Provocative News

Over the years I have come across a few news stories that shed light on a subject in a way that rocked me. I chronicle them here so others can follow my path. My approach is to provide a little context and then link to the original source.

Tracking You via "Anonymous" Cellphone Data - 2019

(Article Link) Cellphone location data from cell towers (the kind of data you cannot block) is captured, "anonymized", and sold. The New York Times obtained and analyzed data on 12 million phones and what they found is astounding. While your data is paired with a different anonymous identifier each day, the NYT found that this really does nothing to protect your identity.

Greek Cellphone is Hacked by State Actor - 2007

(Article Link) A cellphone operator in Athens found that their central system was allowing someone to listen in to politician's phone calls. This is a great bit of reporting overall. The details of how this was found read like a novel. At first I wondered why the CIO decided to reinstall factory fresh software, thus destroying evidence that might lead to who did this. Then I thought, "he doesn't want to know"; I would have done the same.

Some in Peristent Vegetative State Are Listening

(Article Link - see page 583) I was astounded to find that a few people in a persistent vegetative state were actually able to respond to verbal cues. What?!? These are people who have no active brain function, yet ... yet what?

NSA Found Saving ALL Internet traffic - 2006

(Article Link) ATT hosted a secret room in San Francisco that copied all internet traffic for the NSA to archive. The linked Wikipedia article is very good.

Massive Bay Area Internet Outage - 2009

(Article Link) The internet was down for 3-days after three main cables were cut. No one was ever charged in this crime, despite a $250,000 reward. Who did it and why? Suspicions were cast on "recently laid off workers." A conspiracy minded person might think this was an excellent opportunity for the NSA to splice in some taps since they lost access to internet traffic after Room 641A was exposed. Is it odd that other areas had massive fiber cuts too?