Amazon’s Alexa technology has been making headlines this week when users across the U.S. started inquiring about the device’s connections to the CIA and posting the results all over social media sites. Those suspicious of the existence of a covert surveillance state have been immensely validated over the past few months.
President Trump drew massive attention to such deep-state spying conspiracies by blasting former President Obama on Twitter for wiretapping Trump Towers prior to the 2016 election. In an almost perfectly timed fashion, WikiLeaks released thousands of detailed CIA-insider documents providing fuel to the fire with compelling proof that technology can be used by our intelligence agencies to spy on us. Despite the floodgates of the deep-state surveillance programs busting right open, no one is running to ditch their smartphones. What is important to take from these news stories, and what should we do about it?
Artificial intelligence involves creating machines and computer programs that are capable of solving advanced problems and are not confined by biologically observable methods. After WWII, independent researchers began focusing on designing such ‘smart’ machines, computers and robots to perform tasks, run algorithms and compute far beyond human capabilities. When AI technology is combined with automation technology, products like Alexa are born. This machine controls various processes, such as a light switch, and uses its AI to detect voice commands like “turn the light off.” Following this process, Alexa intelligently learns and follows through with requests by the user. While the technology is still developing, it has already advanced to the point where a smart pillow can detect you waking up and automatically begin brewing your morning coffee.
The existence of smart technology is dependent on algorithms that record and analyze millions of user-interactions to predict an individual’s behaviors, habits, desires and preferences. The personalized and predictive nature of these algorithms is what makes us consider machines intelligent.
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden has become famous for leaking classified NSA documents back in 2013. The leaks were indicative of nationwide surveillance programs that collected information like customer phone records, tapped phone conversations, text messages and essentially every bit of internet-based data on everyday Americans. The controversial act of exposing the NSA’s secrets has been called everything from terrorism to patriotism, and this battle for personal privacy just reached a new level. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has now exposed secrets rivaling those in Snowden’s bombshell.
WikiLeaks’ Year Zero files include over 8,000 documents obtained from the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia. The astonishing revelations contained in the documents have opened the public’s eyes to some of the CIA’s more sinister uses for widespread smart technology. According to the leaks, the CIA takes advantage of exploits in smart technology to weaponize the technology itself and the data within. The most talked about revelation is the covert use of the microphone in Apple iPhones, Google Androids, Microsoft computers and Samsung TVs.
If you are using encryption to protect your information, then you may still be in danger because the CIA bypasses encryption by collecting the information before encryption is even applied. The Year Zero release clearly demonstrates that the CIA has created its own version of the NSA with hardly any accountability. The intelligence agency reportedly lost control of their own hacking programs and failed to disclose such vulnerabilities to top companies or the consumers themselves.
The Orwellian nightmare depicting a massive big brother surveillance state is far from today’s reality. In fact, most experts would argue that modern-day society is far stronger and stranger than the fiction 1984. The incomprehensible power of the Internet has directly resulted in a more Huxley-like Brave New World, where individuals willingly give up their rights in favor of pleasure-seeking behaviors. It seems modern-day Americans are willing to give up certain privacy rights or data bits in exchange for greater convenience.
The truth is that modern-day Americans already know big brother is watching, and they are fine with that. The Constitution and United States court systems require that any evidence must be obtained legally with a warrant except when the suspected crime is terrorism. If you are suspected of a crime and a warrant is obtained, then all the information they can find can and will be used against you.
The consensus among younger Americans is that such spying tactics are only being used to protect us or to improve life-enhancing technologies. It is true that such techniques are beneficial in those areas. What happens if such technology gets in the wrong hands, as appears to be the case with the CIA's hacking programs? If you decide to fully unplug at times just to feel a little safer, well, there's no harm in that.
