One of the most shocking things about 21st century America that historians are going to look back on with confusion is how unaware we all were to how much we were being surveilled by the government. If you own a smartphone, the government most likely has full-color photographs of you on the toilet. That’s no exaggeration.
A lot of your gadgets are spying on you at all times. A woman was recently shocked to find pictures of herself on the toilet that were posted to Facebook, after her little robot Roomba vacuum cleaner had taken the pictures of her and remotely uploaded them to the cloud.
And your cellphone is even worse. As Chris Pine’s character said in “The Terminal List” show (highly recommended), “A cell phone is a tracking device that happens to make phone calls.”
The George W. Bush administration set up the mechanisms for this surveillance state with the Patriot Act dating back to 2001. Obama then weaponized that mechanism by having the NSA set up the largest server farm in the entire world in a remote spot in Utah.
All of your data, including the full contents of every text message, email and phone call that you make, is stored on those servers. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Wired Magazine and the New York Times have reported on it.
Here’s Jesse Kelly talking about the fact that Americans now have absolutely no privacy left, because the Deep State is always watching…
Great article.