4 high-tech ways the federal government is spying on private citizens

Does a new Utah facility really monitor your emails?1. The NSA is building a massive data center in Utah to read every email you'll ever send.

Many of us are aware that little of what we say on social networks
is really private. But you'd think your emails would be safe from
prying eyes — especially those of your government. Not so, once the
government completes work on a top-secret Utah data center reportedly
built to spy on civilian communications.

The $2 billion facility, slated to be complete by September 2013, is allegedly designed to be able to filter through yottabytes
(10^24 bytes) of data. Put into perspective, that's greater than the
estimated total of all human knowledge since the dawn of mankind. If
leaked information about the complex is correct, nothing will be safe
from the facility's reach, from cell phone communications to emails to
what you just bought with your credit card. And encryption won't protect
you — one of the facility's priorities is breaking even the most
complex of codes. The good news (if there is any) is that the sheer volume of internet
traffic and emails sent in a single day is far too much to be read by
human eyes. Instead, the government will likely need to rely on
complicated algorithms to assess each transmission and decide if they
represent a security threat. So you're probably out of the government's
earshot here... as long as you watch what you say.

2. The FBI maintains detailed files on numerous public, semi-public, and private figures. Have you ever thought of taking a job with the government? If you value
your privacy, think twice — the government runs incredibly extensive
background searches on its high-profile applicants. What kind of information does the government want from its
applicants? Well, when former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was under
consideration for a job with George H.W. Bush's administration in 1991,
the FBI compiled a massive file
on him. Included in that file: the fact that Jobs had a 2.65 GPA, his
history of marijuana and LSD usage, and his tendencies to "distort
reality" and to "twist the truth" in order to achieve his goals. Of course, Jobs is far from the only figure with an FBI file. Other public personalities profiled by the FBI include John Lennon,
Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, and even Anna Nicole Smith. If you're
curious about what goods the FBI has on you, you can always submit a request
to view your own personal file. It is worth noting, of course, that the
government doesn't profile everyone — just certain people of interest.
Is your data out there for the taking?3. Homeland Security is reading your tweets and Facebook status messages.

Unless you play around with your Twitter and Facebook privacy settings, just about anything you say is public. So it might not come as a surprise that the Department of Homeland Security is seeking contractors
to build software and hardware capable of reading through what it calls
"publicly available social media." Essentially, the government wants to
read through your tweets and status messages to see if there's any
information that might help in detecting threats. There are some ground rules to the project. The government won't pose
as a Twitter follower and won't accept or send any Facebook friend
requests. Still, even with those restrictions, there's a lot of
information floating out there for the feds to read, even if most of it
is nonsense about Justin Bieber.

4. Your ISP may soon be required to keep files on what sites you visit.

The idea sounds pretty far out there — a law that would require your
internet service provider to keep constant tabs on you, along with
detailed records of what websites you visited and when. But that's
exactly what the Hawaii state legislature proposed this January with H.B. 2288 and companion bill S.B. 2530. The
bill, sponsored by State Rep. John Mizuno (D), "requires internet
service providers... keep consumer records for no less than two years."
The bill then goes on to specify that these records must include "each
subscriber's information and internet destination history information." Thankfully, the bills' sponsors
withdrew the offending legislation from debate. But the reason wasn't
just public outcry. Also a factor was the fact that the U.S. House of
Representatives is considering a similar bill titled Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act.
That bill, sponsored and written by Texas Republican Representative
Lamar Smith, would mandate that commercial ISPs create logs of
customers' names, bank information, and IP addresses. That information
could later be used by attorneys seeking to prosecute in a criminal
trial or even in civil cases and divorce trials.

Not much is private anymore

Between private companies violating your privacy
and now the government, is there any way to avoid prying eyes? Not
really, unless you make significant changes in the way you use the web.
So before you send that next tweet or post that next Facebook status
message, think about whether or not you'd be okay with a complete
stranger looking at it — because that's very well what may happen.

[Image credits: Hammer51012, brewbooks] This article was written by Fox Van Allen and originally appeared on Tecca