It is not just our browsing habits that are collected, it’s everything. Online information is just one piece of a very complex process and puzzle.
That puzzle includes your phone and cell phone use ( text messages, calls, SMS messages, the GPS in your phone ( giving a literal biography of everywhere you go, how long you stay, and what you do ), your banking records, your credit card and debit card records.
It includes your employment history, your public records ( birth certificates, marriage licenses, drivers licenses, criminal history, traffic stop history, car registrations, mortgage records, etc ), what you check out from your local library, what you watch on cable or netflix, who you are related to, who you socialize with..
It’s all there and it is all collated and cross referenced. Everything you do leaves a footprint somewhere… and now not only does the technology exist to exploit that fact – the political atmosphere to abuse that power also exists.
Like it or not – just about everything that you do is currently
being used to to profile, categorize, qualify, label, diagnose, and identify you. Some applications of this are relatively harmless. These sorts of things tell Google what hits to show on your searches, and in what order. They also tell advertisers what ads you’d rather see or are more succeptible to. But the potentials here are nearly limitless and the potential for abuses are flatly more frightening than I think any of us can get our minds around.
Active surveillance programs
Prism is a clandestine mass electronic surveillance data mining program operated by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007.
Tempora as exposed by The Guardian newspaper, is a clandestine security electronic surveillance program trialled in 2008, established in 2011 and operated by the British Government Communications Headquarters .
XKeyscore is a formerly secret computer system used by the United States National Security Agency for searching and analyzing Internet data about foreign nationals across the world.
Boundless Informant is a big data analysis and data visualization system used by the United States National Security Agency (NSA) to give NSA managers summaries of NSA’s world wide data collection activities.
Dropmire is surveillance program crated by the National Security Agency aimed at surveillance of foreign embassies and diplomatic staff, including those of NATO allies.
Fairview is mass surveillance programme run by the National Security Agency, aimed at collecting phone, internet and e-mail data in bulk from the computers and mobile telephones of foreign countries’ citizens.
Echelon is a name used to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States).
Turbulence is a United States National Security Agency (NSA) information-technology project started circa 2005.
Stellar Wind is the code name of a Sensitive Compartmented Information security compartment for information collected under the President’s Surveillance Program (PSP).
Mainway is a database maintained by the United States’ National Security Agency (NSA) containing metadata for hundreds of billions of telephone calls made through the four largest telephone carriers in the United States: AT&T, SBC, BellSouth (all three now called AT&T), and Verizon.
Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security.