Forget China, Americans Have Had All Their Communications Bugged For 20 Years

Outrage over the revelation that Chinese authorities have been installing spying devices on all dual-plate Chinese-Hong Kong vehicles is nothing compared to the fact that Americans and European have had all their communications tracked for at least two decades.
“For years now Chinese authorities have been installing spying devices on all dual-plate Chinese-Hong Kong vehicles, enabling a vast network of eavesdropping across the archipelago,” reports the Epoch Times.
However, the modern era of high-tech surveillance really began with the Echelon program in the early 90′s.
In 1999 the Australian government admitted that it was part of an NSA-led global intercept and surveillance grid in alliance with the US and Britain that could listen to “every international telephone call, fax, e-mail, or radio transmission,” using keywords to allow “powerful computers capable of voice recognition” to eavesdrop globally.
Furthermore, a 2001 European Parliament report stated that “within Europe all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted” by the NSA.
As we reported back in 2006, Google announced that it would be using in-built microphones on personal computers to listen for “background noise,” which would then be used to tailor invasive Minority Report-style advertising.
“The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject,” reported the Register.
The report touched upon the inevitability that the use and abuse of this technology will eventually be taken over by the state.
“Pretty soon the security industry is going to find a way to hijack the Google feed and use it for full on espionage.”
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)