When one mentions Big Brother, the mind quickly jumps to a watchful old man with a menacing look. To the present world, the two security firms (CIA and NSA) represent the famed big brother figure. They both take data from individuals and firms as part of their surveillance exercises.
The two have come under fire severally for snooping on people’s privacy with the National Security Agency being exposed by Edward Snowden back in 2013. On its part, the Central Intelligence Agency came under fire by WikiLeaks in 2017 with overwhelming evidence being made public about their surveillance efforts. If you are wondering which one of the two big brothers you should worry about, here’s how they compare.
There is good news, however. Now, one can protect themselves from these two. All that is needed is a VPN to stay safe. A VPN (virtual private network) works by hiding the IP address of the user. In this way, neither the NSA nor the CIA can know who you are when you go online. A VPN has many advantages including being cheap and easily set up to add a layer of protection on your online traffic.
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The NSA
The NSA is focused on big data and not isolated cases. This means that it heavily relies on the efforts of other agencies to breach private data from single individuals. This focus on the bigger picture has made it have fewer field officers than the CIA.
Most of its employees are stationed in the Utah Data Center or in Fort Meade, Maryland. They go for Mass hacks in company directories such as email from a firm and so on. This aspect makes them unlikely to come for you as an individual especially with physical targets. You are safer from them than from the CIA as they go for the multitudes to gain trends and such big data analytics.
Keeping the NSA at Bay
If you want the NSA not to track you:
- Don’t shop online or use ride-hailing apps.
- Only use Bitcoin and cash for payments.
- For search engines, go for duckduckgo
- Avoid using email as much as possible
- Encrypting your chats should be mandatory
- Keep away from social media platforms
- Don’t allow third-party cookies and ads on your browser
The CIA
The work of the CIA complements what the NSA does. While the NSA goes for the data for all Google users, for example, the CIA will go for each one of them for details. They will plant malware in your laptop, put a camera in your flower vase and hack your TV to watch and listen to your private life.
For this, they need a lot of field agents. It uses data from the NSA to find targets of interest then carry out hacks on specific people firms. For the CIA to carry out such attacks, they have very many software and hardware specialists that are trained to carry out remote and physical hacks on targets of choice. They have sent out thousands of these field officers to get what they want. It is this big brother that you should be afraid of.
Staying safe from the CIA
For the CIA, do the following:
- Always update your device to the latest software.
- Always know where your device is located at all times.
- Avoid too many smart devices that have microphones and cameras in your home.
- With these aspects in mind, you will go about your life knowing that no one is peeking into every little thing you do. For most people, it is almost impossible sticking to the tips above and that is how Big Brother gets to you.
