Cloud Storage – CIA Confirms It Is Watching [OPINION]

I've been called a "right-wing nut" before so I guess I had a "right-wing nut conspiracy" going when I thought this "cloud" computer storage thing was too all-encompassing.  Now it seems I've gone from "right-wing conspiracy nut" to just plain right!

On Wednesday Ira Hunt, the Central intelligence Agency's Chief Technology Officer admitted that the CIA tries to,

Collect everything we can and hang onto it forever.

That sent a chill up my spine like nothing else.  Just with opinion pieces I have published I should be concerned that the CIA, FBI or some government agency will come knocking on my door someday.

When I first heard about "cloud storage" I thought to myself in that "right wing conspiracy" way that this could be a goldmine of information for the government or anyone else that could get access to the "cloud".  Going back just a few years you could actually type onto paper a document and file it in a metal device known as a filing cabinet and when the government wanted something from you they had to obtain a search warrant before knocking on your door.  Now thanks to people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates we can type things and file them electronically in our homes or in that nebulous repository called "the cloud".  As George Carlin might say,

The Cloud...sounds kinda like soft benevolent toilet paper.

I wonder what George Carlin really would have to say about "the cloud"?

The "sheeple" that many people are these days wanting to be cool and be part of the in-crowd when this "cloud storage" was first offered started uploading music,contact lists and entire documents for safe, downloadable from anywhere storage.  Just like the drug dealers of the hippie era saying,

First one's free.  You'll see God.

The cloud offered minimal amounts of storage but you could acquire more once you saw how easy it was to use and how "safe" it was.  Right!

The following is how the CIA catches spies but think about how it might be used against average Americans like you and I.  The CIA's Tech officer Ira Hunt said,

The value of any piece of information is only known when you can connect it with something else that arrives at a future point in time...Since you can’t connect dots you don’t have, it drives us into a mode of, we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever.

Think about that.  They collect dots and can connect them later.  With today's technology alone I'm sure they can take a document I wrote last week and piece it together with one I write today, like this one, and turn it into an incriminating document.

Another scary thought about this collection of "dots" as Hunt calls it, is do you really think the government will have to get a warrant to search your files?  If they're "collecting" dots that means they already have access to everybody's files that are in "the cloud"!  The Huffington Post quotes Hunt as saying it is,

Really very nearly within our grasp to be able to compute on all human generated information.

This, he explained, would allow the CIA to analyze digital breadcrumbs people don’t even realize they are leaving behind.

When asked about privacy rights Hunt said technology is moving faster than the world can keep up,

You should be asking the question, what are your rights and who owns your data?

I guess it boils down to this.  My right wing conspiracy theory is in fact a fact.  Watch what you type and if is incendiary in anyway keep it too yourself or save it on a flash drive in your ammo can.