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Sunday 19 October 2014 - 11:23

FBI preventing revolution in US through surveillance

Story Code : 415390
FBI preventing revolution in US through surveillance
Jack Lindblad, a member of the Green Party of Los Angeles County Council, made the remarks in an interview.
 
He was commenting on FBI Director James Comey’s recent statement in which he criticized efforts by tech firms to encrypt smart phones to make them inaccessible to police.
 
His criticism came after Apple and Google announced new software that would automatically encrypt the contents of cellphones, using codes that even the tech companies could not crack.  Comey claimed Apple and Google are putting their customers beyond the law.
 
“This is a golden age of surveillance where the FBI has enjoyed unbridled powers to disturb privacy rights and take away privacy rights,” Lindblad said.
 
He added that millions of people have experienced identity thefts across the world and in the US which appear “to be state-sanctioned because the encrypted keys that the FBI wants as a back door would be open to anyone, would be open to thieves to the same access to any mobile device.”
 
“And it is something that the FBI is playing back and forth with the Supreme Court here in the US, because last year the court ruling struck down the searching of phones by police or the FBI without warrants,” Lindblad said.
 
“And that was struck down. So the FBI and the police departments are left without their unbridled power to search mobile devices, likening it to clothes, or to papers, or to personal property,” he noted.
 
“It’s more obscure, but they are still making the analogy that nothing should be prevented from the purview of law enforcement [agencies],” the politician pointed out.
 
“It appears that the millions of people in the US again are being played by agencies in control and to keep everybody cowered, and to keep dissent down, and to keep revolution from happening,” Lindblad continued.
 
“You want to control the population and one way is to spread fear with the identity theft,” he stated.
 
Last year, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed many US government spying programs that collect electronic data.
 
Snowden began leaking classified intelligence documents in June 2013, revealing the extent of the NSA's spying activities.
 
He revealed that the spy agency has been collecting the phone records of millions of Americans and foreign nationals as well as political leaders around the world.
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