Feature Creep 2

BRT recently posted a blurb titled Feature Creep, whereby the NSA uses the network switch hack to not only scarf up our banking, social and email data but also to gather smartphone locations as needs dictate. Now it's leveraging Google's PREFID cookies to extend its reach into our buying and surfing habits to the nth degree as seen in a Washington Post article titled NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking.  

The National Security Agency is secretly piggybacking on the tools that enable Internet advertisers to track consumers, using "cookies" and location data to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.

The agency's internal presentation slides, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, show that when companies follow consumers on the Internet to better serve them advertising, the technique opens the door for similar tracking by the government. The slides also suggest that the agency is using these tracking techniques to help identify targets for offensive hacking operations.

For years, privacy advocates have raised concerns about the use of commercial tracking tools to identify and target consumers with advertisements. The online ad industry has said its practices are innocuous and benefit consumers by serving them ads that are more likely to be of interest to them.

These specific slides do not indicate how the NSA obtains Google PREF cookies or whether the company cooperates in these programs, but other documents reviewed by the Post indicate that cookie information is among the data NSA can obtain with a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order. If the NSA gets the data that way, the companies know and are legally compelled to assist.

Without privacy we have no freedom, without privacy, 1984 looms. 

Click on the Washington Post graphic to see how the NSA uses Google's cookies to do the deed.

Seymour Hersh is right, Edward Snowden's the real deal without question.