Ex-agent says CIA listens to people through phones and cameras

A former CIA agent said that the American spy agency can listen in on your conversations through your devices.

Between 1990 and 2004, John Kiriakou was a CIA agent who worked in a number of countries around the world. After 9/11, he became the CIA's Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan, where he was tasked with capturing al-Qaeda personnel.

When he left the CIA, he became a whistleblower and spoke about the CIA's use of torture. In 2012, he was convicted of passing classified information to the media, for which he was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

Sitting down with LADbible to talk through some of the most popular questions people have for a former intelligence agent, Kiriakou was asked whether the CIA listens to people through their phones and cameras.

"Yes," he said rather bluntly, before adding, "I hate to say it."

He pointed towards a 'dramatic leak' in 2017 which the CIA termed 'the vault seven disclosures' and contained information that 'the CIA can intercept anything from anyone'.

"They can remotely take control of your car through the car's embedded computer," Kiriakou explained.

"To do what? To make you drive off a bridge into a tree, to make you kill yourself and make it look like an accident.

"They can take over your smart television and turn the speaker into a microphone so that they can listen to what's being said in the room even when the TV is turned off.

"God knows what else they can do that hasn't been leaked."

So, if they are particularly inclined, it sounds like the CIA can use all your fancy technological devices to spy on you and turn your TV into a gadget that listens to you while you're talking.

They can see you, they can hear you, they can take over your car, Kiriakou says based on information that has been leaked.

Whether or not they're spying on you in particular is another matter; in this case, your best defence might be not being interesting enough to be spied on.

Elsewhere in his chat with LADbible, the former CIA agent claimed that 'every Tuesday morning at nine o'clock', there's a National Security Council meeting where they put together a 'kill list'.

He said: "They sit around a table and they make a list of all the people that they want to kill that week, and then they take it back to the CIA, which has a dedicated unit.

"I won't tell you the name, but it has a dedicated unit that takes receipt of the list. They say, 'okay, number one, they drive to the airport, they get on the plane, they go out to that country, they kill the person, they come back' and then they go to number two on the list. That happens every single week."