CIA whistleblower’s chilling warning about what our phones and devices can actually hear | World | News
A former CIA operative has lifted the lid on the disturbing reality of what gadgets such as smartphones can potentially eavesdrop on without our awareness. For those who’ve questioned the eerily precise nature of personalised adverts appearing on their mobile, the notion that our technology might be monitoring us could be edging closer to fact than fiction.
John Kiriakou, an ex-Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst and case officer who became a whistleblower, made history as the first CIA employee to face conviction for revealing the secretive organisation’s enhanced interrogation program. In conversation with podcast presenter Steven Bartlett, the former operative warned that regarding our electronic devices, we “have to worry” about the covert tactics employed by intelligence services worldwide, subsequently explaining how the CIA possesses the capability to “hear everything”. As their discussion turned towards digital security, they explored how “forces”, as Steven termed them, possessed the power to “hack and crack” our technology, despite us “assuming that our devices are secure”.
John explained on The Diary of a CEO podcast: “They’re not secure at all. It’s not just the NSA/CIA/FBI that you have to worry about; it’s the British, the French, the Germans, the Canadians, the Australians, the New Zealanders, the Russians, the Chinese, the Israelis, the Iranians. Everybody has these capabilities, everybody, so you’ve gotta be very, very careful.”
John suggested that intercepting communications barely scratches the surface, pointing to the “Vault 7 Revelations” – an incident where a “disgruntled” CIA software engineer leaked highly classified documents to WikiLeaks.
He claims the CIA possesses the capability to convert your smart TV’s speaker into a microphone, and switching it off makes no difference, as it “can still hear everything”. John explained: “It can still hear everything that’s being said in the room and broadcast I.T. back to the CIA.”
He further alleged: “When I first got hired (in the 1980s), they were able to do that, that’s old technology. And then the thing about the car, this was revelatory.
“They can take control, again remotely, of a car’s computer system in order to kill you. Crash the car, take it off a bridge, take it into a tree, sure.”
John, as a CIA employee, was involved in counterterrorism in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, but reportedly declined training in what was termed “enhanced interrogation techniques”.
According to the Government Accountability Project, John later alleged that the agency waterboarded detainees; in 2012, he pleaded guilty to breaking an intelligence law.
He confessed to leaking the name of a former officer who was allegedly involved in the interrogation of detainees, the BBC reported at the time. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison in 2013.
John spent two years behind bars in a federal prison located in the US state of Pennsylvania, before being granted home confinement.
