“We all want to know what’s really going on. Starts when we’re kids. What’s inside this box? Behind that closed door?

“By the time we’re teenagers, we’re pretty sure there’s a ‘real world’ somewhere beyond our high school halls, a time and place where things make sense, where who’s in charge is something we can find out—and that knowing who and what runs ‘the real world’ will help us live our dreams.” – Parade Magazine

The above was from an article about spy stories on TV, movies, books and even songs.

And do you remember ‘Q’ from the James Bond movies who made gadgets for spies? There is real life Q’s out there. Read an article published recently in Gizmodo titled “Meet the ‘Real-Life Q’ Who Builds Secret Spy Gadgets for a Living” at: http://gizmodo.com/meet-the-real-life-q-who-built-secret-spy-gadgets-for-a-1686218523

The spy gadget maker’s favourite is a “miniature transmitter, disguised in bird droppings. It splats against someone’s window. You know how birds come along and shit on your window, it’s sort of a whiteish, blackish, greyish mess and you see a little drip at the bottom? Imagine that drip is actually highly conductive silver paint. That long drip is actually the antenna, and in that gob is a very tiny transmitter with a tiny battery.”

Allies spy on one another all the time. NSA was tracking German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone.

“Germany was angered by the NSA revelations, but it was soon embarrassed by reports that it was itself spying on an ally — in this case, Turkey — and had even “inadvertently” intercepted calls made by Kerry and Hillary Clinton. As Bernard Kouchner, a former French foreign minister, put it, the problem wasn’t so much that nations spied on their allies — it was that the United States was better at it. “Let’s be honest, we eavesdrop, too,” Kouchner told a French radio station. “But we don’t have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous.” SOURCE: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2015/03/24/allies-spy-on-allies-all-the-time-did-israel-do-something-worse/

The US intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned that entire populations, rather than just individuals, now live under constant surveillance.

“It’s no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing,” he said. “It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.”
SOURCE: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/03/everyone-is-under-surveillance-now-says-whistleblower-edward-snowden

In today’s iNews Cayman we have published an article from the UK’s Guardian “Police continued spying on Labour activists after their election as MPs”.

The spies are from The Met – Scotland Yard – The Metropolitan Police – UK’s elite. Well, it once was.

The Met’s special branch is where the spies are kept. Martin Bridger worked as a spy and he headed up our Operation Tempura.

Phone or wiretapping is the norm. It is done for our protection – so we are told. However, it is the people that actually instigate the wiretapping that tell us this.

Here in Cayman additional powers were given to our police force to tap our phones in 2011. Bridger and his cohorts tapped the phones of ‘suspects’ willy nilly without any supervision but now, when it was announced of these additional powers wiretapping would be closely supervised.

The same people that actually instigate the wiretapping would set up the supervisory watchdog. Of course.

The law mandates this should be a five-member Cabinet-appointed oversight committee, chaired by one of Cayman’s near-200 Justices of the Peace, and comprising a retired judge, magistrate or lawyer; the Chief Officer of the Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs; a government ICT specialist; and a technical expert from an off-island law-enforcement agency.

On 22 March, 2012 the Deputy Governor responded to the HRC confirming that the (then) Portfolio of Internal and External Affairs was in the final stages of identifying members of the Audit Committee and indicated that the matter would go before Cabinet within the next thirty (30) days,” the HRC has reported.

Regulations are in place giving police even wider spying powers for our protection.

I haven’t heard if this Oversight Committee has been formed and if it has who is on it? No one has confirmed either way despite my inquiries. Hopefully someone will give me the answer.

“Welcome to the spying game where you lose your soul”
Apologies to NICKI MINAJ for “The Crying Game”.