AT&T – one of the NSA’s most trusted partners… These are America’s spy hubs… A disturbing scenario… In the mailbag: How do we fight this “new Goliath”?
Picking up where we left off on Monday, Silicon Valley has gotten in bed with the Deep State.
Together, they’re building a mass digital surveillance state that could soon rival China’s Orwellian Social Credit System.
As Legacy Research cofounder Bill Bonner warns, it’s a “monstrous union” that could strip away your freedoms… and the freedoms of millions of Americans.
And as we told you in the private message we sent you last week, exposing this is part of our mandate from Bill and our other founders at Legacy Research – Doug Casey, Teeka Tiwari, and Jeff Clark.
Here’s how Bill summed it up for readers of his daily e-letter…
In China, a “social credit” score is already being used to deny airline travel and even access to dating sites to people who get a low score in “civic virtue” for speaking against the government online or smoking in non-smoking areas.
In the U.S., social media already “scores” customers and businesses. If you don’t measure up to the standards of Airbnb, Uber, or Rocket Mortgage, you may not be able to rent an apartment, reserve a taxi, or get a mortgage.
Big Tech even knows exactly where you are in the world when you’re connected to the web – which is almost always. Bill again…
Truck drivers are already controlled – in terms of both hours driven and speed – electronically. Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking technology already knows how fast we are supposed to drive.
It’s possible to track every car on the road – thanks to the GPS tracking in your smartphone. It would be so easy for the police to give you a speeding ticket based upon the time that’s elapsed between your start point to your destination.
They don’t need these speed traps anymore. They don’t need cops hiding behind bushes with speed guns. They can just use the location data you voluntarily share with Google, Facebook, and other apps.
Digital data isn’t stored in the ether…
It exists in the real world… on hard drives and memory chips on computer servers.
You need to constantly cool these servers with fans. You also need to monitor and control them.
When you collect as much personal digital data as the National Security Agency (NSA) does, you need rows upon rows of internet servers. And you have to house these servers somewhere…
AT&T is the largest internet and telecommunications business in the world.
And the NSA runs the world’s most advanced electronic eavesdropping operation. It intercepts and stores an estimated 1.7 billion private emails, phone calls, and other private communications a day.
For most folks, these two organizations exist in different worlds – one in the world of Big Government… the other in the world of Big Business. But as we’ve been uncovering here at The Daily Cut, they’re part of the public-private partnership known as the Deep State.
And along with Google and Facebook, AT&T is one of the NSA’s most trusted data collection partners…
These are giant data collection facilities housed in windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete buildings.
Here’s one in San Francisco, described as the city’s “telecommunications ‘nerve center’”…
Source: The Intercept
And here’s another in Atlanta, complete with AT&T’s corporate branding…
Source: The Intercept
They allow the NSA to monitor your phone and internet traffic… and the traffic of millions of other Americans. From online news publication The Intercept…
Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world.
A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.
AT&T’s data fortresses don’t just help AT&T carry and process data from its customers. They also carry data from other telecommunications and internet service providers.
These include U.S. telecom giants Sprint, Cogent Communications, and Level 3 Communications, as well as telecom giants in Sweden (Telia), India (Tata Communications), Italy (Telecom Italia), and Germany (Deutsche Telekom).
Here’s how it works…
Your phone calls and internet traffic route through these eight AT&T data centers, where the NSA taps into them. (It uses a piece of cyber-eavesdropping tech called a fiber-optic slitter. This makes exact copies of the data passing through fiber-optic networks and then routes one copy directly to the NSA.)
It can then “data mine” – or do deep analysis on – these digital messages for suspicious keywords, patterns, and connections.
Bottom line: If you said something over the phone… typed something into the search bar in your web browser… or visited a webpage… the NSA has harvested that data and sifted through it.
As you’ll see in today’s mailbag below, we’ve gotten a lot of requests from your fellow readers for steps you can follow to fight back against the digital snooping and censorship we’ve been warning about.
We think it’s a great idea. After all, privacy is a non-negotiable right for a civilized society. And privacy is simply impossible if you’re relying on Google, Facebook, and other Silicon Valley monopolies.
So keep your eyes peeled next week for some countermeasures you can use in your day-to-day life to shore up your digital privacy.
Now, for the promised requests…
I applaud your efforts to fight back against Google and Facebook. I can easily do without Facebook, but Google is tougher. There must be alternatives out there and I would appreciate any feedback on other sources to replace their services.
Dollars will talk if we can find alternatives. Keep up the great effort against the new Goliath. – Wayne B.
Chris, thanks for the info. I look forward to more. You stated the problem with Google Maps, YouTube, Google Chrome, and Gmail. So, what are the alternatives to each that can be used with more privacy? – Morris V.
I’m using Gmail now and I wish to support your efforts by de-platforming myself from Google, etc.
Are you going to produce a guide to help users interested in privacy and liberty to turn the tide on a personal level? Thank you. – Stewart T.
I appreciate having this information. However, you are creating within your readers a desire to act, but with no direction as to what we can do, except to go and hide off the grid.
I would like to see an action plan that will begin to counteract this hugely disturbing circumstance. Without that, all we have is an itch with no way to scratch it. – Charles H.
We hear you, and we’re working with our team of experts to develop a helpful guide for protecting your liberties.
As always, keep your questions and suggestions coming at feedback@legacyresearch.com.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
August 24, 2018
Lisbon, Portugal