You are Being Tracked - Real Time

Feds Tracking Americans' Credit Cards without Warrants   When a government is so entirely adamant on surveillance and tracking of its own citizens, what does that mean? There is something very disturbing about the notion of technological advancements that now easily enable people-tracking to an extraordinary degree. While one may ask, "What do you have to worry about – so long as you're doing nothing wrong", the fact remains that most of us are being watched and tracked throughout our day-to-day lives, while the vast majority of us are doing nothing wrong. We have become numbers within complicated computer algorithms that are in real-time, scanning for triggers and thresholds which could suddenly pop your ID into a category that you may not expect. Here are just a few of the ways that you are likely being tracked. Credit cards, ATM cards, grocery store discount and loyalty programs, department store cards, bank transactions, cell phone tracking, RFID chips, GPS enabled vehicle tracking, E-mail, your current ISP location, travel – tickets, rental car, surveillance cameras, magazine subscriptions, memberships, affiliations, online habits, products you purchase, who you communicate with, on and on the list goes. No doubt there is a government NOC (Network Operations Center), maybe named the CWC (Citizen Watch Center), with a cavernous room filled with rows of computer monitoring stations and walls filled with projected images, while agents watch maps, dots, and lines of various colors and intensities, any of which can be zoomed in for a closer personal look and last known activity, location, and history – of you. This type of thing used to be fiction, only to be read in a novel or watched in a Hollywood movie. I'll betcha that it exists today, somewhere. The point being, as our liberties continue to rapidly erode around us in our former democracy, we should be very conscious about the fact that nearly everything we do and everywhere we go is being recorded in a digital database somewhere, and is being analyzed by our own governments computer systems based on their own definitions of good and bad and in-between,not your definition. Surely this is not going on everywhere, yet, but here in the US, no doubt that it is. ____________________________________________________ A recent story on wired.com sheds some light on the subject of Americans being tracked. Feds Warrantlessly Tracking Americans Credit Cards in Real Time By Ryan Singel   December 2, 2010  |   5:06 pm  |   Categories: Surveillance Federal law enforcement agencies have been tracking Americans in real-time using credit cards, loyalty cards and travel reservations without getting a court order, a new document released under a government sunshine request shows. The document, obtained by security researcher Christopher Soghoian, explains how so-called "Hotwatch" orders allow for real-time tracking of individuals in a criminal investigation via credit card companies, rental car agencies, calling cards, and even grocery store loyalty programs. The revelation sheds a little more light on the Justice Department's increasing power and willingness to surveil Americans with little to no judicial or Congressional oversight. For credit cards, agents can get real-time information on a person's purchases by writing their own subpoena, followed up by a order from a judge that the surveillance not be disclosed. Agents can also go the traditional route — going to a judge, proving probable cause and getting a search warrant — which means the target will eventually be notified they were spied on. The document suggests that the normal practice is to ask for all historical records on an account or individual from a credit card company, since getting stored records is generally legally easy. Then the agent sends a request for "Any and all records and information relating directly or indirectly to any and all ongoing and future transactions or events relating to any and all of the following person(s), entitities, account numbers, addresses and other matters…" That gets them a live feed of transaction data. DOJ powerpoint presentation on Hotwatch surveillance orders of credit card transactions It's not clear what standards an agent would have to follow to get a "Hotwatch" order. The Justice Department told Soghoian the document is the only one it could find relating to "hotwatches" — which means there is either no policy or the department is witholding relevant documents. The Justice Department did not return a call for comment. Every year, the Justice Department does have to report to Congress the numbers of criminal and national security wiretaps undertaken, as well as the number of National Security Letters issued. Tens of thousands of NSLs are issued yearly — most with gag orders that forbid ISPs or librarians from ever saying they have ever been served with such a subpoena. But the Justice Department does not report or make public the number of times it got real time or historic cell phone location information, nor how often it is using these so-called "hotwatch" orders. Photo courtesy of TheTruthAbout [Translate] http://modernsurvivalblog.com  Permalink   Grow your own vegetables  -  patio, indoors, yard   Survival/Victory Garden: http://www.food4wealth.com/?hop=cielos   Please buy this Easy Program from Roy and Dee