View source for Security: High Concepts

= We're All Doomed (monitored and tracked) =
== Preface ==
On June 6th, 2013, Edward Snowden told us what many of us had known for well over a decade: That the NSA intercepts and collects ALL electronic communications it can get its' hands on. It also puts a fair amount of energy into intercepting and collecting non-electronic communications as well.

It's called "Total Information Awareness"

It's difficult to have a good defense against this if you're one of the vanishing number of people who care about their personal privacy.

Why care? If Edward Snowden had access to all that information, and outed it, it just goes to prove that many other scenarios are inevitable, as we are human beings and the NSA is made up of human beings. The danger of amassing so much information is that it can be abused. And it is radioactive - that is to say it has a half life longer than we can know at this point. Perhaps infinite. That is to say, there is no expiration date for the data that is being collected.

Even more ominous possibilities lurk in the distant future. If goulish power structures decide they want to farm our mana, say, what better way to realize "The Matrix" portrayed in movies? The NSA's enormous data set would be instrumental in creating a virtual reality in which the entire population can be imprisoned, and then farmed. Being frozen into the reality of the early 2000's would be a great way to keep a captive population in the thrall of fear and uncertainty.

This is a stub article where I will put down ideas and concepts that revolve around the totalitarian state of our communications today, as imposed by the NSA and the rest of the "intelligence community" (is that an oxymoron?).

== Location Tracking ==
We humans often do things because we can, and for no other reason. Often without thinking through the consequences. Once some of us learned that IP addresses could be vaguely related to physical location, the boom in geolocation began. For some, it was just another thing to share on Facebook or whatever. For the "intelligence community" the possibility of tracking each person at all times became a holy grail.

Smartphones are the ultimate instrumentality of tracking every individual. Unlike chips embedded in your body, nearly everyone _wants_ a smartphone and will voluntarily carry it everywhere. Smartphones contain cellular radios and GPS receivers, and thus allow pinpointing the individual who carries it. That same individual authenticates himself continuously, providing a high degree of accuracy in all respects, including individual liability.

== Location Tracking Avoidance ==
Continuous tracking by unauthorized third parties (e.g. The NSA; Government; Business; Criminal) is difficult to stop at this point in time.

=== One-Way Notification Devices ===
One-way pagers can be used to prevent fine-grained tracking. Both the mechanism and content of your communications can and will still be used to track you, if not with the same degree of accuracy. An SMS gateway can be implemented using various commercial services to get your SMS messages and other alerts directed to a one-way pager.

=== Satellite Phones ===
Satellite phones that do not include GPS provide some relief from the relentless tracking of the cellular networks. Costs of service are dropping although they are still high. Tracking resolution can potentially be reduced to +/- 2,000 miles this way. Due to soft factors, greater resolution will almost always be attained by a determined tracker.

== Hunters vs. Hunted ==
Mankind evolved over millions of years as a hunter. It is only in the past couple of thousand years that our status has changed to prey (the hunted). We are the only species that hunts itself. Perhaps not technically true, but it drives the point home.