While most surveillance software installed on computers is implanted through networks, the NSA has now developed secret technology that permits surveillance and can alter data in computers not connected to the internet. The technology relies on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into computers. These radio waves can be relayed by small briefcase size devices up to eight miles away from the target.
In most cases, the hardware and software is inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user. The NSA claims that the program, known as Quantum, mostly targets foreign industrial and military entities, ranging from China to Mexico, the European Union to Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan.
“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cyber security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the US a window it’s never had before.”
While there is no evidence that the NSA has used this technology on its own citizens, many are wary, as the NSA has not been truthful in the past. The various elements of the program have been leaked by Edward Snowden and may undermine confidence in U.S. made information products such as laptop computers and cloud services. The NSA has been trying to weaken publicly available encryption systems.
The NSA has already inserted implants in 100,000 computers around the world. The technology is more than a century old, yet with modernization, it is a very effective tool. It works while the computer user is under the false confidence that being walled off from the internet constitutes real protection. Most of the equipment has been updated so that the U.S. is less dependent on getting hardware physically into computer systems.
Computers are not the only targets. iPhones, large network servers, and other equipment are targets as well.
Widespread surveillance in a globalized world is vital to controlling earth’s populations. Eventually, targets will expand and subject matter will migrate to use skills honed at the NSA to target the most important activities of God’s people.
Global worship would require global control of which intensive and high caliber surveillance would be necessary to achieve it.