Overview
Developments in technology have enabled all manner new applications: portable phones, personal computers, the World Wide Web, and Global Positioning System, to name a few. Advances in robotics have allowed remote exploration of Mars, controlled by operators on Earth via radio signals incredibly low in power. Small robotic devices are now used routinely in medicine to perform procedures heretofore not thought possible. However, these advances in technology have a dark side.
Application of new technologies for surveillance enables virtually undetectable observation of activities using through-wall imaging, Unmanned Airborne Vehicles (UAVs), and small, remote-controlled robotic devices that can enter buildings via even the smallest of cracks or holes. Employing these remote-controlled, sophisticated technologies provides an unprecedented level of difficulty in attribution and identification of those performing this surveillance. Operators can be far removed from the devices they control, the only link being an ephemeral radio frequency signal. UAVs and mobile robotic devices can be removed from premises being surveilled when in danger of being discovered, or even cloaked using newly-developed invisibility technology. Small robotic devices can be employed clandestinely to perform dirty tricks or deliver drugs or engineered biologics to targets without their consent or knowledge. When secrecy is combined with diversions, hoaxes, and misdirection, eluding investigation and plausible deniability is easily achieved.
It should be noted that, although these techniques fall under the rubric of electronic surveillance, this is an entirely different arena of surveillance than that being performed by the NSA as exposed by Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald. This latter is termed "signals intelligence", and involves interception of communications between parties carried over communications links. Such communications can be encrypted to preserve privacy using passwords and keys, but leave a digital trail during their transport over networks from source to destination. In contrast, the surveillance discussed here involves directly observing what a target is doing, wherever they may be. This more invasive intrusion bypasses and nullifies the use of encryption in communications, as it allows observing the target typing in both passwords and plain text in any communications. In addition, there is no obligatory record of its occurrence in public communication networks, and can thus be performed entirely clandestinely, with no evidence it happened.
However, one aspect that both share is their susceptibility to Greenwald's dictum regarding the abuse of surveillance powers: "It's not a matter of if they will be abused, it's a matter of when." The tremendous insight that this type of invasive surveillance can provide, combined with its exquisite anonymity has spurred its development by the US Government. Its warrantless use in the United States, however, is prohibited by the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. Nonetheless, apparently its utility as well as its difficulty of detection and attribution has lured one or more organizations to deploy these technologies domestically. Since this use is, by default, unconstitutional, such deployment has been kept under wraps, and a comprehensive system has been organized in parallel to both maintain secrecy as well as evade publicity, investigation and documentation.
Domestic use of these technologies is not publicly known, nor is it acknowledged by any agencies or organizations. This maintains the belief by the public that this technology is not being used, and comprises one facet in the comprehensive system to avoid detection. However, this secret use precludes accountibility or oversight, and enables illegal and more nefarious use of the technologies, going beyond surveillance to include dirty tricks, extrajudicial punishment, non-consensual experimentation, and perhaps even self-funding by means of exploiting stolen information for monetary gain without any trail of evidence. This latter possibility is of particular concern, as it frees the organization from dependence on funding, and is thus beyond all external control.
How Would I Know?
This knowledge of high-technology surveillance comes from my personal experience as a target of these methods over a period of years. It was hard won, as I was totally naive in the beginning, and required many observations as well as serious experimentation to connect the dots. But, for some unfathomable reasons, I have been a persistent target of a group that is developing these "dark side" applications of cutting-edge technologies. Although I usually describe this period in a disparaging manner, it has provided an opportunity to observe their development, deployment, and evolution as well as the means by which the program is kept secret.
Although often luck played a part, my training as a research scientist helped immensely in evaluating hypotheses and rejecting alternative explanations, especially in the face of deliberate red herrings, misinformation, and hoaxes from those performing the surveillance. My name is Jonathan Hansen, and it's my belief that most people are unaware of the existence of this surveillance and other applications of these technologies. This web site is designed to document what I have learned, make it available to a wide audience, and to alert them to the serious but unappreciated, dangerous implications of their use. This site is not about how they might be used, but how they are being used now, in the United States, based on observations and evidence.
A Note on Site Organization
This web site is intended to an informational one documenting fast-changing technologies and their nefarious applications. As such, as new discoveries are made and investigated, the various pages treating them will change and be updated. Rather than set up a complex web of links between various pages comprising this site, it is organized in a hierarchical manner. The panel on the left side of each page provides links to more detailed treatment of the specific, named topics that are available from that level, with this page being the top-level starting point. Hovering over links in the list should bring up a brief description of what is covered by that page and its descendants. The viewer should take advantage of the capabilities of modern browsers to ascend back up the tree to view other topics, using the back button and page history to help navigate this site. Likewise, the change log at each level functions in a similar manner, with only changes to material for that topic or more specific descendant pages contained in its entries.
A Quick Tour
The topics from this splash page can be loosely grouped into a few categories and a number of stand-alone topics.
First there are the various technologies that have been developed and are being used. Although cameras are ubiquitous and now can be quite small, Lensless Imaging techniques have also been developed that can function in the dark as well as penetrate fog, walls, and other materials. Devices that can fly constitute a sine qua non for accessing hard to reach locations as well as transporting other devices or materials; a plethora of UAVs and MAVs have been developed and optimized for various conditions and circumstances. And apparently effective Invisibility Cloaks are now possible for UAVs and MAVs that go beyond even a wide range of effective disguises, such as birds and insects, in preventing detection. While UAVs and MAVs are robotic in nature, another class of Robotic Devices have been developed that do not fly, but rather creep and crawl, some tiny enough to enter locations through even small cracks and easily carried by UAVs. Another amazing technique has been developed not directly employed for surveillance, but rather for deception and maintaining secrecy is that of Image Projection, where surprisingly realistic images and videos are projected on surfaces or into free space.
How these technologies are employed for surveillance is straightforward. However, their application for other purposes comprises the second group of loosely defined and overlapping topics. It's not hard to imagine the kind of Dirty Tricks that one could perform using these hi-tech devices. Clearly, surveilling a person or group performing activities that are distasteful or illegal but not being able to use the information might motivate Extrajudicial Punishment. Another use for these technologies that exploits the lack of attribution and accountability they entail includes Nonconsensual Experimentation in studies that could never obtain approval for human subjects. But application of these technologies in Maintaining Secrecy would have to be high on the list; this topic also discusses the dangers of a group with access to these tools that lacks accountability and operates without public knowledge.
This is a broad-stroke, brief tour of the salient topics; the others in the 'Navigation' menu are also of interest and a brief description of each can be had by hovering over the correspoding link button.