The earth woke up Monday morning to yet more unsettling news about how the NSA is spying on people . This time , though , the repercussions are deadly .
It turns out the NSAis helping the war machine carry out lethal pilotless aircraft strikesusing electronic surveillance , namely from unreliable cell telephone data .
https://gizmodo.com/report-nsa-phone-data-guides-drone-strikes-which-kill-1519744305
More specifically , the NSA uses geolocation data to traverse the SIM card or cell telephone set of potential quarry and it then uses that data to vote out them . A former drone operator for Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC)told The Interceptthat the process is inherently blemished because top Taliban leader have figured out the United States is using geolocation datum from cellular telephone phones and regularly swop SIM poster or tack phones . This means that the drone work stoppage do n’t necessarily make their intended quarry but rather friends , family fellow member , or even unsuspicious stranger who pull off to get ahold of the tracked phone . The former drone operator said that innocent people had “ absolutely ” been kill as a result of this lapse .
Can American spies really zero in on suspected terrorists thanks to a fingernail - sized piece of plastic ? And is this a good thought ?
Now , track down a SIM card using internet state information is not as loose as using GPS , but it can be done . The carrier — or whoever is doing the tracking — simply find out which tower the SIM board last transmit with , and thustriangulate the specific locationfrom there . In late years , this eccentric of trailing has become very precise and very approachable . There are even several peregrine apps thatenable you to track phonesusing SIM card information . Once it know the phone ’s co-ordinate the militarycan send a droneor a convoy or whatever you want to intercept it .
Uh Oh , Drone Operators Ca n’t Tell a Weapon From a digger
It ’s toilsome to know whether the NSA chase terrorist suspects this way , but the agency ’s also developed more sophisticated means . While the traditional method vocalize moderately simple , document leaked by Edward Snowdenprove that the NSA has developed special softwarethat they can install remotely to track SIM card . One is called MONKEYCALENDAR . This software implant snatches up the localization data from a targeted SIM card and relays it back to whoever ’s doing the snooping in the manikin of a text subject matter . MONKEYCALENDAR can also make commands “ that allow the SIM card to publish command and make requests to the French telephone . ”
Again , we do n’t have intercourse exactly how the NSA ’s been tracking the SIM visiting card as detail in the late Intercept account . There ’s grounds that the agency can even chase after cellular phone phone that have been turn off , long thought to be a way to dodge spies . The Washington Postreported last year that the NSA had that capability , but details of how it works and how it ’s used remain unreadable .
So the NSA can not only track down your phone , it can also say your phone to do thing . Does this technology make the SIM - tracking strategy any better in terms of accuracy ? dead not . Again , all a prey has to do is keep switch SIM cards and telephone , and he can invalidate being tracked . However , base plainly on how the technology works at present , cell phones will always be traceable , so suspected terrorists are n’t operating without risk even if they do alter phones often .
If you ’re stateside , you ’re in luck . The NSA ca n’t use this geolocation engineering on Americans , because it ’s illegal which is basically why the agencyis only able to call for data on about 20 percentage of U.S. calls . But , hey , it ’s not like the agency does n’t havea whole catalog of other spy toolsit can apply to cut through folks down . If you really require to go off the storage-battery grid , judge switching to handwritten letter air by pigeons . That might actually make .
A peep Inside the NSA ’s Spy Gear Catalog
Image via Shutterstock / Getty
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