Question: How would you, as DIA or NSA or 'Q' White Hats, come out and explain to world leaders, foreign governments, corporations, Billions of people... that you have copies of every conversation, every transaction, every email...and have the ability to monitor anything in the world any time you wish? How would you announce it without giving away your entire infrastructure and destroying your monitoring ability in the future? How can you disclose that info without starting a war? Or causing world-wide murders and "suicides" in certain corrupt circles?
John McAffee.
HE was the one listening. HE gathered up all of this information that is now coming out on illegal activities. HE was the one tracing cryptocurrency transactions. HE listened to your phone calls, read your emails, monitored government officials and corporations by tracking their computers. :>) We didn't realize he was a rogue.
Well... done is done. Too bad he's dead or we could have questioned him. :>) Here are the 31 Terrabytes of information he collected, and it is verified as legitimate. Oh my!!! Look at all of the criminal information! Weird that he had everything on the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations, and it's all available now for everyone to read.
The DIA, NSA, etc... never have to disclose that THEY gathered the info. There is nothing disclosed about how THEY monitor computers, cell phone calls, transactions of all sorts... so their infrastructure remains safe and beyond question. They now can release anything they want and blame it on John McAffee. This seems to be pretty convenient just before the White Hats make SHTF world wide.
McAfee may have had backdoors, but only so much information could be collected, much less processed and analyzed. McAfee doesn't have the technical infrastructure to collect off fiber transmissions, phone calls, cell calls, etc. NSA does. Most likely, if McAfee has the goods, it's only a partial or narrow picture. Just enough to implicate. Or maybe McAfee sold the backdoor to the White Hats.
Of course you're right. However... we aren't talking about reality. This is about how the agencies that DO collect such information can disclose that info without admitting that they have such tremendous capability. You need a straw man.
John McAfee may have occasionally gathered information from people, government agencies or corporations to monitor them. That McAfee didn't have any such capability isn't relevant.
What is relevant is that he can be blamed as the terrabytes of information is released. :>)
Agreed. As long as it is plausible that the security tools installed on devices, computers and servers everywhere were also harvesting data, that is all the cover that would be needed to release the declass data "anonymously", as if McAfee had collected it... kind of brilliant, when you think about it.
"he can be blamed as the terrabytes of information" = plausible deniability and protection of sources and methods.
Given the idle times computers have, their near permanent connection to the internet, it gives plenty of time to index and search for specific things. ie, non-system hidden folders, large collections of images or videos, bookmarks. These can be extracted as a snails pace without notice.
I don't use shit like McAfee, but does it have network security built in also? if it does, most calls route over IP.
I'm not sure why people even consider this stuff- McAffee hasn't been related to the software in many years, so why would this matter?
I was just commenting on calls over network, I'm not smart enough to know the answer.