TrapWire: You Now Live In A Paranoid Conspiracy Thriller
The latest release from Wikileaks has pissed somebody off. The site has been getting hit by an almost unprecedent DDoS attack, one that has completely brought the server down. The attackers are hitting Wikileaks with 10gbs of data a second, which is much more aggressive than most DDoSs in the past. Wikileaks is always pissing off people in high places, but this attack seems to be connected to the recent release of information about TrapWire.
You probably don't know what TrapWire is because almost none of the standard American news media has reported on it. With Wikileaks down it's hard to take a look at the actual documents that have been leaked, but some... alternative news outlets do have the information.
Trapwire is a piece of software that siphons the video feeds from cameras all over the country - cameras at landmarks, public places, subways, casinos and other 'high value targets' - and feeds them all directly to a secret, centralized location. Using advanced face recognition software, the keepers of the video can track anyone, almost anywhere. And here's the thing: TrapWire isn't some kind of plan or concept - it's happening right now. When you pass security cameras, your movements are being monitored by some kind of centralized computer system.
You might scoff, insisting that there's no way that all the information being collected can possibly be actually stored. Well, that's why the NSA has been building the world's biggest data center in Utah - a center that will handle yottabytes of data, an amount of data equal to 10 to the 24th power bytes. Read all about it in a detailed Wired Magazine article.
TrapWire comes from Abraxas, a company in North Virginia whose employee roster is pretty much made up of former spooks and high-level intelligence types. It's one of those companies where the line between private business and American spy system gets really, really blurry. Check out Abraxas' web page - the generic aspect of it is actually creepy.
The revelation of TrapWire comes after agents of Anonymous hacked Stratfor, another 'private' intelligence company. Amid the 5 million emails Anonymous secured was plenty of information laying out what TrapWire is, and how it works.
What it boils down to is that with TrapWire the United States of America has edged into being a surveillance state, one where the authorities are always watching the citizenry. Under such a system everyone is a potential target to watch; in the name of national security we're all being spied on all the time. And by the way, that data center in Utah? Its primary use is to collate all sorts of electronic communication, and not just from the obvious bad guys. As a source tells Wired: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
Strangely, the standard American media has been silent on TrapWire. If this is true - and it looks pretty true - what we're seeing here is a conspiracy nut's wet dreams coming true. Add to all of this the latest NDAA - which allows the US government to detain journalists and private citizens in military facilities indefinitely without hearings and shit gets really scary. I'm not saying we're days away from some kind of totalitarian state. I'm saying we've stepped through a door into a semi-passive totalitarian state without even realizing it.
