General questions about internet/computer monitoring

Basically, how tight and how wide is the degree to which LE/the government monitor our online activities? Which ones are and which ones aren't they unable to watch? Can they see and look at, say, chat conversations in some program? Could they listen in to conversations going on in a Teamspeak server? Does the government monitor these kinds of things as a way of trying to find suspects?

I have these questions because I see some Twitter accounts with say 25,000 followers where the guys are tweeting pictures of bagged coke, or take pictures with pounds of weed where their face is clearly showing.

I'm just not that great with all aspects of technology, and I can't tell whether some of the fears I have are a result of me having seen shit on television. I can't tell if it's absurd, but I'm constantly operating under the suspicion I basically have police officers looking over my shoulder whenever it pleases.

Anyone care comment?


Comments


[4 Points] sohhlz:

Your worst fears are probably true:

NSA records the audio for ALL calls in a certain foreign country:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140318/11035826614/nsa-has-capability-to-record-store-all-foreign-phone-calls-certain-countries.shtml

NSA spies on people in online games:

http://www.propublica.org/article/world-of-spycraft-intelligence-agencies-spied-in-online-games

NSA giant data center:

http://www.wired.com/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/


If you want to have a private conversation online, you must use encryption.

If you want to stay anonymous online, you must use something like Tor or i2p.


[3 Points] 234gefg:

Having the capability to do something and doing it, and then doing it and actually looking into it are all completely worlds apart.

Unless you are doing some ridiculous shit or have direct contacts to seriously suspect people your local law enforcement has no idea what you are doing day to day, and the NSA doesnt care.

the twitter accounts and people posting that shit are retarded, but everyonce in a while you hear about them getting busted for it. so basically its just like anything else, if you don't want someone to know about it don't spread it around, if you want someone to know about your illegal shit then someone will and you will likely get fucked as time passes.

If you are encrypting what you need to encrypt you are fine, just because the NSA has some capabilities doesn't mean your local sherriff can just call them up and say lemme borrow that ol super computer to decrypt this HD.

Think of it this way, how many of your friends do drugs? probably tons, that means their friends do drugs, and well our friends do drugs, so that's going to be a fuck of a lot of people... what would LE even do with that information if they could get it? " welp fucking everyone has ties, sooo... what do we do? " they would drown in the bad shit where they to look for it, what they look for is easy wins so they can look good. just like everyone else in any job.


[2 Points] galaxyandspace:

https://www.whonix.org/wiki/Surveillance_Capabilities

If you want your questions about anonymity, privacy, and Tor/I2P answered, I highly advise reading all you can of the Whonix documentation. It is designed as a crash course into these topics. It's only about 100 wiki pages long, and well worth the read.