The CIA is considering using microwaves and irons for espionage. Free Technical Library News

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CIA considers using microwaves and irons for spying

28.03.2012

CIA director David Petraeus for the first time publicly appreciated the exceptional usefulness of new "household" technologies for espionage.
More and more personal and household devices are connected to the Internet: from TVs to car navigation systems. Recently, the head of the largest intelligence agency in the world, David Petraeus, called new technologies that are widely distributed among ordinary citizens "transformational" and have a huge impact on the work of intelligence officers.

David Petraeus said the new online devices are a treasure trove of data for his department. If earlier spies had to engage in dangerous surveillance and try to put listening devices in all places where there is a person of interest to intelligence, today the situation has changed dramatically. With the advent of "smart homes", geo-referenced data (from photos on social networks, smartphones, navigators, etc.), the CIA can receive a lot of useful data in real time: from a person's location to secret filming through a cell phone or laptop camera.

In the future, intelligence capabilities in this area will grow even more, as remote control and monitoring systems, sensor networks, RFID chips, data servers built into refrigerators and even food processors, etc. are expected to be widespread. All this electronics has a large computing power and can perform the "side" tasks that scouts need. Petraeus pins great hopes on cloud services, supercomputers and quantum computers that will be able to process a huge amount of information that is distributed by a modern "advanced" user.

Petraeus stressed that consumer devices are "changing the way we think about privacy, personal information and secrecy." Thus, the CIA has many legal restrictions regarding spying on foreign and especially American citizens. But collecting data like geolocation, internet statistics, etc. is a "grey zone" where one can act freely. Hardware manufacturers collect a huge amount of data, and it is very easy for the government to track people through common devices like a phone or a PlayStation.

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