Claims of Espionage

Trumps claims, Napolitano claims, many claims there is espionage going on. The heads of agencies who should know claim there is no evidence. Who is telling the truth?

Visions of clandestine meetings, smoke filled rooms and shadows in the night, cast our minds back to the days of Mata Hari, The Rosenberg’s, Major John André and our own Virginia Hall. Spying has been going on since the days of Moses and probably before. The value of information has always been there and that value has increased with the information age.

Are there spies among us? Of course, there are. There always have been. Whether it is the need for military strategic information of political chicanery, having information is most often the difference between winning and losing and success and failure. Sports teams study films of their opponents, military analysts study high altitude films of their enemies, corporations pay dearly for information about their competitors and wives hire detectives to spy on their cheating husbands. How do I know all this? I was the detective they hired.

Information brings an advantage and in our competitive world advantage is everything. So, it is really no secret that the pursuit of information has value. It might be life and death for the investor, for the inventor, for the military conflict or for the political campaign.

Yet, somewhere along the line of the accumulation of information there is the dark shadow of deceit that once crossed makes the gathering of information objectionable. The problem is in knowing where that line is. Credit bureaus gather information, advertising systems gather information and I can prove it by the unsolicited phone calls I get daily and the pop-up ads on my computer that destroy my concentration, progress and blood pressure.

But what about Trump and Obama and Hillary? Are they the object of information gathering? Or might I ask, do dogs have flees? Problem number one, may not be in the gathering of information but in the finding of it. Why did Hillary feel the need to erase the computers and why did Nixon erase the tapes? Why do politicians, military systems, corporate entities and stock exchanges try to hide information? Simple. Advantage. You do not want your competition to know what you do. Secrets have value.

But the means of gathering that information has changed drastically. It is no longer shadowy figures in trench coats and brimmed hats, meeting secretly in the night. It is now geeky types setting somewhere, anywhere, at their keyboard hacking into information in the comfort of their office or garage or bedroom. Information is more readily available today than at any time in history. There are no secrets that cannot be retrieved remotely.

Give me a name and in 10 minutes I will give you a 10-page report of everything about them, except what they ate for breakfast. Google will be able to tell you everywhere they went on their computer for the last year and the credit bureau will tell you everywhere they used their credit or debit card. There are no secrets. Someone knows. Not everyone will tell, but someone will. That is the premise of the gathering of information.

So, did someone, anyone, spy on Donald Trump? What is the evidence that they did or did not?

Did you know that there is software available on the internet that you can download and use within the next 15 minutes into which you can program a cell phone number and it will install itself on the phone without the owner’s permission or knowledge? It will then tell you where that phone is and who it called. Who uses this stuff? Well, anyone who downloads the program. It is very popular with parents of teenagers of course, but I suspect that no one in the political world uses it! (Sarcasm intended).

There are now sophisticated security systems trying to catch up to the problems of available secret information. Secured Communications (https://securedcommunications.com/) is one of the fastest growing corporations in the country, based on the fact that they have developed systems that secure communications and erase secrets so they no longer exist. There is a war going on in our world to secure information or to gather it. But then, that war has been going on since the beginning of time.  It started when Adam and Eve tried to hide from God. The key to depriving your enemy from having damaging information about you is to so live that there isn’t any.

Was Hillary hacked? Was there damaging information to be gained? Is the sky blue?

In this game of one-up-man-ship, did anyone try to get damaging information about Trump? If they did, they probably did not sneak into Trump towers and pry open the phones and put recording devises in them. No need. That is the imagery of yesterday. Today it is far more simple and far more pervasive.

Does this paint a picture of fearful proportions and Big Brother looking over our shoulder and enemies of the State manipulating our elections? Not for me! I expect it, and welcome it. It is in the light of day that information becomes the sanitizing force of the rays of the sun as dark secrets are revealed. I do not welcome the instruction of anyone and everyone into my privacy, but I do not fear damage should they do so. Immunity is the best defense from intrusion.

Trump is probably right, but there is also probability that we will never know. Possibly the Donald might consider getting over his paranoia and the news media stop reporting about ‘much-to-do-about-nothing!’ Of course, spying is going on…