CIA’s Shocking Power Over Your Devices

Holographic city above tablet with technology icons.

Your television can listen to your conversations even when it’s turned off, and that’s the least concerning thing a former CIA officer just confirmed about the devices you own.

Story Snapshot

Former CIA counterterrorism chief John Kiriakou confirms intelligence agencies can remotely hijack phones, televisions, and vehicles through embedded computers
The 2017 Vault 7 leak documented CIA tools capable of converting smart TVs into listening devices and exploiting vulnerabilities in every major operating system
Kiriakou warns that Russian, Chinese, Israeli, Iranian, and allied intelligence services possess identical surveillance capabilities
The technical barrier no longer exists—the only question is whether you’ve become important enough to target

When a Whistleblower Already Paid the Price

John Kiriakou didn’t arrive at his current warnings through speculation. The 14-year CIA veteran served as Chief of Counterterrorist Operations in Pakistan after September 11th, a position that placed him at the operational heart of America’s intelligence apparatus. In 2007, he became the first U.S. official to publicly confirm the CIA’s use of torture. That disclosure cost him his career, his security clearance, and 30 months in federal prison after a 2012 conviction for passing classified information to journalists. When someone who has already sacrificed everything speaks, the wise listen carefully.

His recent appearances on LADbible’s Honesty Box and Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast weren’t designed to shock for entertainment value. Kiriakou provided specific, documented capabilities grounded in the 2017 WikiLeaks release known as Vault 7—a massive trove of CIA documents spanning 2013 to 2016 that detailed the agency’s cyber operations toolkit. These weren’t theoretical programs. They were operational tools with user manuals, bug reports, and version updates.

What the Documents Actually Revealed

The Vault 7 disclosures weren’t vague allegations about potential government overreach. They contained technical specifications for compromising iPhones and Android devices, exploiting security vulnerabilities in Windows, macOS, and Linux systems, and converting Samsung smart televisions into covert listening devices. The documents outlined malware designed to evade detection and attribution, programs targeting web browsers and messaging applications, and methods to maintain persistent access to compromised systems. This wasn’t science fiction—it was engineering documentation for surveillance infrastructure already deployed.

Kiriakou’s contribution transforms these technical documents into plain language: “They can intercept anything from anyone.” The “they” he references extends far beyond Langley. The NSA, FBI, British intelligence, French services, German agencies, Canadian operations, and the intelligence arms of Australia, New Zealand, Russia, China, Israel, and Iran all possess comparable technological capabilities. The assumption that only American agencies conduct electronic surveillance reflects a dangerous naiveté about how global intelligence operations function in the digital age.

Your Car as a Remote-Controlled Weapon

The vehicle control capabilities Kiriakou describes sound like plot devices from a political thriller, but they exploit genuine vulnerabilities in automotive computer systems. Modern vehicles contain dozens of embedded computers managing everything from braking systems to steering mechanisms. These systems communicate through internal networks, and those networks can be accessed remotely through various entry points—entertainment systems, diagnostic ports, or wireless connectivity features marketed as convenience upgrades. Kiriakou frames the capability bluntly: “They can remotely take control of your car through the car’s embedded computer, 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.”

The technical feasibility isn’t disputed by security researchers who have demonstrated similar exploits in controlled environments. What remains unknown is deployment frequency. Kiriakou emphasizes a crucial distinction—possessing a capability differs fundamentally from systematic deployment. Intelligence agencies operate under resource constraints. The question isn’t whether they can compromise your vehicle; it’s whether you’ve become a high-enough priority target to justify the operational investment. That calculation should provide limited comfort.

The Television That Never Stops Listening

Kiriakou notes that the capability to convert smart TVs into listening devices existed when he was hired in the 1980s, categorizing it as “old technology.” The Vault 7 documents confirmed that Samsung smart televisions could be placed in a “Fake-Off” mode—appearing powered down while microphones remained active, transmitting conversations to remote servers. The speaker component functions as a microphone, capturing audio in the room and transmitting it without any visible indicator that surveillance is occurring. No blinking lights, no status indicators, no user consent notifications.

The television in your living room represents the perfect surveillance device—centrally located in homes, positioned to capture conversations in common areas, equipped with always-on internet connectivity, and trusted by users who assume a powered-down device is actually disabled. The technical term for this is “hardware-level compromise,” meaning security cannot be restored through software updates or settings adjustments. The vulnerability exists in the device architecture itself.

The Oversight Vacuum and Constitutional Questions

The asymmetry between capability and accountability creates a dangerous vacuum. Intelligence agencies develop and deploy surveillance tools that remain largely opaque to both the public and elected representatives charged with oversight. The Vault 7 disclosures revealed not just technical capabilities but the absence of meaningful constraints on their deployment. When Kiriakou states “they’re not secure, at all” regarding personal devices, he’s confirming that the constitutional frameworks designed to protect citizens from warrantless surveillance have failed to keep pace with technological capability.

The Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures were written for a world of physical documents and face-to-face conversations. Digital surveillance bypasses these protections through technical means that occur invisibly and remotely. The legal doctrine of “third-party consent” means that data shared with technology companies may not retain constitutional protections. When intelligence agencies can access data directly from devices without user knowledge, the entire framework of consent-based privacy collapses. American conservatives rightly emphasize limited government power and individual liberty—principles fundamentally undermined by unchecked surveillance infrastructure.