NSA Enhanced Surveillance, 5G, and The COVID-19 Care Act… What Just Quietly Happened?

by Jeremy Ferranti

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on April 2, 2020. 

Last week, I published an article regarding the Care Act and What It Means for You and the additional write-ins regarding enhanced surveillance. This morning I visited the NSA’s website and learned they’ve done some page updating. They just revised their U.S. Citizen Surveillance Policy to incorporate the adoption of the COVID-19 Care Act and the Secure 5G and Beyond Act Policies.

Ever wonder where the data for the COVID-19 dashboards come from? How about the social distancing data? The reports and data are being streamed Via the NSA Data Center known as “Bumblehive.”

Here’s a statement I copied and pasted, right off their page and what they have to say…

“In the spirit of openness and transparency, here is a partial list of current and planned future data collection targets:

• internet searches (ie; here’s a collection of searches by Federal Government workers)
• websites visited
• emails sent and received
• social media activity (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
• blogging activity including posts read, written, and commented on
• videos watched and/or uploaded online
• photos viewed and/or uploaded online
• mobile phone GPS-location data
• mobile phone apps downloaded
• phone call records
• text messages sent and received
• Skype video calls
• online purchases and auction transactions
• credit card/ debit card transactions
• financial information
• legal documents
• travel documents
• health records
• cable television shows watched and recorded
• commuter toll records
• electronic bus and subway passes / Smartpasses
• facial recognition data from surveillance cameras
• educational records
• arrest records
• driver license information
• DNA

The PRISM program is our #1 source of raw intelligence and consists of data extracted from the servers of nine major American internet companies. In the spirit of openness and transparency, we have embedded the Twitter feed from the NSA_PRISMbot which periodically posts random samples of PRISM collection data.”

Pretty bad, right?

…except that’s not the NSA’s site. It’s a parody/satire site. It even says so at the bottom of their page:

This is a parody of nsa.gov and has not been approved, endorsed, or authorized by the National Security Agency or by any other U.S. Government agency. Much of this content was derived from news media, privacy groups, and government websites. Links to these sites are posted on the left-sidebars of each page.

The point of all of this is simple: it’s easy to get fooled in an age of ubiquitous information and universal mistrust.  It’s worth it to take the time to dig a little deeper… or to at least read to the bottom of the page.  It’s easy to get fooled… we were.

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Jeremy is a U.S. Army Special Operations Veteran mentor specializing in Real Estate and Construction Development, Financial Literacy, and Small Business Enterprises.