Yesterday’s release of highly sensitive documents by #Wikileaks has created even more difficulties for the embattled #Donald Trump White House. The leak has placed closer attention on the possible role of the Russian government on the November 8th presidential election, but it has also highlighted the domination of modern technology in our everyday lives, beginning with the Oval Office.
Covert activities
Nobody doubts the role of covert activities in international politics of not only the United States, but of every country, without exception. The various intelligence communities have the task of protecting their respective countries from those that are perceived as enemies, both domestically and externally.
For this reason the information released yesterday was a surprise only for the naive who believe that spying should not occur.
Where the release did surprise was the sophistication and variety of resources available for the use of mundane everyday articles as a means monitoring enemies within the ostensible security of their offices and homes.
Phones, TVs and...
As reported by the Guardian and other mainstream newspapers, the CIA has developed systems that allow its agents to be able to use smart phones, personal computers, tablets and even television sets that are able to hear and pass on conversations within range even while apparently turned off.
According to the leaked documents these systems were developed with the collaboration of the British intelligence services and also show the close contact that the America has with its most important allies.
The collaboration was not only against the other enemy superpowers, but also in the fight against terrorisms as groups such as ISIS that have showed themselves adept at using modern technology to make up for the huge difference in purely military potential with their targets in the major industrialized countries which they consider enemies of their interpretation of Islam.
Dependency
But the major implied revelation of the leaks is the simple yet profound fact that industrialized countries have taken the modern technology so much into heart that it has taken a dominant role in our daily lives and are now a weak point.
It would be enough to sit on major public transport in any city to see how many fellow travellers are concentrated on their devices to pass the time in the boredom of the trip.
We can to go to restaurants and coffee shops to see the attention of the customers on the messages, news, or even television programmes on their Smart Phones or tablets which have now often replaced the one time animated conversations amongst friends. And it is even normal now to see people in important conferences or meetings checking their messages or news regularly rather that paying attention to the latest presentation or speaker.
This also exposes the other consequence of yesterday’s development. The material available to the CIA will become available for industrial espionage, if it has not already happened, which is another source of highly complicated non military espionage. The large corporations are in constant competition against their major rivals for grabbing larger shares of the markets and almost any tactic is legitimate to achieve their ends.
Yesterday’s revelations will mean that these corporations will spend even more money in their own counter espionage activities and these will be passed on to the customers as part of the profit margin.
So those who think that yesterday’s leak only involves the highest echelons of the world’s intelligence communities are mistaken, the consequences of the revelations will be with us even in our daily lives and we will probably have to get used to the fact that they will never go away.
