There are quite a few rumors about what is being kept from us and what is not. Most of the time the more important ones seem to involve the government. Let me give you an example, it has been said when the court makes a decision in a case which the government is interested in, the law on the decision will be twisted in such a way as to benefit the government’s purposes. I think this is hardly a secret, because everybody who cites the law always tries to turn it around to their benefit. One thing which was said to have been released by Edward Snowden really bothers people, because it states the government has what is known as back doors in all services for email and text messages and government agents are able to read everything which we are reading and writing to others. New technology seems to have created new problems and if this new technology is being used by people to communicate with each other, government agents reading this are violating our privacy if they don’t have a warrant. There seems to be a project by the government which is a massive surveillance program on us. The name of the program is XKeyscore and it is said the CIA has admitted its existence.

To cover themselves government agencies can go before a secret court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court also known as the FISA court. The procedure is completely one sided and this court makes its decisions based upon what they are told by government agencies without any opposition. The court can allow for the increase in surveillance in any case. This is the same court which forced Verizon to hand over all its records in secret. We found out about this from Edward Snowden. This certainly was never the way our forefathers envisioned the way this country would operate. They would have been abhorred by the secret measures which are becoming a lot more common with the government. Everyone knows there are times when secrets have to be kept, but when they get routine there is a big problem. It is not a government right to know everything about you and yet as more and more secrets are being revealed, government agents begin to feel it is a right.

Even though we have this secret court, the court itself issued a decision in 2011 which stated some of the national security agencies surveillance programs were unconstitutional and the court went on to say the decision should be made public. This was stated on the site Counterpunch. It is being said some security agencies are able to keep public officials in line. The question is how do they do this? One can only imagine the power they have over people. Some people are saying due to the change in the administration government agencies are very worried some of their power will be weakened. There are so many stories about some of them which make us very uncomfortable, it is hard to feel confident in what they are doing. It is also hard to know how many spy agencies we really have. When I was checking up on this one day I read we had one hundred and seventeen. The author said many of them were not known to the general public. I have no way of knowing if this figure is accurate or not, but when we look at a listing there is usually about 17 to 24 listed.

Technology while being a great help to many of us also has its dark side, as does most everything. In this case technology is probably responsible for the loss of privacy more than anything else. It has become almost impossible to have a private life unless one decides to do away with all the technology in their home and even then it is still possible to know what is going on there. New technology enables agencies to merely aim a device at a home and listen to what is being said by the captured vibrations in the window glass. Other devices allow for looking through walls. This doesn’t even take into consideration how easy it is to plant an electronic bug in someone’s house or to trace where they have been or are going by using what is known as smart dust. Smart dust is composed of tiny tracking units which are far smaller than the head of a pin. Each piece is slightly bigger than the point and you would hardly even notice the stuff as it sticks to your shoes and clothing. It sends out a signal which can easily be picked up and tracked. It has been used overseas to track people and may even have been used to track famous terrorists, before targeting them. Some people are now saying smart dust is being improved and has a lot more capabilities than just tracking capabilities. Smart dust has become so smart scientists want to use it to monitor our health, our structures and many other things.

We have always had agencies in this country to check on people and they are needed, but the type of surveillance which we are using today is something relatively new. I am not talking about the devices themselves, but how they are being used. It would’ve been unthinkable in the past to just spy on people for no reason. This also leads to other areas which are very distasteful and those areas include blackmail. If one of our agencies decides they want to get a certain bill through Congress and know about some indiscretions of people on a committee, would they ever decide to threaten a congressman or senator with the release of embarrassing data if he doesn’t play along? I would hope not, but I am a realist and it might be just too much to resist for an agency to get what they wanted.

So far I’ve only talked about government agencies, but technology has made it possible for corporations and large businesses to mimic what the government is doing in this area. Corporate espionage has always been a problem and today it is even a much bigger problem. With all the devices and gadgets available for spying and the armies of computer hackers available, is any business safe? Will we ever be able to even get back a modicum of our privacy? While it doesn’t look like we can, there could be some changes in laws which might protect us from overzealous data gatherers. We have to hope some in government will feel the same way we do and push to enact these laws.