; a new type of government was being formed from any that existed before; its goal was to secure the rights of the individual and if it, or any agency it setup towards these ends, failed in the future towards this goal, it contained a self-destruct clause:

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence; July 4, 1776

So that's a bit of an aside. Just wanted to set the context for how some of us think of individual rights, like privacy. And because threats to our freedoms don't all come from external sources in the obvious guise of terrorists and radical religious factions. In fact, more dangerous and pervasive, are insidious misuses within our systems. Often masked under the rationale of protection rackets.

And, like establishing the motive for a crime, one of the key questions in determining the probability of an action is to assess its opportunity. This is what this post is really about. Opportunity.

The Roving Bug

A U.S. District judge, this week, ruled that a new technique developed by the FBI for tapping cell phones was legal as part of a broader interpretation of the federal wiretapping act.

What you may not know about this technique, and about cell phone technology, is that this permits cell phones to be used as "remote microphones" and they can, on most models, be used like this even if they are turned off. Unless the batteries are completely removed. So, you basically have a monitoring device in your house, in your purse, in your car that can be used to listen in to private conversations.

And while the "wire-tapping" act used to be about catching crooks and required court orders, thanks to the "patriot" act, now it requires no warrant and agencies can basically do so at their "discretion."

Sometimes I wonder what our fore-fathers would think about all this? They say if you raise the temperature of water by a small amount over time, you can boil a frog alive. Does it seem like it's getting hot in here, or is it just me? *ribbet*