I'm a former CIA officer - ‘every government agency on Earth’ can listen through your phone
A former CIA officer has warned the world that every 'government agency on Earth' is able to listen through your phone.
It was a scene that was met with horror in the iconic The Dark Knight film, when Batman crosses an unethical line to turn every phone in Gotham City into his personal surveillance network so he can finally track down the Joker.
Well, such dystopian nightmares are no longer restricted to the land of fiction, according to former CIA officer Jason Hanson.
Hanson spent seven years in America's Criminal Investigation Agency, joining when he was just 23, and has written a book sharing all the tricks of the trade called Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life.
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The Doomsday prepper has a wife and eight kids but still manages to stock a year's worth of food for each member of his family, showing just how pessimistic he is about the world.
It's little wonder given the chilling revelation he shared with LADbible Stories, saying: "Every government agency on Earth can listen through your cell phone, can listen through your laptop, can listen through your cameras. It doesn't matter what it is.
"If you think you have a cell phone that is gonna be like magic and the Agency's not gonna listen in, they can."
Hanson then began showing off an object that may be unfamiliar to many.
He continued: "So I, because I'm more paranoid than the average person, this, kids, is what we call a flip phone, yes? This is my real cell phone, it is a flip phone. So I don't have apps tracking me, I don't have all this stuff tracking me.
"But I still know that if the CIA really wanted to listen on me, yes of course they can listen to my flip phone."
Hanson has warning for if you 'really value your privacy,'
Hanson now teaches his finely honed CIA skills to anyone who needs them.
The Cedar City native runs a company called Spy Briefing, which trains celebrities, the rich and powerful and even ordinary people on evasion, escape, hand-to-hand self-defence, evasive driving, firearms and home defence.
Now he has now passed on some of his top advice.
Hanson revealed he doesn't take even take his archaic flip phone with him to important meetings, and warns the rest of us to do the same if we 'really value' our privacy.
"If I have a very important meeting, I leave my cell phone at home or in my hotel room, I go to that meeting without any electronics whatsoever on me.
"And I have that meeting in person and I make sure we go to a place, mostly a park. Parks are great, where I know that nobody has any devices or anything and I know certain locations to go.
"But if you really value your privacy, if you really have anything, quote unquote, top secret you want to talk about, no electronics nearby, has to be in-person. Because any government on Earth can listen to you if they want to."
Watch Jason Hanson's full interview below:
Hanson explains the importance of VPNs
VPNs – Virtual Private Networks, which allow a user to set their browsing location to anywhere in the world – have been a major topic in British news this month.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer's government has announced that all under 16s in the UK will be banned from social media, which is set to come into law by spring 2027.
In further internet restrictions, Labour are expected to announce plans to ban VPNs.
It's a rule that likely wouldn't sit well with Hanson, who explained that he would never use public WiFi without one.
"If I log into public Wi-Fi, the only time I would ever do it is if I'm using a VPN, a virtual private network," he told LADbible Stories.
"So basically it encrypts my traffic, all that kind of stuff. But I'm not just going to my hotel, or I'm not going when I'm flying on an aeroplane and logging into that public Wi-Fi without a VPN.
"So I wanna make sure that my traffic's encrypted. I wanna make sure it makes me look like, even though I live in Utah, when I'm on my VPN the other day, it said I was in New Jersey," he continued.
"But yeah, if you log into public WiFi without using a VPN or something else, you're absolutely outta your mind because they're just gonna read your mail, they're gonna know everything about you. It is very unsafe."
The Labour Party Technology Secretary spoke about VPNs to BBC Breakfast this week and confirmed changes will be officially announced next month.
"We will make further statements in July about VPNs and further restrictions," Ms Kendal said.
"I said I’d come back in July with a further statement around VPN, but also additional measures we want to look at, further restrictions on AI chatbots that parents have found very worrying, more overnight curfews or breaks in doomscrolling for 16 and 17-year-olds.
“So yesterday’s announcement was the first of the measures and the reason we have done that is the sooner we make a decision on the main question of the ban, the sooner we can get it through Parliament and the sooner it will come into practice."
Topics: Technology, Social Media, UK News, US News
Daniel Murphy