Homeland Security finds evidence of sophisticated surveillance NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE

Not nonsense. Think keylogger. As it is entered or spoken it is captured prior to encryption.

As an IT professional, I fully understand both concepts—and also understand the potential for a mosquito-sized drone to be hovering over my head 24/7 to gather such unencrypted information (along with a personally targeted mosquito drone for every one else, of course).

However, as for software, the code you mentioned would have to be incorporated into the chain somewhere. Now, since there is money—a lot of it—to be made by people who write software that doesn't include such malicious code, it's a virtual certainty that the malicious routines you mention could be completely eliminated from the entire software chain—hardware and upwards. You can't be arguing that every software developer that sells such software is necessarily compromised by CIA et al!

Furthermore, it's incorrect, IMHO, to presume that such software exists on every smartphone—by default—when you buy it.

So it's not reasonable—though not completely farfetched—to assume that every smartphone has automatically been "infected" with such malicious code.

For example, there's a secure communication app called "Signal". As far as I know, they're not owned—or acting in service of—the CIA, NSA, and their ilk.

So it's entirely possible to install a full chain of software on a smartphone which contains no "keyloggers" and no "audiologgers"—even if you have to author such software yourself, or alternately "splice out" any malicious routines which you might become aware of.

Let me put it another way: if virtually every smartphone is compromised with such malicious code, then you can rest assured that virtually every PC of every kind—Apple included—is similarly compromised.

We're just not at that point yet, IMHO—and if we really are at that point, then the federal government should have already been overthrown by the People, or they should at least start the effort forthwith.

Now, if you can provide any links which will convince me that we have reached the point where the ferragummit has achieved "Total Information Awareness", then I welcome any such information, and will be happy to review it and draw my own conclusions.

“Let me put it another way: if virtually everysmartphone is compromised with such malicious code, then you can rest assured that virtually every PC of every kind—Apple included—is similarly compromised.” Exactly. I will try to find some links for you if I get the chance.

Next, ponder about this. if you say “hey siri” and it answers. Is it not listening? And if you are typing a text, does it not prompt you for auto correct on words as you type?

I think it might be all much simpler, in this case, just collecting so called meta data would be valuable.

Note that the component that is “pinging” the phones does not have to be at the location collecting the data. Preferrably, you would have multiple antenna’s collecting data (omnidirectional, directional, fixed, mobile and handheld) which would all be undetectable as they are not emitting any signals -only collecting signal data.

So, how might this work?

An antennas acting as a cell site pings all the phones within receiving distance and the cell phones respond with an ID and maybe a GPS coordinate. In reality, it really doesn’t matter if they respond with the GPS coordinate, here’s why... There are a series of undetectable receiving antenna’s. Some are omnidirectional (all around) with varying ranges, some are fixed directional (pointed at the White House and down key thoroughfares) and some may be vehicle mounted or even handheld -as needed. So, the pinging antenna goes off and all the receiving antennas receive data identifying what phones are within their range. Ping the system often enough and I can figure out that 63 new phones entered the wider range antennas, one minute later 11 of the 63 were on Pennsylvania Avenue and three minutes later four of the 11 phones were identified as being in a blacked out SUV entering the White House.

Do that over a period of months and you’ll identify who attended what meeting, who attends what meetings regularly, who attended a certain meeting that diesn’t normally attend and who seemly appeared out of the blue for a reason that may then be surmised.

If the FBI wanted to know whom Trump was meeting with and who else was there at the same time, this is exactly how they would do it.

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