On what British intelligence can do: sure, listen to your phone calls, read your emails, etc. But how about reshape the web you think you see?
From an IEEE Spectrum report:
Some of the most intriguing spy tools show the UK spy agency’s desire to control and manipulate both online and cellphone communication, including emails and popular social media networks such as Facebook. In the latter case, a tool named “Clean Sweep” can “masquerade Facebook wall posts for individuals or entire countries.” Another tool called “Burlesque” can send spoofed (faked) SMS text messages. And “Scrapheap Challenge” can send fake emails that appear to originate from a target Blackberry device.
Other tools can inflate page views, or drive you to particular YouTube videos, or change the outcome of online polls, or….
Sure, that makes sense, you go to the movies (uh, watch movies on Netflix), you know how it works. Don’t you? Aside from the privacy and policy-making questions for today, makes me wonder how we will consider all this a few decades from now: which parts will we find most interesting, most appalling, most bizarre, most ho-hum-in-retrospect….
Govt396.com 