Big Brother Really is Watching Us

Under Watch?

For the life of me, I can't comprehend why this news item didn't produce big headlines here. According to an e-mail hacked from the Italian cyber-security company named Hacking Team, the United States Drug Enforcement Agency monitors - or intends to - all of Colombia's Internet traffic. All of it.

The U.S. Embassy 'bought another interception tool (something that will receive all the traffic for Colombia's ISPs).'

Presumably, the DEA's interest is limited to catching drug traffickers. But everything you do online here: that dubious website you clicked on, those erotic e-mails, those really stupid, offensive jokes you forwarded, are potentially vulnerable to monitoring. And that's in addition to other Hacking Team software possessed by the embassy "known as Remote Control System or “RCS,” (which) is capable of intercepting phone calls, texts, and social media messages, and can surreptitiously turn on a user’s webcam and microphone as well as collect passwords," according to Vice News. And all of that is in addition to monitoring by the U.S.'s NSA, CIA, as well as whatever monitoring Colombia's own government is doing.

No wonder typewriters are coming back.

Since this monitoring of Colombian residents is being done by the U.S., a foreign nation, there seems to be no oversight or privacy protection here.

Is it just me, or is it really mind-boggling that, in a time of peace, our communications can be read over by strangers? And in the name of the failed War on Drugs? If the government suddenly decided to read whatever letters people still write on paper and stick into envelopes, you can bet there'd be protests. But we seem to be resigned to being monitored on-line.

Meanwhile, over in Venezuela, the state communications company CONATEL is reportedly helping President Maduro's regime identify critical Twitter users so that they can be arrested and imprisoned

Finally, El Tiempo reports that Instagram deleted this tender, innocent photo of three indigenous Wounaan women because their breasts are uncovered.

The deleted photo of three Wounaan women, by photographer Héctor Fabio Zamora.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours