Taking the chance to vent just a bit. These are the sort of things I have been telling people about but have been derided as paranoid and a conspiracy theorist. The Samsung TV was a great example of this, which I called would be more than just samsung sending voice data. Also, so many people have loved to respond to people talking about this with some variation of, "but you're not important, why would they bug you". It really makes me wonder how often those responses were sock puppets attempting to control and derail the narrative, but criticisms like that are so trite eand easily debated.
I have spent a lot of time since the Iraq war (USMC), trying to understand how we got entangled in such a fucking mess, and have continually come to the conclusion that the deep state, of which the CIA is a major part, has actively been working against what I consider the true interests of the United States.
While I agree we need an international intelligence collection unit, let's not forget that originally the CIA's mandate was just to almagamate intelligence from military intelligence units, not to go do shadow operations all over the globe. Truman even wrote an article about how that was not his intention after the JFK assassination, but the article only ran once and Dulles personally flew out to talk to him about a retraction. Ok, though, perhaps that ship has sailed, and ops are a permanent part of collection.
My issue then, is with the disparity between operational intention and what I consider true national interests. I understand a certain amount of realpolitik pragmatism is necessary in the function of nation states and diplomatic international affairs, but I think it has become realpolitik run amok with no anchor on core principles, creating blowback after blowback, to the point that such blowback no longer just seems like incompetence and seems like intentional malice.
Never forget where the CIA came from. It was formed as the OSS by Wall Street Bankers/Lawyers with help from the much older MI6! Those foundations have largely been maintained through their selection process (Yale skull and bones/wolf/scroll and key heavy) The main connection I have eeked out that I don't think most understand though is the relationship between the Wall Street group and The City of London/Vatican/Swiss Banking groups and their many associated secret society groups and orders of knighthood.
In the end, I have postulated that the corruption of the country has been top down, and deliberate. The CIA is a key node point in this corruption, and I question their loyalty to the constitution. Compartmentalization has been used and abused to the point that the mostly good worker bees doing the intel work don't understand the bigger picture plays at work here, and I think it is telling that the decryption passphrase was JFK talking about scattering them to a thousand winds.
There is plenty of evidence that The Company has been operating domestically, unconstitutionally, and against their mandate, for quite some time. I promise you these tools have been used domestically on American whistleblowers, dissidents, and general rabbelrousers considered enemies of the the company. This has been the danger I have been speaking about with the total surveillance state, because now between the company and the agency, all will take is a few turns of some keys and the totalitarian dystopia is fulling engaged, and if you think this was ever about national security I have a bridge to sell you in the pacific. Of course there will be those who claim releases like this are a detriment to national security, and what I claim is the fact that these tools have been used domestically for the purposes of the deep state is the real threat to national security. The agency and the company should be working to help us secure our systems, not NSL gagging tech companies to insert backdoors or give the source so they can do their own 0days, so don't fall for the inevitable cries of but this hurts us and is legitimate. I mean there is evidence they were even corrupting NIST committees! This kind of bullshit is not about national security. I can't believe how easily people accept unconstitutional moves as long as some offical or other claims national security (usually with no evidence). This is about the deep state maintaining power.
For us, the hackers and geeks of the world, they left us alone for a bit, after they lost the 90's cryptowars. It's back on though. This is the danger of tivoization, of proprietary licenses, of closed source code (including BSD licenses that allow such actions). We need to open source everything, start encrypting everything, and making it easier for the layman to use the tools.
Stop using windows and osx, even for gaming. Stop installing windows at your business. Start using HIDS like OSSEC. Start checking your logs. Start checking your checksums. Start hardening your systems and your kernel (grsec). Stop using stock android, and don't use IOS. Desoder microphones on systems. Build faraday cages. Get an SDR and do bug sweeps.
When the surveillance engine is turned on, FOSS hackers will be the only ones free.