Read up on the efforts some router and modem brands goto to try and protect their firmware like updates over the life of a product line.
Signed checksum, private key, verified public key systems.
Just another note, writing/speaking on collating economic and open source financial intelligence data or related computer programming and polygraph research (lie detector for security interviews in some nations) will make a list too:)
That AC is hoping the data capture, entry and analysis is been done looking for another nations spies. A nations best of the best are looking for another nations best spies is the vision been sold to the public.
The problem is the rapid expansion of staff with list addition access. Political waivers for cleared staff getting social advancement to make hiring statistics look better, state level random additions, party political reasons. The people cleared to create a list, add to a list or make the decision on the level of 'watching' is now a rather a big tent. Public and private sectors workers have to 'add' to lists just keep their gov happy.
No bid contractors doing internal clearances for needed teams of staff members (everyone is cleared as the boss is cleared by default), the rushed need for staff with language skills getting access, paper work "dual" citizens with other loyalties, past skills been upgraded for security work adding lots of names for decades.
The ""percolate" to the top" red tape that kept the best mil and gov databases mission focused is now been replaced with new ideas and considerations. Lists are now added to for internal performance quotas or driven by private sector profit considerations or just to keep a clearance active.
Automation also floods databases, every licence plate down roads, databased images of driver and passenger, every active cell phone tracked in an area, tourist or photographer tracked back to their vehicles licence plate and reported for camera use..
Apply for a security clearance for work or to improve looking for gov/mil work.
Look into getting a police check or certificate for local work.
That would induce paperwork see if a person has been placed on a basic, direct national not trusted list.
The "political activists" can face a very passive surveillance just to see who a person talks to, walks with, sends emails, letters, phones, spends hours with.. IM lists, IRC, web 2.0, international VOIP, IM with a person not added to a friends list or not shared with a common third persons IM list, any contact with 1950-80's activists or their work.
A lot of advanced "charity" and "corporate" network tracking is often shared with or sold to gov, mil to see what political connections people make.
If you are a journalist, press, media expect gov backed malware crafted just for your computers, cell phone. No consumer grade protection will have any record of it and view it as normal OS like functionality. Traces of such efforts can point to gov interest in a person.
What are most Western governments looking for at this time is passive collect it all databases that show hops, links, connections, people talking politics, crypto.
Build up too much of an online reputation and have the ability to sway, protect or publish mil or gov whistleblowers material is really when the gov and mil take note.
Crypto and advance maths skills? Creating open source projects with advanced crypto skills passed on from advance university learning that was for placement for mil or gov jobs. Changing from closed source well paid private sector skills to open source crypto.. that will get a lot of gov attention and for anyone in the same project forum, IRC chats, code site.
What books a person buys online on what topics. Years of bulk non fiction can show a person deep in thought about political issues. Some more nonfiction book orders can help with that list..
Basically a person is waiting for enough of a gov database to move form a person of interest to active protest group or political group creation.
Another tracking point is *who* is reading your work, code, looking for you online. If workers with security clearances are been tracked looking up your blog, your work as a journalist, chatroom, code project, as an author...in own time, at home.. your work is an issue for a gov or mil.
University presentations on open, public papers surrounding crypto, gov, mil whistleblowers material even if your nation has freedom of the press, freedom after and of speech.
'How Covert Agents Infiltrate The Internet To Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations" (Feb. 25 2014) https://theintercept.com/2014/...
"Of course you can be transparent -- about the process. Individual cases, yes, people understand that those details may need to be secret, but not the process. Otherwise people might think that there are secret laws in use here."
If the paper work exists to plant malware to turn a cell phone into tracking beacon, have a stealth live mic option to record all conversations even when "off' is a soft touch option and seems powered down. Thin sealed in battery design helped a lot with that:)
If so then its just like past beacon or site collection but with a cell phone. If not the legal teams will keep asking for paperwork covering their client by name for such direct methods.
The magical question is why anyone interesting would have a phone given decades of open court, press and media information about the remote turn on, live mic option or even the analog voice-grade telephone service recording, logs.
The trick seems to be in well pushed talking points that some new cell phones are still magically 'secure' every generation.
More from US courts or been seen in US courts in public having to hand over US collected data on Germans because a German used a US band.
This method will put collection back to the clandestine services and away from public US courts with laws searching for any data stored on a US bands products globally.
Re "A German company that stores its data in German isn't subject to underseas cables and satellite links being heavily monitored."
Cheap telco peering deals could send bulk German data on long trips past US sites in many other NATO nations.
Within Germany efforts like Operation “Glotaic“ show what can be done by splitting links and "collecting all"
The link is in German but the German video has a nice animation at 2:55 showing split options.
"http://www.zdf.de/frontal-21/wie-bnd-cia-und-nsa-gemeinsam-in-deutschland-spionieren-37718666.html
The Germans will also have a huge way in for the BND and Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Office_for_the_Protection_of_the_Constitution
Add in the five eye nations too via the NSA, GCHQ.
AC the "Gehlen Org" was packed with Nazis who the US and UK thought has skills in the East. No questions asked about the war history of staff.
Gehlen_Organization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
".. for all the moral compromises involved [in hiring former Nazis], it was a complete failure in intelligence terms. The Nazis were terrible spies"."
Whistleblowing https://cryptome.org/2013-info...
A few from within the CIA did speak out on illegal torture. They faced prison for telling the truth about illegal torture, not the full protection of US whistleblowing laws.
re "then maybe such a vessel would be useful..."
"If only there were a way"
So all the small nations that win during big war games are been allowed to win? So they go home with a feel good win rather than a certificate of participation (detection)?
Social promotion for the other nations subs efforts? Do they know they are been tracked all the time when trying to be so very sneaky? Or are they still totally fooled into thinking they really got deep into the protected areas with their old subs?
Think back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... like ideas. Can the math be spread over a lot of cores, new gpu's and then work out quick, better, sooner, with less heat?
If yes, great. If no, buy into a different CPU for the calculations.
The positive news is local contractors get decades of jobs creating, building and refitting the drones.
Re "It would be awfully tempting for a naval power like Russia or China to try and nab one on the high seas to find out what makes it tick"
Human spies deep in the US would have seen/been sitting in on the conception, funding and final design. Thats the good part about having generations of human spies deep in governments vs a digital "collect it all" system to try and spy on ports.
Re "to find out what makes it tick"
A well designed modern sub would never allow itself to be seen by any standalone fancy floating network device. Anything on the surface will not get depth at any power setting or just by been passive and super sensitive.
To get depth and detection a new global SOSUS network would have to be fully funded or attempted to uplink from deep depths to a floating drone.
Think back to all the war games where underfunded, old subs sneak around with gifted crews from 2nd and 3rd rate nations to get into the middle of complex layers of the best surface ships the US can design and win every time:)
The options are the US is always letting other nations have a happy event or a lot of random nations old subs just understand how to use depth to great advantage.
If the IT staff are internal to the candidate and creating a very good web 2.0 page much could be deduced about the rest of the staff.
Spending and advance skill sets usually do not occur in just one part of a team.
ie what will the rest of the campaign staff be like, get-out-the-vote strategy, ability to track big-name donors, finance team database.
How can computer lists best help supporters and paid staff track voters, ads? That needs a really good, dedicated IT team. How and where to be buying advertising. Real time feedback on huge ad buys.
Can the team work block by block to get millions of new voters? ie a good web site might just show good, fast internal data and analytics teams.
Or is an outside firm used for the web page and all other needs? Data trust methods?
Two very different ideas can be attempted, in house or less staff hires and a lot of outside firms.
ie is the candidate getting on well with a team of trusted experts everyday or so hard to work with they can only be sold as another brand by outside experts.
Re 'if law enforcement is interested in this data"
Yes the many years of public information on Familial DNA searching been a term used in public. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seems many nations will have paperwork going back to "1983" too:)
The US had the right idea back in the 1960's. Spend a lot of tax payers cash on land, the private sector, German experts who had found a new life in the USA no questions asked and finally creating some US experts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Lots of tax payers cash fixed all the issues and no more lemons.
Try the Indian approach of never getting ahead of your nations own domestic production lines, education and science over generations. Never be totally dependant on other another nations experts or space related exports. Build to a cost, be smart and keep designing domestically.
The UK tried with its buy in of US tech for its Skynet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... military communications satellites. All it was left with was an offer of a US export grade satellite after spending a lot on trying to catch up on space science. Decades of space science cannot be induced in a few years with extra funding.
The US private sector is now stuck waiting for the lucrative funding from US military missions and trying to catch up with a lot of other smart nations who can offer cheap and reliable systems.
Turn the certified to launch military payloads into a tax payer funded flood of cash for basic US science and engineering again. Rediscover metallurgy, acceleration profiles, the acoustic environment so the payloads are happy with US nosecones. Time to think about the dual manifested side?
re " "If we don't tell anyone it exists then no-one will find it, tee hee""
The UK got access to most embassies in Europe in the 1920's-30's, Engima, all French diplomatic communications after 1945 into the 1960's, almost all trusted export crypto used globally until the 1980's. More is now understood thanks to whistleblowers.
It worked because nobody was smart enough to look or had the ability to openly publish Western crypto findings. No book, magazine, newspaper would really consider the story interesting. A classic version of the D-Notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... helped with publishers too.
Now everyone in the UK can get to enjoy a digital D-Notice for talking, asking, recalling past methods or publishing findings, thinking about methods online:)
Anti-Social Behaviour Orders for the smart people who find or look for or talk about malware, crypto, know of advanced maths or computer systems.
Re "I seriously doubt such a measure would pass into law"
The NSA and GCHQ let a generation of users enjoy US based consumer operating systems that responded well to gov malware and keyloggers. After that any compiled export crypto is a junk layer. Some great busy work and a generation of legal distraction.
Re "There was a huge stink made about that as well, and as far as I know, those operations have been shut down (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong)."
The fuss made just further covered collect it all and the ability to collect per person per US designed device.
Re 'could break into these systems and make it easier for them to effectively spy on the UK"
Hints of methods and easy network access showed up in the UK press around 2000.
"'Clean-up' police branded corrupt" (Sunday 31 March 2002) http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Huge amounts of secure digital information was floating around for sale from courts, police to the press or anyone with cash. ie any "government, company or individual" could buy into any secure network.
So the UK is going for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, Government Technical Assistance Centre, NTAC to try and use the GCHQ in public again.
Court workers, legal teams will see the documents just as they did in the past. The media will be informed of the methods and it will be journalists publishing pre trial stories all over again thanks to corrupt police.
Will a CIB3 (anti-corruption squad) like effort have to try and track leaks again as was done around early 2000?
Run integrity tests on everyone again? Who accepts a random offer for information in 2015?
Domestic surveillance is the domain of humans who know what they are doing without courts, media and corruption buying and selling their best results.
Bringing huge amounts of electronic GCHQ material into any open or secure court setting did not work. Too many people got to read of methods and sell information to anyone with the means to pay.
Technically Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will get to every network in the UK per day.
Parallel construction, an offer to become an informant always worked wonders and left no trace to technical methods.
Announcing what the GCHQ will be doing to the public seems like past efforts. Everyone with an interest will just buy the product as it flows down to police and courts in real time. Anyone of interest will just stay away from any communications network.
Re " they will in turn try to outsource to other cheaper geos like vietnam."
So true. China is even been out priced on some products by nations like Indonesia. Even with a cheap work force or new robots in place.
Re "What is the purpose of building these "ghost cities"? Blocks or cities of vacant housing don't make sense. Why are they being built in such seemingly large numbers?"
The wages of the people building, designing a city was seen as a good spend. Better to have them enjoying a days work, offer of advanced skills, new materials and local experts.
Over time it was felt that any created city would fill up as heavy production in the area would need workers and workers like clean, new homes with other workers around them.
Add in hospitals, clubs, bars, water treatment, government workers needs, office workers, public transport - everything was designed and set out to new standards.
The "seemingly large numbers" was to help the local export economy with cheap workers, new jobs or just relocate people as traditional cities got redesigned only for the very rich.
So mostly jobs, workers needs, expanding traditional wealthy city concepts that could move poor relocated people a new cheap ready city areas. The part that was missed was "community".
Or a competitor, state gov/fed officials/other gov/militnational or even legal international police cooperation trying to find out why all the no bid contracts go to just one company without trying to attract too much attention.
If they seem to know so much, who or what is leaking the details to even set up the skilled entry attempts.
Slashdot Mirror
Read up on the efforts some router and modem brands goto to try and protect their firmware like updates over the life of a product line.
Signed checksum, private key, verified public key systems.
COINTELPRO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The part about "All three intelligence services sent the names of Americans to the... " shows the historic domestic and global US list making.
also see Project MINARET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Secret Cold War Documents Reveal NSA Spied on Senators" (SEPTEMBER 25, 2013)
http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/...
Just another note, writing/speaking on collating economic and open source financial intelligence data or related computer programming and polygraph research (lie detector for security interviews in some nations) will make a list too :)
That AC is hoping the data capture, entry and analysis is been done looking for another nations spies. A nations best of the best are looking for another nations best spies is the vision been sold to the public.
The problem is the rapid expansion of staff with list addition access. Political waivers for cleared staff getting social advancement to make hiring statistics look better, state level random additions, party political reasons. The people cleared to create a list, add to a list or make the decision on the level of 'watching' is now a rather a big tent. Public and private sectors workers have to 'add' to lists just keep their gov happy.
No bid contractors doing internal clearances for needed teams of staff members (everyone is cleared as the boss is cleared by default), the rushed need for staff with language skills getting access, paper work "dual" citizens with other loyalties, past skills been upgraded for security work adding lots of names for decades.
The ""percolate" to the top" red tape that kept the best mil and gov databases mission focused is now been replaced with new ideas and considerations. Lists are now added to for internal performance quotas or driven by private sector profit considerations or just to keep a clearance active.
Automation also floods databases, every licence plate down roads, databased images of driver and passenger, every active cell phone tracked in an area, tourist or photographer tracked back to their vehicles licence plate and reported for camera use..
Apply for a security clearance for work or to improve looking for gov/mil work.
Look into getting a police check or certificate for local work.
That would induce paperwork see if a person has been placed on a basic, direct national not trusted list.
The "political activists" can face a very passive surveillance just to see who a person talks to, walks with, sends emails, letters, phones, spends hours with.. IM lists, IRC, web 2.0, international VOIP, IM with a person not added to a friends list or not shared with a common third persons IM list, any contact with 1950-80's activists or their work.
A lot of advanced "charity" and "corporate" network tracking is often shared with or sold to gov, mil to see what political connections people make.
If you are a journalist, press, media expect gov backed malware crafted just for your computers, cell phone. No consumer grade protection will have any record of it and view it as normal OS like functionality. Traces of such efforts can point to gov interest in a person.
What are most Western governments looking for at this time is passive collect it all databases that show hops, links, connections, people talking politics, crypto.
Build up too much of an online reputation and have the ability to sway, protect or publish mil or gov whistleblowers material is really when the gov and mil take note.
Crypto and advance maths skills? Creating open source projects with advanced crypto skills passed on from advance university learning that was for placement for mil or gov jobs. Changing from closed source well paid private sector skills to open source crypto.. that will get a lot of gov attention and for anyone in the same project forum, IRC chats, code site.
What books a person buys online on what topics. Years of bulk non fiction can show a person deep in thought about political issues. Some more nonfiction book orders can help with that list..
Basically a person is waiting for enough of a gov database to move form a person of interest to active protest group or political group creation.
Another tracking point is *who* is reading your work, code, looking for you online. If workers with security clearances are been tracked looking up your blog, your work as a journalist, chatroom, code project, as an author...in own time, at home.. your work is an issue for a gov or mil.
University presentations on open, public papers surrounding crypto, gov, mil whistleblowers material even if your nation has freedom of the press, freedom after and of speech.
'How Covert Agents Infiltrate The Internet To Manipulate, Deceive, And Destroy Reputations" (Feb. 25 2014) https://theintercept.com/2014/...
"Of course you can be transparent -- about the process. Individual cases, yes, people understand that those details may need to be secret, but not the process. Otherwise people might think that there are secret laws in use here." :)
If the paper work exists to plant malware to turn a cell phone into tracking beacon, have a stealth live mic option to record all conversations even when "off' is a soft touch option and seems powered down. Thin sealed in battery design helped a lot with that
If so then its just like past beacon or site collection but with a cell phone. If not the legal teams will keep asking for paperwork covering their client by name for such direct methods.
The magical question is why anyone interesting would have a phone given decades of open court, press and media information about the remote turn on, live mic option or even the analog voice-grade telephone service recording, logs.
The trick seems to be in well pushed talking points that some new cell phones are still magically 'secure' every generation.
More from US courts or been seen in US courts in public having to hand over US collected data on Germans because a German used a US band.
This method will put collection back to the clandestine services and away from public US courts with laws searching for any data stored on a US bands products globally.
Re "A German company that stores its data in German isn't subject to underseas cables and satellite links being heavily monitored."
Cheap telco peering deals could send bulk German data on long trips past US sites in many other NATO nations.
Within Germany efforts like Operation “Glotaic“ show what can be done by splitting links and "collecting all"
The link is in German but the German video has a nice animation at 2:55 showing split options.
"http://www.zdf.de/frontal-21/wie-bnd-cia-und-nsa-gemeinsam-in-deutschland-spionieren-37718666.html
The Germans will also have a huge way in for the BND and Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Office_for_the_Protection_of_the_Constitution
Add in the five eye nations too via the NSA, GCHQ.
AC the "Gehlen Org" was packed with Nazis who the US and UK thought has skills in the East. No questions asked about the war history of staff.
Gehlen_Organization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
".. for all the moral compromises involved [in hiring former Nazis], it was a complete failure in intelligence terms. The Nazis were terrible spies"."
Whistleblowing https://cryptome.org/2013-info...
A few from within the CIA did speak out on illegal torture. They faced prison for telling the truth about illegal torture, not the full protection of US whistleblowing laws.
re "then maybe such a vessel would be useful..."
"If only there were a way"
So all the small nations that win during big war games are been allowed to win? So they go home with a feel good win rather than a certificate of participation (detection)?
Social promotion for the other nations subs efforts? Do they know they are been tracked all the time when trying to be so very sneaky? Or are they still totally fooled into thinking they really got deep into the protected areas with their old subs?
Think back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... like ideas. Can the math be spread over a lot of cores, new gpu's and then work out quick, better, sooner, with less heat?
If yes, great. If no, buy into a different CPU for the calculations.
The positive news is local contractors get decades of jobs creating, building and refitting the drones. :)
Re "It would be awfully tempting for a naval power like Russia or China to try and nab one on the high seas to find out what makes it tick"
Human spies deep in the US would have seen/been sitting in on the conception, funding and final design. Thats the good part about having generations of human spies deep in governments vs a digital "collect it all" system to try and spy on ports.
Re "to find out what makes it tick"
A well designed modern sub would never allow itself to be seen by any standalone fancy floating network device. Anything on the surface will not get depth at any power setting or just by been passive and super sensitive.
To get depth and detection a new global SOSUS network would have to be fully funded or attempted to uplink from deep depths to a floating drone.
Think back to all the war games where underfunded, old subs sneak around with gifted crews from 2nd and 3rd rate nations to get into the middle of complex layers of the best surface ships the US can design and win every time
The options are the US is always letting other nations have a happy event or a lot of random nations old subs just understand how to use depth to great advantage.
Its a big floating wireless version of the very traditional sound surveillance system (SOSUS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If the IT staff are internal to the candidate and creating a very good web 2.0 page much could be deduced about the rest of the staff.
Spending and advance skill sets usually do not occur in just one part of a team.
ie what will the rest of the campaign staff be like, get-out-the-vote strategy, ability to track big-name donors, finance team database.
How can computer lists best help supporters and paid staff track voters, ads? That needs a really good, dedicated IT team. How and where to be buying advertising. Real time feedback on huge ad buys.
Can the team work block by block to get millions of new voters? ie a good web site might just show good, fast internal data and analytics teams.
Or is an outside firm used for the web page and all other needs? Data trust methods?
Two very different ideas can be attempted, in house or less staff hires and a lot of outside firms.
ie is the candidate getting on well with a team of trusted experts everyday or so hard to work with they can only be sold as another brand by outside experts.
The "DNA Data From California Newborn Blood Samples Stored, Sold To 3rd Parties" has "(cbslocal.com)" that links to:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.c...
Re 'if law enforcement is interested in this data" :)
Yes the many years of public information on Familial DNA searching been a term used in public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seems many nations will have paperwork going back to "1983" too
The US had the right idea back in the 1960's. Spend a lot of tax payers cash on land, the private sector, German experts who had found a new life in the USA no questions asked and finally creating some US experts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Lots of tax payers cash fixed all the issues and no more lemons.
Try the Indian approach of never getting ahead of your nations own domestic production lines, education and science over generations. Never be totally dependant on other another nations experts or space related exports. Build to a cost, be smart and keep designing domestically.
The UK tried with its buy in of US tech for its Skynet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... military communications satellites. All it was left with was an offer of a US export grade satellite after spending a lot on trying to catch up on space science. Decades of space science cannot be induced in a few years with extra funding.
The US private sector is now stuck waiting for the lucrative funding from US military missions and trying to catch up with a lot of other smart nations who can offer cheap and reliable systems.
Turn the certified to launch military payloads into a tax payer funded flood of cash for basic US science and engineering again. Rediscover metallurgy, acceleration profiles, the acoustic environment so the payloads are happy with US nosecones.
Time to think about the dual manifested side?
re " "If we don't tell anyone it exists then no-one will find it, tee hee"" :)
The UK got access to most embassies in Europe in the 1920's-30's, Engima, all French diplomatic communications after 1945 into the 1960's, almost all trusted export crypto used globally until the 1980's. More is now understood thanks to whistleblowers.
It worked because nobody was smart enough to look or had the ability to openly publish Western crypto findings. No book, magazine, newspaper would really consider the story interesting. A classic version of the D-Notice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... helped with publishers too.
Now everyone in the UK can get to enjoy a digital D-Notice for talking, asking, recalling past methods or publishing findings, thinking about methods online
Anti-Social Behaviour Orders for the smart people who find or look for or talk about malware, crypto, know of advanced maths or computer systems.
Re "I seriously doubt such a measure would pass into law"
The NSA and GCHQ let a generation of users enjoy US based consumer operating systems that responded well to gov malware and keyloggers. After that any compiled export crypto is a junk layer. Some great busy work and a generation of legal distraction.
Re "There was a huge stink made about that as well, and as far as I know, those operations have been shut down (I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong)."
The fuss made just further covered collect it all and the ability to collect per person per US designed device.
Re 'could break into these systems and make it easier for them to effectively spy on the UK"
Hints of methods and easy network access showed up in the UK press around 2000.
"'Clean-up' police branded corrupt" (Sunday 31 March 2002)
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Huge amounts of secure digital information was floating around for sale from courts, police to the press or anyone with cash. ie any "government, company or individual" could buy into any secure network.
So the UK is going for the National Criminal Intelligence Service, Government Technical Assistance Centre, NTAC to try and use the GCHQ in public again.
Court workers, legal teams will see the documents just as they did in the past. The media will be informed of the methods and it will be journalists publishing pre trial stories all over again thanks to corrupt police.
Will a CIB3 (anti-corruption squad) like effort have to try and track leaks again as was done around early 2000?
Run integrity tests on everyone again? Who accepts a random offer for information in 2015?
Domestic surveillance is the domain of humans who know what they are doing without courts, media and corruption buying and selling their best results.
Bringing huge amounts of electronic GCHQ material into any open or secure court setting did not work. Too many people got to read of methods and sell information to anyone with the means to pay.
Technically Tempora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... will get to every network in the UK per day.
Parallel construction, an offer to become an informant always worked wonders and left no trace to technical methods.
Announcing what the GCHQ will be doing to the public seems like past efforts.
Everyone with an interest will just buy the product as it flows down to police and courts in real time.
Anyone of interest will just stay away from any communications network.
Re " they will in turn try to outsource to other cheaper geos like vietnam."
So true. China is even been out priced on some products by nations like Indonesia. Even with a cheap work force or new robots in place.
Re "What is the purpose of building these "ghost cities"? Blocks or cities of vacant housing don't make sense. Why are they being built in such seemingly large numbers?"
The wages of the people building, designing a city was seen as a good spend. Better to have them enjoying a days work, offer of advanced skills, new materials and local experts.
Over time it was felt that any created city would fill up as heavy production in the area would need workers and workers like clean, new homes with other workers around them.
Add in hospitals, clubs, bars, water treatment, government workers needs, office workers, public transport - everything was designed and set out to new standards.
The "seemingly large numbers" was to help the local export economy with cheap workers, new jobs or just relocate people as traditional cities got redesigned only for the very rich.
So mostly jobs, workers needs, expanding traditional wealthy city concepts that could move poor relocated people a new cheap ready city areas. The part that was missed was "community".
Or a competitor, state gov/fed officials/other gov/militnational or even legal international police cooperation trying to find out why all the no bid contracts go to just one company without trying to attract too much attention.
If they seem to know so much, who or what is leaking the details to even set up the skilled entry attempts.