11.7.1. Things the Government May Monitor
- besides the obvious things like diplomatic cable traffic,
phone calls from and to suspected terrorists and criminals,
etc.
+ links between Congressmen and foreign embassies
- claims in NYT (c. 9-19-91) that CIA had files on
Congressmen opposing aid to Contras
+ Grow lamps for marijuana cultivation
- raids on hydroponic supply houses and seizure of mailing
lists
- records of postings to alt.drugs and alt.psychoactive
- vitamin buyers clubs
+ Energy consumption
- to spot use of grow lamps
+ but also might be refined to spot illegal aliens being
sheltered or any other household energy consumption
"inconsistent with reported uses"
- same for water, sewage, etc.
+ raw chemicals
- as with monitors on ammonium nitrate and other bomb
materials
- or feedstock for cocaine production (recall various
seizures of shipments of chemicals to Latin America)
- checkout of books, a la FBI's "Library Awareness Program"
of around 1986 or so
- attendance at key conferences, such as Hackers Conference
(could have scenes involving this), Computer Security
Conference
11.7.2. Economic Intelligence (Spying on Corporations, Foreign and
Domestic)
+ "Does the NSA use economic intelligence data obtained in
intercepts?"
- Some of us speculate that this is so, that this has been
going on since the 1960s at least. For example, Bamford
noted in 1982 that the NSA had foreknowledge of the plans
by the British to devalue the pound in the late 1970s,
and knowledge of various corporate plans.
- The NSA clears codes used by the CIA, so it seem
impossible for the NSA not to have known about CIA drug
smuggling activities. The NSA is very circumspect,
however, and rarely (or never) comments.
+ there have been calls for the government to somehow help
American business and overall competitiveness by "levelling
the playing field" via espionage
- especially as the perceived threat of the Soviet bloc
diminishes and as the perceived threat of Japan and
Germany increases
- leaders of the NSA and CIA have even talked openly about
turning to economic surveillance
+ Problems with this proposal:
- illegal
- unethical
+ who gets the intelligence information? Does NSA just call
up Apple and say "We've intercepted some message from
Taiwan that describe their plans for factories. Are you
interested?"
- the U.S. situation differs from Japan and MITI (which
is often portrayed as the model for how this ought to
work) in that we have many companies with little or no
history of obeying government recommendations
+ and foreign countries will likely learn of this espionage
and take appropriate measures
- e.g., by increasing encryption
11.7.3. War on Drugs and Money Laundering is Causing Increase in
Surveillance and Monitoring
- monitoring flows of capital, cash transactions, etc.
- cooperation with Interpol, foreign governments, even the
Soviets and KGB (or whatever becomes of them)
- new radar systems are monitoring light aircraft, boats,
etc.
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind