Wikileaks: The CIA is Spying on All Your Electronics - And it's Getting Weird

Wikileaks recently released a set of classified CIA documents they’re calling “Year Zero”, it's just one part of a greater collection of documents code-named “Vault 7”. The Year Zero collection includes detailed information on CIA spying capabilities, many of which involve your favorite consumer electronics devices. At 8,761 pages of data, Julian Assange says that Year Zero is the largest intelligence release of its kind. And to think of all the work Boris and Natasha had to go through just to get a few measly pages of CIA secrets.

Most of us already assume the government is spying on us through our Internet-connected devices. The 2013 Wikileaks dump informed Americans that the NSA has wiretapped the entire Internet and is storing everyone’s communication at a Utah data center called PRISM.

The Year Zero leaks have exposed how far government spying has gone in recent years. It turns out that our phones, TVs, computers, game consoles and set top boxes are routinely sending information directly to the CIA. But what’s truly alarming about the most recent revelations is that it coincides with a shift in American attitudes away from concerns about privacy or checks and balances in favor of authoritarian government power. What’s interesting is that both sides of the political spectrum seem to be in agreement that the answer to our social ills lies in government authority as statistics show that fewer Americans are concerned with the government’s electronic spying. Pinstripes and acid wash jeans may be 33 years out of fashion, but it’s beginning to look a lot like 1984.

Apple’s Bid For Reason

It’s been a couple of years since Edward Snowden exposed documents confirming that US intelligence agencies had been seeking a backdoor into the iPhone, ever since it launched in 2007. Breaking through the Apple product’s security had been part of a top-secret cooperative intelligence program led by US and British agencies, according to the Snowden. But the intelligence agency hacking mission wasn’t limited to Apple - it extended to all mobile network communication devices on all major operating systems. The last of the Snowden documents were dated 2013, but Year Zero picks up from there - taking us through CIA activities from 2013 through 2016, where US intelligence agencies have been busy busting through our electronics in interesting ways we may have never thought possible.

The Year Zero leaks makes the FBI’s 2016 request for a backdoor into the iPhone seem quaint by comparison. In Feb 2016, Apple CEO Tim Cook declared in an open letter to customers that Apple will take the moral high ground and refuse to cooperate with FBI requests for a backdoor into the device.

In his letter Cook said: ”The implications of the government’s demands are chilling...”. At the time, we may have dismissed Cook’s words as public grandstanding, but you’ve got to hand it to Apple. It was a controversial message to the American people in the wake of the San Bernardino tragedy in December, 2015 and Apple risked looking like a terrorist sympathizer. But to anyone who supports the intent of the US constitution to limit government power with checks and balances as a way to mitigate the tyranny, he made the right choice.

But while Cook was deflecting a possible over-the-table bridge to an iPhone backdoor, the CIA was already exploiting backdoors to iPhone and other mobile devices.

Weaponized Hacks

The FBI’s request to Apple was limited to access to data stored on a locked iPhone without destroying the device. But the CIA’s snooping capability goes much farther. According to Wikileaks, the CIA can not only browse any smartphone’s data but it can take control of your device without your knowledge, turning on or off features as needed - including microphones and cameras. Where it gets truly frightening is that these hacks techniques allow agents to take control of larger physical objects like automobiles, hospital equipment and theoretically even airplanes. The latest round of leaks is already rekindling theories around the death of author and journalist Michael Hastings in 2013.

Hastings was a critic of the Obama administration, and had just published an article on Buzzfeed entitled “Why Democrats Love Spying on Americans” when he fatally crashed his Mercedes C250 Coupe. The Vault 7 leaks may serve to legitimize existing conspiracy theories while also creating new ones, now that we know the CIA has the ability to perform assassinations by taking control of moving vehicles. And if somehow the victim survives, they can take control of life support equipment at the hospital. 

Vault 7 Footnotes

• Investment in the government’s digital spying network and hacking capabilities has cost taxpayers as much as hundreds of millions per-month since its inception.

• Government spying on US citizens is a clear violation of the 4th amendment. "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”
  

• Samsung smart TVs have been so thoroughly hacked they can be made to appear off while hackers record information from their built-in cameras and microphones.
  

• Android devices can be used to “bulk spy”, conducting blanket data collections from all wifi devices around the controlled device.
  

CIA Spying Gets Really Weird

One of of the more interesting Vault 7 leaks shows that the CIA is working on a Meme Warfare Center (MWC). The center is tasked to become experts in meme analysis and generation or in today’s vernacular - “culture hacking”. It’s the Internet version of the same mass influence game the CIA has always played in foreign nations like South and Central America to encourage uprisings in Soviet-friendly regimes. But CIA culture hacking on American soil only make sense if they’re encouraging indifference toward spying and a preference for more authoritarian government power. Creating a more docile populace through memes, the parallels to the language-propaganda exercised by the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s 1984 are stunning.

The idea of militarized memes has been around for some time, and it’s well known that these little thought cluster-bombs have far reaching influence on a given population. It’s a powerful form of mass mind control with a significant downside - once deployed the creator has little control over what influence is derived from the meme. Much academic study has gone into what makes for an influential meme, and how memes can be used to the advantage of both marketing and political circles.

The very thought of the CIA creating Pepe the Frog memes to “culture hack” America would be funny if the prospect weren’t so scary. And it’s that cultural influence that may prove to be a critical piece to these Vault 7 revelations.

Make America Complacent Again

Pew Research data shows that Americans today have a considerably high tolerance for government snooping into their private lives. Soon after the first round of Wikileaks were published, Pew found that almost half of Americans don’t care about the government spying on them.

“52% described themselves as “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about government surveillance of Americans’ data and electronic communications, compared with 46% who described themselves as “not very concerned” or “not at all concerned” about the surveillance.”

Today’s so-called Internet generation has come of age and growing into the roles of influencers and decision makers in America. It’s no surprise that Millennials are significantly more progressive than previous generations. Polls from both YouGov and the American National Election Studies indicate that the young adult population of today has an overall favorable view of government solutions to what it believes ails society - even where it means sacrificing basic freedoms guaranteed in the constitution. The belief in a government-run utopia is catching on.

Even more alarming is a 2015 Pew Research study that shows a shocking 40% of millennials are okay sacrificing First Amendment rights to free speech, if that speech might be deemed offensive to minorities. It’s social justice through the government’s monopoly on violence - it doesn’t get more progressive than this!

Are we witnessing a successful government “culture hacking” program?

Willingly ceding rights or checks and balances for governmental power is presently a bipartisan problem that exists on both sides of the left/right divide. The political left doesn’t mind giving up rights for progressive ends while the right tries to take the Executive Order a running leap closer to authoritarianism. The US Constitution was written knowing that government will naturally find a way to push its people to sacrifice their personal freedom. The privacy of a nation’s people is a strong indicator of a people’s liberty.

You may count yourself among the unconcerned about government spying because you’re doing nothing wrong. But consider that the information being collected on you is being parsed by algorithms seeking the patterns that speak to the threats of today, the it’s being stored - forever. This data on you can be used as evidence for the threats of tomorrow.

Today we justify government intrusion because they’re fighting a war on terror. Tomorrow we may justify sacrifices to freedom because they’re fighting bigotry. How long before we sacrifice more freedom because the government is fighting a righteous war on heretics and unbelievers?