108
6 A Planetary-Scale Threat
You are probably familiar with some of the revelations of Edward Snowden related
to the NSA, GCHQ, and Five Eyes Alliance. These cover everything from mass
surveillance to psychological operations, state-based cybermobbing, hacker armies,
and digital weapons.
Most people, however, are not aware of the activities of the CIA, which might be
even more dangerous to human rights. In particular, their spying activities can be
combined with real-life operations on people worldwide. Some of these activities
have been revealed by WikiLeaks under the name “Vault 7”.
8 The leaks show that
the CIA is hacking basically all electronic devices, including smart TVs, modern
cars, and the Internet of Things. Recently, we have also learned that, in the decades
before, the CIA has been spying on more than 100 countries by means of corrupted
encryption devices.
9
6.3 Digital Crystal Ball
With so much data at hand, one can make all sorts of science-fiction dreams come
true. One of them is the idea to create a “digital crystal ball”.
10 Just suppose one could
access measurement sensors, perhaps also microphones and cameras of smartphones
and other devices in real-time, and put all this information together.
For a digital crystal ball to work, one would not have to access all sensors globally
at the same time. It would be enough to access enough devices around the place(s)
one is currently interested in. Then, one could follow the events in real time. Using
also behavioral data and predictive analytics would even allow one to look a bit into
the future, in particularly, if personal agenda data would be accessed as well. I do
not need to stress that the above would be very privacy-invasive, but the reader can
certainly imagine that a secret service or the military would like to have such a tool,
nevertheless.
It is highly likely that such a digital Crystal Ball already exists. Private companies
have worked on this as well. This includes, for example, the company “Recorded
Future”, which Google has apparently established together with the CIA,
11 and the
company “Palantir”, which seems to work or have worked with Facebook data
(among others).
12 Such tools do also play an important role in “predictive policing”
(discussed later).
8 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7, https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/, https://wikileaks.org/
vault7/.
9 See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51487856, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/
2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report.
10 Can the Military Make A Prediction Machine?, Defense One (April 8, 2015) https://www.defens
eone.com/technology/2015/04/can-military-make-prediction-machine/109561/.
11 Exclusive: Google, CIA invest in ‘Future” of Web Monitoring, Wired (July 28, 2010) https://
www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/.
12 Palantir knows everything about you, Bloomberg (April 18, 2020) https://www.bloomberg.com/
features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/.
6 A Planetary-Scale Threat
You are probably familiar with some of the revelations of Edward Snowden related
to the NSA, GCHQ, and Five Eyes Alliance. These cover everything from mass
surveillance to psychological operations, state-based cybermobbing, hacker armies,
and digital weapons.
Most people, however, are not aware of the activities of the CIA, which might be
even more dangerous to human rights. In particular, their spying activities can be
combined with real-life operations on people worldwide. Some of these activities
have been revealed by WikiLeaks under the name “Vault 7”.
8 The leaks show that
the CIA is hacking basically all electronic devices, including smart TVs, modern
cars, and the Internet of Things. Recently, we have also learned that, in the decades
before, the CIA has been spying on more than 100 countries by means of corrupted
encryption devices.
9
6.3 Digital Crystal Ball
With so much data at hand, one can make all sorts of science-fiction dreams come
true. One of them is the idea to create a “digital crystal ball”.
10 Just suppose one could
access measurement sensors, perhaps also microphones and cameras of smartphones
and other devices in real-time, and put all this information together.
For a digital crystal ball to work, one would not have to access all sensors globally
at the same time. It would be enough to access enough devices around the place(s)
one is currently interested in. Then, one could follow the events in real time. Using
also behavioral data and predictive analytics would even allow one to look a bit into
the future, in particularly, if personal agenda data would be accessed as well. I do
not need to stress that the above would be very privacy-invasive, but the reader can
certainly imagine that a secret service or the military would like to have such a tool,
nevertheless.
It is highly likely that such a digital Crystal Ball already exists. Private companies
have worked on this as well. This includes, for example, the company “Recorded
Future”, which Google has apparently established together with the CIA,
11 and the
company “Palantir”, which seems to work or have worked with Facebook data
(among others).
12 Such tools do also play an important role in “predictive policing”
(discussed later).
8 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7, https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/, https://wikileaks.org/
vault7/.
9 See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51487856, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/
2020/feb/11/crypto-ag-cia-bnd-germany-intelligence-report.
10 Can the Military Make A Prediction Machine?, Defense One (April 8, 2015) https://www.defens
eone.com/technology/2015/04/can-military-make-prediction-machine/109561/.
11 Exclusive: Google, CIA invest in ‘Future” of Web Monitoring, Wired (July 28, 2010) https://
www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/.
12 Palantir knows everything about you, Bloomberg (April 18, 2020) https://www.bloomberg.com/
features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/.