Can the government spy on you through your smart phone?

And track you and put you on lists and stuff? I don't do anything bad but I keep up with a lot of celebrity gossip and I don't want to be put on some list for googling J lo and Ben Affleck 3 times a week. Or google Today Show gossip every time theres an issue on the show. Which is like everyday.

I don’t think your government is particularly interested in the type of things you look up. You should be safe from any type of lists I think.

I have a different perspective than Crazy Hitch. I have what I consider a healthy paranoia about the US government spying on us. We already know that the government mines info about our activity on line. I make a point to never say anything in text, email, online or on my cell phone that I don't want the powers that be to know about. Ever do a Google search something then have ads for that thing pop up on your phone? Google tracks the info and sells it.

Before anyone tells me I'm being irrational or overly paranoid let me share a couple real life events. 1) I have a friend who discovered there was an FBI file on him because, AS A KID, he sent a letter to the Soviet embassy asking for information for a school report. (We grew up during the Cold War.) 2) a young man who was a classmate of my brother was assassinated by the CIA in the 70s. Many years later Law and Order did an episode about it. It doesn't help that I worked for an agency that used to take what we did and where we went on line on agency computers and on our work cell phones. I'm left feeling that a bit of healthy paranoia is a good thing, especially in the US right now. Folks, please don't make this political.

MD, I doubt the authorities give a hoot about who visits celebrity sites so you are probably safe.

Someone I knew had a brother who worked at the pentagon. This was when I was 14. I wrote him a letter asking if aliens were real. She gave him the letter but he never responded.

Now I wonder if theres a file on me from 2007.

I think, the thing to remember is that the second you connect to the internet, you *must* accept that everything you are doing can be seen and analysed by “someone”. Whether that someone is the government, a criminal, a private company etc., is irrelevant, “someone” could potentially build a profile on you.

Even if you connect via the most secure Virtual Private Network, with end-to-end encryption, and use a search engine that supposedly doesn’t record your searches and history, by the very nature of the electronic form of communication, you run the risk of someone intercepting and analysing what you do. No matter how secure you think you are, you are not. Mistakes happen, information leaks, is stolen, falls into the public domain, is subject to access by authorities, etc., etc.

The question is are you ok with that? If you are, then that’s ok. Judging from the most intimate of things that people seem to post on sites, quite openly and freely, it seems many of us are ok with it. If we weren’t, then we wouldn’t be having this conversation on here now.

Jeff.

Somebody is likely watching most of the time but I don’t think it’s government but more like companies wanting to sell you stuff or get your data. Even if they don’t know what you are saying verbatim, they know your location and search history. You know how if you browse the website, you get a text from them that we know you are interested. So yes they know what you do. Government would watch too but likely if they suspect something fishy

I doubt they care to keep records of what silly things 14 year olds ask. Or create special files

Quote:

Originally Posted by divine1966 I doubt they care to keep records of what silly things 14 year olds ask. Or create special files

Devine, my friend was all of 12yo when the FBI started a file on him. All he did was ask for info about Russia. He's always been interested in the country. Had no interest in Communism, just the country.

That said I doubt anyone in DC would be interested in a 14yo asking about aliens.

The federal government in the US is technically prohibited from "spying" on an average American citizen by law. Does that meant they don't do it in some manner to gather "meta data" on people, especially when targeting a suspected criminal that you're only marginally associated with? I'm pretty certain they're looking at such data with coarse filters, looking for patterns and associations with criminals.

That said, I spend zero seconds of my day worrying about such things because I know the amount of data, even with AI's assistance, is overwhelming. They (government bureaucrats) don't care about the average citizens' life and Google lookups.

Respectfully Doc John, the Constitution gives citizens the right to due process when accused of a crime. There are 200+ people in an El Salvadore prison who were denied due process. I do not mean to make this a political discussion, just because something is illegal does not guarantee our government will not do it.

That said, I agree with you about not spending time worrying about it.