Fact-Up Friday:You've Been Hacked - No Joke

Your computer/phone/tablet has been hacked.  All of the data on it is available to the hackers, they can listen to your calls, read your texts, emails, see your web browser history, take control of your camera/microphone... This is not a "what if" scenario - this actually applies to YOU.

So, I guess you want to know who the hackers are... Well if you're in the US they're called the NSA and if you're in the UK they're called GCHQ.  Since I'm British we'll mostly be concentrating on the hackers who call themselves GCHQ and their techniques of privacy invasion, but since we have the UKUSA agreement and ECHELON we will also look at some of the NSA tools GCHQ use.

GCHQ "Doughnut" Cheltenham

Tempora is a system they were using in 2011 - they can probably store 3 weeks now. I think the "Mastering The Internet" bit of the program is pretty scary - "As of 2013, the system is capable of copying signals from up to 200 fibre-optic cables at all physical points of entry into Great Britain."

Take a look at XKeyscore and Carnivore for examples of what they *could* do YEARS ago... Then look at MYSTIC and Bullrun... And don't think your files with Google are safe - they have better access to your Google Drive/Photos/Phone records than you do.

Everything you do online is monitored, recorded, watched and most definitely not private in any way shape or form.

Next time we'll look at GNU Privacy Guard - a PGP suite for linux.