US Intelligence Agencies To Americans Travelling Abroad: Trust No One, Use Burner Phones, They're All Out To Get You
from the just-because-you're-paranoid... dept
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has been going through something of an awkward phase the last few years. The Office, which is a part of the White House, and is supposed to direct and coordinate various parts of the intelligence community, has been trying to figure out how to be more open and "transparent" to the public since the Snowden documents began flowing. Given that historically the intelligence community has focused on being as secret as is humanly possible, it's not very good at this whole transparency thing. And sometimes it's just really, really awkward. Just try (really) to watch this video it put out on Wednesday, telling US travelers abroad to fear everyone and everything.
Then the video just gets weirder. A smug asshole shows up claiming he's someone who "knows better" and tells Frank not to bring so many electronic gadgets with him. He actually recommends getting a burner phone and a throwaway email address for travel overseas. Yes, this is part of the same US intelligence community that has talked about how burner phones have created problems for its surveillance efforts, though which these days also is pretty good at connecting burner phones to individuals by merging various databases together. Smug guy also says not to post on Facebook (or, rather, "Friend Basket" in the video) that you'll be travelling overseas. Now, that's also not necessarily a bad recommendation, but it depends on context quite a bit. If the fear is that you're alerting foreigners to target you, given the earlier paranoia in the video, it's unlikely that those targeting you are finding out because of your social media posts.
Then, the paranoia goes deeper. Frank meets a woman and they agree to go for drinks. Smug Jackass basically says that anyone that friendly to Frank must be evil. Then, he reminds Frank never to send a work email, even though he's traveling for work. And then he actually says: "Besides, who's got time for work? You're traveling! Get out there! Live a little!" Remember that literally a minute earlier, Smug Guy was berating Frank for doing exactly that.
Yes, there are certainly some people where this kind of thing applies to them when travelling abroad. But this video isn't likely to help them, and it applies to a fairly limited population of people. Meanwhile, this video really kinda reveals the paranoia with which the US intelligence community lives. They spy on absolutely everyone, so they assume that absolutely everyone is getting spied on everywhere as well. It's also somewhat bizarre that they're pushing disposable email and burner phones on people while warning about terrorists using the same.
The key messages: the US intelligence community is creepy and smug, and they want you to be deathly terrified of anyone you encounter in a foreign country.
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Filed Under: burner phones, odni, spies, surveillance, travelling, video
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intelligence community logic
(PS. We need a budget increase to cover all that surveillance...)
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Reminds me of the "Travel Agency" in the Truman Show
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/Conspiracy theory, I hope.
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Re:
If people on list cannot_______________ (we'll start with "come into our country", but it could be anything).
Then the bigger the list the more people cannot_______________
Followed by, since so many people cannot do _______________anyway, we might as well get rid of _______________
It is the new workaround for that pesky constitution thingy.
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One-Way logic problem.
Burner Phones also protect the innocent from bad actors.
People searching for terms are not always ignorant of that term.
People desiring privacy does not mean they are up to no good.
The fundamental purpose of having privacy is that that you are not judged on things that are stupid.
Who if your favorite sports team?
What is your favorite food?
Favorite actors/actresses?
People harm others over the simplest of differences in opinion. The reason for privacy is to help keep the self safe. It is important to safety that everyone NOT know my habits, numbers, & private details. Conversely, it is important that my significant other does know them!
Information develops knowledge, knowledge develops power!
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Re: One-Way logic problem.
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Re: One-Way logic problem.
Cliché ++
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Re: One-Way logic problem.
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Scare tactics to keep people home?
Since if you have something to hide you are clearly going to be targeted by the state.
Maybe they are trying to get Americans arrested in foreign nations for trumped up charges. keep them home instead of letting them go out and learn dangerous ideas.
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Re: Scare tactics to keep people home?
Don't leave the propaganda bubble! And if you do, be a jingoistic jackass to insure you get robbed just on principle!
You can't help but cringe when you see some of your countrymen abroad. I think that is true for every nationality though.
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Re: Re: Scare tactics to keep people home?
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Re: Scare tactics to keep people home?
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Only spy-women chat up geeky Americans.
At the same time, if I had proprietary information (e.g. business secrets or client data), then of course it'd be sufficiently encrypted.
But I bet if it's encrypted enough to keep the NSA out of my business, it's probably encrypted enough to keep any other spies out of it as well.
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It's not new, it's just how USG people think
There was always a guy from the State Dept. there to watch over the "US delegation" (most of whom represented private firms).
Every Friday he'd tell us to let State know everywhere we went outside our hotel over the weekend - not for infosec reasons, but because it's a "foreign country" and we could get into all kinds of trouble. We could get arrested and have no rights, not like at home in the US.
This was in Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe. Far safer than any place in the US - the main danger was overdosing on cheese.
But I think they really meant it.
There's something about the mentality of people who go to work for the US government - they really, truly, think all them furriners in nasty, terrible places like Switzerland, the UK, Austrialia, Japan (Japan!) are lawless hellholes without Good Old Fashioned Merican Democracy where people will be skinned alive for blinking at the wrong time.
It's a kind of paranoia and fear of the strange.
But it's real, and sincere.
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Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
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Re: Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
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Re: Re: Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
the nerve, showing us up, and all...
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Re: Re: Re: Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Switzerland, the child-proofed chocolate-coated rubber room of Western Europe.
$ words: ENCRYPTED numbered bank accounts
(fix that for ya)
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Re: It's not new, it's just how USG people think
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To be fair, this attitude was more valid when visiting the second world during the Cold War.
Both sides had their own dirty tricks and both sides had little respect for the subjects they'd bribe or extort.
In the spook sector, it's industrial espionage that is renowned for being particularly nasty. Nations often recognize they have to live with each other, but rival companies would love nothing better than to see their competitors buried underground and the earth under their factories salted.
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Re: To be fair, this attitude was more valid when visiting the second world during the Cold War.
The same goes for companies operating under the rule of law - much as they might like to obliterate their competitors, they can't get away with it.
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Re: It's not new, it's just how USG people think
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Re: Re: It's not new, it's just how USG people think
But the warnings we got in the '90s weren't much about that - it was mostly "you'll be arrested on made-up charges and have no rights", etc. They made as if they were genuinely concerned with our safety.
In Switzerland.
(As far as I know, nobody took their advice, and did as they pleased on weekends without telling anyone. We chuckled about their nannying...privately.)
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Re: Re: Re: It's not new, it's just how USG people think
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/world/americas/maritime-repo-men-a-last-resort-for-stolen-s hips.html
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Re: Re: It's not new, it's just how USG people think
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As opposed to Americans staying at home, where they can trust their government...wait...never mind.
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Not that far off
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Beyond Irony
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That's good advice...
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Re: That's good advice...
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Re: That's good advice...
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Dammit Frank!
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So, those burner phones, where from ?
"I'm from the government and I'm here to hand you your very own government-issued burner phone to keep you safe when travelling. You can be absolutely sure this burner phone is safe to use and free from nasty foreign malware! Enjoy your trip. Rest assured we will be doing all we can to watch over you and keep you safe!"
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There is a reason that the public does not trust it's government here in the US and this article puts it on display between the lines. This is the level of paranoia functioning at present in the US, by our government.
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Heres the truth ,the european tourism industry is just a front,for marxist spys ,Get smart the movie is a documentary .
Meanwhile in the real world the nsa is free to spy on
anyone including the european parliament or the german
chancellor or any private company .
No one in europe is innocent or is just trying to do a
job or bring up a family .
Why would any american try to travel any way ,
just go to disneyland or hollywood .
Maybe the nsa assumes every other country runs a
a massive surveillance network
with 1000,s of employee,s .
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This is only the first step in the plan...
2. Track phone calls and e-mails.
3. Upon re-entry into the US, arrest Americans for being dirty rotten terrorists (they are using burner phones and fake e-mail addresses, so they must be guilty).
4. Increase Terrorist arrest statistics and request double the budget due to the huge increase in domestic born terrorists..
5. Profit... chaching
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That's almost impressive
'We do all of this(or at least we would if we could), so we're sure that other governments do it too. As such you should absolutely protect yourself using methods that would get you treated and/or investigated as a suspicious individual if you did it here, because Only Criminals Have Anything To Hide.'
Pretty much all the 'advice' given would be much more fitting if told to someone crazy enough to want to visit the US.
Don't bring your actual phone, it's one whim away from being stolen and searched.
Don't bring your electronic devices, laptops or whatnot unless you want those stolen and searched as well.
Be careful about using unsecured connections for anything valuable, there's any number of agencies that like to grab anything and everything they can, just because they can.
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That much projection into a single video
Did some Snowdenish wise guy in the USG script and produce this to implicitly ridicule USG policy (and warn foreigners)?
Or am I ignoring Hanlon's Anti-razor (Never attribute to beneficence that which is adequately explained by incompetence)?
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Re: That much projection into a single video
Teenage kids on Youtube do far better. All the time. I'm embarrassed for my country.
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And make sure you use encryption on everything!
Also, these things never happen in the US possibly more than anywhere else, at all.
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Get your free burner phone here
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-13/tasmanian-tourist-tracker-provides-limitless-insights/741025 4
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That's why Doomsday Preppers received money from the federal education budget, and was only closed down after it was decided people were learning too much.....................
tin foil hat
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I can't help imagine this being the thought process of the knuckleheads who decided this propagandist junk was a good idea.
"It's an outrage! Americans might be letting foreign governments mine their data when they're abroad!"
"How dare they? Mining American data and holding onto it is our job!"
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At 4:15, the traveler is informed that foreign intelligence services "often operate in other countries".
Really? Foreign intelligence services operate in other countries? I'm just saying, I learned something there..
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Pot and Kettle
They do not. This is simply how they treat foreign tourists themselves and they project their own behaviour on other states.
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Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
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Re: Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
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Re: Re: Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
The only thing that's anything like safe is Bitcoins. Memorized in wetware.
And even those can pop out under waterboarding.....
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Re: Re: Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
As for the attempted misdirect - there is a greater likely hood of an American Tourist getting robbed or killed than a Foreign Tourist getting stopped by a State Trooper after committing a traffic violation:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/04/world/missing-american-student-italy/
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Re: Re: Re: Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
I don't know if you believe otherwise, but your reference to one such incident does not prove your claim.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Hm... Burner Phones and Pre-Paid Credit Cards is a good idea
Mexico: http://www.forbes.com/sites/doliaestevez/2016/01/20/state-department-renews-travel-warning-for-large -parts-of-mexico-103-americans-killed-in-2015
Brazil: http://www.businessinsider.com/american-tourist-gang-raped-and-beaten-on-transit-van-in-rio-de-janei ro-2013-4
Great Britain: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/25/american-student-slashed-in-london-police-eye-musli ms-patrols.html
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statistics and rate per tourist
Compare that to say rate of civil forfeiture cases against travelling Canadians in the US.
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0.9/10 on IMDB
Come on Murica, this is embarrassing.....
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