The Myth: They can see everything you do!!! Especially if it is digital. [FALSE]

While the NSA and the government can indeed see a lot of what you do, and there are some markets where they can see everything it is not true in many cases. Those that I agree with in trying to wake people up will often state that they capture and see everything digital. This is not true.

I am a network engineer and I work in the VOIP industry. I also deal with a lot of hacking attempts and other information that we have. This tells me quite a few things.

First for them to intercept and capture your data it must cross places they are tapped into. NOT all calls transit through such nodes. Many calls are what is called ON NET and if they are VOIP they likely never go through a large carrier that might be such a node. Such calls will not be monitored or recorded. This is why people are often trying to hack VOIP providers and Asterisk boxes to be able to make calls.

Now there is a compliance type of thing known in the industry as CALEA. This is compliance where if a federal government or agency wants to TAP a specific call they can do so. It does not do ALL calls ALL the time as that would bring the internet circuits for any of these VOIP providers to their knees. They have to login and intentionally monitor a specific DID (phone number). Likewise, it does not sit there listening to all calls and for keywords and then jump on that call.

However, if you are on nodes that are connected to large internet backbones then something like this might be possible. For this reason it is possible such monitor everything is available if your calls are on T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc or if your call transits across their network. Though I suspect most of that is an urban myth as well. The amount of bandwidth required by all of the networks out there would need to be exorbitant. Sure the NSA may have high bandwidth, but that only matters between them and whichever network switches/hubs/nodes they connect to. It doesn't mean all of the rest of us and our networks magically have the required bandwidth to accomplish this.

Furthermore, the activities you do on your computer likely will not be noticed unless your traffic passes through a location they are monitoring or if they have been tipped off that they intentionally need to monitor you.

You can put a packet sniffer/capture program on a network and monitor what flows in and out of it. That sniffer is only useful for traffic that passes through it's technology.

So the THEY SEE EVERYTHING is a myth.

There are a couple of places where they may be able to make this myth no longer a myth.

If there are smart agents and devices locally that listen for keywords they MIGHT be able to send signals and indicate that you are a person of interest. So are there any devices that might do this? Well, it'd likely come in the form of things that listen to your voice and act helpful. Sound familiar? Siri? Amazon Echo? Alexa? Cortana? Other devices that listen for voice commands?

If you have any of those (which is becoming more common) then those could be a vector for making that myth more realistic.

The other way it can be done is if you have been targeted and spyware/malware is planted on your computer or device that can be tapped much like CALEA to send traffic to an alternative site.

The main thing to know here is that most of what the claims about NSA and their abilities are is a myth. Though some of it is true, and as we get more and more devices that listen to our voices the more plausible it becomes that they will cease to be mythological.