Wikileaks has just published secret CIA intelligence from 2013 to 2016 which it calls “the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.” The documents contain diverse materials on hacking which appear to implicate the spy agency in learning to hack into any gadget anywhere.

An expert told the New York Time the materials are genuine. They are part of an even more massive group of CIA documents that have been made available to WikiLeaks.

Virtually any device is open to scrutiny

WikiLeaks promises more installments. Today's arrival consists of 7,818 web pages and 943 attachments.

It would appear that the CIA and other US spy agencies can defeat encryption on virtually all of the devices we use to for communication. Among them are Android, Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp. This includes the capacity to recover messages before encryption kicks in.

This may not surprise those familiar with allegations that no one is safe from government snooping. The WikiLeaks revelations will push people on all sides to demand more clarity on how to be safe from unwarranted scrutiny.

One more problem in a divided nation

Today's revelation drops into a toxic political environment where both sides will doubtless use the leak as an occasion to speculate whatever serves their interests.

Trump will no doubt accuse the Obama administration of great incursions on citizens of the US. Forces opposed to Trump may concentrate on whether WikiLeaks has timed this leak to divert attention from an investigation of the President's ties with Russia.

According to the New York Times, some of the CIA programs revealed are quite exotic including one code-named Weeping Angel whose target is Samsung TVs.

TVs have the capacity to listen to our casual conversations. It is not a good day to speculate on the future of privacy.

Today;s arrival is in a class with the revelations of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. The appropriate questions may be two in number:

1, Who gets to supervise the activities of our far-flung spy apparatus?

2. Are we nearing a point when no information can be hidden from anybody.?
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