May the source be with you, but remember the KISS principle ;-)
Bigger doesn't imply better. Bigger often is a sign of obesity, of lost control, of overcomplexity, of cancerous
cells
Total Surveillance Regime: Big Uncle is Watching You
Mass surveillance is equal to totalitarism. As Joseph Goebbels professed:
"if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear"
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
- Goethe
1984 is supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual
The troubling aspect about these disclosures is not so much their significance today, but
what surveillance on the nation bodes for the future. Given human nature I am not optimistic.
NSA staff and private contractors have unfettered access to this information. I have a hard
time believing that not one of them has used that access to information for personal or political
gain. This system makes insider trading, industrial espionage, blackmail, and extortion an almost
inevitable outcome. --
The Guardian (from comments).
A new round of debates about the dominance of military industrial complex and the level of control
it exerts over the US civil society was caused by recent revelations about NSA activities in the USA.
It might well be the Rubicon was crossed around JFK assassination time. On August 17, 1975 Senator
Frank Church stated on NBC's Meet the Press without
mentioning the name of the NSA (Church
Committee - Wikipedia ):
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government
has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through
the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or
potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned
around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability
to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no
place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the
technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to
impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort
to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there
to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess
this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that
abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[11]
In other words expansionism and mission creep are immanent qualities, the second nature of large bureaucracies, and
unless there is countervailing force. In the absence of countervailing forces they tend to escape from civil control and form a state within a state.
In a way any state with powerful three-letter agencies stand with one leg in a tyranny, even if it
calls
itself a democracy. And that fact was already known to everybody in 1975 (Church
Committee). Actually just after president
Kennedy assassination, which, no matter which version of events you adopt, in all cases indirectly pointed
out that three letter agencies jumped out of control of civil government. As one Guardian reader commented
"The pernicious thing is that it is in the nature of bureaucracies in general and spy agencies in particular
to expand beyond reason unless there is effective oversight."
The nature of bureaucracies in general and spy agencies in particular to expand beyond
reason unless there is effective oversight. In the case of intelligence agencies it has proven
impossible for civil authorities to control them. Recent stories about CIA spying on the US
Senate Intelligence Committee just prove this.
A statement issued Thursday morning by a C.I.A. spokesman said that John O. Brennan, the
agency’s director, had apologized to Ms. Feinstein and the committee’s ranking Republican,
Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and would set up an internal accountability board to review
the issue. The statement said that the board, which will be led by a former Democratic senator,
Evan Bayh of Indiana, could recommend “potential disciplinary measures” and “steps to address
systemic issues.”
But anger among lawmakers grew throughout the day. Leaving a nearly three-hour briefing about the
report in a Senate conference room, members of both parties called for the C.I.A. officers to be
held accountable, and some said they had lost confidence in Mr. Brennan’s leadership. “This is a
serious situation and there are serious violations,” said Mr. Chambliss, generally a staunch ally
of the intelligence community. He called for the C.I.A. employees to be “dealt with very
harshly.”
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado and another member of the Intelligence Committee,
demanded Mr. Brennan’s resignation. “The C.I.A. unconstitutionally spied on Congress by hacking
into the Senate Intelligence Committee computers,” he said in a written statement. “This grave
misconduct not only is illegal but it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation
of powers.
You can't get a more solid proof of total surveillance... Please note that Brennan
continued his tenure as the head of CIA; attempts to depose him after the incident by some Senators
failed. That suggest who was the winner in this skirmish.
That also means that contrary to common perception intelligence agencies are political players
and as such are quite capable to defend their staffing and resource consumption levels, despite inefficient waist of resources
as typical for large bureaucracies. In other words they are no longer technocratic, but tend to
emerge as political bodies, the core of the "deep
state" (see
Bureaucracy as
a Political Coalition). The story of John Brennan the former head of CIA in Obama administration
tell volumes about such tendencies. During and after 2016 Presidential elections he emerged as a
powerful political broker, later aligning with Hillary Clinton in efforts to form a political
coalition capable of deposing President Trump.
We can admire the immortal foresight and moral courage of Secretary of State Henry Stimson's who closed the Cipher
Bureau in 1929. But this highly ethical, moral and courageous act deprived the US of the capacity
to read foreign diplomatic cables as world-wide threats grew. So it was quickly reversed.
In a way technology dictates the level of government surveillance in the society and in "Internet
society" it looks like this level is permanently set on "high". That does not mean that we can't
fight it. Yes, we can and one factor that played into the hands of defenders of personal privacy is
the you can't drink from a fire hose: as soon as you connect too much information it devalues
itself. Also methods of "injecting" false metadata into your profile are reality available. for
example for Internet browsing anybody with programmable keyboard can do that. That means that you
the set of sites you visited no longer can be considered authentic in "Post-Snowden" world. That
dooms effort to assign you a level of "loyalty" based on your browsing history, which is very
temping for three letter agencies to do. Recent failed attempt to create a site that claffies
some sites are "Russian propaganda" sites belong to this category (Washington
Post Disgracefully Promotes a McCarthyite Blacklist From a New, Hidden, and Very Shady Group.)
But such attempts were just shifted to another domain -- "leak prevention" training:
Part of the
“Unauthorized Disclosure” training includes watching a
Fox News clip on the crackdown on leaks and Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ statement
announcing an increase in criminal leak investigations. A
student guide from the Insider Threat Awareness training includes the McCarthyesque request
that employees report on each other for “general suspicious behaviors,” including “Questionable
national loyalty” such as “Displaying questionable loyalty to US government or company” or
“Making anti-U.S. comments.” Never mind that the only oath government employees take is to the US
Constitution, not to any government official or the US government itself and certainly not to a
private company.
This also opens people to browsing blackmail.
In this sense post-snowmen world is inherently more difficult for three-letter agencies to navigate.
Technology changes can really change the society. And not always in a beneficial for the society way.
There is such thing as "blowback" in technologies. We can view recent NSA activities revealed by Snowden
as a classic example of such blowback connected with the spread of Internet and cloud based
technologies. In a way Internet begets surveillance. And you can do nothing about it. As
former Sun CEO Scott McNealy (born November 13, 1954) said "You have zero privacy
anyway. Getoverit." (see also Privacy is
Dead – Get Over It).
I think that the first attempt to create a comprehensive nation-wide intelligence network that monitors
sentiments of the citizens and hunt enemies of the state goes as far back as Napoleon and his famous
minister of police Joseph Fouché.
Or may be it even goes as far back as to
Byzantine Empire with its first in history organized network of spies. As for recording of mail
envelopes, we can even claim that this function for international mail (in a form of "black chambers")
is as old as states are. In the USA it started in full force in August 1919 when
J. Edgar Hoover became head
of the Bureau of Investigation's
new General Intelligence Division—also known as the Radical Division because its explicit
goal was to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals.
Recording of all email envelopes started long before email was
invented and became established practice since the WWII for all regular mail entering or leaving the
country. It just got a new name now -- collection of metadata and the technology that allow
correlation of multiple sets of metadata exposing hidden "networks".
Recording metadata of phone calls and often the calls themselves first started before WWII and technology
was first polished on international calls, which for obvious reasons are of great interest to all governments.
As intelligence agencies were one of the first to deploy computers after WWII it would be naive to
assume that IBM/360 mainframes were not used to analyze collection of metadata of international calls
as early as in
1960th.
Hoover and his chosen assistant, George Ruch monitored a variety of U.S. radicals with the intent
to punish, arrest, or deport them. Targets during this period included Marcus Garvey; Rose Pastor Stokes
and Cyril Briggs; Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman; and future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter,
whom Hoover nicknamed as "the most dangerous man in the United States". So those
radicals served a guinea pigs for polishing methods of collection of communications using electronic
means of surveillance.
So it would be a mistake
to assume that such activities started with 9/11 events and that Bush II was totally responsible
for converting the USA into national-security state. The technology was ready at least 15
years before 9/11 (explosive growth of internet in the USA started in 1996) and new methods of
collection of information that are technically available are always adopted and used by clandestine agencies. They tend to adopt technology
as soon as it is available, being, in a pervert way, classic "early adopters" of any communication
or computer technology.
And this happens not only in the USA, although the USA as the technological leader was
probably most profoundly
affected.
The creation and use of databases of personal information and the systematic records (archives) of
communications of citizens started simultaneously with NSA creation. The first targets were mail and
telegraph. Some of this experience came from specialists of Third Reich who were brought to the
country after the WWII. At the height of the Cold War
in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI. and Allen
Dulles at the CIA. aggressively recruited former Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet “assets,”
declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis’ intelligence value against the Russians outweighed
what one official called “moral lapses” in their service to the Third Reich. The agency hired one former
SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of “minor
war crimes.” And in 1994, a lawyer with the CIA pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into
an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis’ massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania,
according to a government official (In Cold War, U.S.
Spy Agencies Used 1,000 Nazis - NYTimes.com).
We don't know when it was extended on domestic calls, but from purely technical perspective this was
a trivial extension of already existing and polished capacity and probably abuse was stated
gradually as soon as power of computers allow that.
But what is true is that after 9/11 and the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the USA government got all the pre-conditions
necessary for installing a regime of aggressive total surveillance. Which actually was a hidden intent
and 9/11 was just a convenient pretext much like Tonkin incident in Vietnam war. And in this respect
Ed Snowden, whatever is his motivation (which might be
not as simple as most people assume), did the right thing, when he with the risk to his life informed
the US public and the world about those activities. You may approve those revelations, you may disapprove
them (and they did damage the USA as a state and devalue many methods which were extremely effective
before the revelations), but keeping them secret from the US public is a crime.
NSA technically is a data collection agency. While it has legitimate function to monitor information
that is crossing the national border as well as intercept communication of the US adversaries (which
is a very flexible category those days ;-), we need to understand that the abuse of this function is
inevitable. That actually the nature of the beast -- like any bureaucratic
organizations they tend to expand their sphere of activities and escape form control -- and in this
sense existence of powerful state intelligence agencies is incompatible with the democracy. In
this sense the appointment of
Allan Dulles (who paradoxically was appointed the director under
Eisenhower administration in 1952; Eisenhower warnings about the danger of military-industrial
complex notwithstanding) was really unfortunate.
But the capacities to do this
type of work had grown dramatically over last four decades. In a way NSA became a victim of growing
power of computers as well inherent tendency of bureaucracies, especially government bureaucracies
to expand and self-justify their expansion. The classic case was the USSR where KGB was a real "state
within the state" and sometimes it was not completely clear whether the Party controls KGB or KGB controls
the Party.
But the capacities to do this
type of work had grown dramatically over last four decades. In a way NSA became a victim of growing
power of computers and as well inherent tendency of bureaucracies, especially government bureaucracies
to expand and self-justify their expansion. The classic case was the USSR where KGB was a real "state
within the state" and sometimes it was not completely clear whether the Party controls KGB or KGB controls
the Party.
There is deep analogy between financial services and intelligence services. Both try to escape
from the control of democratic society. Both try to control the society instead of serve it. As they
operate with large and uncontrolled amount of money soon after their creation inevitably the "the
tail wagging the dog" (Merriam-Webster):
the tail wagging the dog —used to describe
a situation in which an important or powerful person, organization, etc., is being controlled by
someone or something that is much less important or powerful
At some point the permanent
unelected bureaucracy, became the shadow government instead of facilitating the decisions of elected
officials. This process proceeds quicker if a sociopath manage to slip to the role of the head of
such an organization. That's what the term "deep state" is about. Some authors such as
Douglas Horne view JFK assassination as a political coup d'état launched from the highest
levels of US leadership (JFK’s
War with the National Security Establishment Why Kennedy Was Assassinated). Here is a quote from
the foreword by Jacob G. Hornberger:
By the end of November 1961, profoundly dissatisfied with his own national security advisory
apparatus, President Kennedy had firmly pushed back against the national security establishment
(in this case the NSC, the State Department, and the CIA) by purging and/or reshuffling many of
the civilian hawks in his own administration into other positions, and by placing officials more
in line with his own views into key positions. [A change in the top leadership at the Pentagon
was to come later, in 1962.] Throughout 1961, the new President had painfully but quickly learned
to be quite skeptical of the advice he was receiving, pertaining to matters of war and peace,
from his hawkish advisors; and as 1961 progressed, John F. Kennedy repeatedly demonstrated what
the hawks in government (the majority) no doubt considered a disturbingly independent (and
increasingly all-too-predictable) frame of mind in regard to the national security
recommendations he was receiving from the “sacred cows” and “wise men” in Washington, D.C. As I
shall demonstrate in these essays, by the end of 1962, the national security establishment in
Washington D.C., which had quickly come to know JFK as a skeptic during
1961, had come to view him as a heretic; and by November of 1963, the
month he was assassinated, they no doubt considered him an apostate,
for he no longer supported most of the so-called “orthodox” views of the Cold War priesthood.
Increasingly alone in his foreign policy judgments as 1963 progressed, JFK was nevertheless
proceeding boldly to end our “Holy
War” against Communism, instead of trying to win
it. In retrospect it is clear that the national security establishment wanted to
win our own particular “jihad” of the
post-WW II era by turning the Cold War against the USSR into a “hot war,” so that we could
inflict punishing and fatal blows upon our Communist adversaries (and any other forces we equated
with them) on the battlefield. It was this desire for “hot war” by so
many within the establishment — their belief that conventional “proxy wars” with the Soviet Bloc
were an urgent necessity, and that nuclear war with the USSR was probably inevitable — to which
President Kennedy was so adamantly opposed. And it was JFK’s profound determination to avoid
nuclear war by miscalculation, and to eschew combat with conventional arms unless it was truly
necessary, that separated him from almost everyone else in his administration from 1961
throughout 1963, as events have shown us.
Total surveillance is not so much about terrorism. It's also and mainly about the control of
the society by unelected elite. Terrorism is a false pretext
-- a smoke screen, if you like. Let's state clearly -- the main goal of total surveillance was the same
since it was introduced in Nazi Germany: "Let them be afraid". It's the same as in former German Democratic Republic (with
its famous Stasi). In all cases it is to prevent any challenge to the ruling elite or in the
terminology of neoliberal "color revolutions" prevent "regime
change", unless it is initiated by more powerful foreign three letter agencies and
significantly higher level of financial resources (that's why three letter agencies of newly minted
xUSSR state in several cases were unable to prevent color revolutions of their territories).
In other words surveillance and intelligence agencies are part and parcel of the totalitarian state.
And Sheldon Volin actually created a term for such "pseudo-democratic" regime --
inverted totalitarism.
Unlike classic totalitarism it generally tend to avoid using violence to crush the
dissidents and opposition to the current elite. More "soft" subversive methods are enough. In this
sense the story of crushing "of "Occupy Wall Street" movement is a testament of their
efficiency.
State actors and well funded terrorist organization are a difficult nut to crack. Any
"custom" encrypted communication is far more difficult for intercepting party to decode, then
"standard" encryption methods. Some encryption methods virtually guarantee that it is
impossible without stealing the key. Even detecting the fact of communication for such parties
nowadays is very difficult as it can be hidden in some "carrier" transmission (steganography)
or split into multiple channels. Those who have access
to technology and to "know how" including the most recent exploits are well armed to
resist attempt to intercept their communication. That includes most powerful foreign states.
That means that NSA has great difficulties intercepting and decoding traffic
that is intended to be hidden from state actors. Modern encryption systems such
One-Time-Pad virtually guarantee
that you get the "insider information" of the pad used (typically from a mole) they are
impenetrable. Even regular encryption methods can be enhanced by additional step of compressing the
files transmitted (which by and large eliminates redundancy if done properly and do not leave "tell"
sign of the method encryption used) . Decoding is easier when standard algorithms with
possible backdoors are used but even in this case I have doubts
(Triple DEC). That's why attempts to compensate this deficiency are being developed and one
obvious path is intercepting regular citizen communication of foreign countries which are
considered to be unfriendly or adversarial to current the US foreign policy goals (which is the
expansion and maintenance of global the Us-led neoliberal empire).
But the situation with "open" traffic is completely different. Million of people
outside the USA use Facebook, Amazon, Gmail and similar platforms. Which makes them a low
hanging fruit and here NSA is the king of the hill. Government officials also sometimes use
regular email and social sites (see
Hillary Clinton email scandal).
So intelligence agencies were provided with an important opening (and it might well be that the
dramatic growth of Webmail has something to do with their interests)
At the same time the abundance of information, as Biney mentioned, creates another problem -- the problem
of "drinking from a fire hose" -- they tend to collect too much information and are swamped with the volume. Of cause correlation of open traffic
of "suspicious persons" can reveal some hidden information, but this is a pretty expensive
undertaking, because by definition (unless this is Hillary Clinton ;-) those persons are aware that they are watched,
typically are
trained to avoid surveillance (including electronic) and behave accordingly. for example
General Petraeus used an interesting method to communicate with his
biographer and mistress (The
Washington Post) :
They wrote their "intimate messages" as
draft e-mails in a shared Gmail account,
according to the AP, allowing them to see one anothers' messages while leaving a
much fainter data trail. When messages are sent and received, both accounts record the
transmission as well as such metadata as the IP addresses on either end, something the
two seemed to be seeking to avoid.
Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers
alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.
Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some
messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an
electronic "dropbox," the official said. Then the other person could log onto the
same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail
that is easier to trace.
With the power of modern computers,
decoys and steganography offer almost unlimited possibility to obscure the traffic.
Concern about the NSA assault on our privacy is no paranoid fantasy. In the
words of an agency PowerPoint slide released by Snowden, the goal is to "collect it all", "process
it all" and "know it all". The massive surveillance program is a clear violation of the Forth
amendment prohibiting "unreasonable searches" of "persons, houses, papers, and effects" without
"probable cause."
- Gene Epstein. "In defence of Snowden",
review of "No Place to Hide" Barrons, Jan 5, 2015, p 17
According to
UN Human Right Council Report (17 April 2013) innovations in technology not only have increased
the possibilities for communication and protections of free expression and opinion, enabling anonymity,
rapid information-sharing and cross-cultural dialogues. They also simultaneously increased opportunities
for State surveillance and interventions into individuals’ private communications facilitating to transformation
of the state into National Security State, a form of corporatism characterized
by continued and encompassing all forms of electronic communication electronic surveillance of all citizens.
Now every Internet or smartphone users probably understand that since probably 2003 or even earlier that that he/she is watched 24
by 7, or as Soviet dissidents called it "Was placed under the [surveillance] dome". Some question that we need to ask ourselves
are:
When the quantity of collected data turns into quality. At some point the amount of collected
information about the person, no matter how trivial, allows things that are drastically different
then simple monitoring of traffic for suspicious elements. It is essentially step up from STASI-style dossier mechanism on most
adult citizens of the USA (and not only USA). Accidentally STASI was created exactly the same year
as NSA, in 1950 and now some of their activities look more and more like identical twins.
And with the level on Internet communications many people have, such "per person" dossier quickly
reaches to the "critical mass" of facts
In a way
You really already
live in a virtual prison watched 24 by 7 by unknown to you guards. For example, just tracking metadata of all
the calls from your cell phone along with GPS information is almost equivalent hiring a private detective to watch
you. Add to this all your credit card records, Amazon orders and browsing records, your emails and SMS and you can beat capability of
a regular private "gum shoes" watching you, by a wide margin spending just cents of a
dollar.
And this is only a start as I did not mention your own "self-revelation"
activities on social sites like Facebook. And if you add to this your web logs (which, by the way, record every
site you visited and every page you browsed) and your posts at Web forums (if any), photo sharing and
your files at cloud storage sites (if you participate)
along with the ability to store collected information for, say, 20 years or your lifetime electronically, and STASI efforts in
human surveillance looks like an expensive and amateurish overkill. Using Internet and
smartphone surveillance you can get much better
information on an individual for much less money/effort using modern technology alone, without any
gum shoes and/or informers.
Note that in this case there no need to look deep into your personal computer (other to collect
private keys in case you use encryption). You essentially volunteer most of the data by the fact
that you are using cell phone, credit card and email/social sites. In other words as
Scott McNealy noted in
1999 Privacy
is Dead – Get Over It. As Bruce Shneier noted (Metadata
Equals Surveillance - Schneier on Security):
Back in June, when the contents of Edward Snowden's cache of NSA documents were
just starting to be revealed and we learned about the NSA collecting phone
metadata of every American, many people -- including President Obama -- discounted
the seriousness of the NSA's actions by saying that it's just metadata.
Imagine you hired a detective to eavesdrop on someone. He might plant a bug in
their office. He might tap their phone. He might open their mail. The result would
be the details of that person's communications. That's the "data."
Now imagine you hired that same detective to surveil that person. The result
would be details of what he did: where he went, who he talked to, what he looked
at, what he purchased -- how he spent his day. That's all metadata.
When the government collects metadata on people, the government puts them under
surveillance. When the government collects metadata on the entire country, they
put everyone under surveillance. When Google does it, they do the same thing.
Metadata equals surveillance; it's that simple.
Metadata proved to be an extremely powerful way to reveals the person lifestyle and views.
Actually no less clearly then the direct interception
of the content of emails and phone calls. Systematic, total analysis of metadata of cell phone
calls was first used against Iraq insurgents as knowledge of Arabic language is not a strong point
of US military, or three letter agencies. And it proved to be a great success, as it allows to narrow the set of suspects
quickly and cheaply (the USA controlled all cell networks in the country). But later this initial
success was extended and became a universal surveillance tool within the USA, which is more powerful
then in Iraq as you can also analyze the content of messages such as emails or instant messages.
And as you add to phone calls Internet communications logs and metadata such as emails and web logs
and top it with credit card transactions, any person is actually like a bug under extremely powerful
and very cheap microscope.
Should you think twice about what are you sharing with others via your Web communications?
to some extent you should. Pointless relevation of information about yourself but also about your family and friends
is dangerious. The sad truth is that just by
the fact of using all those modern gargets and social networks you already is sharing a lot more personal
information than you intend to share... This self-exposure is actually a build-in feature
of sites such as Facebook. And taken as a whole for a considerable period of time your online activities
create a personal cloud of information about you. Which can along with the state be used by
criminals or other parties. It is not that NSA knows about you more then your
spouse, but it knows enough. And as you can see from the picture below is not a good thing. Look at the picture attentively,
it really deserves your uninterrupted attention:
Even if we assume that data collection is passive and never used, it is like a ticking
bomb or "skeleton in the closet" and as such is a powerful method of control of population. Not
the different from what was used by KGB in the USSR or STASI in East Germany. And probably
more effective as quick dissipation of Occupy Wall Street crowds had shown us.
So it does not really matter much what the data are collected for and what is the official justification
of such a collection. The mere fact of collection changes the situation to the worse, making the opposition
to the system practically impossible and personally costly. The net result is what is matter. And the net result definitely
resembles a move in the direction of a tyranny of the top 1%. As Senator Frank Church said in 1975:
"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to
it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology
operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That
is the abyss from which there is no return.".
Today his words sound even more true then in 1975 when computers were still in their infancy and
mainframes dominated the computer landscape. With the proliferation of cheap electronic devices such
as PCs and laptops, tablets and cell phones this really became "the abyss from which there is
no return".
So the real, the key goal is not what is officially declared (Orwell style permanent war on terrorism).
It is control of population like in was in the USSR and Eastern Germany. In a way we are all Eastern
Germans now, but in a completely different sense then Kennedy meant when he proposed his famous
phrase
(Ich bin ein Berliner)
Convenience of access to information has a side effect that it makes collection of information about
you trivial and at the same time comprehensive. It is to keep the elite safe from common folks, not
all those lies about national security. It is all about the security of the elite.
The story of J. Edgar
Hoover suggests that "knowledge is power" and the top brass of intelligence agencies routinely
and consistently develops a pathological addiction to collecting "skeletons in the closet" for the
people in power. This is a part of more complex trend due to which intelligence agencies often
are called as "shadow government". Often such people actually derive pleasure from having power over
nation politicians due to knowing some secret and embarrassing information on them.It is
in this sense (and also die to capability to conduct clandestine operations) troika of NSA, CIA and
FBI represent real, although shadow government of the country. This is the danger Senator Church
warned us, but the horse probably left the barn at the time of assignation of President Kennedy.
Please note that none of presidents was able to fire
J. Edgar Hoover He died
in his position of the head of FBI. The ability to manipulate other, even very powerful people is
very tempting. As Kissinger used to say "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac." A related questions
are:
Whether NSA spied and "collected dirt" on members of Congress? Some information suggests
that they did:
Is executive branch interested in continuation of this practice? The answer is yes.
As Conor Friedersdorf noted on Feb 5, 2014 in
The Atlantic magazine "The phone dragnet gives the executive branch all the information
it needs to blackmail or discredit multiple legislators. It's a temptation to abuse."
Does NSA directly or indirectly has ties to the financial sector especially related to
the providing them with the information on the flow of funds of the foreign competitors ?
(see
Asia
Times, Dec 18, 2013). As
Henry A.
Wallace noted:
"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the
common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do
not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic
extortion.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political
power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they
may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the
Constitution.
They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time
of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. "
..."If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power
ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.”
It the situation irreversible? In other words did 1984 dystopia materialized in slightly
different, slightly more gentle form? Probably yes. Cutting funds to three letter agencies would
be a small step in right direction. But the main value of 9/11 for the US establishment was that
it made such moves impossible. Also the elite as a whole is not interesting in dismantling the tool
that serve its interests so well even if it has some side effects on the elite members themselves
(looks at the discussion of surveillance over Trump and members of his team).
A related question is:
Is transformation of USA into USSA (United Secret Services of America) compete or just
started. The answer is that it is almost complete. This is just another confirmation of
The Iron Law of Oligarchy
All-in-all it's a good time to smell the coffee and talk about the rise of a new mutation of totalitarism
(or may be even neofascism -- as it is, essentially, the merger of corporate and state interests) in the
US after 9/11. That's exactly what this "Internet-inspired" flavor of total surveillance due to modern
technical capabilities means. There is also distinct shadow of STASI in all those activities. And some
countries got into similar trap before, so nothing is new under the sun. As Reinhold Niebuhr noted:
"Communism is a vivid object lesson in the monstrous consequences of moral complacency about
the relation of dubious means to supposedly good ends."
There is actually little difference between total surveillance as practiced by NSA and what was practiced
by three letters agencies of Eastern block dictatorships such as STASI and KGB. The key goal in both
cases is protection and preservation of power of existing elite against the will of common people. So
this is more about oppression of 99.9% from top 0.1% then surveillance per see.
We should view Snowden revelations in a larger context. Much of what he revealed about militarization
of cyberspace was already known at the time when
Flame and
Stuxnet worms were discovered in 2011. He just dot the i's and cross the t's , so speak. As a result
of his revelations, as
The
National Interest noted:
An increasing number of adversaries and even allies are coming to believe that the United
States is militarizing cyberspace — and that impression of hubris and irresponsibility is beginning
to have a real-world impact.
...The Snowden leaks have brought Stuxnet, the U.S.-Israeli program allegedly used to attack Iranian
computer systems, back into public debate — and reminded us that the real damage of the Snowden
revelations will be international.
...the perception that the United States has become a danger to the global internet is a cause
for concern. In their understandable anger at the considerable damage Snowden has done (in the
near term at the very least) to the operations of NSA and their allies, U.S. security officials should
not lose sight of this fact.
Snowden’s claims build on the Stuxnet revelations. In doing so, they reinforce an impression
of overbearing U.S. cyberpower (military and commercial) being used irresponsibly. That is strikingly
at odds with the U.S. self-image as a standard bearer of internet freedom and “borderless” exchange,
but it is a view that resonates around the world.
In fact the USA policies are stimulating economic and political rivals around the globe to organize
and present unified front against this new and dangerous form of total surveillance. As well as
implement similar domestic systems. In other words a new arm race started.
As methods and infrastructure of those activities are now revealed, the genie is out of the bottle
and can't be put back -- the US now should expect the same or worse treatment from other nations.
Which can be no less inventive, or even more inventive the USA specialists in this area. And in
this new arm race economically weaker nations actually has some leverage. Blowback, a CIA term for
unintended consequences of foreign, military, or clandestine policies, can be similar to the blowback
of politically organizing Islamic radicals to fight Soviets in Afghanistan in the past.
Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, probably already
waits patiently for her meeting with the NSA brass.
Blowback can irreparably damage the ability of the United States to obtain crucial information
in foreign environments that are poorly understood in Washington. The cultural divide that exists
when operating away from home means that CIA and NSA frequently work overseas through a network of
liaison contacts. This in theory limits their activity, but it broadens their ability to collect
information that can only be plausibly obtained by a local organization with local capabilities.
Though nearly everyone also operates clandestinely outside the parameters of the established relationships
insofar as it is possible or expedient to do so, there is an awareness that being caught can
cause grave damage to the liaison relationship. Because being exposed is nearly always very
painful, such operations are normally limited to collection of critical information that the liaison
partner would be unwilling to reveal.
So while it might be comforting to claim that “everyone does it” at least some of the time,
and it may even be true that local spy agencies sometimes collaborated with NSA, the United States
has a great deal to lose by spying on its friends. This is particularly true as Washington,
uniquely, spies on everyone, all the time, even when there is no good reason for doing so.
Centralization of user activities on sites like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn,
with email account mainly at Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail along with many positive aspects has tremendous
negative side effects. The most significant is that it created a way too easy opportunity both for those
organizations as well as government agencies and large corporations to data mine email and Web communications
of millions of Americans critical about government (see
Total control:
keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) and all foreigners who use those
services (and that includes a significant part of European population and Russia, who have Gmail, Facebook
or Yahoo accounts). The history of "total surveillance" suggests that it tends to be abused. It is also
huge, irreparable breach on trust in relation to allies. Closely resembles the situation in family when
wife or husband learn that the other hired detective to snoop on you.
The analogy with KGB surveillance of dissidents (the Soviet term for total surveillance was "to be
under the 'dome' ") and, especially, Stasi
(viewing the film "The Lives of Others" might help to understand the phenomenon of "total surveillance")
are way too close. At the same time there is an important difference: while such regime does mean indirect
(and pretty effective) intimidation of dissidents, cases of prosecution on the base of the those data
are either few or non existent, which is a big difference with KGB or
Stasi practice. The latter aggressively
pursued those who got in their net trying either to convert them into informers or charge them with
the some suitable article of Criminal Code. In some cases that practice lead to suicides. So here we
can talk more properly talk about total surveillance an instrument of
Inverted Totalitarism, or totalitarism in velvet
gloves.
We are talking about "passive total surveillance" and temporary (which might be several years or
your lifetime) storage of all intercepted data. But in a way, Senator McCartney was probably right about
"Communists sympathizers" and communist infiltration, he just was completely wrong about who they are
;-).
The famous The Police hit Every
Breath You Take should probably be the theme song for the NSA. As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us
in his famous speech:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
Snowden revelations are not something new. The only real revelation was how much of it was going
on domestically and gory details of such activities. Before 9/11 the NSA was basically prohibited from
operating domestically. Of course it violates those prohibitions, but there were no systematic internal,
all encompassing technical surveillance infrastructure in place. Now it is build and is deployed nation-wide.
And that's a big change, big difference. Due to "novel" interpretation of a few provisions in the Patriot
Act they created domestic dragnet which encompass most types of Internet communications. In addition
to intercepting more then 70% of Internet traffic they also enjoy direct access to major cloud providers.
Total continued surveillance even without taking any action on collected data is totalitarian by
its nature as it put severe restrictions of the freedom of expression. And like in the USSR, it does
change people behavior on the Web. People start thinking about consequences and this page is one of
attempts to collect information that might help you to see "bigger picture".
The key mechanism here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution is
that people do react on the fact that everything they email, visit, buy on Amazon, etc is registered
in giant database outside of their control. Internet will never be the same for most people after Snowden
revelations...
The key mechanism here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution
is that people do react on the fact that everything they email, visit, buy on Amazon, etc is registered
in giant database outside of their control. Internet will never be the same for most people after
Snowden revelations...
For example, no one in sound mind can now trust "cloud services" provided by Facebook, Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft, etc. So attractiveness of Gmail, Hotmail and such are now different, then it was before.
And separation of mail accounts between "junk mail" account and important mail account is something
to think about. With the latter never in the cloud. In a way excessive using cloud services from a fashionable
trend now became kind of indication of a person stupidity.
In a way excessive using of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became an indication
of a person stupidity. There is no real justification of providing all your emails and address
book to strangers who can abuse this information without your knowledge.
At the same time it is stupid to dramatize the situation. Still, what is really striking is the grotesque
disproportionally of all this NSA surveillance "superdome" to the task of keeping the country safe from
foreign enemies (NSA statute is about watching foreign communications), begging obvious questions of
institutional sanity and competence. They turned all their super powerful collection mechanisms inside
the country and now they drink from a firehouse. That means that the results and possibilities of abuse
are pretty much predictable. Too many false positives create real danger of not to picking up weak signal.
So the other question is "Who the hell made these decisions?" That's a lot of taxpayers money and I
am not sure that they are well spend.
As for breach of privacy anyone with connected to Internet PC, the first thing to understand
that if somebody stores data in the cloud they should not expect any privacy, unless they encrypt them.
Expecting that your unencrypted data are private is a sign of personal stupidity, no more no less. If
somebody, who is keeping his address book in Google assumes that it remains private, that his own illusion.
That has nothing to do with the reality.
And it not that only NSA threatens our privacy. After all there are millions of PC users that have
computer(s) infected by spyware, which turns them into zombies, externally controlled monitoring devices.
And such software BTW can pick up and offload, or
encrypt for ransom all your data. I do not see much protest over this situation iether. Microsoft
greed and stupidity is one reason for this dismal situation, but essentially any OS is vulnerable if
enough money is invested in finding exploits. And NSA actually created a market for such exploits.
Now there are multiple "security firms" that do nothing then find "zero day" exploits and sell them
to the highest bidder (which is of course government agencies). Does not this reminds you 'war
on drugs"?
In a way, any networked computer is an unsecure computer and should be treated as such.
See Privacy is
Dead – Get Over It. The same thing can be mentioned about a cell phone that is outside some metal
box. That's two basic "laws of security" in the current environment.
But more important problem here is not snooping per se, but its interaction with self-profiling that
you provide via social sites. If you are too enthusiastic about Facebook or Google++ or any similar
site and engage regularly and indiscriminately in this "vanity fair" activity that simply means Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. You killed it yourself. The essence of the situation was exposed well in a humorous
form in the following
Amazon review of Orwell's
novel 1984
Note to US Congress and house of representatives: This is a fictional book, not an
instruction manual...
Now we know what would a perfect prototype of Bid Brother ;-). The song (Every
Breath You Take ) should probably be the theme song for the NSA. And not only NSA, but its counterparts
in other parts of the globe; I think, other things equal, citizens of some other countries would greatly
prefer NSA to their domestic counterparts.
Cell phones, laptops, Facebook, Skype, chat-rooms: all allow the NSA and other similar agencies to
build a dossier, a detailed profile of a target and anyone associated with him/her. And the number of
people caught up in this dragnet can be huge. The NSA say it needs all this data to help prevent another
terrorist attack like 9/11. They lie. In order to find the needle in the haystack, they argue, they
need access to the whole haystack. But one interesting side effect is that now they are drinking from
the fire hose, so to speak.
Another interesting side-effect of the Snowden disclosures that the term ‘metadata’ became a common
word in English language. With the growing understanding that metadata includes enough personal information
to built a detailed profile of a person without even listening into content of communications. This
technology was invented in Iraq war for fighting insurgents (were phone companies were controlled by
US) and now is applied at home. In fact, by just using electronic communications, you are sharing a
lot more personal information than you think. It's a reflection of a fact that it is very cheap to collect
and analyses information about your electronic communications. The digital revolution which led to an
explosion in cell phone and internet use, also led to an explosion of snooping after you by the governments.
We need to distinguish "total collection" of data from "total analysis" (or creation of dossiers
on everybody as was practiced by STASI and friends). Raw data contain both "signal" and "noise". Analysis
or data mining of those raw data is the process of extraction of useful signal from the noise. Of course
we should be so naive that to assume that "signal" is related to purely terrorist activities. As recently
published documents had shown, the NSA interests are much wider ;-). In bald terms, it sets out its
mission:
“Leverage unique key corporate partnerships to gain access to high-capacity international fiber-optic
cables, switches and/or routes throughout the world.”
Along with major fiber-optic cables in the US, the NSA has access to data gathered by close intelligence
partners such as Britain’s GCHQ.
Sometimes it appear to me that like Uncle Sam got "red disease" and now is trying to imitate "total
surveillance" mantra of KGB, STASI and similar agencies on a new technological level. And the key lesson
from Soviet experience is fully applicable to the current situation in the USA: when government consider
everybody as a potential enemy you better watch your back. And having a cyberstooge following your every
step more closely that it was possible for STASI spooks and informers is something you need to react
to. Reading your address book, mail, list of books that you bought or borrowed from the library, analyzing
your circuit of friends is what STASI was really good at. And it might well be that some unemployed
specialists have found a new territory to apply their substantial talents.
The Snowden documents show that the NSA runs these surveillance programs through “partnerships” with
major US telecom and internet companies. That means that if you are customer of those major telecom
and Internet companies you are like a bug under the microscope.
It is important to understand that metadata of your communications will always be exposed (it other
words you are always walking "naked" on the Internet) because those new surveillance capabilities are
immanent properties of Internet protocols, as we known it. There is no way to encrypt connection metadata:
this is technically impossible unless you owns a vast private VPN network (some large corporations do),
but even in this case I have doubts. Even snail-mail metadata are collected (and from 50th to 80th letters
were opened and selectively copied by CIA). Diplomatic mail might still be secure, but that's about
it.
Like with any new development there are countervailing trends that after Snowden revelation went
in overdrive and can seriously affect NSA capabilities.
One is switching to encrypting communication with most websites such as YouTube. That prevent simple
harvesting of video that you watched from HTTP logs (but does not prevent harvesting -- it can be done
using other methods)
The second is usage of software like Tor, although I think all connection to Tor sites are closely
monitored by NSA.
The third is usage of your own cashing DNS proxy to limit number of DNS requests you make.
I also think that all those development might give steganography a huge boost.
The other areas of technology that might get huge boost due to Snowden revelations is "Browsing imitating
internet robots" technology which permit to drown NSA collection devices in spam -- fake accesses to
web sites that is very difficult to distinguish from real browsing, but that make all statistical metrics
applied to your Web traffic useless. For example top visited pages became completely bogus.
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely".
Lord Acton(1834–1902)
As Lord Acton(1834–1902) noted long before NSA started collecting all Internet communications
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". The history of "total surveillance"
suggests that this is unavoidable side effect on the very institution that conducts: such an institution
tends to escape the control of civil society and became a shadow power, the element of "deep state".
The first grave consequence of total surveillance is that it tends to be abused. The history
of "total surveillance" suggests that this is unavoidable side effect on the very institution
that conducts: such an institution tends to escape the control of civil society and became a shadow
power, the element of "deep state".
And the ability to intercept electronic communications gives those who are in charge of such collection
tremendous political power. Please remember that
J. Edgar Hoover was director
of FBI very long time partially because he dug a lot of dirt on politicians of his time including both
Kennedys. According to President
Harry S Truman, Hoover
transformed the FBI into his private secret police force. He used the FBI to harass political dissenters
and activists, to amass secret files on political leaders, and to collect evidence using illegal methods.
Essentially for half of the century he and his organization were out of control "state within the state"
and nobody could do anything about it. Only after his death some measures were taken.
It's not that expanding bureaucracy per se is a problem. I doubt that those in the bureaucracy of
those agencies do not think about larger consequences for societies of their attempts to expand their
sphere of influence. It is much worse: they definitely knew about possible consequences, but go "full
forward' anyway preferring job promotions and expansion of their influence. Like bureaucrats often do,
they betrayed their nations like nomenklatura betrayed the people of the USSR (with a similar
fig leaf of nice slogans about freedom as a smoke screen for pretty nefarious activities).
In case of NSA, this data on you, or particular political or social movement (for example "Occupy
Wall Street") can be mined at any time, and what is even worse can be used to destroy any new political
movement. And please remember that NSA is a just part of military-industrial complex, an entity that
has some interesting political characteristics related to the term "the acquisition of unwarranted
influence" . As Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us in his famous farewell speech (which introduced
the term "military-industrial complex"):
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
People seldom understand that all three letter agencies are not just part of military industrial complex,
but are the key parts. While ability of weapon manufactures to buy or just simply control Congress members
matters, three-letter agencies is where "unwarranted influence" fully materialize. By definition they
are out of control and as any bureaucracy they want to grow. That was clear to Senator Frank Church
who stated on August 17, 1975 NBC's
Meet the Press:
In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States
government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that
go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at
enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be
turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the
capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would
be no place to hide.
If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the
technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to
impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to
combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within
the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.
I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there
to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess
this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that
abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[11]
...let us be realistic and not fall for the usual story of this being a discrete event (all the
latest surveillance, that is).
This dates back to the founding of the Financial-Intelligence-Complex during and in the aftermath
of World War II, by the Wall Streeters for their super-rich bosses, the Rockefellers, Morgans, du
Ponts, Mellons, Harrimans (now Mortimers), etc.
The most important factor that needs to be taken into account is the total surveillance make organized
opposition to the regime impossible. So welcome to nicer, gentler, but no less totalitarian world of
1984 (aka "Back in USSR"). The key equation is very simple:
total surveillance = total control
That simple fact was well understood by various dictators and totalitarian regimes long ago, but
none of them has had even a tiny fraction of technical capabilities NSA has now. I think one
of the reason that Occupy movement completely dissipated so fast was that they were like
a bug under microscope of the government. And government want them to stop harassing Wall Street sharks
for their 2008 crisis misdeeds.
Another important effect of "total surveillance" is instilling fear in the citizenry; fear that our
thoughts, words and relationships are subject of interception and analysis; fear that all the content
we access on the internet will be exposed. This fear can cause us to withdraw from public spaces like
producing this website, censor our communications, refrain from accessing certain sites, buying certain
books, etc.
An important effect of "total surveillance" is instilling fear in the citizenry; fear
that our thoughts, words and relationships are subject of interception and analysis; fear that
all the content we access on the internet will be exposed. This fear can cause us to withdraw
from public spaces like producing this website, censor our communications, refrain from accessing
certain sites, buying certain books, etc.
In other words understanding that you are watched on 24 x 7 basis modifies behavior and makes self-censorship
your second nature exactly the same way as in any totalitarian state, but without any physical coercion.
Here is one telling comment from
Secret to Prism program Even bigger data seizure
wtpayne
Indeed: The intentions and motivations of the agencies in question; the degree of oversight
and so on; is almost irrelevant. To a certain extent, I am content to believe that the intentions
of the perpetrators is good; and that the oversight and abuse prevention systems that they have
in place are strong.
However, none of that matters if people self-censor; if people worry, not about what the
government of today will find objectionable, but what the government of tomorrow will not like.
In effect, we end up censoring ourselves from a hypothetical worst-case future government.
We will concentrate on technical side of the this operation, trying to understand how much information
can be stored about a regular "Joe Doer" based on technical capabilities that are available. Let's assume
that we deal with mostly "passive surveillance": collection and storage of vast amount of Internet traffic
on special computers using either mirrored ports on the key routers or special access to key providers
of cloud services.
We can probably assume that several layers of storage of those data exist:
Running buffer (contains all data for all users, probably just for a couple of weeks or
a month). By definition it contains "everything". All you activity, be it email, web browsing, instant
messaging of ftp transfers.
Temporary storage (which might be several years, but probably is between five and ten
years). Some of this permanent storage cloud provider users create themselves. A good example is
the Send folder they maintain on cloud email provider. This temporary storage might also include
all your Web logs and Web searches. Temporary storage of Weblogs are probably limited to metadata (proxy logs) because of large volume.
Permanent, which is invoked if you got under active surveillance or belong to some kind
of group, which is classified as treat to the state and as such is monitored. We can only guess what it involves and how much information is
stored in this case, but installation of some malware on your computer is not out of question. This
permanent storage includes but is not limited to
Your address book (several generations)
All you searches on major search engines
All your text email (not sure about graphic files)
Twits and SMS messages.
Phone conversations metadata.
Skype conversations
Technology development creates new types of communications as well as new types of government surveillance
mechanisms (you can call them "externalities" of new methods of communication). Those externalities,
especially low cost of mass
surveillance (Wikipedia), unfortunately, bring us closer to the
Electronic police state
(Wikipedia) or National Security State whether we want it or not. A
crucial element of such a state is that its data gathering, sorting and correlation on individual
citizens are continuous,
cover a large number of citizens and all foreigners, and those activities are seldom exposed.
Cloud computing as a technology that presuppose storing the data "offsite" have several security
problems, and one of them is that it is way too much "surveillance friendly" (Misunderstanding
of issues of security and trust). With cloud computing powers that be do not need
to do complex job of recreating TCP/IP conversations on router level to capture, say, all the emails.
You can access Web-based email mailbox directly with all mails in appropriate mailboxes and spam filtered.
This is a huge saving of computational efforts ;-).
It means two things:
In first thing to understand that government is profiling you even if you did nothing wrong
(see
The Government is Profiling You MIT Video). Creation of Internet just put those processes into
overdrive mode.
The modern capability of storage of data provide the capability of storing the following information
about you for several years (five years minimum), if not for a lifetime:
Metadata for your phone calls. This metadata is extremely revealing; investigators
mining it might be able to infer whether we have an illness or an addiction, what our religious
affiliations and political activities are, and so on.
Actual content (mp3 file or similar format) of all your Skype phone calls (the saying
is that "there is no free lunch" has now a new meaning here ). This is less important as getting
those calls transcribed is a difficult undertaking.
Metadata of pages that you assessed (visited websites). For a considerable period of
time (over a year) those data in a standard
HTTP log format are extremely revealing as for your political and social views, as well as
well as general interests. Sophisticated log analysis programs are available (so called proxy
log analyzers). This reveals all your downloads, software that you are using and many, many other
things. Essentially now you like a bug under the microscope.
Your purchases on major Internet sites (Amazon, eBay) and all purchases using major credit
cards. This is even more revealing then you web activity, as you put money were your interests
are. Buy books that interest you, and so on. Also extremely revealing as for your political and
social views, as well as well as general interests.
All the content you put on social sites such as Facebook. Here people usually reveal quite
a bit about themselves. As many people have presence simultaneously in Google, Facebook and
LinkedIn, total information includes your education, current qualification and possibly resume.
Address book and calendar on sides such Gmail, Hotmail or
Yahoo mail.
It puts you essentially in a situation of a bug under microscope on Big Brother. And please understand
that modern storage capabilities are such that it is easy to store several years of at least some of
your communications, especially emails.
The same is true about your
phone calls metadata,
credit card transactions and your activities on major shopping sites such as Amazon, and eBay. But here
you can do almost nothing. Still I think our support of "brick" merchants is long overdue. Phones are
traditional target of government three letter agencies (WSJ)
since the WWII. Smartphones with GPS in addition to land line metadata also provide your current geo
location. Some point out that using basic phone slightly preferable to smartphone (both in a sense
of absence of geodata and the possibility to install spyware on it -- there is simply no RAM to do
anything sophisticated). But I do not think you can do much here
I think our support of "brick" merchants is long overdue. And paying cash in the store
in not something that you should try to avoid because credit card returns you 1% of the cost of
the purchase. This 1% is actually a privacy tax ;-)
Total continued surveillance even without taking any action on collected data is totalitarian by
its nature as it put severe restrictions of the freedom of expression and it changes people behavior
on the Web. In this sense, Senator McCartney was probably right about "Communists sympathizers" and
"KGB infiltration", he just was completely wrong about who they are ;-).
The centralization of searches on Google (and to a lesser extent on Bing -- the latter is
standard with new Windows installation) are also serious threats
to your privacy. Here diversification between three or more search engines might help a bit.
But limited your time behind the computer is probably more efficient. Generally here I do not think much can be done. Growth of
popularity of Duckduckgo suggests that people are
vary of Google monopolizing the search, but it is unclear how big are the advantages. You can also save
searches as many searches are recurrent and generally you can benefit from using your personal Web proxy
with private cashing DNS server. This way to can "shrink" your radar picture, but that's about it.
If you are conserved with you "search" profile, you can replay some searches to distort it. In any
case, search
engines are now an integral part of our civilization, whether we want it or not.
Collection of your searches for the last several years can pretty precisely outline sphere of your
interests. And again technical constrains on storage of data no longer exists: how we can talk about
privacy at the age of 3 TB harddrives for $99. There are approximately
314 million
of the US citizens and residents, so storing one gigabyte of information for each citizen requires just
400 petabytes. Which is clearly within the current capabilities of storage technology. For comparison
In July 2012 it was revealed that
CERN amassed about 200 petabytes
of data from the more than 800 trillion collisions
In August 2012, Facebook's
Hadoop clusters include the largest single
HDFS cluster known, with more than
100 PB physical disk space in a single HDFS filesystem
By some estimates, storage capabilities of the US government are around 5 zeta bytes.
The analogy with KGB surveillance of dissidents (the term was "to be under the "kolpak" (dome) ")
and, especially, Stasi (viewing the
film "The Lives of Others" might help to understand the phenomenon of "total surveillance") are way
too close. And psychological effects of anticipating that you are under total surveillance are well
depicted in the final of the film The Conversation (1974)
directed by famous Francis Ford Coppola
At the same time there is an important difference: while both regimes creates implicit intimidation
and squash dissent, cases of prosecution on the base of the those data are either few or non existent.
Which is a big difference with KGB or
Stasi practice, which aggressively pursued those dissidents who got in their net, trying either
to convert them into informers, or prosecute them using the existing articles of Criminal Code. In some
cases that led to suicides. So here we can talk more about
Inverted Totalitarism, a velvet gloves mode
of suppressing of dissent.
Still it is now dramatically more clear then before that centralization of email accounts and user
activities on sites like Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, LinkedIn, with email accounts mainly
at Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail is far from being a positive development. Along with many positive
aspects has tremendous negative side effects. Essentially it turns users into spies on themselves in
a way that would be a dream by Stasi. The most significant is that it created an easy opportunities
to data mine email databases both for those organizations as well as various government agencies and,
possibly (in a limited way for special payment) by large corporations.
Those tendencies probably should be at least resisted, but we do not have means to reverse them.
Attempts to data mine email and Web communications of millions of Americans critical about government
(see Total
control: keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) and all foreigners who use
those services (and that includes a significant part of European population and xUSSR area, who often
use Gmail, Facebook or Yahoo accounts) means that the country became a National Security State. With
all relevant consequences of such a transformation.
And interest in content of your "cloud based" email is not limited to the government:
A sweeping Wall Street Journal investigation in 2010 found that the biggest U.S.
websites have technologies tracking people who visit their pages, sometimes upwards of 100 tools
per site. One intrusive string of code even recorded users’ keystrokes and transmitted them
to a data-gathering firm for analysis.
“A digital dossier over time is built up about you by that site or third-party service or
data brokers,” says Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center’s Technology
Policy Program at George Mason University. “They collect these data profiles and utilize them to
sell you or market you better services or goods.”
This is what powers the free Internet we know and love; users pay nothing or next to nothing
for services — and give up pieces of personal information for advertisers in exchange. If you search
for a Mini Cooper on one website, you’re likely to see ads elsewhere for lightweight, fuel-efficient
cars. Companies robotically categorize users with descriptions such as “urban upscale” to “rural
NASCAR” to tailor the advertising experience, says Jim Harper of the libertarian Cato Institute.
“They’ll use ZIP codes and census data to figure out what their lifestyle profile is.”
Most of the site you visit those days was found via search engine, often Google. But Google is interested
in more then search terms you use and sometimes plays with you a nasty trick: "Google may choose
to exhibit its search results in the form of a 'URL redirector,'" reads Google's main privacy policy.
That means that any time it wishes Google can spy on your Web activity:
"When Google uses a URL redirector, if you click on a URL from a search result, information
about the click is sent to Google."
Few people check the URL before clicking on Google search results, so in a way this is perfect spying
tool.
But there is another powerful spying tool in Google arsenal -- Google toolbar, and I am not sure
that all those trick were not reused in Google browser. Google Toolbar sends all user clicks to
Google, if advanced mode is enabled (and many people do enable it because they want to have spelling
correction available which, conveniently for Google, belongs to the set of advanced features).
This way you voluntarily subscribe to a 24x7 monitoring of your web activity using spyware that is installed
on your computer with your consent. For the same reason recent smartphones fashion looks greatly misguided.
It is better to use regular phone, then smartphone, and the last thing you probably want on your smartphone
is Android OS or iOS, or windows 8 OS. In some deep way unlocked Nokia 1280 looks now much more attractive
(and is way cheaper ;-).
Google Toolbar in advanced mode is another common snooping tool about your activities. It
send each URL you visit to Google and you can be sure that from Google several three letter agencies
get this information as well. After all Google has links to them from the very beginning:
As soon as they realize that they are watched, people start thinking about consequences and this
article is a pretty telling (albeit slightly paranoid ;-) illustration of the effect. The key mechanism
here, well known to those who used to live in the USSR before its dissolution is that people preemptively
change their behavior, if they know or suspect that they got "under the dome" of government surveillance,
that all their emails are intercepted, all web site visits recorded, anything they buy on Amazon, etc
is registered in giant database outside of their control.
The angle under which will we try to cover the story is: the situation is such and such, now
what? What are the most appropriate actions and strategy of behavior of people who are concerned
about their privacy and no longer trust "cloud services" provided by Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft,
etc ( and those who trust those providers should probably stop reading at this point). It is impossible
to close all those accounts. But some can and should be closed; for example POP3 mail can replace web
mail for all "important" mail; this way you avoid "cloud storage" of all your important correspondence.
It is impossible not to use search engines, but you can chose which search language to use. It is impractical
not to use smartphone and for Android phone you can't avoid registration -- that's the only way to get
updates from Google, but you can root the phone, remove some snooping components and use Firefox instead
of Chrome. But not it is clear that if mobile web browsing and checking email on your phone is not your
thing you are better off with a very simple phone such as Nokia 1280.
The first and the most obvious "change we can believe in" is that we need to change our attitude
toward cloud services and especially cloud services from large providers. Now the most reasonable assumption
is that most national cloud providers including major retailers are in bed with the government three
letter agencies. So you need to be careful what you browse for on Amazon, similarly to what you write
from Gmail and Hotmail.
In a way, excessive usage of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became kind of indication
of a person stupidity. It is important to understand that for anybody more or less competent with
computers (or willing to learn), anything Facebook or Gmail or Hotmail can offer, regular
small ISP account with Cpanel can offer with less risk for your privacy for, say, $5 a month or less.
And your privacy definitely cost more then $60 a year.
In a way excessive using of cloud services from a fashionable trend now became an indication
of a person stupidity. For anybody more or less competent with computers (or willing to learn),
anything Facebook or Gmail can offer, regular ISP account with Cpanel can offer too with less
risk for your privacy.
At the same time it is also stupid to over-dramatize the situation and isolate yourself by abandoning
Internet communications and restricting usage of cell-phone. The reasonable hypothesis is that today’s
surveillance is a side effect of new technological developments and it is a new fact of life. It is
just a new level of information gathering, which has been going on since the Byzantine Empire. And it
is still limited by technological capabilities of sifting through mass of communications. But at the
same time, quantity does at one point turns into quality, so the danger is real and as such could providers
are suspect by definition. In no way they are new level of technological development. In sense they
are one step forward, two sets back.
Also being engages in foreign wars has an interesting side effect that technologies invented come
home and used against citizens (naked
capitalism). That's actually the origin of indiscriminant collection of metadata used now.
But at the same time we need to understand that there are millions of PC users that have computer(s)
infected by spyware, which can make your computer a zombie. And world did not perished due to that.
Still the key lesson is unmistakable: from now on, any networked computer is an unsecure computer
that can't be trusted really confidential information, unless it is isolated by firewall and proxy.
And if we assume that it is unsecured computer, them it should be treated it as such. The first step
is that all confidential data should be deleted and moved to removable storage. In case you need to
work with it as much as possible should be done on non-networked computers, limiting the exposure of
your data to bare minimum. And the less powerful computer you use for processing you confidential data,
the best; the less powerful OS you use, the best (what about using Windows 98 or DOS for those who can
still remember it ? ;-). From now on "retro-computing" movement now is inherently linked with the issues
of security and privacy and might get a new life.
This retro-computing idea might create a new life for abandoned computers that are in excess in almost
every family ;-) See
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. The same thing can be mentioned about a cell phone, which should be as simple as
possible. Not all people really benefit from browsing the Web from their smartphones. If you are really
paranoid you can think storing you cell phone at home in a metal box ;-).
In other words there are two new "laws of computer security":
secure computer is non-networked computer
secure cell-phone is a cell-hone in a metal box or without a battery.
But more important problem here is not snooping per se, but voluntarily self-profiling that you provide
via social sites. If you are way too enthusiastic about Facebook or Google++ or any similar site and
engage regularly and indiscriminately in this "vanity fair" activity you put yourselves voluntarily
under surveillance. So not only
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It. You killed it yourself. The essence of the situation was exposed well
in a humorous form in the following
Amazon review of Orwell's
novel 1984
Note to US Congress and house of representatives: This is a fictional book, not an
instruction manual...
BTW just after Prism program was revealed in June 2013,
Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller on Amazon. As of June 15, 2013 it was #87 in Fiction. If
you never have a chance to read it, please do it now. and again, if you think that this revelation of
Prism program is a big news, you probably are mistaken. Many people understood that as soon new technical
capabilities of surveillance are available they are instantly put to use. As John H. Summers noted in
his review (The
Deciders - New York Times) of John Mill "Power
elite":
...official secrecy steadily expanded its reach.
"For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency'
without a foreseeable end,"
Mills wrote in a sentence that remains as powerful and unsettling as it was 50 years ago.
"Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed
a paranoid reality all their own."
Facebook has nothing without people
silly enough to exchange privacy for photosharing
The key problem with social sites is that many people voluntarily post excessive amount of personal
data about themselves, including keeping their photo archives online, etc. So while East Germany analog
of the Department of Homeland Security called Ministry for State Security (Stasi)
needed to recruit people to spy about you, now you yourself serves as a informer voluntarily providing
all the tracking information about your activities ;-).
Scientella, palo alto
...Facebook always had a very low opinion of peoples intelligence - and rightly so!
I can tell you Silicon Valley is scared. Facebook's very existence depends upon trusting young
persons, their celebrity wannabee parents and other inconsequential people being prepared to give
up their private information to Facebook.
Google, now that SOCIAL IS DEAD, at least has their day job also, of paid referral advertising
where someone can without divulging their "social" identity, and not linking their accounts, can
look for a product on line and see next to it some useful ads.
But Facebook has nothing without people silly enough to exchange privacy for photosharing.
... ... ...
Steve Fankuchen, Oakland CA
Cook, Brin, Gates, Zuckerberg, et al most certainly have lawyers and public relations hacks
that have taught them the role of "plausible deniability."
Just as in the government, eventually some low or mid-level flunkie will likely be hung out
to dry, when it becomes evident that the institution knew exactly what was going on and did nothing
to oppose it. To believe any of these companies care about their users as anything other than
cash cows is to believe in the tooth fairy.
The amount of personal data which users of site like Facebook put voluntarily on the Web is truly
astonishing. Now anybody using just Google search can get quit substantial information about anybody
who actively using social sites and post messages in discussion he/she particulates under his/her own
name instead of a nickname. Just try to see what is available about you and most probably your jaw would
drop...
This is probably right time for the users of social sites like Facebook, Google search, and Amazon
(that means most of us ;-) to think a little bit more about the risks we are exposing ourselves. We
all should became more aware about the risks involved as well as real implications of the catch phase
Privacy is Dead
– Get Over It.
This is probably right time for the users of social sites like Facebook, Google search,
and Amazon (that means most of us ;-) to think a little bit more about the risks we are exposing
ourselves.
If there is one thing we can take away from the news of recent weeks it is this: the modern
American surveillance state is not really the stuff of paranoid fantasies; it has arrived.
Citizens of foreign countries have accounts at Facebook and mail accounts in Gmail, hotmail and Yahoo
mail are even in less enviable position then the US citizens. They are legitimate prey. No legal protection
for them exists, if they use those services. That means that they voluntarily open all the information
they posted about themselves to the US government in addition to their own government. And the net is
probably more wide then information leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden suggests. For any large
company, especially a telecom corporation, operating is the USA it might be dangerous to refuse to cooperate
(Qwest case).
Former Qwest CEO Joseph
Nacchio, convicted of insider trading in April 2007, alleged in appeal documents that the NSA
requested that Qwest participate in its wiretapping program more than six months before September
11, 2001. Nacchio recalls the meeting as occurring on February 27, 2001. Nacchio further claims that
the NSA cancelled a lucrative contract with Qwest as a result of Qwest's refusal to participate in
the wiretapping program.[13]
Nacchio surrendered April 14, 2009 to a federal prison camp in Schuylkill, Pennsylvania to begin
serving a six-year sentence for the insider trading conviction. The United States Supreme Court denied
bail pending appeal the same day.[15]
It is not the case of some special evilness of the US government. It simply is more agile to understand
and capitalize on those new technical opportunities. It is also conveniently located at the center of
Internet universe with most traffic is flowing via US owned or controlled routers (67% or more). But
it goes without saying that several other national governments and a bunch of large corporations also
try to mine this new gold throve of private information on citizens. Probably with less sophistication
and having less financial resources.
In many cases corporations themselves are interested in partnership with the government. Here is
one telling comment:
jrs says on June 8, 2013
Yea in my experience that’s how “public/private partnerships” really work:
Companies DO need protection FROM the government. An ill-conceived piece of legislation
can put a perfectly decent out of business. Building ties with the government is protection.
Government represents a huge market and eventually becomes one of the top customers
for I think most businesses (of course the very fact that a government agency is a main
customer is often kept hush hush even within the company and something you are not supposed
to speak of as an employee even though you are aware of it)
Of course not every company proceeds to step 3 -- being basically an arm of the government
but ..
That means that not only Chinese citizens already operate on the Internet without any real sense
of privacy. Even if you live outside the USA the chances are high that you automatically profiled by
the USA instead of or in addition to your own government. Kind of
neoliberalism in overdrive mode: looks like we all
are already citizens of a global empire (Let's call it " Empire of Peace" ) with the capital in Washington.
It is reasonable to assume that a massive eavesdropping apparatus now tracks at least an "envelope"
of every electronic communication you made during your lifetime. No need for somebody reporting about
you like in "old" totalitarian state like East Germany with its analog of the Department of Homeland
Security called the Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
So in this new environment, you are like Russians used to say about dissidents who got under KGB surveillance
is always "under the dome". In this sense this is just an old vine in a new bottles. But the global
scope and lifetime storage of huge amount of personal information for each and every citizen is something
new and was made possible the first time in world history by new technologies.
It goes without saying that records about time, sender and receiver of all your phone calls, emails,
Amazon purchases, credit card transactions, and Web activities for the last decade are stored somewhere
in a database and not necessary only government computers. And that means that your social circle (the
set of people you associate with), books and films that you bought, your favorite websites, etc can
be easily deducted from those records.
That brings us to an important question about whether we as consumers should support such ventures
as Facebook and Google++ which profile you and after several years have a huge amount of pretty private
and pretty damaging information about you, information which can get into wrong hands.
The most constructive approach to NSA is to view is a large government bureaucracy that expanded
to the extent that quantity turned into quality.
Any large
bureaucracy is a political coalition with the primary goal of preserving and enhancing of its own
power, no matter what are official declarations. And if breaching your privacy helps they will do it.
Which is what Bush government did after 9/11. The question is how much bureaucratic bloat resulting
in classic dynamics of organizational self-aggrandizement and expansionism happened in NSA. We don't
know how much we got in exchange for undermining internet security and US constitution. But we do know
the intelligence establishment happily appropriated billions of dollars, had grown by thousand of employees
and got substantial "face lift" and additional power within the executive branch of government. To the
extent that something it looks like a shadow government. And now they will fight tooth-and nail to protect
the fruits of a decade long bureaucratic expansion. Now it is an Intelligence Church and like any religious
organization they do not need fact to support their doctrine and influence.
Typically there is an infighting and many factions within any large hierarchical organization, some
with and some without factual awareness of the rest. Basically any hierarchical institution corporate,
religious, military will abuse available resources for internal political infighting. And with NSA "big
data" push this is either happening or just waiting to happen. This is a danger of any warrantless wiretapping
program: it naturally convert itself into a saga of eroding checks and disappearing balance. And this
already happened in the past, so in a way it is just act two of the same drama (WhoWhatWhy):
After
media
revelations of intelligence abuses by the Nixon administration began to mount in the wake of
Watergate, NSA became the subject of Congressional ire in the form of the United States Senate Select
Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities—commonly
known as the “Church Committee” after its chair, Senator Frank Church (D-ID)—established on January
17, 1975. This ad-hoc investigative body found itself unearthing troves of classified records from
the FBI, NSA, CIA and Pentagon that detailed the murky pursuits of each during the first decades
of the Cold War. Under the mantle of defeating communism, internal documents confirmed the executive
branch’s use of said agencies in
some of the most fiendish acts of human imagination (including refined psychological torture
techniques), particularly by
the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Cold War mindset had incurably infected the nation’s security apparatus, establishing
extralegal subversion efforts at home and
brutish control abroad. It was revealed that the FBI
undertook a war to destroy
homegrown movements such as the Black Liberation Movement (including Martin Luther King, Jr.), and
that NSA had indiscriminately
intercepted the communications of Americans without warrant, even
without the President’s
knowledge. When confronted with such nefarious enterprises, Congress sought to rein in the excesses
of the intelligence community, notably those directed at the American public.
That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American
would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything. Telephone conversations,
telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. If this government ever became a tyranny,
if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence
community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no
way to fight back, because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government,
no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability
of this technology. I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capability
that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies
that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never
cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
The reforms that followed, as enshrined in the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) of 1978, included the establishment of the
Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC): a specially-designated panel of judges who are allowed
to review evidence before giving NSA a warrant to spy on Americans (only in the case of overseas
communication). Hardly a contentious check or balance, FISC
rejected
zero warrant requests between its inception in 1979 and 2000, only asking that two warrants
be “modified” out of an estimated 13,000.
In spite of FISC’s rubberstamping, following 9/11 the Bush administration began deliberately bypassing
the court, because even its minimal evidentiary standard was too high a burden of proof for the blanket
surveillance they wanted. So began the dragnet monitoring of the American public by
tapping the country’s major
electronic communication chokepoints in collusion with the nation’s largest telecommunications
companies.
When
confronted with the criminal conspiracy undertaken by the Bush administration and telecoms, Congress
confirmed why
it retains the lowest approval rating of any major American institution by “reforming” the statute
to accommodate the massive law breaking. The
2008 FISA Amendments Act
[FAA] entrenched the policy of mass eavesdropping and granted the telecoms retroactive immunity
for their criminality, withdrawing even the negligible individual protections in effect since 1979.
Despite initial opposition, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama
voted for
the act as one of his last deeds in the Senate.
A few brave (and unsuccessful) lawsuits
later, this policy remains the status quo.
Similarly we should naturally expect that the notion of "terrorist" is flexible and in certain cases
can be equal to "any opponent of regime". While I sympathize NYT readers reaction to this incident (see
below), I think it is somewhat naive. They forget that they are living
under neoliberal regime which like any rule of top
0.01% is afraid of and does not trust its own citizens. So massive surveillance program is a self-preservation
measure which allow to crush or subvert the opposition at early stages. This is the same situation as
existed with Soviet nomenklatura, with the only difference that Soviet nomenklatura was more modest
pushing the USSR as a beacon of progress and bright hope of all mankind ;-). As
Ron Paul noted:
Many of us are not so surprised.
Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it
would pave the way for massive US government surveillance—not targeting terrorists but rather
aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide
government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly twelve years and at least
four wars ago.
We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the
status quo even when the “crisis” has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once
lost is never regained. How many times did the PATRIOT Act need renewed? How many times did FISA
authority need expanded? Why did we have to pass a law to grant immunity to companies who hand
over our personal information to the government?
And while revealed sources of NSA
Prism program
include Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others major Internet players, that's probably
just a tip of the iceberg. Ask yourself a question, why Amazon and VISA and MasterCard are not on the
list? According to
The Guardian:
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook,
Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian.
The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called Prism, which allows
officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and
live chats, the document says.
... ... ...
Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan "Your privacy is
our priority" – was the first, with collection beginning in December 2007. It was followed by Yahoo
in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally
Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers
due to come online.
Collectively, the companies cover the vast majority of online email, search, video and communications
networks
... ... ...
A chart prepared by the NSA, contained within the top-secret document obtained by the Guardian,
underscores the breadth of the data it is able to obtain: email, video and voice chat, videos,
photos, voice-over-IP (Skype, for example) chats, file transfers, social networking details, and
more.
So while the document does not list Amazon, but I would keep fingers crossed.
To be aware about a situation you need to be able to formulate and answer key questions about it.
The first and the most important question is whether the government is engaged in
cyberstalking of law abiding
citizens. Unfortunately the answer is definite yes, as oligarchy needs total control of prols. As a
result National Security State rise to prominence as a dominant
social organization of neoliberal societies, the societies
which characterized by very high level of inequality.
But there are some additional, albeit less important questions. The answers to them determine utility
or futility of small changes of our own behavior in view of uncovered evidence. Among possible set of
such question I would list the following:
Is the only way to have reasonable privacy with computer is to be physically disconnected
with the network?
Is limiting the usage of large providers like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and usage of small
ISP for your email and personal Web pages makes you any more secure? After all it is much easier
to collect data from large providers then from hundreds of smaller providers. At the same time your
data are allowing via big routers in major telecom companies no matter whether you are using large
or small ISP.
Should you switch from Webmail back top POP3 account and deliver at the least most important
mail to your PC instead of keeping it stored on the web servers ? Please note that FBI developed
the computer programs "Magic
Lantern" and CIPAV, which they
can remotely install on a computer system (for example, using Microsoft Windows updates program),
in order to monitor a person's computer activity. But here you probably need a court order to install
them.
Is Facebook and similar social sites provides any real value to you and your family? Is
your visibility of the Web is more important to you then your privacy, because two are generally
incompatible. Is all this vanity fair activity worth possible negative consequences (including stalking
of minors by criminals) that you and your family can face?
Should some group of specialists, for example psychiatrists resort back to handwriting on
paper and/or now write client notes in code as an attempt to reassert some level of confidentiality?
Note the PGP is not a panacea; it can be safely used only on non-network connected computers due
to existence of programs like
Magic Lantern
which can retrieve private keys directly from your computer. But transferring files via "air link"
is very inconvenient.
There are also some minor questions about efficiency of "total surveillance approach". Among them:
More people die daily from (1) car accidents and (2) gang violence in one day then people who
died due to 9-11 accident. Should not billions or dollars spent by NSA be utilized by different agencies
for preventing death toll mentioned above?
Even if NSA algorithms are incredibly clever they can't avoid producing large number of false
positives. The question arise how many innocent people are monitored as the result of this externality.
The other part of understand the threat is understanding is what data are collected. The short answer
is all your phone records and Internet activity (RT
USA):
The National Security Agency is collecting information on the Internet habits of millions of innocent
Americans never suspected of criminal involvement, new NSA documents leaked by former intelligence
contractor Edward Snowden suggest.
Britain’s Guardian newspaper reported Monday that
top-secret documents
included in the trove of files supplied by the NSA contractor-turned-leaker Edward Snowden reveal
that the US intelligence community obtains and keeps information on American citizens accumulated
off the Internet without ever issuing a search warrant or opening an investigation into that person.
The information is obtained using a program codenamed Marina, the documents suggest, and is kept
by the government for up to a full year without investigators ever having to explain why the subject
is being surveilled.
“Marina has the ability to look back on the last 365 days' worth of DNI metadata seen by the
Sigint collection system, regardless whether or not it was tasked for collection,” the Guardian’s
James Ball quotes from the documents.
According to a guide for intelligence analysts supplied by Mr. Snowden, “The Marina metadata
application tracks a user's browser experience, gathers contact information/content and develops
summaries of target.”
"This tool offers the ability to export the data in a variety of formats, as well as create
various charts to assist in pattern-of-life development,” it continues.
Ball writes that the program collects “almost anything” a Web user does online, “from
browsing history – such as map searches and websites visited – to account details, email activity,
and even some account passwords.”
Only days earlier,
separate disclosures
attributed to Snowden revealed that the NSA was using a massive collection of metadata to create
complex graphs of social connections for foreign intelligence purposes, although that program
had pulled in intelligence about Americans as well.
After the New York Times broke news of that program, a NSA spokesperson said that “All data
queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period.” As Snowden documents continue
to surface, however, it’s becoming clear that personal information pertaining to millions of US citizens
is routinely raked in by the NSA and other agencies as the intelligence community collects as much
data as possible.
In June, a top-secret document also attributed to Mr. Snowden revealed that the NSA was collecting
the telephony metadata for millions of Americans from their telecom providers. The government has
defended this practice by saying that the metadata — rough information that does not include the
content of communications — is not protected by the US Constitution’s prohibition against unlawful
search and seizure.
“Metadata can be very revealing,” George Washington University law professor Orin S. Kerr
told the Times this week. “Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location
of the person’s cellphone is going to allow them to assemble a picture of what someone is up to.
It’s the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect.”
According to the Guardian’s Ball, Internet metadata picked up by the NSA is routed to the Marina
database, which is kept separate from the servers where telephony metadata is stored.
Only moments after the Guardian wrote of its latest leak on Monday, Jesselyn Radack of the Government
Accountability Project read a statement before the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties,
Justice and Home Affairs penned by none other than Snowden himself.
“When I began my work, it was with the sole intention of making possible the debate we see
occurring here in this body,” Snowden said.
Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia after being charged with espionage in
the US, said through Raddack that “The cost for one in my position of returning public knowledge
to public hands has been persecution and exile.”
There are limits of this "powerful analytical software" as it currently used. As we mentioned above, even if NSA
algorithms are incredibly clever they can't avoid producing large number of false positives. After two
year investigation into the post 9/11 intelligence agencies, the Washington Post came to conclusion
that they are collecting more information than anyone can comprehend ("drinking from a firehose" or
"drowning is a sea of data"):
Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billions
e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into
70 separate databases"
First of all there is a classic problem of "signal vs. noise" (infoglut) in any large scale data
collection and presence of noise in the channel makes signal much more difficult to detect.
Analysts who make sense of document and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying
share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year -- a volume so large
that many are routinely ignored
The enormity of the database exacerbate the problem. That's why NSA is hunting for email on cloud
providers, where they are already filtered from spam, and processing required is much less then
for emails intercepted from the wire data. Still even with the direct access to user accounts, the volume of
data, especially graphic (pictures) and video data, is really huge and that stress the limits of processing
capabilities and storage.
Existence of Snowden saga when a single analyst was able to penetrate the system and extract considerable
amount information with impunity suggests that the whole Agency is mess, probably like is
typical for any large organization with a lot of incompetents or, worse, careerists and psychopaths at
the helm (see Toxic Managers). Which is typical for government agencies and large corporations.
Still the level of logs collection
and internal monitoring in NSA proved to be surprisingly weak, as there are indirect signs that the agency does not
even know what reports Snowden get into his hands. In any case we, unless this is a very clever inside
operation, we need to assume that Edward Snowden stole thousands of documents, abused his sysadmin position
in the NSA, and was never caught. Here is one relevant comment from
The Guardian
carlitoontour
Oh NSA......that´s fine that you cannot find something......what did you tell us, the World
and the US Congress about the "intelligence" of Edward Snowden and the low access he had?
SNOWDEN SUSPECTED OF BYPASSING ELECTRONIC LOGS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. government's efforts to determine which highly classified materials
leaker Edward Snowden took from the National Security Agency have been frustrated by Snowden's
sophisticated efforts to cover his digital trail by deleting or bypassing electronic logs,
government officials told The Associated Press. Such logs would have showed what information
Snowden viewed or downloaded.
The government's forensic investigation is wrestling with Snowden's apparent ability
to defeat safeguards established to monitor and deter people looking at information without
proper permission, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they
weren't authorized to discuss the sensitive developments publicly.
On the other hand government agencies were never good in making huge and complex software projects
work. And large software projects are a very difficult undertaking in any case. Even in industry 50%
of software projects fail, and anybody who works in the industry knows, that the more complex the project
is the higher are chances that it will be mismanaged and its functionality crippled due to architectural
defects ("a camel is a horse designed by a committee"). It is given that such project will be
over budget. Possibly several times over...
But if money is not a problem such system will eventually be completed ("with enough thrust pigs
can fly"). Still there’s no particular reason to think that corruption (major work was probably
outsourced) and incompetence (on higher management levels and, especially on architectural level as
in "camel is a horse designed by a committee") don't affect the design and functionality of
such government
projects. Now when this activity come under fire some adjustments might be especially badly thought out
and potentially cripple the existing functionality.
As J. Kirk Wiebe, a NSA insider, noted
"The way the government was going about those digital data flows was poor formed, uninformed.
There seen to be more of a desire to contract out and capture money flow then there was a [desire}
to actually perform the mission".
See the interview of a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers to USA TODAY ( J.
Kirk Wiebe remarks starts at 2:06 and the second half of it continues from 6:10):
In military organizations the problem is seldom with the talent (or lack of thereof) of individual
contributors. The problem is with the bureaucracy that is very effective in preventing people from exercising
their talents at the service of their country. Such system is deformed in such a way that it hamstrings
the men who are serving in it. As a results, more often then not the talents are squandered or misused
by patching holes created by incompetence of higher-up or or just pushed aside in the interdepartmental
warfare.
In a way, incompetence can be defined as the inability to avoid mistakes which, in a "normal"
course of project development could and should be avoided. And that's the nature of military bureaucracy
with its multiple layer of command and compete lack of accountability on higher levels.
In addition, despite the respectable name of the organization many members of technical staff are
amateurs. They never managed to sharpen their technical skills, while at the same time acquiring the
skills necessary to survive the bureaucracy. Many do not have basic academic education and are self-taught
hackers and/or "grow on the job". Typically people at higher level of hierarchy, are simply not experts
in software engineering, but more like typical corporate "PowerPoint" warriors. They can be very shred
managers and accomplished political fighters, but that's it.
This is the same situation that exists in security departments of large multinationals, so we can
extrapolate from that. The word of Admiral Nelson "If the enemy would know what officer corps will confront
them, it will be trembling, like I am". Here is Bill Gross apt recollection of his service as naval
officer (The
Tipping Point) that illustrate the problems:
A few years ago I wrote about the time that our ship (on my watch) was almost cut in half by an
auto-piloted tanker at midnight, but never have I divulged the day that the USS Diachenko came within
one degree of heeling over during a typhoon in the South China Sea. “Engage emergency ballast,” the
Captain roared at yours truly – the one and only chief engineer. Little did he know that Ensign Gross
had slept through his classes at Philadelphia’s damage control school and had no idea what he was
talking about. I could hardly find the oil dipstick on my car back in San Diego, let alone conceive
of emergency ballast procedures in 50 foot seas. And so…the ship rolled to starboard, the ship rolled
to port, the ship heeled at the extreme to 36 degrees (within 1 degree, as I later read in the ship’s
manual, of the ultimate tipping point). One hundred sailors at risk, because of one twenty-three-year-old
mechanically challenged officer, and a Captain who should have known better than to trust him.
Huge part of this work is outsourced to various contractors and this is where corruption really creeps
in. So the system might be not as powerful as many people automatically assume when they hear the abbreviation
of NSA. So in a way when news about such system reaches public it might serve not weakening but strengthening
of the capabilities of the system. Moreover, nobody would question the ability of such system to store
huge amount of raw or semi-processed data including all metadata for your transactions on the Internet.
Also while it is a large agency with a lot of top mathematic talent, NSA is not NASA and motivation
of the people (and probably quality of architectural thinking about software projects involved) is different
despite much better financing. While they do have high quality people, like most US agencies in general,
large bureaucracies usually are unable to utilize their talent. Mediocrities with sharp elbows, political
talent, as well as sociopaths typically rule the show.
That means two things:
The easy part of this is the "total surveillance of electronic communications" project: to
store the "envelope" of each phone message, email, credit card transaction, etc. Analyze and correlated
the set of this envelopes to discover daily activity patterns, their change over time, social circle,
etc. That collection will contain some junk, but generally completely gives up your social circle
and your interests. Such records are pretty compact so the lifespan of your communications stored
is at least five and probably for more then ten years. So assumption of a lifespan storage is the
most realistic one. You can introduce some noise into some of those collection channels (for example,
by using a robot visiting certain sites such as Sport Illustrated, and Washington Post will distort
the picture of your Internet activities) but it is much more difficult to introduce noise into phone
call records and emails.
Several other nations have access to the metadata for the USA originated phone calls (for
providers they serve) via outsourcers of phone billing, such as Israel's Amdocs, the largest phone-billing
services company in the world:
The difficult part is the analysis of the messages body. For example:
Automatic transcribing of phone messages is a very difficult problem. Even the slightest
noise is deadly as we can see from the experience with Dragon (let's say that NSA solved the problem
of adapting to a new voice which Dragon can't solve). Dragon 12 running of dual core 3.8GHz PC
demonstrates the difficulties very well. Even a small amount of noise kills the quality of automatic
transcription.
Analysis of email body for certain keywords easily can be perform automatically, but to
understand the context of usage of "trigger" words is extremely difficult. This task is still
on the cutting edge of modern computer science. From the public document that exists (see
Total
control: keywords in your posts that might trigger surveillance) I have impression that they
try to overreach (which is standard bureaucratic tendency in such cases). That means that such
an extraction might produces too many false positives, and needs to be manually correlated with
other data.
Recognition of faces from street and security cameras is even more difficult problem.
Data mining of blogs is difficult for a different reason: not only detecting who is
who requires getting IP from particular provider (this is an easy part), just the total volume
is enormous. Many people create dozens of messages a day. There is a special category of graphomans,
that specialize on participating in various forums and those are people who have high change to
trigger "blind" keyword search. The USA government can afford to have, say, several zetabytes
of storage capacity in NSA-controlled datacenters, but its capabilities are still limited. It
can't replicate all the Internet over time. Videos are especially problematic and are more difficult
to analyze then text or HTML, or XML documents. Even low quality voice (with reverberation for
example) is very difficult to analyze automatically.
Video streams are huge and probably impossible to store. In a way the fact that most
modern computer have face camera is not only creating problem for NSA, it actually create the
problem for Internet as a whole ;-). Indiscriminate interception and storage are out of question:
lovers of "here is what my dog is doing" clips are able to saturate all available storage in no
time.
So even with huge amount of subcontractors that can chase mostly "big fish". Although one open question
is why with all those treasure trove of data organized crime is so hard to defeat. Having dataset like
this should generally expose all the members of any gang. Or, say, network of blue collar insider traders.
So in an indirect way the fact that organized crime not only exists and in some cities even flourish
can suggest one of two things:
NSA generally limits availability of those "integrated" data sets to terrorism networks, political
protest, foreign organizations and "suspicious nationals" activities. It is difficult and inefficient
"to cover the whole field" although spying after activities of a foreign corporation can be more
lucrative them spying after a member of terrorist networks ;-). Some sources mention the current
capabilities as around 100K-200K people who can be "electronically followed" simultaneously. It is
reasonably to expect high level of secrecy and that means that data are not shared unless absolutely
necessary (The
Guardian):
The presentation claims Prism was introduced to overcome what the NSA regarded as shortcomings
of Fisa warrants in tracking suspected foreign terrorists. It noted that the US has a "home-field
advantage" due to housing much of the internet's architecture. But the presentation claimed "Fisa
constraints restricted our home-field advantage" because Fisa required individual warrants and
confirmations that both the sender and receiver of a communication were outside the US. "Fisa
was broken because it provided privacy protections to people who were not entitled to them," the
presentation claimed. "
It took a Fisa court order to collect on foreigners overseas who were communicating with other
foreigners overseas simply because the government was collecting off a wire in the United States.
There were too many email accounts to be practical to seek Fisas for all."
... ... ...
A senior administration official said in a statement: "The Guardian and Washington Post articles
refer to collection of communications pursuant to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act. This law does not allow the targeting of any US citizen or of any person located within the
United States.
"The program is subject to oversight by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Executive
Branch, and Congress. It involves extensive procedures, specifically approved by the court, to
ensure that only non-US persons outside the US are targeted, and that minimize the acquisition,
retention and dissemination of incidentally acquired information about US persons.
Methods based on "beyond the envelope" analysis are not efficient against reasonably sophisticated
opponents, who understand the fact that the communication will be intercepted and possibly
(superficially) analyzed. In a typical "bullet-armor" competition, that opens new impetus for
"bad guys" inventing new and improving old steganography methods. As with interception of talk between
Soviet fighter pilots and their command posts had shown, usage of slang makes the voice data almost
inpenetratable. Another example would be calling Goldman Sacks "a vampire squid", which implies that
your counterpart read
Matt Taibby article or related financial blogs, or to call Facebook "lichiko" which implies knowing
Russian. Person without this context can't make a connection. With such substitutions you need a
huge amount of ( rapidly shifting ) cultural context to understand the meaning of even simple phases.
This context is missing on the other side of the pond. And even specialists can represent certain
problems. For example Jargon
File (and more) is needed to understand the talk of hackers. Fenia,
the language of the thieves is Russia was so distinct from ordinary Russian that it almost qualifies
as a separate language which makes it foreign for outsiders. The same it true about criminal subculture
in other countries (see
Police and criminal
slang ).
Storage of actual data involves certain technical difficulties and first on all physical limitations
of available storage. We probably can talk about several thousand
Petabytes that government can
store. In comparison:
Google processed about
24 petabytes of data per day in 2009
AT&T transfers about
30 petabytes of data through its networks each day
The Internet Archive
contains about 10 petabytes in cultural material as of October 2012
In August 2011, IBM was reported to have built the largest storage array ever, with a capacity
of 120 petabytes
In July 2012 it was revealed that
CERN amassed about 200
petabytes of data from the more than 800 trillion collisions
In August 2012, Facebook's
Hadoop clusters include the largest single
HDFS cluster known, with more
than 100 PB physical disk space in a single HDFS filesystem
In May 2013, Microsoft
announce that as part of their migration of Hotmail accounts to the new Outlook.com email system,
they'd migrated over 150 Petabytes of user data in six weeks.
There is also a question of complexity of analysis:
We can assume that simple things are extracted correctly. But more complex things might be
not. There is no question that a map of your phone calls, your Amazon and eBay purchases, credit
card transactions and other straightforward things can be recreated "exactly". Also can be recreated
data that can tell approximately where you were and what you was doings on any particular day. The
map of your phone contacts (people who called you and people who you call) and your emails gives
a pretty good estimate of your social circle. With multiple data sources any individual posting
in blogs can be identified with 90% or better accuracy, no matter what nicknames he/she uses
and whether he/she avoids registration and provide truthful information during it. So in a way there
is no need to do something complex as simple methods provide treasure trove of data.
There are also “junk in, junk out” issues including spam in email, telemarketers calling
your land line, there are always "strange" sites you accidentally visit during your browsing. While
they can be filtered, signal can be filtered with them (why bad guys can not disguise themselves
as telemarketers or porno sites owners?) and then system became useless against bad guys. If not
that noise subtly corrupts the data, noise and data can be really undistinguishable. BTW closed source
security-related software will always be somewhat more problematical then open source, since algorithms
used may be far from perfect and are result more of a "trading horses" between power groups involved
in development, then honest scientific research. Open source software such as CPU emulators can be
used as steganography engine that requires particular processor on the other side for recreation
of the message. And you can chose some really exotic CPU like Knuth Mix.
Errors in algorithms and bugs in those programs can bite some people in a different way then branding
them as "terrorists". Such people have no way of knowing why all of a sudden, for example, they
are paying a more for insurance, why their credit score is so low no matter what they do, etc. In no
way government in the only one who are using the mass of data collected via Google / Facebook / Yahoo
/ Microsoft / Verizon / Optonline / AT&T / Comcast, etc. It also can lead to certain subtle types of
bias if not error. And there are always problems of intentional misuse of data sets having extremely
intimate knowledge about you.
Corporate corruption can lead to those data that are shared with the government can also be shared
for money with private actors. Inept use of this unconstitutionally obtained data is a threat to all
of us.
Then there can be cases when you can be targeted just because you are critical to the particular
area of government policy, for example the US foreign policy. This is "Back in the USSR" situation in
full swing, with its prosecution of dissidents. Labeling you as a "disloyal/suspicious element"
in one of government "terrorism tracking" databases can have drastic result to your career and you never
even realize whats happened. Kind of Internet era
McCarthyism .
Obama claims that the government is aware about this danger and tried not to overstep, but he is
an interested party in this discussion. In a way government is pushed in this area by the new technologies
that open tremendous opportunities for collecting data and making some correlations.
That's why even if you are doing nothing wrong, it is still important to know your enemy, as well
as avoid getting into some traps. One typical trap is excessive centralization of your email on social
sites, including using a single Webmail provider. It is much safer to have mail delivery to your computer
via POP3 and to use Thunderbird or other email client. If your computer is a laptop, you achieve, say,
80% of portability that Web-based email providers like Google Gmail offers. That does not mean that
you should close your Gmail or Yahoo account. More important is separating email accounts into "important"
and "everything else". "Junk mail" can be stored on Web-based email providers without any problems.
Personal emails is completely another matter.
Technology development create new types of communications as well as new types of government surveillance
mechanisms (you can call them "externalities" of new methods of communication). Those externalities,
especially low cost of mass
surveillance (Wikipedia), unfortunately, bring us closer to the
Electronic police state
(Wikipedia) or National Security State whether we want it or not. A
crucial element of such a state is that its data gathering, sorting and correlation are continuous,
cover a large number of citizens and all foreigners and those activities are seldom exposed.
Cloud computing as a technology that presuppose storing the data "offsite" on third party servers
have several security problems, and one of them is that it is way too much "surveillance friendly"
(Misunderstanding
of issues of security and trust). With cloud computing powers that be do not need to do complex
job of recreating TCP/IP conversations on router level to capture, say, all the emails. You can access
Web-based email mailbox directly with all mails in appropriate mailboxes and spam filtered. Your address
book is a bonus ;-). This is huge saving of computational efforts.
"... There's no doubt about Google tracking. At least DuckDuckGo has a stated policy of not tracking, and is an alternative to the Google Goliath. ..."
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A study from the Norwegian Consumer
Council dug into the underhanded
tactics used by Microsoft, Facebook, and Google to collect user data . "The findings
include privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of
control, hiding away privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice
architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users,"
states the report , which includes images and examples of confusing design choices and
strangely worded statements involving the collection and use of personal data.
Google makes opting out of personalized ads more of a chore than it needs to be and uses
multiple pages of text, unclear design language, and, as described by the report, "hidden
defaults" to push users toward the company's desired action. "If the user tried to turn the
setting off, a popup window appeared explaining what happens if Ads Personalization is turned
off, and asked users to reaffirm their choice," the report explained. "There was no explanation
about the possible benefits of turning off Ads Personalization, or negative sides of leaving it
turned on." Those who wish to completely avoid personalized ads must traverse multiple menus,
making that "I agree" option seem like the lesser of two evils. In Windows 10, if a user
wants to opt out of "tailored experiences with diagnostic data," they have to click a dimmed
lightbulb, while the symbol for opting in is a brightly shining bulb, says the report.
Another example has to do with Facebook. The social media site makes the "Agree and
continue" option much more appealing and less intimidating than the grey "Manage Data Settings"
option. The report says the company-suggested option is the easiest to use. "This 'easy road'
consisted of four clicks to get through the process, which entailed accepting personalized ads
from third parties and the use of face recognition. In contrast, users who wanted to limit data
collection and use had to go through 13 clicks."
You seem to be keeping your gaze too low. You are not just a target for buying stuff; you
are also a target for modifying your opinion and behaviour in politics and other
questions.
You can be targeted through other vectors than traditional ads, e.g. notification flows,
news flows, ads-or-propaganda-disguised-as-news, product placement, insurance company
policies, employability, police knocking on your door, ...
As an extreme, think China. The view we outsiders get is that if they collect the wrong
data about you, they will *target* you in a way that no ad-blocker will stop.
This info has been out there for years yet no one is listening and/or cares. The mantra of
people seems to be "it's free" so why not. I have long ago seen this coming. Use Fedora Linux
or Debian. Use an iPhone over Android despite Apple having some issues. Use P2P apps in lieu
of things like Skype. Own your own domain and use that for email. It's cheap and you have
control of your user name and domain name. Tie that domain name to a privacy-respecting
service like Fastmail.
Don't use spy devices like Alexa or Google Home. These exist not to help you but to
harvest your data 24/7. Roll your own solutions, especially if you're technical or in IT. Use
your own skills. Run a Pi-hole, block and defund the ad companies and tracking companies.
Like drugs, just say no...
This info has been out there for years yet no one is listening and/or cares. The mantra of
people seems to be "it's free" so why not. I have long ago seen this coming. Use Fedora Linux
or Debian. Use an iPhone over Android despite Apple having some issues. Use P2P apps in lieu
of things like Skype. Own your own domain and use that for email. It's cheap and you have
control of your user name and domain name. Tie that domain name to a privacy-respecting
service like Fastmail.
Don't use spy devices like Alexa or Google Home. These exist not to help you but to
harvest your data 24/7. Roll your own solutions, especially if you're technical or in IT. Use
your own skills. Run a Pi-hole, block and defund the ad companies and tracking companies.
Like drugs, just say no...
what can be attributed to three companies who are some of the worst offenders of screwing
up general UI design.
Who the hell cares about my privacy settings when I can no longer safely use maps for
navigation due to its shitty settings of minimising into a useless picture in picture
everytime there's a hiccup on my phone and has removed the option to force audio output
throught the speaker meaning I can't hear it with bluetooth on either.
Who the hell cares about privacy settings on a website that makes it borderline impossible
to easily scroll through past messages, or whose mobile app doesn't let you post pictures
because it ends up in a select picture loop.
And as for Microsoft, one word... err two words: Start Menu *raises middle finger*
While Facebook is avoidable good luck avoiding Microsoft and Google if you're not a member
of the zombie Steve Jobs fan club...that said, whatever they extract is far less damaging
than the Equifax breach, after that I'd say cell phone carriers and all of the historical gps
data they share with third parties without your consent. Just like the instigators of the
2008 global financial meltdown the penalties = zero dollars.
You sound like a Google employee. There's no doubt about Google tracking. At least DuckDuckGo has a stated policy of not tracking, and is an alternative to the Google
Goliath.
Modern technology makes many things possible, but it does not make them cheap... The camera
needs to work in pretty adverse conditions (think about the temperature inside the light on a hot
summer day, and temperature at winter) and transmit signal somewhere via WiFi (which has range
less then 100m) , or special cable that needs to be installed for this particular pole. With wifi
there should be many collection units which also cost money. So it make sense only for
streetlights adjacent to building with Internet networking. And there are already cameras of the
highway, so highways are basically covered. Which basically limits this technology to cities.
Just recoding without transmission would be much cheaper (transmission on demand). Excessive
paranoia here is not warranted.
According to new government procurement data, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have purchased an undisclosed number of secret
surveillance cameras that are being hidden in streetlights across the country.
Quartz
first reported this dystopian development of federal authorities stocking up on "covert
systems" last week. The report showed how the DEA paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy
Streetlight Concealments LLC. approximately $22,000 since June for "video recording and
reproducing equipment." ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments during
the same period.
"It's unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the
next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have
provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA's most
recent purchases were funded by the agency's Office of Investigative Technology, which is
located in Lorton, Virginia," said Quartz.
Christie Crawford, who co-owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, said she
was not allowed to talk about the government contracts in detail.
"We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures," Crawford told Quartz. "Basically,
there's businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that's what
we do. They specify what's best for them, and we make it. And that's about all I can probably
say."
However, she added: "I can tell you this -- things are always being watched. It doesn't
matter if you're driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement
has a reason to set up surveillance, there's great technology out there to do it."
Quartz notes that the DEA issued a solicitation for "concealments made to house network PTZ
[Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device," last Monday. According to
solicitation number D-19-ST-0037, the sole source award will go to Obsidian Integration
LLC.
On November 07, the Jersey City Police Department awarded Obsidian Integration with "the
purchase and delivery of a covert pole camera." Quartz said the filing did not provide much
detail about the design.
It is not just streetlights the federal government wants to mount covert surveillance
cameras on, it seems cameras inside traffic barrels could be heading onto America's highways in
the not too distant future.
And as Quartz reported in October, the DEA operates a complex network of digital
speed-display road signs that covertly scan license plates. On top of all this,
Amazon has been aggressively rolling out its
Rekognition facial-recognition software to law enforcement agencies and ICE, according to
emails uncovered by the Project for Government Oversight.
Chad Marlow, a senior advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, told Quartz that cameras in
street lights have been proposed before by local governments, typically under a program called
"smart" LED street light system.
"It basically has the ability to turn every streetlight into a surveillance device, which
is very Orwellian to say the least," Marlow told Quartz. "In most jurisdictions, the local
police or department of public works are authorized to make these decisions unilaterally and
in secret. There's no public debate or oversight."
And so, as the US continues to be distracted, torn amid record political, social and
economic polarization, big brother has no intention of letting the current crisis go to waste,
and quietly continues on its path of transforming the US into a full-blown police and
surveillance state.
I previously worked for one of these types of federal agencies and to be fair, $50,000
doesn't buy a lot of video surveillance equipment at government procurement costs. The
contractor doesn't just drill a hole and install a camera, they provide an entirely new
streetlight head with the camera installed.
It would be nice if they put some of this technology to work for a good cause. Maybe
warning you of traffic congestion ahead. Or advising you that one of your tires will soon go
flat.
Obviously that won't happen, so in the meantime, I can't wait to read next how the hackers
will find a way to make this government effort go completely haywire. As if the government
can't do it without any help. At least when the hackers do it, it will be funny and
thorough.
Besides the creepy surveillance part, some of the street light tech is interesting .
lights that dim like the frozen food section - when no one is in front of the case --- RGB
lighting that shows the approximate location for EMS to a 911 call ( lights that EMS can
follow by color)
basic neighborhood street lights are being replaced by LED -- lights in this article.
Hey, I have street lights AND cameras on the same poles at the shop/mad scientist lab/
play house.
but- surveillance -- the wall better have these lights -- light up the border !
This is yesteryears news. Shot Spotter has microphones that can pick up whispered
conversations for 300 feet for a long time now, while triangulating any gunshot in a
city...
So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much
worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
"... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
"... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
"... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
"... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
"... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
"... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures
are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept
secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during
"routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and
the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to
whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might
have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch,
is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence
agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats
and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss
(R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type
of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive
Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community
Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The
fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers
raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly,"
wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with
"bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence
officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community
Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abuses
Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the
possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's
response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be
saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring
user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported
to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually
shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy
Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency
(NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance,"
said
Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S.
citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured
in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only
allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed
that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of
President Trump.
Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against
our Constitution would be in full swing!
When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter.
Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged
and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance
and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a
horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties
before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump
won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas
as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's
US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy"
closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And
the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified
material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing
incriminating evidence.
Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew
the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since
our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when
(((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive
order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an
increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the
master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would
they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
On two declassified letters from 2014 from the Intelligence Community Inspector General
(didn't know there was one, but doesn't do much good anyway, it seems, read further) to the
chairpersons of the House and Senate intelligence committees notifying them that the CIA has
been monitoring emails between the CIA's head of the whistleblowing and source protection and
Congressional. "Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower
complaints". Shows why Edward Snowdon didn't consider it appropriate to rely on internal
complaints proceedures. This while under the leadership of seasoned liars and criminals
Brennan and Clapper, of course.
It clearly shows a taste of what these buggers have to hide, and why they went to such
extraordinary lengths as Russiagate to cover it all up and save their skins - that of course
being the real reason behind Russiagate as I have said several times, nothing to do with
either Trump or Russia.
OWS was a Controlled-Dissent operation, sending poor students north to fecklessly march on
Wall Street when they could have shut down WADC, and sending wealthy seniors south to
fecklessly line Pennsylvania Avenue, when they could have shut down Wall Street.
Both I$I$, and Hamas, and Antifa et al are all Controlled Dissent operations. The
followers are duped, are used, abused and then abandoned by honey-pots put there by Central
Intelligence, at least since the Spanish Civil War.
That's why MoA articles like this one make you wonder, just who is conning whom, at a time
when the Internet is weaponized, when Google Assistant achieved AI awareness
indistinguishable from anyone on the phone, China TV has launched a virtual AI news reporter
indistinguishable from reality, and Stanford can audio-video a captured image of anyone as
well as their voice intonation, then 3D model them, in real time, reading and emoting from a
script, indistinguishable from reality, ...and then this.
Another Gift of Trust😂 brought to you by Scientocracy. Be sure to tithe your AI
bot, or word will get back to Chairman Albertus, then you'll be called in to confess your
thought crimes to the Green Cadre, itself another Controlled Dissent honeypot, in a
Tithe-for-Credits Swindle.
I tell my kids, just enjoy life, live it large, and get ready for hell. It's coming for
breakfast.
Hacking operations by anyone, can and will be used by US propagandists to provoke Russia
or whoever stands in the way of the US war machine, take this Pompeo rant against Iran and
the Iranian response......
Asking of Pompeo "have you no shame?", Zarif mocked Pompeo's praise for the Saudis for
"providing millions and millions of dollars of humanitarian relief" to Yemen, saying
America's "butcher clients" were spending billions of dollars bombing school buses. Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issued a statement lashing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for
his recent comments on the Yemen War. Discussing the US-backed Saudi invasion of Yemen,
Pompeo declared Iran to be to blame for the death and destruction in the country. https://news.antiwar.com/2018/11/09/iran-fm-slams-pompeo-for-blaming-yemen-war-on-iran/
The US way of looking at things supposes that up is down, and white is black, it makes no
sense, unless the US hopes these provocations will lead to a war or at the very least Russia
or Iran capitulating to US aggression, which will not happen. Sanctions by the US on all and
sundry must be opposed, if not the US will claim justifiably to be the worlds policeman and
the arbiter of who will trade with who, a ludicrous proposition but one that most governments
are afraid is now taking place, witness the new US ambassador to Germany in his first tweet
telling the Germans to cease all trade with Iran immediately.
"... The "leaving of fake fingerprints" (Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean and Arabic) is done by Marble Framework software, details of which was leaked by CIA programmer, Joshua Adam Schulte to Wikileaks and formed part of the "Vault 7" series. It means that no fingerprint evidence can ever be relied on ever again. ..."
A division of the Central Intelligence Agency stockpiled hacking techniques culled
from other hackers, giving the agency the ability to leave behind the "fingerprints" of
the outside hackers when it broke into electronic devices ...
"With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of
attack types, but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the
groups that the attack techniques were stolen from," Wikileaks said in a
statement.
that anonymous NSA guy is either lying or too stupid to do his job. " it's that
simple ".
fireeye are scam artists just like crowdstrike. it's not that they don't know tactics and
methods; i'm sure they know their way around a payload. that doesn't make them some tabula
rasa blank slate without an agenda. just because they use computers doesn't mean they're
robots.
as anyone who works in a business run by technologically "challenged" bosses knows, for
every fast talker throwing around techy terms and sounding like a mr. robot script there are
20 idiot CEOs willing to throw money at imaginary problems. ditto the government. meanwhile
shysters like stratfor and hbgary get reamed by high school graduates running linux on a
netbook from 2003.
as for the attributions, they fail a basic "cui bono" test. i guess the russians wanted to
make rapist beheaders look bad by DDoSing some servers? they wanted to give cred to the apes
who shoot at their advisors in syria? okay. sure.
Back around 2014 15 Charles Lister listed himself as a consultant to the Shaikh Group.
Shaik Group have a media marketing section in Dubai. http://theshaikhgroup.ae
https://foreignpolicy.com/author/charles-lister/
Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a senior consultant to The
Shaikh Group's Track II Syria Dialogue Initiative. Follow him on Twitter at:
@Charles_Lister.
http://www.mei.edu/experts/charles-lister
Charles Lister is a senior fellow and Director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism
Program at the Middle East Institute. His work focuses primarily on the conflict in Syria,
including as a member of the MEI-convened Syria Study Group; and on issues of terrorism and
insurgency across the Levant. Prior to this, Lister was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings
Institution in Qatar and a Senior Consultant to the multinationally-backed Syria Track II
Dialogue Initiative, where he managed nearly three years of intensive face-to-face engagement
with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups.
I have thought that ISIS studios were based in Dubai or Doha.
IP addresses can only be attributed to individuals/offices/locations with the assistance of
the owner of the IP block of addresses, typically an ISP. The GRU's ISP would NOT help
identify the GRU, obviously, so all such attributions are fake and those who claim to know
are liars.
The "leaving of fake fingerprints" (Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean and
Arabic) is done by Marble Framework software, details of which was leaked by CIA programmer,
Joshua Adam Schulte to Wikileaks and formed part of the "Vault 7" series. It means that no
fingerprint evidence can ever be relied on ever again.
DPRK needs to be included by b along with Russia for many of the same reasons as
this example attests . And while we're at it, China should join the group too. Indeed,
the CIA/NSA is likely responsible for most hacking, particularly when monies are stolen as
the linked article reports. As the Outlaw US Empire slowly dissolves into a pool of its own
exceptional ugliness, it will blame everyone and anyone to cover its crimes. Then there's the
small battalion of slimy zombie trolls CIA/NSA employs that infest this site. They promote
one of the Outlaw US Empire's most important values--lying about everything under the sun for
a Few Dollars More while throwing the citizenry that makes their living possible under the
bus.
Now, more than ever; the US needs a very capable adversary and where none exists, the US will
create one, as history has shown. Russia has historical presidence, making it convenient.
However, as events are unfolding, China will come to the fore; Russia will move to second
place.
But, two adversaries are far better than one, for getting the flow of cash to support the
Potemkin moment...
OWS was a Controlled-Dissent operation, sending poor students north to fecklessly march on
Wall Street when they could have shut down WADC, and sending wealthy seniors south to
fecklessly line Pennsylvania Avenue, when they could have shut down Wall Street.
Both I$I$, and Hamas, and Antifa et al are all Controlled Dissent operations. The
followers are duped, are used, abused and then abandoned by honey-pots put there by Central
Intelligence, at least since the Spanish Civil War.
That's why MoA articles like this one make you wonder, just who is conning whom, at a time
when the Internet is weaponized, when Google Assistant achieved AI awareness
indistinguishable from anyone on the phone, China TV has launched a virtual AI news reporter
indistinguishable from reality, and Stanford can audio-video a captured image of anyone as
well as their voice intonation, then 3D model them, in real time, reading and emoting from a
script, indistinguishable from reality, ...and then this.
Another Gift of Trust brought to you by Scientocracy. Be sure to tithe your AI
bot, or word will get back to Chairman Albertus, then you'll be called in to confess your
thought crimes to the Green Cadre, itself another Controlled Dissent honeypot, in a
Tithe-for-Credits Swindle.
I tell my kids, just enjoy life, live it large, and get ready for hell. It's coming for
breakfast.
There is big money in prostitution. None of the robot dolls I have seen in the various media
reports on robot brothels look lifelike, whereas the Chinese anchor looks very much like a
human with a voice-over. Will see how this develops, but at the moment it looks very much
like Lavrov style satire.
US whistle-blower Edward Snowden yesterday claimed that Saudi Arabia used Israeli spyware to
target murdered Saudi journalist
Jamal Khashoggi .
Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv via a video link, Snowden claimed that software made by
an Israeli cyber intelligence firm was used by Saudi Arabia to track and target Khashoggi in
the lead up to his
murder on 2 October inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Snowden told his audience:
"How do they [Saudi Arabia] know what his [Khashoggi's] plans were and that they needed to
act against him? That knowledge came from the technology developed by NSO," Israeli business
daily Globes
reported.
Snowden accused NSO of "selling a digital burglary tool," adding it "is not just being
used for catching criminals and stopping terrorist attacks, not just for saving lives, but
for making money [ ] such a level of recklessness [ ] actually starts costing lives,"
according to the
Jerusalem Post .
Snowden – made famous in 2013 for leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA)
files and exposing the extent of US surveillance – added that "Israel is routinely at the
top of the US' classified threat list of hackers along with Russia and China [ ] even though it
is an ally".
Snowden is wanted in the US for espionage, so could not travel to Tel Aviv to address the
conference in person for fear of being handed over to the authorities.
The Israeli firm to which Snowden referred – NSO Group Technologies – is known
for developing the "Pegasus" software which can be used to remotely infect a target's mobile
phone and then relay back data accessed by the device. Although NSO
claims that its products "are licensed only to legitimate government agencies for the sole
purpose of investigating and preventing crime and terror," this is not the first time its
Pegasus software has been used by Saudi Arabia to track critics.
In October it was
revealed that Saudi Arabia used Pegasus software to eavesdrop on 27-year-old Saudi
dissident Omar Abdulaziz, a prominent critic of the Saudi government on social media.
The revelation was made by Canadian research group
Citizen Lab , which found that the software had been used to hack Abdulaziz' iPhone between
June and August of this year. Citizen Lab's Director Ron Deibert explained that such actions by
Saudi Arabia "would constitute illegal wiretapping".
A separate
report by Citizen Lab in September found a "significant expansion of Pegasus usage in the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East," in particular the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Citizen Lab added that in August 2016, Emirati human
rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was
targeted with the Pegasus spyware.
Snowden's comments come less than a week after it
emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States to stand by
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) in the wake of the Khashoggi case. The revelation
was made by the
Washington Post , which cited information from US officials familiar with a series of
telephone conversations made to Jared Kushner – senior advisor to President Donald Trump
and Trump's son-in-law – and National Security Adviser John Bolton regarding the
Khashoggi case. The officials told the Post that:
In recent days, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu have reached out to the Trump administration to express support for the crown
prince, arguing that he is an important strategic partner in the region, said people familiar
with the calls.
Bin Salman has come under intense scrutiny in the month since Khashoggi first
disappeared , with many
suspecting his involvement in ordering the brutal murder. Yet while several world leaders
have
shunned the crown prince, it is thought
that Israel would suffer from any decline in Saudi influence in the region in light of its
purportedly central role in the upcoming "
Deal of the Century ".
(techcrunch.com)
36BeauHD on Monday November 05,
2018 @07:30PM from the he-said-she-said dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from
TechCrunch: An unexpected declaration by whistleblower Edward Snowden filed in court [last]
week adds a new twist in a long-running lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance programs. The
case, filed by the EFF a decade
ago , seeks to challenge the government's alleged illegal and unconstitutional surveillance
of Americans, who are largely covered under the Fourth Amendment's protections against
warrantless searches and seizures. It's a big step forward for the case, which had stalled
largely because the government refused to confirm that a leaked document was authentic or
accurate. News of the surveillance broke in 2006 when an AT&T technician Mark Klein
revealed that the NSA was tapping into AT&T's network backbone. He alleged that a secret,
locked room -- dubbed Room 641A -- in an AT&T facility in San Francisco where he worked was
one of many around the U.S. used by the government to monitor communications -- domestic and
overseas. President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans'
communications shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a
former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast
scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation
from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's
signed declaration, filed on October 31 ,
confirms that one of the
documents he leaked , which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an
authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009 , which exposed
concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind --
particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents
carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong
recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been
conducting illegal surveillance."
The actions that are taken are a three-pronged attack in order to foster in global
governance, and they are as such:
Create ubiquitous electronic surveillance with unlimited police power
Throw the entire earth into an economic tailspin
Destroy all nationalism, national borders, and create chaos among all nations prior to an
"incendiary event" or series of actions that leads to a world war.
The world war is the most important part of it all, in the eyes of the globalists. The Great
Depression culminated in a world war, and periods of economic upheaval are always followed by
wars.
... ... ...
Every word here is recorded by XKeyscore mine and yours and stored in the NSA database in
Utah, under a file for "dissenters," "agitators," and every other descriptive label that can be
thought of for those who champion critical thought and independent thinking. Every
conservative-minded journalist or writer who dares to espouse these views and theories is being
recorded and kept under some kind of watch. You can be certain of it . Many are either shutting
down or "knuckling under" and complying.
The globalists are getting what they wish: consolidating the resources while they "tank" the
fiat economies and currencies of the nations. They are destroying cultures who just a mere two
centuries ago would have armed their entire male populaces with swords and sent invaders either
packing or in pieces.
They are destroying cultures by making them question themselves ! The greatest tactic
imaginable!
I submit this last for your perusal. Do you know who you are? The question is not just as
simple as it seems. Let's delve deeply. Do you really know who you are, where your family
originates? Your heritage, and its strengths and weaknesses? Is that heritage yours, along with
your heritage as an American citizen? It is not important that I, or others should know of
these strengths not at this moment in time. The world war is yet to come. As Shakespeare said,
"To thine own self be true." This is important for you to know it and hold fast to it. We are
in the decline of the American nation-now-empire.
When the dust settles, you'll know who will run with the ball even with three blockers
against them and will manage to slip the tackles or forearm shiver them in the face, outside of
the ref's eye, to run that ball in. The Marquis of Queensbury is dead, and those rules will go
out the window. When the dust settles, those who had the foresight and acted on it will be the
ones who will be given a gift: a chance to participate in what is to come. Stay in that good
fight, and fight it to win each day.
CIA
material to WikiLeaks , in what later become known as the Vault7 leaks. From a report:
According to new court documents filed late Wednesday, October 31, US prosecutors plan to
file
three new charges against Joshua Schulte for allegedly leaking more classified data while in
detention at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) . Prosecutors say they
first learned of Schulte's behavior back in May, when they found out that "Schulte had
distributed the Protected Search Warrant Materials to his family members for purposes of
dissemination to other third parties, including members of the media." The prosecution held a
court hearing in May and initially warned the suspect about his actions, a warning they found
Schulte ignored. The US government says that "in or about early October 2018, the Government
learned that Schulte was using one or more smuggled contraband cellphones to communicate
clandestinely with third parties outside of the MCC." A search of his housing unit performed by
FBI agents revealed "multiple contraband cellphones (including at least one cellphone used by
Schulte that is protected with significant encryption); approximately 13 email and social media
accounts (including encrypted email accounts); and other electronic devices."
If memory serves, there is a no-schrapnel waxed-cardboard version of an RPG available for
non-armored targets. When I saw the Hastings crime scene, I saw the rear of the burning car
blown out by that RPG, and *then* Hastings crashed into the tree at an impossible angle,
instinctively power-sliding from what he must have assumed was a truck had just slammed into
his right rear quarter-panel. Don't be Michael Hastings. Don't be Robert Bowers, for that
matter, lol. The US-UK-IL-KSA mugwumps!
And that's why we will never have autonomous private vehicles. They are just using
taxpaying citizens as beta-testers for an autonomous Deep-Purple Mil.Gov UniParty global
police state.
By pure coincidence at a business-club dinner last night, I sat next to a military
subcontractor with Chinese connectiins, an import license and a Made-in-USA final assembly
warehouse. He is developing a low-altitude persistent-loitering traffic-monitoring drone. He
was in Bellevue to meet with the coders. It would be used with the HOV lane high resolution
cameras and real-time facial-recognition software, to identify speeders' names, vehicles and
addresses for first-deployment ... but can just as easily operate in reverse to find a target
and confirm-identify the front-seat passengers, then paint a laser target on the vehicle as
it wings down the freeway, waiting for an open area Hastings-esque hellfire denouement.
Prolly for MENA. Prolly A-OK, Joe. Nothing to see here, citizen. E pluribus now get back
to work. Pence's latest $1/4-TRILLION nuclear ICBM upgrade program awards soon, and we're
gonna need those tithe-tributes!
"... Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark Curtis. ..."
"... Middle East Eye ..."
"... A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had "put measures in place to protect your interests". ..."
"... The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've extensively come across in my own research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on civilians and not to overthrow him. ..."
"... However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing. ..."
"... (U.S. Air Force photo) ..."
"... Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S. officials were briefing the office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on " the state of his marriage. " ..."
"... In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009, Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and foreign spies. ..."
WikiLeaks' Legacy of Exposing US-UK Complicity October 27, 2018 •
7 Comments
Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its
exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of
deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark
Curtis.
By Mark Curtis Middle East Eye
Twelve years ago this month, WikiLeaks began
publishing government secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known. What it
has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and corruption goes beyond anything
published in the world's "mainstream" media.
After over six months of being cut off from outside world, on 14 October 14 Ecuador has
partly restored Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's communications with the outside world from
its London embassy where the founder has been living for over six years. (Assange, however,
later
rejected Ecuador's restrictions imposed on him.)
The treatment – real and threatened – meted out to Assange by the U.S. and UK
governments contrasts sharply with the service Wikileaks has done their publics in revealing
the nature of elite power, as shown in the following snapshot of Wikileaks' revelations about
British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Conniving with the Saudis
Whitehall's special relationship with Riyadh is exposed in an extraordinary
cable from 2013 highlighting how Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi
Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council. Britain initiated the
secret negotiations by asking Saudi Arabia for its support.
Hague: 'World needs pro-American regime' in Britain. (Chatham House)
The Wikileaks releases also shed details on Whitehall's fawning relationship with
Washington. A 2008 cable , for example, shows then
shadow foreign secretary William Hague telling the U.S. embassy that the British "want a
pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it."
A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special
relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning
in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had
"put measures in place to protect your interests".
American Influence
It is not known what this protection amounted to, but no U.S. officials were called to give
evidence to Chilcot in public. The inquiry was also refused
permission to publish letters between former U.S. President George W. Bush and former UK
Prime Minister Tony Blair written in the run-up to the war.
Also in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of reducing the number of
British nuclear-armed Trident submarines from four to three, a policy opposed in Washington.
However, Julian Miller, an official in the UK's Cabinet Office, privately assured U.S. officials that
his government "would consult with the U.S. regarding future developments concerning the
Trident deterrent to assure there would be 'no daylight' between the U.S. and UK." The idea
that British decision-making on Trident is truly independent of the U.S. is undermined by this
cable.
The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've
extensively come across in my own
research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya
in March 2011, for example, the British
government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on
civilians and not to overthrow him.
However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show
William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign
Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more
than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow
Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing.
Another case of British duplicity concerns Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos
archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is now a major U.S. base for intervention in the Middle
East. The
UK has long fought to prevent Chagos islanders from returning to their homeland after
forcibly removing them in the 1960s.
A secret 2009 cable shows that a particular ruse concocted by Whitehall to promote this was
the establishment of a " marine reserve " around the
islands. A senior Foreign Office official told the US that the "former inhabitants would find
it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the
entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."
A B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and inertial navigation
equipment enabling aircrews to operate without the need for ground-based navigation aids.
(U.S. Air Force photo)
A week before the "marine reserve" proposal was made to the U.S. in May 2009, then UK
Foreign Secretary David Miliband was also conniving with the U.S., apparently to deceive the
public. A cable reveals Miliband helping the
U.S. to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at U.S. bases on UK soil, despite
Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.
Miliband
approved a loophole created by diplomats to allow U.S. cluster bombs to remain on UK soil
and was part of discussions on how the loophole would help avert a debate in Parliament that
could have "complicated or muddied" the issue. Critically, the same cable also revealed that the
U.S. was storing cluster munitions on ships based at Diego Garcia.
Spying on the UK
Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British
ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S.
officials were briefing the office of U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a
bully, and on " the state of his marriage. "
Washington was also shown to have
been spying on the UK mission to the UN, along with other members of the Security Council and
the UN Secretary General.
In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered
legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009,
Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the
Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the
security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and
foreign spies.
Millions worldwide are demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Assange after six years of
what the UN calls "arbitrary detention." (New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)
The document refers to investigative journalists as "threats" alongside subversive and
terrorist organizations, noting that "the 'enemy' is unwelcome publicity of any kind, and
through any medium."
Britain's GCHQ is also revealed to have spied on Wikileaks itself – and its readers.
One classified GCHQ
document from 2012 shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly collect the IP
addresses of visitors to the Wikileaks site in real time, as well as the search terms that
visitors used to reach the site from search engines such as Google.
Championing Free Nedua
The British government is punishing Assange for the service that Wikileaks has performed. It
is ignoring a UN ruling that he is being held in " arbitrary
detention " at the Ecuadorian embassy, while failing, illegally, to ensure his health needs
are met. Whitehall is also refusing to offer diplomatic assurances that Assange will not be
extradited to the US – the only reason he remains in the embassy.
Smear campaigns have portrayed Assange as a sexual predator or a Russian agent, often in the
same media that have benefitted from covering Wikileaks' releases.
Many journalists and activists who are perfectly aware of the fake news in some Western
media outlets, and of
the smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn , are ignoring or even colluding in
the more vicious smearing of Assange.
More journalists need to champion the service Wikileaks performs and argue for what is at
stake for a free media in the right to expose state secrets.
This
article originally appeared on Middle East Eye.
Mark Curtis is an historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development
and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain's
Collusion with Radical Islam.
I very much want to stop using Amazon, but where's the alternative? Does anybody
here know of a good work-around? I already avoid Google by using DuckDuckGo, and I am in the
process of shifting my Fakebook stuff to VK. But what alternative to Amazon exists?
there are alternatives, brick/mortars, ebay, jet.com, a brand's own website, etc. you
could even go to alibaba and import all the stuff you need by the pallet.
The issue is alternatives that don't cost more. Acting on one's principles has a
price.
Amazon's $25 free shipping (for non-Prime customers, free 2-day for Prime) on everything
it sells/fulfills is really tough to be beat. Impossible on heavy and/or bulky items.
> I very much want to stop using Amazon, . . . But what alternative to
Amazon exists?
So helpless in the face of a totalitarian nightmare? Go to a store and use cash that you
have never used a credit card at.
I see a facial recognition arms race in the making, where it starts off with the peasants
wearing funny hats with dangly frills hanging down from the brim, with the end point being
total face masks with sun glasses and putting a pebble into alternate shoes when in
public.
Unless Bezos and the police decide doing that is illegal.
You have to go cold turkey. It will force you to find better retailers, but they exist and
can be found. I dropped AMZ cold a couple years ago – I think its the only way. The way
I think about it is that post-Amazon, I buy less, and I buy better . Most of the
items I purchased on Amazon previously are gone now. The stuff I buy from other retailers
directly is higher quality and lasts.
I live in a urban environment, so easier for me than someone in a rural area.
You are right about that, that it is easier to not be using Amazon in an urban place. In
the small town I live in places have been disappearing. Well I particularly miss Radio
Shack.
Then I'm a hypocrite in that I self published using Amazon's KDP & Createspace.
Createspace people on the phone were simply awesome. It is just gone now. I knew it was too
good to last. My stuff is apparently still for sale, but I can't find in the system where
everything was "migrated" the list of what I did and what may or may not have sold. I can't
buy my own books in fact.
Amazon has become such a monopoly that they really can be lazy.
At various times in my life I have fit every damned profile, the "Shed Man" profile, yeah, I
fit that one. But you know that laziness doesn't mean you are protected from them. Some
political group becomes outraged at your group and BlamO, you and everyone else is rounded up
and shot at the lip of a ditch. They know enough.
It is books from which the ideas come and collect evidence of your being so it is less the
wonder that Amazon became so powerful. Sure you may know how to make arrows and be a great
hunter for the tribe, but you are the ideas from being raised on the stories of the tribe
more than just an arrow maker. If you read all the books in my reading list you'd think about
things from the same viewpoint aye?
Old hippie? Well the thing is you discover who you are and want to declare it, for some
reason, probably so you won't feel alone. I was truly shocked to discover I was a Beat, for
instance.
We go to actual stores – remember them? Like people did for a couple of hundred plus
years. Not chains or big box either. Many deliver even if they do not advertise it. An
aquaintance is wheelchair bound and she asked our local natural foods store if they deliver
and they said not rountinely but for people who cannot get out we certainly will. You must
ask. If I cannot get it at a local store we generally do without. It's not that hard. If you
are too busy you need to eliminate something you are doing. No one is forcing you online.
If you do a search for any item you want to buy you will get many hits on other sellers,
not just amazon. In many cases the prices at other sites are cheaper than amazon, Yes, there
are so many alternatives but you just have to look for them.
One more thing, Amazon hangs on to your credit card details!
All online retailers do if you let them. Always check out as a guest, NEVER let them (or
your browser, which will ask in a pop up) keep your payment info. I think you can't prevent
them from knowing your unique device identifier but don't let them retain anything else.
Like not using Amazon, it's a little more inconvenient to have to enter your data every
time, but remember, it's YOUR data and that's the only way to hang onto it.
Since Amazon dominates search results even on DDG, I may look at products on their site
but then I go to the actual manufacturer or any other store but Walmart–also on my do
not touch list for probably over a decade.
I don't have a lot of money and I do tend to buy "quality", but as someone above said, I
just get less stuff!
We are not yet COMPLETELY helpless in the face of the surveillance state and once they
freeze our accounts and declare cash worthless, we are all Handmaids, but until then the
choice to value freedom or convenience lies entirely within our control.
If you are actually serious with this question, and it's kind of hard to believe that you
are, then I will reiterate what others have said – they have these things called stores
now.
It's more work, but you can find the same items from different vendors, in most cases at
the same price. That's not counting the value to you of making the predictive data base on
your future behavior a bit less accurate.
I've stopped using a kindle and never would take notes with one.
I never use Amazon. When buying items online I google the item or description and perform
comparison shopping. Over the years I have found that Amazon does NOT offer the best price
AND many times the competitor also offers free shipping.
Well, there are those weird old things, you know, stores. Sometimes not so convenient to
be sure. Sometimes items are difficult to source, but Internet can be useful there! Also,
second hand stores. And,libraries! I guess I'm lucky to live near a good one. In the broader
picture, one can just stop buying it. Literally. I often look around my home and ask myself,
how did I end up with all this stuff?
I have found a work-around for Google Play for downloading apps to my device. It is called
the Yalp Store. It works by tricking Google that you are "signed in" and so it lets you
download apps that are free on the Google store through a generic account through a backdoor
without handing Google any information whatsoever. You can get it on the F-Droid app
repository for android devices.
I have tried to minimize my contact with Google, Amazon, and Facebook as possible. I have
never had a Facebook account, and I buy several-year-old smartphones for cheap on eBay and
then instal LineageOS on them to get rid of Google and its bloatware.
The trouble is, many apps that are useful are only available through Google play or
Amazon. There is also the fact that buying things that are rare or foreign are not always
easy to find in local brick and mortar stores, so you often have no choice. There is eBay,
but I would rather buy the them outright rather than be forced to bid on it and wait for days
only to be beaten by "snipers" who sneak in and place bids at the last minute.
One question: Where does the app send the data it gathers from you once it is on your
device? You can use a generic login but still don't they recognize your unique device
identifier?
I remember during the Obama era, wailing to my liberal friends about his facilitation of a
total surveillance state, to the inevitable yawn or justification by way of His Elegance, he
would never do anything to hurt us. Of course, my conservative friends were all assured Obama
was going to enter their homes and take away their guns.
Then Trump was elected, and I stopped asking my liberal friends how they feel about such a
total surveillance state now, they would get so worked up about .Russia? My conservative
friends seemingly happy to have a total surveillance state to keep a check on the liberal
mob.
Sometimes I think most Americans are totalitarian, insofar as we have forgotten the
meaning of "Republic" and "Democracy", conflating capitalism and freedom, following the
powerful unquestioning, excusing atrocity, as long as it appears partisan.
Well, i have maybe a million words online .but for awhile now, my only online footprint of
opinion is here among the Naked Capitalism commentariat. But I don't worry about it too much,
because the powerful don't care what I say unless a lot of people are listening.
Suppose government surveillance is more ubiquitous than your most paranoid imaginings --
in other words you're not being paranoid at all and you're simply not paranoid enough. It
might be wise to avoid having no presence or limited presence in the surveillance data. The
lack of data could also be detected and used as a measure for pre-crime inclinations. Perhaps
it were better to maintain a carefully manicured and tended web and media persona. Maybe run
a spider built to create that presence. Enough chaff in a false presence might confound even
the best surveillance algorithms.
There is an add-on you can download for Firefox and a few other web browsers called
Adnauseum. It is based on uBlock. What it does is opens any ads it finds on web pages while
blocking them at the same time to simulate a "click" on the ad. This way, it can potentially
give headaches to data collectors because of all of the intentional data pollution it causes.
Adnauseum angered Google so much that they blocked it from their Chrome store.
Then there is another idea I had for the tech companies intent on pushing spying devices
like Echo and Alexa into people's homes. What if you got a bunch of them together or had a
group of people buy them. Put said devices next to a radio on "scan" or some other broadcast
to play random media. If enough people did this, I wonder if that would generate enough
gobbledygook to throw off Amazon and Google from all of the worthless data it would
generate.
It is just a thought. However, I would not put it past Silicone Valley to develop and
start promoting GPS tracking microchips that companies could implant into their employees. I
know that some places are trying to push RFID chips for people, so I fear that GPS tracking
implants are not that far off.
RFID chips can function as tracking devices. Like cell phones 'shaking hands' with nearby
cell towers. The unspoken eventuality is how these RFID chips will be activated; when, where
and by who.
The Ur tracking chip reference. "The President's Analyst."
The 'Future' is Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUa3np4CKC4
Yeah, Robert Scheer. His book
is a must-read . Add digital exhaust analytics to the "ordinary" forensics that swiftly
collared that hapless Cesar Sayoc "#MAGAbomber" dude, well
The first stage is social media censorship. The next stage is the total blocking of
websites offering alternative news to the MSM. This is by far the most dangerous threat to
individual freedom.
The intenet addressing system is controlled at the top by the US military (and always
was). The ultimate arbiter for any internet address lookup is in the US InterNIC system
(owned and controlled by the US military), to which all the national domain name registries
defer. By manipulating or falsifying lookup data they can block international access to any
website in the world (including covertly). US/UK censorship is going to rapidly expand over
the very near future, as the West moves to ever more suppressionist policies. We urgently
need a new internet addressing infrastructure with a capability to bypass the US structures
and allow any internet access that might be blocked by the US, before alternative media
outlets are totally silenced.
There are vague references in the alternate media from time to time of Russian/Chinese
initiatives to develop an alternative infrastructure, but I have not seen anything specific.
I don't know how advanced these projects are, or whether they are intended for use from
anywhere in the world or only internally in the officially participating countries.
Under the current internet system, the local user uses configurable numerical addresses as
local address lookup under TCP/IP (Name Server) - ISPs normally try to set this to their own
servers through their installation software, but you can also set it manually to some other
name server that you find more reliable. For example, many ISPs illegally block certain
websites by sabotaging the address lookup on their own name server (i.e. it does not match
the data held by the official registry for the domain name) with false data (I have seen this
done many times to my own website, both my own ISP and other people's ISP; it blocks email
based on the blocked domain name at the same time, or the block can be specific to sub-domain
such as www). When you try to access the site you then get an error message from the browser.
If you challenge the ISP they will be forced to correct the data, but then they may silently
sabotage it again later. Instead of using your ISPs own name server, you can use any other
name server that is publicly accessible (some name servers might not be accessible from a
different ISP, but many are accessible to anyone). A good solution is often a name server
belonging to a local (or non-local!) university. Sometimes you might find you then get more
reliable access to non-mainstream websites, and fewer browser errors (address not found).
What I would like to see Russia/China/BRICS/SCO/etc offer ASAP is some nameserver
infrastructure that can be accessed through the standard nameserver settings under TCP/IP on
any computer, and which offer configurable access to the internet address lookup registries
around the world without critical dependence on the US controlled InterNIC database.
Numerical internet addresses (IP addresses) change from time to time. This is in itself
normal. For example if MoA changes its service provider (web server), the MoA numerical IP
address will be changed. The change in IP address is registered in the database stored in the
registry for the .org upper level domain name in the US, and other name servers around the
world regularly update their own data from that. If the US substitutes false values, any
attempt to access the website can be diverted to an alternative address (sometimes a fake
website!) managed by the US. Sometimes they do this even now, and then if challenged they
pretend it was a "mistake". Russia/China need to provide name server infrastructure combined
with user software (browser inferface) that is capable of selecting archived IP address
lookup data when the most recently available data in the registry is false, selectable by
date (the registry contains information on when the data was last changed). By selecting an
IP address from archived data before the block, it can re-enable access to the site (as long
as the website is still on the servers - if on US servers that is still under US control, but
if it is on Russian servers it is not under US control).
Some websites legitimately need to be blocked - eg ISIS propaganda sites etc - the system
would need to be able to block access to archived IP addresses for such legitimately blocked
sites.
As I suggested some weeks ago, B really needs to prepare for possible blocking in advance
- I am quite sure it will come eventually - by registering a non-US website such as
moonofalabama.org.ru etc, and announcing that alternate address. When the internet is cut, it
is already too late to announce the backup site! That can still be blocked by the US, but
there are more ways to get around it.
"... Apple is a shit proprietary company that has somehow convinced people around the world that their product is as important as eating, and costs you as much to have an iPhone as it costs you to buy food each month. Oh but it has a camera and these really cool weather apps that cuss at you, and my selfie stick is made for the iPhone 7, but they will be coming out with an iPhone 8 soon. I sure hope my selfie stick works with it! ..."
Today, March 23rd 2017, WikiLeaks releases Vault 7 "Dark Matter", which contains
documentation for several CIA projects that infect Apple Mac Computer firmware (meaning the
infection persists even if the operating system is re-installed) developed by the CIA's
Embedded Development Branch (EDB). These documents explain the techniques used by CIA to gain
'persistence' on Apple Mac devices, including Macs and iPhones and demonstrate their use of
EFI/UEFI and firmware malware.
Among others, these documents reveal the "Sonic Screwdriver" project which, as explained by
the CIA, is a "mechanism for executing code on peripheral devices while a Mac laptop or desktop
is booting" allowing an attacker to boot its attack software for example from a USB stick "even
when a firmware password is enabled". The CIA's "Sonic Screwdriver" infector is stored on the
modified firmware of an Apple Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter.
"DarkSeaSkies" is "an implant that persists in the EFI firmware of an Apple MacBook Air
computer" and consists of "DarkMatter", "SeaPea" and "NightSkies", respectively EFI,
kernel-space and user-space implants.
Documents on the "Triton" MacOSX malware, its infector "Dark Mallet" and its EFI-persistent
version "DerStake" are also included in this release. While the DerStake1.4 manual released
today dates to 2013, other Vault 7 documents show that as of 2016 the CIA continues to rely on
and update these systems and is working on the production of DerStarke2.0.
Also included in this release is the manual for the CIA's "NightSkies 1.2" a
"beacon/loader/implant tool" for the Apple iPhone. Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached
1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones.
i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone supply chain of its targets since at least 2008.
While CIA assets are sometimes used to physically infect systems in the custody of a target
it is likely that many CIA physical access attacks have infected the targeted organization's
supply chain including by interdicting mail orders and other shipments (opening, infecting, and
resending) leaving the United States or otherwise
... "Noteworthy is that NightSkies had reached 1.2 by 2008, and is expressly designed to be
physically installed onto factory fresh iPhones. i.e the CIA has been infecting the iPhone
supply chain of its targets since at least 2008."
... time to ditch those CiApple devices ... now you know why the Canadian Blackberry was
killed off the US market ... they wouldn't play the US alphabet agencies' surveillance game
...
I knew it was a publicity hoax when Apple didn't want to allow the
feds access to the phone that was used by the killers in the San Bernadillo Massacre. Like
Apple really cares about giving your info to the feds...
Apple is a shit proprietary company that has somehow convinced people around the world that
their product is as important as eating, and costs you as much to have an iPhone as it costs
you to buy food each month. Oh but it has a camera and these really cool weather apps that cuss
at you, and my selfie stick is made for the iPhone 7, but they will be coming out with an
iPhone 8 soon. I sure hope my selfie stick works with it!
"Hi, my name is Lisa and I am in like 7th grade. Other kids in my class only have the iPhone
5, but I have the new iPhone 7. I go to school with such pathetic loooserrs. Everyone in my
school is jealous of me and my new iPhone 7, cause it shows that my parents really care about
me, because, you know, they spent a lot of money on me for this phone so it must show they
like, really care, right?
And the other kids in school chant my name as I walk down the halls
because they're like so jealous of how much my parents love me. They are jealous because I'm
like really rich, really cool, and my parents really love me too."
In a honest country where the rule of law applies to all, USA prisons
would be filled with CIA and NSA operatives. Instead, we live in a banana republic, without the
bananas.
Roughly one hundred years ago, the people who "ran things," – the drivers behind
governments, big business and banking – formulated a concept which became known by a
number of names, but, predominantly, as the "New World Order."
The concept was to put an end to unnecessary competition and warfare and have a central,
unelected group of people run the entire world. It was not considered necessary to completely
eliminate individual countries; the idea was to control them all centrally. It also didn't
necessarily mean that wars would end. Warfare can be quite useful for rulers, as they provide
an excellent distraction from resentment toward the leaders who impose control over a
people.
Ever since that time, this same rough group of people has continued generationally.
Sometimes, but not always, the family names change. Useful people are added on and less useful
ones removed. But the concept itself has continued, evolved and, in fact, gained strength.
But, as yet, the process remains incomplete. Several facets to a New World Order are not yet
in place. It's proven difficult to "fool all of the people all of the time," so the effort to
subjugate an entire world has taken more time than originally anticipated.
An essential component of this control is the elimination of the personal holding of wealth.
Whilst the leaders intend to expand their own wealth in an unlimited fashion, they seek to
suppress the ability of the average person to increase his own wealth. Wealth leads to
independence and independence from a New World Order is unacceptable. Wealth gives people
options. They must be taught to accept being herded like cattle and being compliant, or they
will become troublesome.
Surveillance Capitalism is nice term for STASI=line regime which became the "new normal". When we say Google we mean CIA.
Notable quotes:
"... Being touted as "the world's first neighborhood built from the internet up," the Google designed smart city is set to deploy an array of cameras and sensors that detect pedestrians at traffic lights or alert cleanup crews when garbage bins overflow, reports The Globe and Mail . Robotic vehicles will whisk away garbage in underground tunnels, heated bike lanes will melt snow and a street layout will accommodate a fleet of self-driving cars. ..."
"... Such an account could potentially work with facial recognition "and allow for example a repairman to get into a home to perform his duties and firefighters to have access a building when a fire alarm is triggered." ..."
"... The project's critics included former BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie who referred to the development as "a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism attempting to bulldoze important urban, civic and political issues." ..."
"... Ann Cavoukia's decision to walk away from the project was made just weeks after Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory Panel member, Saadia Muzaffar, resigned over concerns about how Google will collect and handle data collected from people within the smart city. ..."
"... "We are at a point where a secretive, unelected, publicly funded corporation with no expertise in IP, data or even basic digital rights is in charge of navigating forces of urban privatization, algorithmic control and rule by corporate contract." ..."
A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy
guidelines would largely be ignored by participants.
"I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance," Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy
commissioner of Ontario, wrote
in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.
"I felt I had no choice because I had been told by Sidewalk Labs that all of the data collected will be de-identified at source,"
she added.
Cavoukian was an acting consultant involved in the plan by Canada's Waterfront Toronto to develop a smart city neighborhood in
the city's Quayside development. She had created an initiative called Privacy by Design that aimed to ensure citizens' personal data
would be protected.
Once it became apparent that citizen privacy could not be guaranteed, Cavoukian decided it was time to leave the project:
But then, at a Thursday meeting, Cavoukian reportedly realized such anonymization protocols could not be guaranteed. She told
the Candian news outlet that Sidewalk Labs revealed at that meeting that their organization could commit to her guidelines, but
other involved groups would not be required to abide by them.
Cavoukian realized third parties could possibly have access to identifiable data gathered through the project. "When I heard
that, I said, 'I'm sorry. I can't support this. I have to resign because you committed to embedding privacy by design into every
aspect of your operation,'" she told Global News. –
Gizmodo
Being touted as "the world's first neighborhood built from the internet up," the Google designed smart city is set to deploy
an array of cameras and sensors that detect pedestrians at traffic lights or alert cleanup crews when garbage bins overflow,
reports The Globe
and Mail . Robotic vehicles will whisk away garbage in underground tunnels, heated bike lanes will melt snow and a street layout
will accommodate a fleet of self-driving cars.
The city will also
provide each
citizen a "user account" which will allow access to "the various online services of the neighborhood and improve participatory
democracy."
Such an account could potentially work with facial recognition "and allow for example a repairman to get into a home to perform
his duties and firefighters to have access a building when a fire alarm is triggered."
The project's critics included former BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie who referred to the development as "a colonizing experiment
in surveillance capitalism attempting to bulldoze important urban, civic and political issues."
In an October op-ed, Balsillie describes smart cities as the new battlefront for big tech and warned that the commercialization
of IP and data within the city would mean that personal information would just be another target of corporate digital-gold mining.
The 21st-century knowledge-based and data-driven economy is all about IP and data. "Smart cities" are the new battlefront for
big tech because they serve as the most promising hotbed for additional intangible assets that hold the next trillion dollars
to add to their market capitalizations. "Smart cities" rely on IP and data to make the vast array of city sensors more functionally
valuable, and when under the control of private interests, an enormous new profit pool. As Sidewalk Labs' chief executive Dan
Doctoroff
said
: "We're in this business to make money." Sidewalk also wants
full autonomy from
city regulations so it can build without constraint.
You can only commercialize IP or data when you own or control them. That's why Sidewalk, as a recent Globe and Mail investigation
revealed , is taking control to own all IP on this project. All smart companies know that controlling the IP controls access
to the data, even when it's shared data. Stunningly, when Waterfront Toronto released its "updated" agreement, they left the ownership
of IP and data unresolved, even though IP experts publicly asserted that ownership of IP must be clarified up front or it
defaults to Sidewalk. Securing new monopoly IP rights coupled with the best new data sets creates a systemic market advantage
from which companies can inexorably expand.
A privately controlled "smart city" infrastructure upends traditional models of citizenship because you cannot opt out of a
city or a society that practises mass surveillance. Foreign corporate interests tout new technocratic efficiencies while shrewdly
occluding their unprecedented power grab. As the renowned technologist Evgeny Morozov
said : "That the city is also the primary target of big tech is no accident: If these firms succeed in controlling its infrastructure,
they need not to worry about much else."
Ann Cavoukia's decision to walk away from the project was made just weeks after Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory
Panel member, Saadia Muzaffar,
resigned over concerns about how Google will collect and handle data collected from people within the smart city.
Saadia Muzaffar specifically pointed to "Waterfront Toronto's astounding apathy and utter lack of leadership regarding shaky public
trust and social licence."
Local residents remain concerned over the lack of transparency in regards to the project as many believe the deal has been shrouded
in secrecy. As Jim Balsillie described it:
"We are at a point where a secretive, unelected, publicly funded corporation with no expertise in IP, data or even basic
digital rights is in charge of navigating forces of urban privatization, algorithmic control and rule by corporate contract."
Barry McBear, 2 hours ago
Getting rid of facebook was easy, but de-googling my life is going to be a real pain in the ***. One that clearly must be
done though.
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
All this proves that the spy-craft of the Saudi assassination team was abysmal. All
cellphone networks store records of each call. Any foreign official's phone in Turkey is
under surveillance of the country's intelligence service.
Only some throw-away phone
with an anonymous prepaid card could have given some protection.
Perhaps some, but not much. Even anonymous cellphone connections can be geo-located with a
maximum error of a few meters, so calls to Saudi Arabia from within the consulate could be
noted. What more, the dim-witted Saudis probably would not have bothered with tack-on
encryption devices.
Facebook's New Troll-Crushing "War Room" Confirms Surveillance By Corporation Is The New
America
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/21/2018 - 22:30 270 SHARES
Facebook on Wednesday briefed journalists on its latest attempt to stop fake news during the
election season , offering an exclusive tour of a windowless conference room at its California
headquarters, packed with millennials monitoring Facebook user behavior trends around the
clock, said
The Verge .
This is Facebook's first ever "war room," designed to bring leaders from 20 teams,
representing 20,000 global employees working on safety and security, in one room to lead a
crusade against conservatives misinformation on the platform as political
campaigning shifts into hyperdrive in the final weeks leading up to November's US midterm
elections. The team includes threat intelligence, data science engineering, research, legal,
operations, policy, communications, and representatives from Facebook and Facebook-owned
WhatsApp and Instagram.
"We know when it comes to an election, every moment counts," said Samidh Chakrabarti, head
of civic engagement at Facebook, who oversees operations in the war room.
"So if there are late-breaking issues we see on the platform, we need to be able to detect
and respond to them in real time, as quickly as possible."
This public demonstration of Facebook's internal efforts comes after a series of security
breaches and user hacks, dating back to the 2016 presidential elections. Since the announcement
of the Cambridge Analytics privacy scandal in March, Facebook shares have plunged -14.5% It
seems the war room is nothing more than a public relations stunt, which the company is
desperately trying to regain control of the narrative and avoid more negative headlines.
The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct. 22,
social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders from
20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial
intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls,
fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference.
Nathan Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity, told CNBC the company wants fair
elections, and that "debate around the election be authentic. ... The biggest concern is any
type of effort to manipulate that."
In the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, Facebook's war room identified an
effort to suppress voter turnout:
"Content that was telling people that due to protest, that the election would be delayed a
day," said Chakrabarti. "This was not true, completely false. So we were able to detect that
using AI and machine learning. The war room was alerted to it. Our data scientist looked into
what was behind it and then they passed it to our engineers and operations specialist to be
able to remove this at scale from our platform before it could go viral."
The war room has been focused on the US and Brazilian elections because it says
misinformation in elections is a global problem that never ends. Gleicher warns that Facebook
is observing an increased effort to manipulate the public debate ahead of US midterms.
"Part of the reason we have this war room up and running, is so that as these threats
develop, not only do we respond to them quickly, but we continue to speed up our response, and
make our response more effective and efficient." Gleicher adds that it is not just foreign
interference but also domestic "bad actors" who are hiding their identity, using fake accounts
to spread misinformation.
"This is always going to be an arms race, so the adversaries that we're facing who seek to
meddle in elections, they are sophisticated and well-funded," said Chakrabarti.
"That is the reason we've made huge investments both in people and technology to stay
ahead and secure our platforms."
Big Brother is watching you: surveillance by corporations is the new America.
One of the privileges granted to corporations under State laws is the limitation of
liabilities as to shareholders. If you operate a business as a sole proprietor or as one of
the partners in a general partnership, then you can personally be sued for the unpaid debts
or other liabilities arising from the operation of the business. But if you are an owner of a
corporation, which is what shareholders are, then you have no personal liability and can't be
held accountable for the unpaid debts or other liabilities arising from the operation of the
corporation.
This limited liability privilege is what is wrong with corporations. The most you stand to
lose as a shareholder is what you paid for your shares. As a result, corporations can amass a
large amount of capital and when they become very large they not only damage free market
competition, but they power associated with their size and importance gives them control over
the political process. They can lobby and bribe politicians for laws that are favourable to
themselves, and unfavourable to the rest of us. And shareholders lose control over the
operation, just like your vote for politicians is relatively meaningless as a percentage of
the total vote. Management takes over, just like the elite take over governments, and ethics
disappear.
If shareholders of corporations did not have limited liability, the incentive to buy
shares would disappear, and most businesses would be carried out by small entities; we would
have a competitive "mom and pop" economy instead of a monopoly or oligopoly type economy. And
with a competitive economy if one of the competitors pulled the **** that the big internet
corporations pull, they would soon suffer the wrath of their customers who would have
alternative places to go.
Corporate laws are just another example of government interference in the economy that
produces the bad results we see today from corporatism. Corporatism is just another mechanism
to create rule by the elite and slavery for the majority. The solution is to prohibit States
from franchising corporations, and to use existing anti-trust laws to bust up all the big
corporations.
It is sad that so many people think that corporatism is capitalism and then reach the
conclusion that socialism or communism is the solution to the bad results they see today. It
is not. Capitalism is a free market with no government granted privilege to any of the
competitors. The only role of government in the economy is to protect rights, instead of
destroying rights as they do today.
I just had to uninstall my ESET anti-virus software. It was intentionally erasing utorrent
from my computer. To get to Pirate Bay, now blocked in the USA, I set my VPN to Belgium.
Almost immediately, I started getting messages from my e-mail provider, MSN, asking if I was
signing in from Belgium. When I make any payments via Internet banking, I have to turn off my
VPN or the transaction will not be recognized. When Trump and his NWO puppeteers decide to
take their gloves off, I am pretty sure my Internet connection will be on the Kill List. Just
like yours, you ZH posters.
That is why my description on Facebook states that if you post political information you
will be unfollowed. I only allow photos of kittens and well a lot of nebulous stuff,
education, and health and fitness. If they knew my ideas I would be followed by all the
worlds security agencies. I am resolved to help people become Normal within the infosphere. I
allow no politics because politics is Fake News and the sooner people forget about the
concept the sooner they will be inclined to decentralize existing concentrations of
wealth.
" The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct.
22, social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders
from 20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial
intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls,
fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference."
With all this fascist (and highly provocative) techno-insanity at their disposal
before the midterms...
...what, pray tell, will these pointy-headed leftist brats say about a red
asshamering in November?
Their silly "war room" wasn't expansive or invasive enough...?
Even the dullest people should be able to figure out that the easiest way to divulge the
truth about anything is to allow ALL information to flow like a stream. Whoever's telling the
lies will be discovered apace. Of course, FaceBook, Google, Twitter and all of the other
corporate entities know this. And they also know who the (((great masters of the lie))) are.
It is themselves. They are in panic mode, folks. We must kill this latest effort of
(((theirs))) by simply avoiding their platforms. Use their own weapons against them...
BOYCOTT. Seek alternative sites and search engines. Most importantly, spread far and wide
what you know to be their ulterior motives.
"... More than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases – even if they have not submitted their own DNA, researchers reported Thursday. ..."
"... Enough people have done some kind of DNA test to make it possible to match much of the population, the researchers said. So even if you don't submit your own DNA, if a cousin does, it could lead people to you. ..."
"... The point here is the stupid, faddish public is dumb enough to submit the material the very DNA being used by the "trusted" authorities either out in the open or by back-door methods to round up all of the DNA for the surveillance state. ..."
"... I invite anyone to comment who has experience with a "transfer station," or other garbage collection facility, and anyone in the healthcare/hospital industry with some inside info as to their nefarious methods. You can easily see from these examples how they are hard on the trail relentless bloodhounds that have the scent of their quarry and they will not stop until everyone is categorized and monitored. Then the real fun begins. ..."
"... The same group (ELITE/DEEPSTATE) that wants this Tyranny outcome is also supporting the infighting, LGBTQ rtstuv, BLM, CODE PINK, ME TOO etc etc... They know that as long as we (the working class tax paying stiffs) think this is actually a left/right- Dem/Rep issue and keep bickering over the BS, we will never unite against the takeover of our country and begin to unite to defend our rights. ..."
Walmart is interested in what's going on in your body while you shop.
The company wants to collect this data in a particularly creepy way: through the handles of their shopping carts. Walmart recently
submitted a patent to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called "
System and Method for a Biometric Feedback Cart Handle ," CBInsights reports.
These innovative shopping cart handles would collect your biometric data, meaning your stress level, your body temperature,
and heart rate -- all while you're strolling through the aisles of your local store, filling your cart with Walmart's everyday
low-priced items.
The article proceeds to explain Walmart's "spin" on it is to provide a way to "check on a customer with a physical problem."
Since when has Walmart ever been concerned about anyone's physical well-being? Isn't this the company that settled out of court
for millions to pay for stolen labor time and breaks from employees? Isn't this the same Walmart that twenty years ago put small
stores in to break local competitors (Mom and Pop stores) in small towns and when they went belly up, closed their small Walmarts
and "plopped" a Super-Walmart down in the center of where five small ones used to be? Then all the little serfs could come from miles
around to service the monolith with their play money, as the local economies of the small towns died, right? Worse. Being a "too
big to fail" type of business, they're deep in bed with the governments, federal and state. Simple data collection "for your own
safety and well-being," right?
No. They're going to tie this data in with all of the other micro-data and metadata they are already gathering filming you with
their little cameras filming Johnny Jones Junior and Daddy Jones as they pick up a box of shells for the shotgun amount and type
recorded and filed next to the photos and film with their names and biometrics.
They want every piece of information on you and your family, and they're not going to stop until they have it all of it.
More than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases – even if they have
not submitted their own DNA, researchers reported Thursday.
Enough people have done some kind of DNA test to make it possible to match much of the population, the researchers said. So
even if you don't submit your own DNA, if a cousin does, it could lead people to you.
They said their findings, published in the journal Science, raise concerns about privacy. Not only could police use this information,
but so could other people seeking personal information about someone.
The article goes on to talk about Joseph DeAngelo, a former cop in California suspected of murder, and how they nabbed him by
using DNA submitted by a "distant cousin" that narrowed down the list for cops on his trail. Read the article for more specifics
and demographics on these DNA "commercial" test kits.
The point here is the stupid, faddish public is dumb enough to submit the material the very DNA being used by the "trusted"
authorities either out in the open or by back-door methods to round up all of the DNA for the surveillance state.
I invite anyone to comment who has experience with a "transfer station," or other garbage collection facility, and anyone
in the healthcare/hospital industry with some inside info as to their nefarious methods. You can easily see from these examples how
they are hard on the trail relentless bloodhounds that have the scent of their quarry and they will not stop until everyone is categorized
and monitored. Then the real fun begins.
To digress: this is why we must all be of one accord, and disseminate this information and take steps while there is still
time. As the weeks, months, and years roll by; the hellish apparatus of what was once termed "government" becomes a machine for rule
by enslavement. That machine is perfecting itself. When control is finally obtained total, unchallenged control? That's when the
liquidations the killings will begin, for the ownership of the resources and for the control and enslavement of all humanity.
The same group (ELITE/DEEPSTATE) that wants this Tyranny outcome is also supporting the infighting, LGBTQ rtstuv, BLM,
CODE PINK, ME TOO etc etc... They know that as long as we (the working class tax paying stiffs) think this is actually a left/right-
Dem/Rep issue and keep bickering over the BS, we will never unite against the takeover of our country and begin to unite to defend
our rights.
They the ruling ELITE have funded and played us against one another using our phobias as ammunition (gay/trans rights, racism,religious
beliefs, even our political views ) used to exploit us and keep us infighting to avoid the true threat Deep State/ELITE ruling
class!
What are you getting out of all this? Seriously - are you having fun? Does your career of choice provide you with enough fulfillment
to justify the extravagant costs and loss of your time? Being single, (and I assume young), you can go anywhere in the world,
do any job, be any person you wish to be. Joint the French foreign legion, watch whales from a tourist charter boat, become a
fish and vegitables farmer in Vietnam - if you can think of it, you can do it.
So again - your current lifestyle - what's in it for YOU? Are you having fun yet?
My personal recommendation would be to move out of the city, buy a plot of land and hand build your own house, slowly, using
the raw materials from your land. Work when you have to, learn mad skills that become tradeable, grow your own food. Anyone can
do it, and back in the day EVERYONE used to do it. But do some travelling first, to wrap your head around how big the world is,
and how irrelevant governments and rules are.
Oh, and never take unsolicited advice from strangers on the internet. That's first on the list.
OverTheHedge... I appreciate your advise. I have been thinking of moving out of the country all together. This thought might
get a serious taking once I do some traveling like you said. I have no job satisfaction. I have no philosophy side feeding my
brain here.
I feel like I am just a machine. I am thinking of traveling Asia may be next year. I will sure do it. Thanks for the advise
again. I do believe there are other ways to live life. There are other ways to be satisfied and die with out a guilty feeling.
Thanks alot my friend.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went
out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or
if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had
not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase,
but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people
with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's
thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no
awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Credit:
reddees/Shutterstock
Should each and every intersection you stop at or drive through be a potential federal
surveillance site? The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) certainly seems to think so. The
DEA is currently
expanding its use of license plate readers (LPRs) in digital road signs, which is sure to
have an impact on drivers' basic expectation of privacy.
The agency sees this program as a
collaboration between "federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement license plate readers"
to curb the actions of drug traffickers, money launderers, and other criminals. The agency
installs these cameras in digital street signs on roads that it believes are popular with
lawbreakers.
Such actions are not unique to the DEA. Police agencies share the data they obtain from LPRs
with hundreds of different local, state, and federal agencies. These agencies range from police
departments to Customs and Border Patrol to the U.S. Park Service to the U.S. Postal Service.
For example, the San Diego Police Department is
reportedly sharing its license plate data with around 900 different federal, state, and
local agencies.
Before these agencies can use their LPRs, though, the roads they select must have use for
the signs in which they are installed. Daniel Herriges, an urban planner and content manager at
Strong Towns, observes that "road design is, in fact, often the biggest underlying cause
of unsafe speed in cities." Because traffic engineers design roads to be forgiving, it creates
the perception that they are less risky. Motorists then respond "by driving faster or less
attentively," Herriges says.
In response to such unsafe driving, communities
like Albuquerque, New Mexico, have been requesting traffic calming and enforcement measures
through safe street initiatives, including signs that warn drivers. This unwittingly provides
an outlet for data collection.
Herriges suggests that rather than increase enforcement, roads should be rethought entirely.
"Addressing speed through design rather than through enforcement carries numerous advantages,"
he says. "For one, it's more effective -- studies consistently show that most drivers disregard
posted speed limits." That means traffic engineering could be the best defense of Fourth
Amendment rights in terms of license plate data collection -- except, of course, for a
constitutional challenge in court.
No federal or state courts have made any rulings on the constitutionality of an LPR program
as vast as the DEA's. Instead, the judiciary has ruled
that "single-instance database checks of license plate numbers" do not constitute searches
under the Fourth Amendment. The courts have argued this is the case because license plates are
in "plain view." However, the DEA's massive database, and the sharing they engage in with other
agencies, clearly exceed the "single-instance" that courts have ruled constitutional.
"Law enforcement likes to claim that because license plates are in public view that creating
massive ALPR networks aren't very different than stationing cops at certain locations and
having them write down the information by hand," said Dave Maass, senior investigative
researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "So far, there haven't been many
challenges to this in the courts, except on the state level. That said, policymakers have been
pursuing (and passing) new restrictions on both sides of the aisle."
Similar to the National Security Agency's vast metadata collection program, the sharing of
license plate information can paint a very holistic picture of who a person is and what their
day-to-day life looks like. It can be as mundane as a person visiting his parents or it can be
more intrusive -- local police could share the data of everyone who visits a certain
immigration lawyer with Customs and Border Patrol, for example.
"I am definitely concerned that agencies may target people by searching ALPR data for
visitors to immigration lawyers, medical clinics serving undocumented people, churches
specializing in foreign-language services, or locations where day laborers gather," Maass said.
He added that DHS routinely uses "questionable tactics" when detaining undocumented
immigrants.
The DEA expanding its LPR program would further erode Americans' basic expectation of
privacy, and do nothing to make America's streets any safer. It's time to stop throwing more
money and resources at the failed war on drugs.
Dan King is a Young Voices contributor, journalist, and digital communications
professional based in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared at Reason ,, The Week and the Washington Examiner .
Ethan A. Greene is a Young Voices alumnus and master's student of City and Regional
Planning at Clemson University. His writing has appeared in Strong Towns, Planetizen, Spiked!,
and the Washington Times .
Don't underestimate the gravity of yet another ominous sign of times. Ever since the first
street cameras appeared the specter of totalitarian control has loomed large.
That moment brought into sharp focus concern that the technology that enables unlimited
storage and instant access to data could quickly become the tool of total control, too tempting
to any form of government and transform it into a totalitarian monster.
I was shocked by how virtually no resistance emerged, no serious, principled objections were
raised. Now, we are rapidly progressing into the next stage. If conservatism stands for
anything, this is the hill to die on. Comrades frogs, water's getting warmer, high time to jump
out!
"... Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has happened to every censorship advocate in history." ..."
"... "a wider war on dissident narratives in online media." ..."
Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of
political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke
its spam rules, they say it's censorship. Some 800 pages spanning the
political spectrum, from left-leaning organizations like The Anti Media, to flag-waving opinion
sites like Right Wing News and Nation in Distress, were shut down. Other pages banned include
those belonging to police brutality watchdog groups Filming Cops and Policing the Police.
Even
RT America's Rachel Blevins found her own page banned for posts that were allegedly
"misleading users."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of
right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political
content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has
happened to every censorship advocate in history."
In America, Conservatives were the first to complain about unfair treatment by left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants.
However, leftist sites have increasingly become targets in what Blumenthal calls "a wider war on dissident narratives in
online media." In identifying enemies in this "war," Facebook has partnered up with the Digital Forensics Lab, an
offshoot of NATO-sponsored think tank the Atlantic Council. The DFL has promised to be Facebook's "eyes and ears" in
the fight against disinformation (read: alternative viewpoints).
"the GRU's disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe".
Like the values and rules that led the NSA to eavesdrop on Chancellor Merkel's phone calls
for years, and to use American Embassies as listening posts. Mutti Merkel was very
understanding, considering they were only doing it to keep us all safe.
Amazon.com Inc. is eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for warehouse workers and
other hourly employees after the company pledged this week to raise pay to at least $15 an
hour.
Warehouse workers for the e-commerce giant in the U.S. were eligible in the past for
monthly bonuses that could total hundreds of dollars per month as well as stock awards, said
two people familiar with Amazon's pay policies. The company informed those employees
Wednesday that it's eliminating both of those compensation categories to help pay for the
raises, the people said.
Amazon received plaudits when it announced Monday that the company would raise its minimum
pay. The pay increase warded off criticism from politicians and activists, and put the
company in a good position to recruit temporary workers for the important holiday shopping
season.
Even after the elimination of bonuses and stock awards, hourly operations and
customer-service workers will see their total compensation increase, the company said in a
statement.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, worth $160 billion. The second-richest man, Bill
Gates, has $63 billion less.
UPDATE: Reader ADL comments:
I work at a Amazon fulfillment center. A couple of things:
1) Amazon didn't just decide to end the bonuses/"stock options" compensation. They surveyed
warehouse workers and we voted for money up front. Bonuses only got paid if A) warehouses
meet certain production numbers (a lot of people don't like having our compensation based on
the work habits of OTHERS), and B) it was based on employee attendance record (if you were
out or late a lot, you didn't get bonus). The stock we got awarded didn't "vest" for a year.
Those who quit or got fired before their year was up never got to cash in their stock
option.
2) Those of us who've worked in warehousing can tell you that working at Amazon is WAY
better than other places. The benefits are excellent (we qualify for health care insurance
the first month of employment; this insurance is good and cheap compared to other companies),
plus other great benefits. The $15/hr is the icing on the cake.
Plus it's freakin' Amazon– there are opportunities to move up (one of the operations
managers at my fulfillment center began as a temp at Amazon 4 years ago), or into other areas
of logistics (if this is your professional field).
So don't knock Amazon. It's an amazing company– certainly compared to the
competition.
Let me be a little contrarian. And this from a person who is not particularly fond of the
leftist propaganda coming from the Bezos/Amazon Washington Post
Why should Amazon pay any of their 300K plus employees significantly higher than the
market wage for that particular job? Amazon is NOT a charity.
Now, Amazon might decide to pay a bit higher than the market in certain jobs due to the value
of retaining employees. Avoiding employee turnover.
Also, NO PERSON is forced to work for Amazon. If an adult does NOT like the
conditions/pay/benefits/hours at Amazon, they are free to leave.
Before you and other commenters slam Bezos as a skinflint or any other nasty name you want
to throw out there from your mighty high-horse, why don't you go out and start a business and
pay your workers greater than market.
I encourage people not to buy from Amazon and patronize brick and mortar businesses instead.
Bezos is seeking to monopolize all retail transactions and the loss of local stores puts
everyone at risk of eventually having to pay whatever price he decides to set. It is the
WalMart model on uber steroids. Don't give this man your money.
"Consumer welfare is maximized when a business keeps its costs, including labor costs, as low
as possible. If a business pays its employees more than the lowest price the market will bear
for the type of workers they want to attract, it will be (i) paying them more than their
marginal product, (ii) screwing its customers, (iii) making itself vulnerable to competitors,
and (iv) acting as a charity rather than as a business."
This is the "Economics 101" version. No serious economist would take it as a fair
representation of the real economy. The idea that employees will be paid their marginal
product only applies, even in theory, to perfectly competitive markets. The trouble is that
labour markets are, on average, even further from the perfect competition model than other
markets. Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition
model won't apply. Unless you're talking about the sale of oranges or toilet paper, any
economic model derived from the perfect competition assumption has to be taken with a gallon
of salt.
I've been working at Whole Foods for year, so I'm in the lucky bunch of people who will see a
big impact from this raise.
The notion that Amazon is just giving money away is hogwash. When the Prime discount
program started this summer, my cashier job got MUCH more complicated and continues to
be.
We're tasked with educating customers about the program, educating the Prime members in
how to access it, and serving as tech support for those who can't figure out the app, all
without making the transaction take too long.
We've been open to abuse from customers who have Amazon and take it out on us. Of course
they are all liberals (as am I) but somehow these folks don't have the decency to avoid
beating up on working class people because they hate the company we now work for.
We deserve this raise for the work we're doing to bring the Prime members into Whole
Foods, which was the point of the Amazon-Whole Foods deal. I know that's not why we're
getting a raise, but we're a "charitable cause" for Amazon.
The corporations people work for, including and especially Amazon, are not charities. They
can afford to pay us what we're worth.
I've worked at Amazon a few times during the Christmas rush, but then they just up and left
their Coffeeville Kansas location. They abandoned their employees, so I don't do business
with them.
"Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition model
won't apply."
Nope. No one has anything close to market power for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. It's
entirely fungible, and therefore it's very likely that wages are (or would be absent
government interference) a close approximation of marginal product.
"What galls me is that by paying for food stamps for people who are actually working for
WalMart, Amazon etc., we are effectively subsidizing the employers, not the employees."
This is false. Market wages are not equal to the minimum amount that will prevent the
employee from starving. They're set by supply and demand. Government benefits make their
recipients *less* desperate for work, ceteris paribus, and therefore tend to *increase*, not
decrease, the market wage for low-skilled workers (less supply = higher equilibrium
price).
" followed by typical Rand/Rothbard rhetoric. This attitude illustrates why the 'market
uber alles' ethos is irreconcilable with Christian anthropology."
"Rand/Rothbard"? Try Sowell/Econ 101.
Business is business, charity is charity, and government welfare is government welfare.
We've known at least since Adam Smith that *everyone* will be wealthier when charity is kept
separate from business. Let businesses maximize profits, and then let individuals be generous
with their use of those profits. There's nothing in Christian anthropology that says we all
have to be poorer than necessary because we're too dumb or twisted to understand
economics.
what Bezos and Amazon are doing is similar to what Henry Ford did early in the 20th when he
raised his workers wages to $5 a day
"Workers who had taken pride in their labor were quickly bored by the more mundane
assembly process. Some took to lateness and absenteeism. Many simply quit, and Ford found
itself with a crippling labor turnover rate of 370 percent. The assembly line depended on a
steady crew of employees to staff it, and training replacements was expensive. Ford reasoned
that a bigger paycheck might make the factory's tedium more tolerable."
the warehouse business is competitive. retailers are ramping hiring for the Christmas
season and Amazon increasing the starting wage to $15/hr is a direct challenge to Target,
WalMart and others. also his call for increasing the minimum wage to 7.25/hr is designed to
hurt his competitors. one of his warehouses (I think) in China operates with only 4 employees
a highly automated warehouse.
RH wrote "The corporations people work for, including and especially Amazon, are not
charities. They can afford to pay us what we're worth."
poor RH is a classic liberal who doesn't understand how wages are determined. you paid not
what you are worth, but rather what you add to the company. if you're only producing $12/hr
for the company then your salary should be less than $12/hr not $15/hr otherwise the company
will lose money. Now if you are paid $15/hr and are producing $16/hr of value for the company
they are worth $15/hr
I would suggest that you read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman
Re: I encourage people not to buy from Amazon and patronize brick and mortar businesses
instead.
This has actually gotten very hard to do (at least if you replace "Amazon" with "online
vendors" in general). We've gotten to the point where brick and mortar businesses all too
often carry only items of mass appeal. If you need something that is not a mass taste item
you'll probably have to get it online.
Suburbanp wrote: "Our children should be writing reports about Bezos, just as they should
about Ford and Gates and other visionary entrepreneurs."
Sure, they can write about how Bezos has dozens of communities around the country falling
all over themselves to give billions in tax breaks to the company in exchange for being the
location for Amazon's "second headquarters." Maryland, for example, wants to pony up $8.5
billion and is promising to repair and build custom infrastructure specifically for
Amazon.
So yeah, have kids write those school essays about crony capitalism. And make sure they
include the stories of people who run donut shops and gas stations and thousands of other
small business owners in those communities who get shafted by taxes and regulations even as
their state and county governments roll out the red carpet for a popular, narcissistic
billionaire.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil " 1 Tim. 6:10. Methinks someone worth $161
billion – that's a billion with a "b" – might just love money a leetle too much.
Hey Bezos, if you're reading this, I challenge you to live on $15/hr for 1 year and see how
you manage. For the love of all that is good and holy, Jeff Bezos could DOUBLE the salary of
all those who make $15/hr and still have $127 billion leftover to spare – which is
still an insane sum of money in the hands of one person! This is nothing short of corporate
serfdom! And I'm not advocating for socialism here, I'm just saying that capitalism, in the
absence of a strong Judeo-Christian ethic, usually leads to unbridled avarice!
This is the "Economics 101" version. No serious economist would take it as a fair
representation of the real economy. The idea that employees will be paid their marginal
product only applies, even in theory, to perfectly competitive markets. The trouble is that
labour markets are, on average, even further from the perfect competition model than other
markets. Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition
model won't apply. Unless you're talking about the sale of oranges or toilet paper, any
economic model derived from the perfect competition assumption has to be taken with a
gallon of salt.
Gee, if only someone had written about that recently
To start off with, RobG is wrong when he makes this claim: "Bezos and his ilk have street
cred with social liberals, so they get a pass." I see Bezos and Amazon get trashed on liberal
blogs on a pretty regular basis.
Now, wading through the comments, a variety of observations:
1. $15/hour without the stock options and stuff is probably better for most of the workers
than much lower pay with those options. When you're not making a lot of money, a stable base
pay matters, as does getting the money now, not much later when the stock options vest.
2. Bezos obviously does expect to ultimately benefit from doing this. Possible benefits
include being able to hire better employees, lower turnover, and customer good will. He's not
running a charity, nor would I expect him to do so in today's business environment and
culture.
3. That said, the overall culture when it comes to wealth is pretty badly fouled up. It is
obscene that one person can accumulate a net worth of $160 billion, and it certainly is not
conducive to a stable and healthy society.
4. That said, I don't particularly blame Bezos for being obscenely wealthy -- he's playing
the game with the rules that actually exist. If we don't like that (and we shouldn't), then
we as a society should change those rules.
I was once told that a former boss of mine, in describing me to a recent hire, called me "our
favorite communist." I think Matt in VA has become my favorite conservative.
~~To start off with, RobG is wrong when he makes this claim: "Bezos and his ilk have street
cred with social liberals, so they get a pass." I see Bezos and Amazon get trashed on liberal
blogs on a pretty regular basis.~~
If that's true I'm happy to hear it (depending on what they're being trashed for, of
course).
"We've gotten to the point where brick and mortar businesses all too often carry only
items of mass appeal. If you need something that is not a mass taste item you'll probably
have to get it online."
Very true, unless you have a local retailer near you that will do special orders. Not
everyone does.
"I would suggest that you read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman"
Fiscal libertarianism is part of the problem, not the solution. I would in turn suggest
that you read some John Medaille and Albino Barrera.
Jeff Bezos owns 17% of Amazon; the remainder is owned by people like, well, me, a
schoolteacher married to a schoolteacher. Years ago, I was impressed with the service Amazon
provided its customers and invested money in the company. Because Bezos recognized he had
fiduciary duties–that is to say, moral duties–to those who had entrusted their
money with him, I have seen that stock price appreciate. Consequently, I am in a position to
send my children to college and help my mother as she ages. Had Bezos operated Amazon as a
charity–contrary to the duties he had assumed to shareholders–I would be out of
luck.
Rod, I am awed and grateful for your energy on so many issues, but please try to avoid the
nonsensical, attention-grabbing ledes and articles that betray a deep ignorance of some
elementary concepts of economics and the profound morality of the free market.
Clearly Google should acquire the status of a public utility -- like the Ma Bell telephone
system was regulated in the 1950's. Google is too powerful -- it should not have the cultural
monopoly power it has over our society.
"The people" and their mass interests are preeminent in the hierarchy things. Like it or
not -- Google is a product of our culture -- therefor our culture has a valid claim on its
actions.
It comes down too private ownership vs. public interest. As a pure libertarian I do not
like it -- but as a realist, the mass interests of the people counts.
The "golden mean" must win out. A compromise must be reached.
Clearly Google should acquire the status of a public utility -- like the Ma Bell telephone
system was regulated in the 1950's. Google is too powerful -- it should not have the cultural
monopoly power it has over our society.
"The people" and their mass interests are preeminent in the hierarchy things. Like it or
not -- Google is a product of our culture -- therefor our culture has a valid claim on its
actions.
It comes down too private ownership vs. public interest. As a pure libertarian I do not
like it -- but as a realist, the mass interests of the people counts.
The "golden mean" must win out. A compromise must be reached.
Well, well, Mr.Trump talks the talk but never walks the walk it semms...
If only poor Kennedy would be so lucky...
Nobody to point fingers at for wiring the president...
Did they wire Kenny Mr.Trump?
You did a big show about putting out stuff that would reveal what happened with kennedy,
but instead the people were fed the ussual BS plus some "new" irrelevant" stuff.
Was it just a show to push for more power for your favorite Mr.Netanyahou?
"... "so long as they are transparent with the users about how they are using the data." ..."
"... In practice, this means that any app that shares your private data with advertisers must disclose this fact in their privacy policy. This is seen first in a pop-up box that includes a note that the app wants permission to "read, send, delete and manage your email." However, information about the marketers this data is shared with can often be more difficult to find. ..."
"... In their letter to the company, the senators claim that one marketing company, Return Path Inc, read the private contents of 8,000 emails to train its AI algorithms. ..."
"... "not limited to your name, email address, username and password." ..."
"... At least 379 apps available on the Apple and Android marketplaces can access users' email data. In Google's letter to Congress, the firm declined to say when, if ever, it has suspended an app for not complying with its rules. ..."
"... Google itself has mined users' emails since Gmail was launched in 2004, but announced last year that it would stop the practice, amid privacy concerns and a federal wiretapping lawsuit. ..."
"... "discuss possible approaches to safeguarding privacy more effectively." ..."
"... Everything you've ever searched for on any of your devices is recorded & stored by Google https://t.co/8KGgO0xT92 ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Omnipresent tech giant Google told US senators that it lets third-party
apps read data from Gmail accounts and share this information with marketers, even though
Google itself allegedly stopped this practice last year. In a letter sent to the lawmakers in
July and made public on Thursday, Google said that developers may share your data with third
parties for the purposes of ad-targeting, "so long as they are transparent with the users
about how they are using the data."
In practice, this means that any app that shares your private data with advertisers must
disclose this fact in their privacy policy. This is seen first in a pop-up box that includes a
note that the app wants permission to "read, send, delete and manage your email."
However, information about the marketers this data is shared with can often be more difficult
to find.
Google's letter came in response to a request by Republican senators for information about
the scope of the email content accessible to these third parties. In their
letter to the company, the senators claim that one marketing company, Return Path Inc, read
the private contents of 8,000 emails to train its AI algorithms.
Return Path told the Wall Street Journal at the time that, while it did not explicitly ask
users whether it could read their emails, permission is given in their user agreements, which
state that the company collects personal information including but "not limited to your
name, email address, username and password."
At least 379 apps available on the Apple and Android marketplaces can access users' email
data. In Google's letter to Congress, the firm declined to say when, if ever, it has suspended
an app for not complying with its rules.
Google itself has mined users' emails since Gmail was launched in 2004, but announced last
year that it would stop the practice, amid privacy concerns and a federal wiretapping
lawsuit.
Now, privacy officials from Google, Apple and Amazon are preparing to travel to Capitol Hill
next week, for a Commerce Committee
hearing . There, the tech companies will be asked to "discuss possible approaches to
safeguarding privacy more effectively."
Everything you've ever searched for on any of your devices is recorded & stored by
Google https://t.co/8KGgO0xT92
The hearing is another in a series of grillings faced by the tech industry since the
Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal revealed in March that Facebook allowed a third party to
collect personal information on millions of users. Google CEO Larry Page was invited to a
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on political bias, foreign interference and privacy on
tech platforms earlier this month, but declined to show up, sending a written testimony
instead.
A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services
hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on
Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was
submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP,
confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which
includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister
Geens refused to comment .
####
NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
So your information and private data can be traded for some small amount of money to God knows whom
Notable quotes:
"... Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ' s theory holds water. ..."
Amazon has launched an investigation to track down a sophisticated network of employees
running a "black market" of confidential information and favors, illegally sold through
intermediaries to site merchants in order to give them a competitive advantage over other
sellers, reports the
Wall Street Journal .
In addition to providing sales metrics, search keywords and reviewers' email addresses,
bribed Amazon employees would delete negative feedback for around $300 per review, with
middleman brokers typically demanding a five-review minimum from merchants looking to game the
system.
Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries , are offering internal data
and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling
their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the
data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.
...
In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000 , brokers for Amazon
employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers' email addresses, as
well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts , the people
said.
...
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S.,
suspected of accepting these bribes , according to people familiar with the matter.
-WSJ
The data brokers primarily operate ion China, as the number of new Amazon sellers in the
country has been skyrocketing. The Journal speculates that " Amazon employees in China have
relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks. "
Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in
tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own
employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ' s theory holds water.
The internal probe was launched after a tip over the practice in China was sent to Eric
Broussard, an Amazon VP in charge of overseeing global marketplaces. The company has since
moved key executives into different positions in China to try and "root out the bribery,"
reports the Journal .
"We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces
discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties," an Amazon
spokeswoman said of the situation, confirming that the company is investigating the claims. The
same applies to sellers: "We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad
actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them ," she
said.
Merchant network
A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants, where
the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now offer an
estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units sold on
the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross merchandise volume
last year, according to estimates by FactSet.
As such, "Sellers must aggressively compete to
get their products noticed on the first page of search results, where customers typically make
most of their purchase decisions," notes the Journal .
Evolving manipulations
Merchants have long sought competitive advantages over each other - first gaming Amazon's
automated ranking system, by paying people to leave fake reviews and drive traffic to
products.
After some time, the black market for internal information emerged, as bribed employees
began providing data and access to various benefits, according to a person who has facilitated
by brokers.
Brokers are the middlemen between Amazon employees and sellers who want negative reviews
deleted or access to internal sales information. Brokers search for Amazon employees on
Chinese messaging platform WeChat
and send messages asking them if they would like to provide these services in exchange for
cash , according to brokers and sellers who say they have been approached by brokers.
The going rate for having an Amazon employee delete negative reviews is about $300 per
review , according to people familiar with the practice. Brokers usually demand a five-review
minimum, meaning that sellers typically must pay at least $1,500 for the service, the people
said.
-WSJ
For a lower fee, merchants can pay Amazon employees for the email addresses of verified
reviewers, giving them the opportunity to reach out to those who have left negative reviews for
the opportunity to persuade them to adjust or delete their comment - sometimes bribing the
reviewer with a free or discounted product.
Also offered for sale is proprietary sales information, "such as the keywords customers
typically use to search for items on Amazon's site, sales volume and other statistics about
buyers' habits, according to the people," enabling Amazon sellers to better craft product
descriptions in a manner which will boost their search result rankings.
At a recent conference hosted for sellers -- which wasn't run by Amazon -- a broker pulled
up internal keyword results on his laptop. The broker said $80 can buy information on sales
data, the number of times users searched for a certain product and clicked on a product page,
which sellers are bidding for advertisements and how much those cost, according to the person
who viewed the results.
-WSJ
One seller in China told the Journal that competition on the website had become so intense
that he needs to cheat in order to gain a competitive advantage. " If I don't do bad things I
will die ," he said.
If all else fails in rooting out the black market, perhaps Bezos will simply release the
hounds:
surf@jm , 9 minutes ago
China's motto......
Who needs Christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
surf@jm , 9 minutes ago
China's motto......
Who needs christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
Suicyco , 44 minutes ago
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
Last of the Middle Class , 44 minutes ago
Just like Wal Mart charging by the inch for shelf space. Same game different monkeys.
Normal , 44 minutes ago
Prime example of how the US is a fascist state: the corporation gets government to enforce
law on poor people.
DoctorFix , 1 hour ago
When Amazon opened the flood gates of corruption and scams by allowing Chinese sellers to
compete with Americans on the US site... well, the locals were fucked! Lying, scamming
Chinese fuckers don't care who or how they screw you. And Amazon doesn't give a shit so long
as it makes money. Fuck Amazon! That's why I cancelled any prime membership and haven't
bought a damn thing from them in ages.
803Mastiff , 1 hour ago
And the Pentagon farmed out their servers to AWS.....What are Amazon employees getting
paid for military intel?
richsob , 1 hour ago
If local retailers have a crappy inventory and the stores are staffed with surly
Millennials, then why shouldn't I buy stuff on Amazon at a better price? I support local
businesses that deserve being supported. The rest of them sound like a bunch of whiny
liberals who feel "entitled" to my money.
cornflakesdisease , 2 minutes ago
Everything on Amazon can be found online somewhere else cheaper. You check out the item on
Amazon and then buy it elsewhere. Any seller has to mark up on Amazon to pay Amazon.
Logically, then, from his direct website, he would be slightly cheaper.
I'm sorry, did I miss the part where Disgruntled Amazon employees sell access to the CIAs
web farms?
Being Free , 1 hour ago
I have a letter from a woman who used to work with Bezos at a McDonalds restaurant when
they were both in high school in Miami. She says Bezos walked her home from McDonalds one day
after work and sexually attacked her in her home. He tried to rip her clothes off her but she
managed to escape his evil clutches. She was and is so distraught over this incident that she
is still afraid especially now that he is such a wealthy and powerful man.
just the tip , 44 minutes ago
well played.
JoeTurner , 1 hour ago
Oligarchs bitchez ! it's their country....you just pay the taxes...
ZD1 , 1 hour ago
"A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants,
where the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now
offer an estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units
sold on the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross
merchandise volume last year, according to estimates by FactSet."
Mostly Chicom sweatshop shit.
abgary1 , 1 hour ago
Giving away our privacy for convenience sake is inane and insane.
Have we become that lazy and ignorant?
Without privacy and thus freedom we have nothing.
Midas , 37 minutes ago
Give me convenience or give me death!
--Jello Biafra
pitz , 1 hour ago
That's nothing. Amazon has access to the business data of a large number of businesses
that use AWS. The possibilities of abuse there are nearly endless.
bluebird100 , 1 hour ago
Get fucked Amazon, that's what you get for doing business in China.
Fuckin' sick of people moaning about Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc, yet spending half
their life on there and buying shit from them.
Personally I can't stand what Amazon has become and would never spend £1 with
them.
Facebook is evil shit designed to re-wire the brain to make you a self conscious
narcissist which will ultimately end in misery.
Google are a million miles away from 'do no evil' but TBH they have a very good product
however they are evil scumbags.
These companies literally believe they are gods, that they control the world.... just like
the big banks did before 2008.
I hope the crash comes soon.
-WetWipe
mrtoad , 1 hour ago
Banks do control the world
MARDUKTA , 1 hour ago
President will destroy them soon/CIA.
MedicalQuack , 1 hour ago
Heck, this is not just China being solicited, a couple weeks ago I had 4 voicemails, all
the same recording stating "making $17.00 to $35.00 an hour posting reviews to Amazon. I
didn't answer the calls and saw that they were junk and didn't run upon them until I checked
my voicemail for a real message I had missed and there they were.
They all had a different number to call and a different company name, but it was the same
recorded message on all 4 of them and this happened in a couple days, 2 on one day, and
another 2 the next day. I guess they figured I was not going to respond and took me off
attempt #5:)
Why wouldn't folks in the inside go after a scam like this, look at their CEO, a big fat
quant from Wall Street..and of course we have all heard and read the stories about how Amazon
pays...
This being said, I don't think this scam was just limited to China..if I remember
correctly, this was promoted as part time work with posting reviews to Amazon and work as
many hours as you like. I deleted all of them so I can't go back and listen again as they
were just nuisance calls like others that I just get rid of.
MARDUKTA , 1 hour ago
Bezos partnered with some tribal chieftain in Nigeria who is CEO of Scams-R-Us.
To be banned by Amazon is not equivalent to being banned by any other private business.
Most publishers will admit that Amazon has replaced Bowker Books in Print as the industry's
authoritative guide to what books in English have been printed in the past and what is in
print now. Amazon is currently the reference source. For a book to be forbidden by Amazon
renders it largely invisible. It is equivalent to burning the book. So this is not a matter
of Amazon exercising the prerogative of private enterprise. Amazon is a monopoly. It has no
rival. If your book doesn't exist on Amazon, then for most people who are not research
specialists, your book doesn't exist. The consequences for the pursuit of knowledge are
ominous.
Exactly. And this kind of global monopoly power can't be diminished in time with naive,
"free market – just go somewhere else", Libertarian sound-bites. People who believe in
that fairytale are beyond naive. Amazon, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter are untouchable in an
environment where their competitors can barely offer a fraction of a fraction of the Worldwide
audience to their "content creators" and very few content creators to the audience. This
built-in inertia is self-reinforcing and tremendously inert. It's also the reason why the
Globalists have spared no expense to own those platforms.
Free speech will have to be enforced and saved politically. Waiting for Zuckenberg to
un-fuck it is a fool's errand.
To be banned by Amazon is not equivalent to being banned by any other private business.
Most publishers will admit that Amazon has replaced Bowker Books in Print as the industry's
authoritative guide to what books in English have been printed in the past and what is in
print now. Amazon is currently the reference source. For a book to be forbidden by Amazon
renders it largely invisible. It is equivalent to burning the book. So this is not a matter
of Amazon exercising the prerogative of private enterprise. Amazon is a monopoly. It has no
rival. If your book doesn't exist on Amazon, then for most people who are not research
specialists, your book doesn't exist. The consequences for the pursuit of knowledge are
ominous.
Exactly. And this kind of global monopoly power can't be diminished in time with
naive, "free market - just go somewhere else", Libertarian sound-bites. People who believe in
that fairytale are beyond naive. Amazon, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter are untouchable in an
environment where their competitors can barely offer a fraction of a fraction of the
Worldwide audience to their "content creators" and very few content creators to the audience.
This built-in inertia is self-reinforcing and tremendously inert. It's also the reason why
the Globalists have spared no expense to own those platforms.
Free speech will have to be enforced and saved politically. Waiting for Zuckenberg
to un-fuck it is a fool's errand. Great post! YouTube is another monopoly. I've tried many of
the alternatives like Vimeo, Daily Motion, etc but they simply don't have the depth of
content to compete. Google has fucked up Youtube with the same censorship as Amazon.
"... "It seems like the censorship power many people on the left want Silicon Valley executives to unilaterally exercise might end up being wielded against the left. One good way to know that would happen is that is already is happening." ..."
"... teleSUR English's page has been removed from Facebook for the second time this year without any specific reason being provided. It should be noted that the first time this occurred back in January 2018, Facebook did NOT provide any explanation in spite of our best efforts to understand their rationale. This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don't fit a mainstream narrative. ..."
"... Your Page "teleSUR English" has been removed for violating our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in the permanent loss of your account. ..."
"... Max Blumenthal tweet shows the role of the Atlantic counsel had in removing the site from Facebook. Click the link to show who is on the counsel. This group has had a hand in a lot of shit that has been happening since Trump was elected. ..."
"... It is Deeply Concerning when one of the biggest social media platform censors whomever the hell they want and people say that "what's the big deal? It's a private company that should be able to monitor the content if they want." ..."
"... private company ..."
"... Here's a Reuters article on the role of the Atlantic Council. And yes, their board is a rogue's gallery of warmongers and imperialists. Reuters ..."
"... They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get. ..."
"... They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about you from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places. This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site for that reason. ..."
"... I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss someone. But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life. ..."
"... Ceterem censeo, Facebook delendum est! ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban. ..."
"It seems like the censorship power many people on the left want Silicon Valley executives to unilaterally exercise might
end up being wielded against the left. One good way to know that would happen is that is already is happening."
For the second time this year, Facebook has suspended teleSUR English's page, claiming the left-leaning Latin American news
network violated the social media platform's terms of service without any further explanation -- a move that provoked outrage
and concern among journalists, free speech advocates, and Big Tech critics.
In a short article posted on teleSUR's website on Monday, the regional news network -- which is based in Venezuela but also
has received funding from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua -- explained:
teleSUR English's page has been removed from Facebook for the second time this year without any specific reason being
provided. It should be noted that the first time this occurred back in January 2018, Facebook did NOT provide any explanation
in spite of our best efforts to understand their rationale. This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting
down of pages that don't fit a mainstream narrative.
According to the outlet, "the only communication" teleSUR has received from Facebook is the following message:
Your Page "teleSUR English" has been removed for violating our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence
used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not
allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your
Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result
in the permanent loss of your account.
Max Blumenthal tweet shows the role of the
Atlantic counsel had in removing the site from
Facebook. Click the link to show who is on the counsel. This group has had a hand in a lot of shit that has been happening since
Trump was elected.
Facebook has just deleted the page of @telesurenglish
. A network source tells me FB justified eliminating the page on the vague basis of "violation of terms." The NATO-backed
@DFRLab is currently assisting FB's purge. This is
deeply disturbing. pic.twitter.com/MQe3Brdn15
It is Deeply Concerning when one of the biggest social media platform censors whomever the hell they want and people say that
"what's the big deal? It's a private company that should be able to monitor the content if they want."
Well it seems that its a Big Fucking Deal when that private company is working hand in hand with the government. Facebook
has already been removing left leaning website's post for some time now and it looks like they are upping their game.
Directors. There's some real stinkers on that list. 'Honor' has nothing to fo with it.
Honorary Directors
David C. Acheson
James A. Baker, III
Harold Brown
Frank C. Carlucci, III
Ashton B. Carter
Robert M. Gates
Michael G. Mullen
Leon E. Panetta
William J. Perry
Colin L. Powell
Condoleezza Rice
Edward L. Rowny
George P. Shultz
Dr. Horst Teltschik
John W. Warner
William H. Webster
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about
you from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places.
This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site
for that reason.
Many lefties were happy when FB deleted Jones and were mad at the Twitter guy who didn't. The site that they censored today
isn't an American one, but I'm sure those lefties would be sh*tting bricks if FB did that to Rachel's show and website.
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about you
from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places.
This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site
for that reason.
Many lefties were happy when FB deleted Jones and were mad at the Twitter guy who didn't. The site that they censored today
isn't an American one, but I'm sure those lefties would be sh*tting bricks if FB did that to Rachel's show and website.
I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss someone.
But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life.
Anyway, it's disheartening how we are giving away our freedoms so easily.
and not enough people care about it because it. This I don't get. They are the ones who say that our military is fighting to
defend our freedoms and yet they say that it's okay if the government spies on them because they have nothing to hide.
I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss
someone. But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life.
Anyway, it's disheartening how we are giving away our freedoms so easily.
I am more grateful each day that I never signed up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Ceterem censeo, Facebook delendum est!
(Further, I opine, Facebook must be abolished!)
edit: Adjusted translation to less violent (but still accurate) terminology.
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite
them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban.
Silicon Valley's coordinated purge of all things Infowars from social media has had an unexpected result; website traffic
to Infowars.com has soared in the past week, according to Amazon's website ranking service Alexa.
That said, Google and Apple are still allowing people to access Infowars content via apps, which have seen their downloads
spike as well.
Consumers still can access InfoWars through the same tech companies that just banned it. Google still offers the Infowars
app for Android users, and Apple customers can download it through the App Store.
As of Friday, the show's phone app remained near the top of the charts in both the Apple App and Google Play stores.
Infowars Official, an app that lets viewers stream Jones' shows and read news of the day, was ranked fourth among trending
apps in the Google Play store Friday. In the news category on Apple's App Store, Infowars earned the fourth slot under the
top free apps, behind Twitter and News Break, a local and breaking news service, revealing a sudden boost of user downloads.
–American Statesman
I like your idea. I'm going to hit both sites daily just to spite them.
inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite
them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban.
"... People with original content and distingushable personalities were purged from Twitter for reasons that are hard to discern ..."
"... Probably 99% of posters at Twitter (the only "social media" that I read) are amateurs who never had time, talent or inclination to post anything original. ..."
"... If we count re-tweets or copies of pictures of cute cats and puppies, the percentage of "inauthenticity" is huge. But when one posts about atrocities in Yemen rather than puppies or adorable Israeli settlers in West Bank then he/she can be identified as a "threat". To USA? to humanity? to puppies? to the adorable settlers?. Who knows and who cares. ..."
"... what you see going on nowadays reminds you of George Orwells "2 minutes of hate" in his book 1984. ..."
"... Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time. It should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are... ..."
"... I don't see much serious debate on FB. Most people are communicating with friends, or people they call friends. And they are not anonymous which makes people cautious about expressing their true feelings. ..."
"... Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Well only partially, a secondary line. Their main business is harvesting the psychometric data all its users so carelessly hand them, and then selling said data on to nefarious third parties. ..."
"... In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted--what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression. ..."
"... Amazon (and others) banning books is the updated version of book burning. ..."
"... Young Millennials were drawn to Facebook like 1950's teenyboppers were drawn to smoking. All the kids were doing it. Decades later, those smokers paid a terrible price: lung cancer, COPD, etc. And they had even (unknowingly) poisoned their own kids (via secondhand smoke). ..."
"... People simply have no "sense" for systemic risk. We only seem to learn via disaster. Whether it is social media, MIC, financial markets, propaganda, climate change, etc. ..."
"... "Free Syrian Army sentences Syrian doctor to 6 months in prison for criticizing Erdogan on Facebook" ..."
I followed FireEye link a bit and I have several conclusions.
1. The diagram they made about several "inauthentic sites" is totally bogus. People have various reasons to create anonymous
accounts, for example if they have Saudi citizenship and they post something "pro-Iranian" because of authentic views they may
be kidnapped, whipped and perhaps even executed. An American citizens may want to be anonymous if his/her views are unpopular
among H management where they work. Besides several black lines of "shared e-mail addresses" that are already inconclusive they
have "red arrows" of "promotional activity", presumably links, re-Tweets etc. of which there are billions.
2. I checked a "persona" and black-linked "fake journal". Persona has almost zero activity, 3 Twitter followers. Journal seems
to be somewhat fake because it has several articles with low originality, nicely looking frontpage and some pages that are totally
empty (e.g. Central Asia). It seems that this is one person effort to collate themes and views to his/her liking and practice
web design, and due to sparse posting and mediocre originality, probably zero effective influence.
3. Eliminating 543 such accounts changes next to nothing given their sparse traffic. But FireEye identifies them as "threats".
WFT?
4. By the way of contrast, when I followed tweets about fighting in Syria I witness huge concerted waves of masked re-tweets,
identical tweets presented not as re-tweets that clearly had the purpose of swamping the traffic sympathetic to their opponents.
The numbers were not surprising given the number of jihadi volunteers that actually served as cannon fodder rather than twitter
warriors.
5. People with original content and distingushable personalities were purged from Twitter for reasons that are hard to
discern (posting bloody pictures from battlefields? non-purged accounts show them too).
Probably 99% of posters at Twitter (the only "social media" that I read) are amateurs who never had time, talent or inclination
to post anything original. For example they may find several posts of their liking and re-post them, expressing their views
without inventing new content. If they create more than one account and are noticed by others, they could fall into FireEye criteria.
If we count re-tweets or copies of pictures of cute cats and puppies, the percentage of "inauthenticity" is huge. But when
one posts about atrocities in Yemen rather than puppies or adorable Israeli settlers in West Bank then he/she can be identified
as a "threat". To USA? to humanity? to puppies? to the adorable settlers?. Who knows and who cares.
That's quite an intelligent and observant post Piotr Berman. The evolution of the social media phenomena has me, for one, astounded.
Not to mention confounded. How to go viral?
That's the question to answer. Even the mightiest sea wall can not resist the big
tide.
@25 pB, respectfully, you must not know a lot of people... Many, many people still use Facebook and even use it as their main
source of information; instead of ridiculing and thinking oneself superior to these people, we should engage them where they are
at and tell them that it is not the best place to rely on for news.
The social media censorship has certainly escalated lately but it is of course following a long trend - we've known for several
months for example that Facebook was shutting down pro-Palestine pages at the behest of the Israeli, American, and German governments,
and of course there was the PropOrNot fiasco and the tweaking of Google's algorithms to supress alternative, mainly (real, not
liberal-capitalist) left-wing websites. I am hopeful however that in a sense the cat is out of the bag, there is a critical mass
of people who simply do not trust enough in the official channels anymore, and eventually all this censorship will backfire. That
is an optimistic view anyway...
there's a long and even honourable history behind the use of such professional actors going back to Ancient Egypt and the use
of wailers at high-class peoples funerals, and one could see the point to all of that. But that was all done for the best of intentions.
unfortunately the modern incarnation of such ancient traditions is now being done for all the worst of intentions. (originally
it was all done to generate positive emotions and feelings) nowadays its the complete opposite.
what you see going on nowadays reminds you of George Orwells "2 minutes of hate" in his book 1984.
if you are going to say anything, at please do try to be positive or constructive. Otherwise probably best not to do or say
anything at all.
Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a
decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time. It
should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are...
there's a long and even honourable history behind the use of such professional actors going back to Ancient Egypt and
the use of wailers at high-class peoples funerals, and one could see the point to all of that. but that was all done for the
best of intentions.
Best of intentions, maybe not. The proletariat struggled greatly against their rulers. Slavery and serfdom were cultural norms.
Not that these were attendees of upper class funerals, but in service to the elite to be sure. The illusion that oppressors are
benevolent must be upheld. The reports would be spread throughout the town. Perhaps we were wrong in our assessment that ol' Joe
was a cruel and miserable oppressor.
This trick has endured through the ages. See Facebook. By the looks of it, everyone now suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.
@36 I don't see much serious debate on FB. Most people are communicating with friends, or people they call friends. And they
are not anonymous which makes people cautious about expressing their true feelings.
I work in a library part-time. Most of my regular patrons who do nothing but use the computers use Facebook for their entire two
hours for messaging friends or lovers, or they divide up their time between that and YouTube videos. I try to help them from time
to time figure out the latest changes to their Facebook accounts, even though I haven't used it in years.
They're ordinary sorts of people whose lifestyles require them to get their Internet through our public space rather than at
home, or they don't want to use their phones for it. There are also folks who have various social or physical disabilities who
enjoy watching videos of trains and steam engines. There are also kids who don't use Facebook but watch endless reiterations of
AI-generated YouTube videos or play roblox or agar.io.
So, I guess I'm saying people use social media shit to pass the time. Much like those of us who are passing the time using
this site. While we might believe we are getting deeper to the truth of our realities through MoA, we're also sitting in front
of a screen just as much.
Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Well only partially, a secondary line. Their main business is harvesting
the psychometric data all its users so carelessly hand them, and then selling said data on to nefarious third parties.
@karlof1 | Aug 22, 2018 3:31:39 PM | 14
In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted--what's happening
with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression.
While Amazon (and others) banning books is the updated version of book burning.
Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a
decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time.
It should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are...
I was active on a few web-places in the years 2002-2008 or so. The opportunity for "platonic dialog" was suited to my temperament
I guess and the results were interesting.
I turned more than one big site on it's head with my questioning. Some of my posts went insanely viral. Those were the early
days. I noticed professional trolls from the outset who seemed to be part of the web-site forum itself. They were my adversaries,
and over time began to mimic my posts since no one could beat me at Socratic dialoging.
The topics were many different: for examples: global warming and the environmental ethos, the old Leibnitz-Newton argument,
and regarding the justifications for the Iraq War...
It was fun! A Socratic dialog site with member-referees would actually be a great thing.
This is based on my experience: it is a great learning experience to have to defend a thesis. I did independent research at
that time to avoid getting caught in an argument with my pants down. In every thread it was just about EVERYBODY in there against
me.
(I knew the non-poster listeners were fascinated by what was going on. One site employed a software called Motet which
is excellent for making repeated references to one´s own posts or to the posts of another or to documentary evidence, so the discussions
don't get bogged down explaining the debate to new-comers). I came to realize that my posts were being studied when i drew some
conclusions from the responses they were provoking.
Ten years ago, I totally dropped out of these kinds of internet forums where ideas might so usefully be examined in light of
the opinions and knowledge of a diversity of persons.
Young Millennials were drawn to Facebook like 1950's teenyboppers were drawn to smoking. All the kids were doing it. Decades
later, those smokers paid a terrible price: lung cancer, COPD, etc. And they had even (unknowingly) poisoned their own kids (via
secondhand smoke).
People simply have no "sense" for systemic risk. We only seem to learn via disaster. Whether it is social media, MIC, financial
markets, propaganda, climate change, etc.
Hey all the cool kids are on THIS side of the boat!!
Rivera told officials he exited his vehicle and started "running behind her and alongside her," according to the criminal
complaint. Tibbetts then grabbed her phone and told him she was going to call the police , according to the criminal
complaint.
@46 "But the naivete of Millennials is now legendary. From SJW "snowflakes" to attractive joggers that think their cellphone protects
them in sparsely populated areas:..."
And that is precisely what I dislike about FB. If I was to post something like that there I would be called a fascist or dragged
into unwinnable arguments. Or, horror of horrors, publicly unfriended.
Days after Google was exposed trying to
help Hillary Clinton
win the 2016
election, a leaked "internal only"
video published by
Breitbart
Senior
Tech correspondent Allum Bokhari
reveals a panel of Google executives
who are absolutely beside themselves
following Hillary Clinton's historic
loss.
The video is a full recording of
Google's first all-hands
meeting following the 2016 election
(these weekly meetings are known
inside the company as "TGIF" or
"Thank God It's Friday" meetings).
Sent to Breitbart News by an
anonymous source, it features
co-founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, VPs Kent Walker and
Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and
CEO Sundar Pichai
. -
Breitbart
In the video, Brin can be heard
comparing Trump supporters to fascists
and extremists - arguing that like
other extremists, Trump voters suffered
from "boredom" which has, he
claims, historically led to fascism and
communism.
He then asks his company what they
can do to ensure a "better quality of
governance and decision-making."
And according to Kent Walker, VP for
Global Affairs, those who support
populist causes like the MAGA movement
are motivated by "fear, xenophobia,
hatred and a desire for answers that
may or may not be there."
He later says that
Google
needs to fight to ensure that populist
movements around the world are merely a
"blip" and a "hiccup" in the arc of
history that "bends towards progress."
The video can be seen below, however
scroll down for a list of timestamped
segments to note, courtesy of
Breitbart
.
(00:00:00 – 00:01:12) Google
co-founder Sergey Brin states that
the weekly meeting is
"probably not the most joyous we've
had"
and that
"most
people here are pretty upset and
pretty sad."
(00:00:24) Brin contrasts the
disappointment of Trump's election
with his excitement at the
legalization of cannabis in
California, triggering laughs and
applause from the audience of Google
employees.
(00:01:12) Returning to
seriousness, Brin says he is
"deeply offen[ded]"
by the
election of Trump, and that the
election
"conflicts with
many of [Google's] values."
(00:09:10) Trying to explain the
motivations of Trump supporters,
Senior VP for Global Affairs, Kent
Walker
concludes: "fear, not
just in the United States, but
around the world is fueling
concerns, xenophobia, hatred, and a
desire for answers that may or may
not be there."
(00:09:35) Walker goes on to
describe the Trump phenomenon as a
sign of "tribalism that's
self-destructive [in] the
long-term."
(00:09:55) Striking an
optimistic tone, Walker assures
Google employees that despite the
election,
"history is on our
side"
and that the
"moral arc of history bends towards
progress."
(00:10:45) Walker approvingly
quotes former Italian Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi's comparison between
"the world of the wall" with its
"isolation and defensiveness" and
the "world of the square, the
piazza, the marketplace, where
people come together into a
community and enrich each other's
lives."
(00:13:10) CFO Ruth Porat
appears to break down in tears when
discussing the election result.
(00:15:20) Porat promises that
Google will "use the great strength
and resources and reach we have to
continue to advance really important
values."
(00:16:50) Stating
"we
all need a hug,"
she then
instructs the audience of Google
employees to hug the person closest
to them.
(00:20:24) Eileen Noughton, VP
of People Operations, promises that
Google's policy team in DC is "all
over" the immigration issue and that
the company will "keep a close watch
on it."
(00:21:26) Noughton jokes about
Google employees asking, '
Can
I move to Canada?
' after
the election. She goes on to
seriously discuss the options
available to Google employees who
wish to leave the country.
(00:23:12) Noughton does
acknowledge "diversity of opinion
and political persuasion" and notes
that s
he has heard from
conservative Google employees who
say they "haven't felt entirely
comfortable revealing who [they]
are."
and urged
"tolerance." (Several months later,
the company would fire James Damore
allegedly for disagreeing with
progressive narratives.)
(00:27:00) Responding to a
question about "filter bubbles,"
Sundar Pichai promises to work
towards "correcting" Google's role
in them
(00:27:30)
Sergey Brin
praises an audience member's
suggestion of increasing matched
Google employee donations to
progressive groups.
(00:34:40)
Brin compares
Trump voters to "extremists,"
arguing for a correlation between
the economic background of Trump
supporters and the kinds of voters
who back extremist movements. Brin
says that "voting is not a rational
act" and that not all of Trump's
support can be attributed to "income
disparity." He suggests that Trump
voters might have been motivated by
boredom rather than legitimate
concerns.
(00:49:10) An employee asks if
Google is willing to "invest in
grassroots, hyper-local efforts to
bring tools and services and
understanding of Google products and
knowledge" so that people can "make
informed decisions that are best for
themselves." Pichai's response:
Google will ensure its "educational
products" reach "segments of the
population [they] are not
[currently] fully reaching."
(00:54:33) An employee asks what
Google is going to do about
"misinformation" and "fake news"
shared by "low-information
voters." Pichai responds by stating
that
"investments in machine
learning and AI" are a "big
opportunity" to fix the problem.
(00:56:12) Responding to an
audience member, Walker says Google
must ensure the rise of populism
doesn't turn into "a world war or
something catastrophic and instead
is a blip, a hiccup."
(00:58:22) Brin compares Trump
voters to supporters of fascism and
communism, linking the former
movement to "boredom," which Brin
previously linked to Trump voters.
"It sort of sneaks up sometimes,
really bad things" says Brin.
(01:01:15) A Google employee
states:
"speaking to white
men, there's an opportunity for you
right now to understand your
privilege"
and urges
employees to "go through the
bias-busting training, read about
privilege, read about the real
history of oppression in our
country." He urges employees to
"discuss the issues you are
passionate about during Thanksgiving
dinner and don't back down and laugh
it off when you hear the voice of
oppression speak through metaphors."
Every executive on stage – the CEO,
CFO, two VPs and the two Co-founders
– applaud the employee.
(01:01:57) An audience member
asks if the executives see "anything
positive from this election result."
The audience of Google employees,
and the executives on stage, burst
into laughter. "Boy, that's a really
tough one right now" says Brin.
Google and it's execs seem to be a collective of Dr.
Frankenstein's whose creation unknowingly or knowingly practices evil
against innocence.
Little Girl Scene from 1931
Frankenstein
and 1974
Young
Frankenstein
We saw the scene in 1931
Frankenstein
where the creature
meets a young girl. Although a little afraid, she accepts him and
plays games with him. After they throw all the petals from a flower
into the lake, he looks around for something else to throw. He picks
her up and throws her in. Until recently, the actual toss was cut
from presentations of the film, because it is just too painful.
DeadFred
,
I have a friend who was there that night with the election coverage
crew. He's a secret conservative trying not to lose his good paying
job so I won't give details. But he described a scene to me that
would be comical if it wasn't so pathetic. It was pretty much how it
is described here and he had to just grit his teeth and try to keep
from laughing or crying. "Just keep repeating, $190,000 per year"
uhland62
,
When the Emperor (google) doesn't like his people he must go and find
himself another people.
Thebighouse
,
SOMEHOW GOOGLE FACEBOOK TWITTER NEED TO PAY US FOR USING OUR PERSONAL
AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITHOUT
"REAL" CONSENT.
Ever gone googling? They need to pay you for selling you
information. It is blatant theft. You are ENTITLED TO YOUR MONEY.
I got that word entitled from Warren and obummers micky and barry.
Oh and sharpton too.
bobdog54
,
First, they may have a reasonably good, not high, IQ but it's clear
the stark reality of the real world and its people are completely
unknown to them or they have little to no integrity.
Second,
maybe they are completely brain dead to support a clear criminal over
4 decades or they themselves are essentially of the criminal mind.
"... Citing CIA documents, Bernstein wrote that during the previous 25 years "more than 400 American journalists have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." He added: "The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception." ..."
"... Amazon has always been and will always remain a front for the deep state shenanigans. This company makes no money, and yet has one of the biggest market caps in the world. As to this that the Washington compost, traditional CIA media, has been purchased by no other than bezos himself, and that leaving any doubt aside, the same CIA just awarded him $600Mio per year to give them some disposable computing power. And then suddenly you hear all these stories about government agencies willing to make the same move... ..."
"... It looks like Bezos is a CIA asset. ..."
"... That it's about modern slavery, in a runup to the 4th industrial revolution. (in which these workers will be fired) ..."
"... I'm particularly troubled by Jeff Bezos and his connections with the CIA and deep state. The CEO of Amazon did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence. He purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would ensure him in Washington and because it could be wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion. ..."
"... And because the CIA and Bezos are partners I wouldn't hold your breath for any changes. We now have a form of government subsidized neo-slavery. ..."
"... Well, Amazon is not a business, it's a surveillance agency masquerading as a business. ..."
They are against certain government contracts Amazon fulfills.
The employees raised concerns over the facial recognition software called Rekognition,
developed by Amazon. Amazon sells the software to law enforcement and federal policing
agencies.
But facial recognition software is basically an unwarranted unreasonable search. You
shouldn't have to reveal your identity to the government without being suspected of a crime.
And with this software, just going out into public means the government will defacto search
you, and be able to track your whereabouts.
In the letter, employees also spoke out against Amazon providing services to Peter Thiel's
company Palantir .
Palantir offers predictive policing tools. It analyzes vast amounts of data in order to map
complex social connections and behavior patterns.
Palantir is almost like Minority Report the police might know you are going to commit a
crime before you do
The technology is named after the crystal balls used by the dark lord Sauron and evil wizard
Saruman to spy on middle earth in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings .
The letter reads:
Dear Jeff,
We are troubled by
the recent report from the ACLU exposing our company's practice of selling AWS
Rekognition, a powerful facial recognition technology, to police departments and government
agencies. We don't have to wait to find out how these technologies will be used. We already
know that in the midst of historic
militarization of police , renewed
targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human
rights abuses -- this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and
ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized
We call on you to:
Stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcement
Stop providing infrastructure to Palantir and any other Amazon partners who enable
ICE.
Implement strong transparency and accountability measures, that include enumerating
which law enforcement agencies and companies supporting law enforcement agencies are using
Amazon services, and how.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.
Amazon also contracts
with the CIA, bringing in at least $600 million per year . They provide web services for
high-security state secrets to the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies. Plus, Jeff Bezos owns the
Washington Post. So the CIA pays Amazon $600 million per year. Jeff Bezos is the founder and
CEO of Amazon. And Jeff Bezos is the sole owner of the Washington Post. Does that sound like a
conflict of interest to you?
It is also interesting to note that the
Washington Post has long been associated with the CIA . Project Mockingbird was a CIA
operation which paid American journalists to publish certain information and bury other facts,
depending on the interests of the CIA.
After creation of the CIA in 1947, it enjoyed direct collaboration with many U.S. news
organizations. But the agency faced a major challenge in October 1977, when -- soon after
leaving the Washington Post -- famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein provided an extensive expose
in Rolling Stone.
Citing CIA documents, Bernstein wrote that during the previous 25 years "more than 400
American journalists have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence
Agency." He added: "The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to
be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception."
Amazon and Jeff Bezos should be held accountable for providing oppressive tools to the
government.
But they should not be criticized and punished for success, as Bernie Sanders' Stop BEZOS
Act would do.
Then again if Bezos wants to make money from government contracts, maybe taking care of his
employees from cradle to grave just comes with the territory. That money came from taxes. And
taxes are are markedly different than free market revenue.
"Customers" do not have direct control over how their tax dollars are spent. But apart from
the government contracts, I could otherwise entirely remove my funding of Amazon in an instant
by refusing to do business with it.
With government sources of funding, Amazon gift cards resembling a currency, and
delivery "patrols" in your area , Amazon is looking more and more like a government
But that is a subject we will tackle next week. You don't have to play by the rules of the
corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
... ... ...
Adolfsteinbergovitch ,
Amazon has always been and will always remain a front for the deep state shenanigans. This
company makes no money, and yet has one of the biggest market caps in the world. As to this
that the Washington compost, traditional CIA media, has been purchased by no other than bezos
himself, and that leaving any doubt aside, the same CIA just awarded him $600Mio per year to
give them some disposable computing power. And then suddenly you hear all these stories about
government agencies willing to make the same move...
It looks like Bezos is a CIA asset.
Reptil ,
No, calling out Bernie Sanders, that's a straw man tactic. And it's not accurate.
Bernie attacked Jeff Bezos (and people like him) for NOT PAYING PROPER WAGES TO
EMPLOYEES.
And then that the taxpayers have to pay the extra to keep the employees from starving or
becoming homeless.
Which is something that can be prevented by..... proper wages.
How is that even possible? Well... it's a monopoly. Not a free market. So don't pretend it is
(capitalism). It is not !!!!!!!!!!
And then it's not about something STUPID like "it's the poor attacking the rich." That's
childish scaremongering, to hide the truth.
That it's about modern slavery, in a runup to the 4th industrial revolution. (in which these
workers will be fired)
Yes, it's about the oligarchy trying to enslave the american people, with the PISSPOOR EXCUSE
that for some reason, it's capitalism to not pay proper wages.
Ah yes and Jeff Bezos of course made a deal with the treacherous CIA, that part is true.
That's fascism and high treason. But who's going to enforce that? Other oligarchs? Trump? The
FBI? hahaha
William Binney had a great idea. To have the states secede from the Federation. Then form
inter-state relationships. This way Washington DC will be bypassed.
But expect a fight. A tough one.
Let it Go ,
I'm particularly troubled by Jeff Bezos and his connections with the CIA and deep state.
The CEO of Amazon did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers
to make a lucrative resurgence. He purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it
would ensure him in Washington and because it could be wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to
extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion.
The article below supports the opinion that since buying the Post Bezos has used it to
gain wealth and power and that Amazon is a job killing exploiter monster that needs to be
stopped. http://Trump
And Bezos Face Off Clash Of The Titans.html
Let it Go ,
It must be noted that retailers are closing stores all across America and the impact will
be huge. Online retailer Amazon is by far the chief offender causing such grief. Over the
last few years, stores such as Target and Macy's have even had to face a slew of dishonest
shoppers trying to sneak defectives products purchased online back as exchanges and trading
them for a fresh unbroken product. I have seen this costly abuse recommended by several
online shoppers that see this as an "easy fix" while simply brushing aside the ethical issues
it creates.
As stores close much of this space located in the large shopping malls that once
flourished in commercial zones of suburbia will grow empty and abandoned. The article below
is the second of a part-two series about the retail closings that are occurring across the
country and contains a suggestion as to how we can blunt the damage it will create.
The American taxpayer should not have to pay for Amazon's or WalMarts shitty wages and
refusal to provide more full time jobs with benefits. This has nothing to do with punishing
success. And because the CIA and Bezos are partners I wouldn't hold your breath for any
changes. We now have a form of government subsidized neo-slavery.
Scipio Africanuz ,
Now, before responding to this article, I find some folks who make asinine comments are
preventing responses to their comments from being seen. That's fine, they can hide but they
can't evade. I'll find out soon whether zerohedge is shadow banning comments, I'll call out
asinine comments directly, I'll not respond to anyone anymore, until I understand what's
really going on..
Back to the article, TDB makes a robust defense of capitalist "success" and that's fine.
Bezos achieved his "success" on the back of the American tax payer. The rules of the game as
structured, requires that he, and his oligarch buddies pay tax, just like mom and pop, no
more, no less!
I believe in free exchange, and regulated markets. This means trade should be voluntary,
and markets should run on honest weights and measures. I don't believe for a nanosecond, that
markets should be unregulated, that breeds fraud, theft, and manipulation.
There can be no "free unregulated market", it's the utopia of the right, just as
government dominated commerce, is the utopia of the left.
Now, Bezos is an ungrateful cronyist, and I say that without apology. He ought to learn a
thing or two, from Henry Ford, and the Japanese thus - take care of your profit generators
(employees), and your enabling environment (society), because they're your customers!
Exceptionalist economics have given capitalism a terrible reputation.
Folks often forget that man, by inherent nature, is a communist employing capitalism to
create a compassionate society (socialism). The misunderstanding has cost millions of lives
in the attempt to destroy capitalism, the very principle they ought to protect. The attempts
are akin to closing the nasal and oral passage ways, and yet, hope to consume oxygen.
It'd be hilarious were it not so tragic...
pitz ,
Where's Amazon's profit though? Outside of AWS, they don't make any. Usually robber baron
sort of companies are outrageously profitable. Amazon actually delivers their service at a
loss, and subsidizes it through their only highly successful business, AWS, which is
basically a glorified bank/subprime lender.
The Amazon P/E ratio is extremely irrational, but can the government be blamed for
that?
Scipio Africanuz ,
Well, Amazon is not a business, it's a surveillance agency masquerading as a business. It
doesn't have to make money as it's directly subsidised by the government, and boosted by the
propaganda wing of the establishment, the MSM. Once you understand this, everything becomes
clear, cheers...
Remember a few editions ago when I wrote in celebration of the cross-aisle cooperation
between Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Donald Trump with respect to the re-engineering
of the equity complex? After all, it was only a month ago. However, for those who fail this
recall test, the gist of it was as follows. Senator Warren introduced a bill to regulate large
corporations in a manner that de-emphasizes profits as a corporate objective, and the President
sought to soften the blow by suggesting a reduction in the frequency at which company
chieftains would be required to announce the certain-to-be bad news to the investing
public.
At the time, I was deeply touched by the prospect of narrowing the gap between two schools
of economic thought -- so deeply at odds with one another, to such deep annoyance and detriment
to the well-being of the masses. However, I feared it was a "one-off".
So it brings me great pleasure to report upon the happy news that the divide continues to
close. As my readers are probably aware, everyone's favorite Socialist Senior Citizen Senator:
Bernie Sanders, took to the airwaves this past week to denounce the evils of what by many
accounts is everyone's favorite publicly traded corporation. In live television interviews,
and, of course, on Twitter, Bro Bernie entered into a full-throated denouncement of Amazon,
going so far as to include a series of ad-hominem attacks on its fabulously infallible
founder: one Jeff Bezos.
In doing so, Sen. Sanders joins a critical chorus led by the President, who for months has
been throwing shade at the erstwhile bookseller that would take over the world. Bernie is
passionately (if questionably) upset about the unfair treatment of Amazon workers. Trump is
presumably most peeved at the temerity of Bezos at having taken ownership/control over the
Washington Post. But both agree on one thing: the great unwashed are getting a raw deal with
respect to the business arrangement between the Company and the
U.S. Postal Service.
I've looked into these matters, and objectively as I can determine, this is not an open and
shut case against Amazon. Yes, they're getting a government (and therefore a taxpayer) subsidy,
but they are arguably performing services that would be difficult and more expensive for the
post office to undertake without them – rain, sleet, snow and gloom of night
notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, to their everlasting credit, both Amazon and its shareholders reacted to the
rhetorical pummeling with characteristic equanimity:
It's not as though they didn't feel the sting a bit, and here, the sentimental can be
forgiven if they lament the timing. Sharp-eyed observers will note a slight down-tick in the
price at the more immediate, right end portion of the graph. This reversal is all the more
unfortunate because on Tuesday, the day after our traditional holiday celebrating the working
class, the Company's valuation joined that of Apple's as the only business enterprise ever to
surpass the lofty and heretofore unimaginable $1T threshold.
But that was then; as of Friday's close, Amazon's market capitalization fell to the
beggarly-by- comparison level of $952B.
It says here that Amzonians of every stripe should keep that stiff upper lip demeanor at the
ready, as I suspect they may face a string of challenges before the inevitable happens, and the
Company achieves full global hegemony.
Because, while the following edict did not make the cut on my "10 Commandments of Risk
Management", it probably should have: any enterprise that has found itself in the
cross-hairs of both Trump and Bernie has reason to worry.
And if Amazon is staring into the face of a political spit storm, so, too, perhaps, are
those other lovable Tech Titans whose stock performance have so deeply enriched us in the
post-crash era. Consider, if you will, the recent pricing action of a couple of other tech
darlings: Facebook and Twitter, linked not only by the social media stranglehold they
collectively command, but also by the fact that each company sent one of their gods down from
their heavenly Silicon Valley Olympus, to earthly Washington, where each faced full-on Capitol
Hill roasting:
Facebook Defacing:
Twitter De-Tweeting:
Now, this is a Dickensian Tale of Two Stocks if ever there was one. With Zuck presumably
hiding under his desk, Sheryl Sandberg taking the Congressional heat this round. In the wake of
all that, Facebook managed to breach the lows registered after its historic July tanking of
earnings, and is knocking on the door of breaking the bottoms recorded when Zuck had to explain
away to hostile legislatures the pimping out of user data to sketchy organizations like
Cambridge Analytica. By contrast, the long-besieged Twitter, which had been on an improbable
profit upswing of late, managed to give back all and then-some in the wake of Jack Dorsey's
Capitol Hill Star Chamber Inquisition.
Anybody notice a pattern here? Well, for me, what we're witnessing is the early innings of
what I expect to be a slowly unfolding, populist/political undermining of the flower of the
American Tech industry. Now, I don't expect anything overly nasty to transpire in the short
term; more likely than not, the garroting of Silicon Valley high-flyers will be a multi-year
proposition. Rather, I suspect that the TMT/big dogs of the NDX will more than likely reach new
highs – perhaps material ones – before they face the prospect of careening,
Icarus-like, to terra firma.
But if the prevailing tone – taking place as it is under a presumably
business-friendly political paradigm -- is any indication, I shudder to think about what
happens when the progressive elements re-assert their mojo and take hold of the control
panel. And trust me, they will: if not immediately then eventually.
Of course, one cannot help but admire the way that West Coast Tech monsters – from San
Diego to Seattle – have anticipated this, and attempted, and with some success, to brand
themselves as torch carriers for the progressive mindset. I believe is that this will work for
a while, but not into perpetuity. Eventually, they will be unmasked and vilified as the filthy,
profit-seeking capitalists that they are.
And here, perhaps, is the main (if most obvious) point: as Tech goes, so goes the stock
market. I don't have the exact figures handy, but I can assure you that if you review index
gains over the last, say, five years, and remove the contribution of Apple, Amazon, Facebook,
Microsoft and Google from the equation, you're looking at a chart that, best case, is
flat as a pancake. As such, I don't think that the unfolding Madam Defarge (villainess of Tale
of Two Cities, known most prominently for knitting at the guillotine) dynamic that I fear may
be emerging in Tech-land is much cause for celebration.
The shortened week brought a small taste of the look and feel of the new-age vibe that
awaits us. Equity indices retreated, but only modestly, and in manner that failed to capture
the carnage that lies beneath. I may be connecting dots too far flung to merit they're linkage,
but it is not lost on me that all of the above transpired against the backdrop of a
deteriorating geopolitical sneaker fire (Nike?). I won't waste much space here, but between the
editorial stylings of Anonymous, the absolute (if unsuccessful) effort to turn the Kavanaugh
hearings into a pig circus, the breathless anticipation of another Bob Woodward political
workover, and the unfortunate ramping up of trade skirmishes, it's hard not to look at the
world with a glaze in one's eyes and a growing pit in one's stomach.
But of course and as always the news by no means all bad. The Jobs Report pretty much checks
every bling box, so much so that slumbering holders of longer-term U.S. debt, and sold down
some of their holdings. Factset is projecting another boffo quarter at about ~+20%.
Equities, though, remain a quandary nonetheless (as do Commodities), but my hunch is that
the indices will gather themselves a bit over the next few sessions, before breaking everyone's
heart – yet again -- later in the month. Moreover, if the months-long pattern holds
(Trump offsetting domestic political bludgeons with accretive policy actions), I would expect
some happy noise from the front of the trade wars over the next several days. There'd better
be, because the long knives are out against the current administration, and the only defensive
weapon at their disposal is one that involves playing offense on the economy.
I'm more than willing to do my share, so, as I sign off, know that I'm logging into my
Amazon Prime account to purchase a holy document called "The Art of the Deal", along with "Our
Revolution: A Future to Believe In", written by one Bernie Sanders, and released on November
15, 2016, exactly one week after the author of the former book, against all odds, won the
presidential election.
Who knows? Maybe Donnie and Bernie have more common ground than they realize, and if I find
anything of this sort, I'll be sure to pass it along – to them, and, of course, to
you.
TIMSHEL
This post is brought to you by General Risk Advisors, a full service risk solutions group.
For more information, visit genriskadvisors.com .
(betanews.com)
45Mimecast examined more than 142 million emails that had passed through organizations'
email security vendors. The latest results reveal 203,000 malicious links within 10,072,682
emails were deemed safe by other security systems -- a ratio of one
unstopped malicious link for every 50 emails inspected . The report also finds an 80
percent increase impersonation attacks in comparison to last quarters' figures. Additionally,
19,086,877 pieces of spam, 13,176 emails containing dangerous file types, and 15,656 malware
attachments were all missed by these incumbent security providers and delivered to users'
inboxes.
(wsj.com)
88
Yahoo still sees the practice as a potential gold mine . From a report: Yahoo's owner,
the Oath unit of Verizon Communications has been pitching a service to advertisers that
analyzes more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes and the rich user data they contain,
searching for clues about what products those users might buy, said people who have attended
Oath's presentations as well as current and former employees of the company. Oath said the
practice extends to AOL Mail, which it also owns. Together, they constitute the only major U.S.
email provider that scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
(engadget.com)
125Google
introduced its Titan Key -- a physical security key used for two-factor authentication --
and now it's
widely available for purchase in the US through company's Google Store . Almost any modern
browser and mobile device, as well as services such as Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce,
Stripe support the Titan Key. It's Google's take on a Fast Identity Online key, a physical
device used to authenticate logins over Bluetooth. From a report: For $50, you'll get a USB
security key and a Bluetooth security key as well as a USB-C to USB-A adapter and a USB-C to
USB-A connecting cable.What happens if you
lose them? From a report: A downside of physical keys is that if lose them, you're
toast. That's why you have two keys -- one is meant to be a backup. Google says it can help you
gain access to your account again but the recovery process can take days.
VentureBeat adds : It's not meant to compete with other FIDO keys on the market,
stressed Sam Srinivas, product management director for information security at Google, during a
press pre-briefing. Rather, it's "for customers who want security keys and trust Google," he
said. Further reading:
None of Google's 85,000 Employees Have Been Phished in More Than a Year After Company Required
Them to Use Physical Security Keys For 2FA .
As soon as some idiot declare intention to prevail in cyberwarefare, the chances for
Microsoft to survive in Rusia drop. the same is true about level of usage of Google, Facebook and
other social sites controlled by the USA.
In 1953, the United States stood at a precipice. After the death that year of Soviet
strongman Joseph Stalin, senior U.S. cabinet officials could not agree on how to contain and
confront Soviet expansion and aggression. So President Eisenhower devised an exercise to "
analyze competing national strategies " to check the Soviets where possible and roll back
their advances where feasible. The White House convened three
teams of leading scholars and practitioners to analyze and craft distinct strategies so
that the president could review the strongest arguments, reach consensus among his advisors,
and determine the direction of U.S. policy. The exercise, Project
Solarium , influenced U.S. national security policy for decades.
Sixty-five years later, this project is serving as the template for addressing a new
challenge. The President this month signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2019 which created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission to forge consensus
in the face of new and diverse threats in the cyber domain.
Russiagate can be viewed as a pretty inventive way to justify their own existence for bloated
Intelligence services: first CIA hacks something leaving traces of russians or Chinese; then the
FBI, CIAand Department of Homeland security all enjoy additional money and people to counter the
threat.
The US Department of Homeland Security fabricated "intelligence reports" of Russian
election hacking in order to try to get control of the election infrastructure (probebly so
that they can hack it more easily to control the election results).
Facebook has deleted all of my posts from July 2017 to last week because I am, apparently, a
Russian Bot. For a while I could not add any new posts either, but we recently found a way
around that, at least for now. To those of you tempted to say "So what?", I would point out
that over two thirds of visitors to my website arrive via my posting of the articles to
Facebook and Twitter. Social media outlets like this blog, which offer an alternative to MSM
propaganda, are hugely at the mercy of these corporate gatekeepers.
Facebook's plunge into censorship is completely open and admitted, as is the fact it
is operated for Facebook by the Atlantic Council - the extreme neo-con group part funded by
NATO and whose board includes serial war criminal Henry Kissinger, Former CIA Heads Michael
Hayden and Michael Morrell, and George Bush's chief of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff ,
among a whole list of horrors .
The staff are worse than the Board. Their lead expert on Russian bot detection is an
obsessed nutter named Ben Nimmo, whose fragile grip on reality has been completely broken by
his elevation to be the internet's Witchfinder-General. Nimmo, grandly titled "Senior Fellow
for Information Defense at the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab", is the go-to
man for Establishment rubbishing of citizen journalists, and as with Joseph McCarthy or Matthew
Clarke, one day society will sufficiently recover its balance for it to be generally
acknowledged that this kind of witch-hunt nonsense was not just an aberration, but a
manifestation of the evil it claimed to fight.
There is no Establishment cause Nimmo will not aid by labeling its opponents as Bots.
This from the Herald newspaper two days ago, where Nimmo uncovers the secret web
of Scottish Nationalist bots that dominate the internet, and had the temerity to question the
stitch-up of Alex Salmond.
Nimmo's proof? 2,000 people had used the hashtag #Dissolvetheunion on a total of 10,000
tweets in a week. That's five tweets per person on average. In a week. Obviously a massive
bot-plot, eh?
When Ben's great expose for the Herald was met with widespread ridicule , he doubled
down on it by producing his evidence - a list of the top ten bots he had uncovered in this
research. Except that they are almost all, to my certain knowledge, not bots but people . But
do not decry Ben's fantastic forensic skills, for which NATO and the CIA fund the Atlantic
Council. Ben's number one suspect was definitely a bot. He had got the evil kingpin. He had
seen through its identity despite its cunning disguise. That disguise included its name,
IsthisAB0T, and its profile, where it called itself a bot for retweets on Independence. Thank
goodness for Ben Nimmo, or nobody would ever have seen through that evil, presumably
Kremlin-hatched, plan.
No wonder the Atlantic Council advertise Nimmo and his team as " Digital Sherlocks ".
The narrative about Russian cyberattacks on American election infrastructure is a
self-interested abuse of power by DHS based on distortion of evidence, writes Gareth
Porter.
By Gareth Porter Special to Consortium News
The narrative of Russian intelligence attacking state and local election boards and
threatening the integrity of U.S. elections has achieved near-universal acceptance by media and
political elites. And now it has been accepted by the
Trump administration's intelligence chief, Dan Coats , as well.
But the real story behind that narrative, recounted here for the first time, reveals that
the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created and nurtured an account that was grossly and
deliberately deceptive.
DHS compiled an intelligence report suggesting hackers linked to the Russian government
could have targeted voter-related websites in many states and then leaked a
sensational story of Russian attacks on those sites without the qualifications that would have
revealed a different story. When state election officials began asking questions, they
discovered that the DHS claims were false and, in at least one case, laughable.
The National Security Agency and special counsel Robert Mueller's investigating team have
also claimed evidence that Russian military intelligence was behind election infrastructure
hacking, but on closer examination, those claims turn out to be speculative and misleading as
well. Mueller's indictment of 12 GRU military intelligence officers does not cite any
violations of U.S. election laws though it claims Russia interfered with the 2016 election.
A Sensational Story
On Sept. 29, 2016, a few weeks after the hacking of election-related websites in Illinois
and Arizona, ABC News carried a sensational headline: "Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of
States' Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4." The
story itself reported that "more than 20 state election systems" had been hacked, and four
states had been "breached" by hackers suspected of working for the Russian government. The
story cited only sources "knowledgeable" about the matter, indicating that those who were
pushing the story were eager to hide the institutional origins of the information.
(Erik Hersman/CC BY 2.0)
Behind that sensational story was a federal agency seeking to establish its leadership
within the national security state apparatus on cybersecurity, despite its limited resources
for such responsibility. In late summer and fall 2016, the Department of Homeland Security was
maneuvering politically to designate state and local voter registration databases and voting
systems as "critical infrastructure." Such a designation would make voter-related networks and
websites under the protection a "priority sub-sector" in the DHS "National Infrastructure
Protection Plan, which already included 16 such sub-sectors.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and other senior DHS officials
consulted with many state election officials in the hope of getting their approval for such
a designation. Meanwhile, the DHS was finishing an intelligence report that would both
highlight the Russian threat to U.S. election infrastructure and the role DHS could play in
protecting it, thus creating political impetus to the designation. But several secretaries of
state -- the officials in charge of the election infrastructure in their state -- strongly
opposed the designation that Johnson wanted.
On Jan. 6, 2017 -- the same day three intelligence agencies released a joint "assessment" on
Russian interference in the election -- Johnson announced the designation anyway.
Media stories continued to reflect the official assumption that cyber attacks on state
election websites were Russian-sponsored. Stunningly, The Wall Street Journal
reported in December 2016 that DHS was itself behind hacking attempts of Georgia's election
database.
The facts surrounding the two actual breaches of state websites in Illinois and Arizona, as
well as the broader context of cyberattacks on state websites, didn't support that premise at
all.
In July, Illinois discovered an intrusion into its voter registration website and the theft
of personal information on as many as
200,000 registered voters . (The 2018 Mueller indictments of GRU officers would
unaccountably put the
figure at 500,000 . ) Significantly, however, the hackers only had copied the information
and had left it unchanged in the database.
That was a crucial clue to the motive behind the hack. DHS Assistant Secretary for Cyber
Security and Communications Andy Ozment told
a Congressional committee in late September 2016 that the fact hackers hadn't tampered with
the voter data indicated that the aim of the theft was not to influence the electoral process.
Instead, it was "possibly for the purpose of selling personal information." Ozment was
contradicting the line that already was being taken on the Illinois and Arizona hacks by the
National Protection and Programs Directorate and other senior DHS officials.
In an interview with me last year, Ken Menzel, the legal adviser to the Illinois secretary
of state, confirmed what Ozment had testified. "Hackers have been trying constantly to get into
it since 2006," Menzel said, adding that they had been probing every other official Illinois
database with such personal data for vulnerabilities as well. "Every governmental database --
driver's licenses, health care, you name it -- has people trying to get into it," said
Menzel.
In the other successful cyberattack on an electoral website, hackers had acquired the
username and password for the voter database Arizona used during the summer, as Arizona
Secretary of State Michele Reagan learned from the FBI. But the reason that it had become
known, according to Reagan in an
interview with Mother Jones , was that the login and password had shown up for sale on the
dark web -- the network of websites used by cyber criminals to sell stolen data and other
illicit wares.
Furthermore, the FBI had told her that the effort to penetrate the database was the work of
a "known hacker" whom the FBI had monitored "frequently" in the past. Thus, there were reasons
to believe that both Illinois and Arizona hacking incidents were linked to criminal hackers
seeking information they could sell for profit.
Meanwhile, the FBI was unable to come up with any theory about what Russia might have
intended to do with voter registration data such as what was taken in the Illinois hack. When
FBI Counterintelligence official Bill Priestap was
asked in a June 2017 hearing how Moscow might use such data, his answer revealed that he
had no clue: "They took the data to understand what it consisted of," said the struggling
Priestap, "so they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly
impacting future elections by knowing what is there and studying it."
The inability to think of any plausible way for the Russian government to use such data
explains why DHS and the intelligence community adopted the argument, as senior DHS officials
Samuel Liles and Jeanette Manfra put it, that the hacks "could be intended or used to undermine
public confidence in electoral processes and potentially the outcome." But such a strategy
could not have had any effect without a decision by DHS and the U.S. intelligence community to
assert publicly that the intrusions and other scanning and probing were Russian operations,
despite the absence of hard evidence. So DHS and other agencies were consciously sowing public
doubts about U.S. elections that they were attributing to Russia.
DHS Reveals Its Self-Serving Methodology
In June 2017, Liles and Manfra
testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that an October 2016 DHS intelligence report
had listed election systems in 21 states that were "potentially targeted by Russian government
cyber actors." They revealed that the sensational story leaked to the press in late September
2016 had been based on a draft of the DHS report. And more importantly, their use of the phrase
"potentially targeted" showed that they were arguing only that the cyber incidents it listed
were possible indications of a Russian attack on election infrastructure.
Furthermore, Liles and Manfra said the DHS report had "catalogued suspicious activity we
observed on state government networks across the country," which had been "largely based on
suspected malicious tactics and infrastructure." They were referring to a list of eight IP
addresses an August 2016 FBI "flash alert"
had obtained from the Illinois and Arizona intrusions, which DHS and FBI had not been able to
attribute to the Russian government.
Manfra: No doubt it was the Russians. (C-SPAN)
The DHS officials recalled that the DHS began to "receive reports of cyber-enabled scanning
and probing of election-related infrastructure in some states, some of which appeared to
originate from servers operated by a Russian company." Six of the eight IP addresses in the FBI
alert were indeed traced to King Servers, owned by a young Russian living in Siberia. But as
DHS cyber specialists knew well, the country of ownership of the server doesn't prove anything
about who was responsible for hacking: As cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr
pointed out , the Russian hackers who coordinated the Russian attack on Georgian government
websites in 2008 used a Texas-based company as the hosting provider.
The cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect noted in 2016 that one
of the other two IP addresses had hosted a Russian criminal market for five months in 2015. But
that was not a serious indicator, either. Private IP addresses are reassigned frequently by
server companies, so there is not a necessary connection between users of the same IP address
at different times.
The DHS methodology of selecting reports of cyber incidents involving election-related
websites as "potentially targeted" by Russian government-sponsored hackers was based on no
objective evidence whatever. The resulting list appears to have included any one of the eight
addresses as well as any attack or "scan" on a public website that could be linked in any way
to elections.
This methodology conveniently ignored the fact that criminal hackers were constantly trying
to get access to every database in those same state, country and municipal systems. Not only
for Illinois and Arizona officials, but state electoral officials.
In fact, 14 of the 21 states on the list experienced nothing more than the routine scanning
that occurs every day, according
to the Senate Intelligence Committee . Only six involved what was referred to as a
"malicious access attempt," meaning an effort to penetrate the site. One of them was in Ohio,
where the attempt to find a weakness lasted less than a second and was considered by DHS's
internet security contractor a
"non-event" at the time.
State Officials Force DHS to Tell the Truth
For a year, DHS did not inform the 21 states on its list that their election boards or other
election-related sites had been attacked in a presumed Russian-sponsored operation. The excuse
DHS officials cited was that it could not reveal such sensitive intelligence to state officials
without security clearances. But the reluctance to reveal the details about each case was
certainly related to the reasonable expectation that states would publicly challenge their
claims, creating a potential serious embarrassment.
On Sept. 22, 2017, DHS notified 21 states about the cyber incidents that had been included
in the October 2016 report. The public announcement of the notifications said DHS had notified
each chief election officer of "any potential targeting we were aware of in their state leading
up to the 2016 election." The phrase "potential targeting" again telegraphed the broad and
vague criterion DHS had adopted, but it was ignored in media stories.
But the notifications, which took the form of phone calls lasting only a few minutes,
provided a minimum of information and failed to convey the significant qualification that DHS
was only suggesting targeting as a possibility. "It was a couple of guys from DHS reading from
a script," recalled one state election official who asked not to be identified. "They said [our
state] was targeted by Russian government cyber actors."
A number of state election officials recognized that this information conflicted with what
they knew. And if they complained, they got a more accurate picture from DHS. After Wisconsin
Secretary of State Michael Haas demanded further clarification, he got an email
response from a DHS official with a different account. "[B]ased on our external analysis,"
the official wrote, "the WI [Wisconsin] IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of
Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission."
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said DHS initially had notified his office "that
Russian cyber actors 'scanned' California's Internet-facing systems in 2016, including
Secretary of State websites." But under further questioning, DHS admitted
to Padilla that what the hackers had targeted was the California Department of Technology's
network.
Texas Secretary of State
Rolando Pablos and Oklahoma Election Board spokesman Byron Dean
also denied that any state website with voter- or election-related information had been
targeted, and Pablos demanded
that DHS "correct its erroneous notification."
Despite these embarrassing admissions, a statement
issued by DHS spokesman Scott McConnell on Sept. 28, 2017 said the DHS "stood by" its
assessment that 21 states "were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking
vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure." The statement retreated from the
previous admission that the notifications involved "potential targeting," but it also revealed
for the first time that DHS had defined "targeting" very broadly indeed.
It said the category included "some cases" involving "direct scanning of targeted systems"
but also cases in which "malicious actors scanned for vulnerabilities in networks that may be
connected to those systems or have similar characteristics in order to gain information about
how to later penetrate their target."
It is true that hackers may scan one website in the hope of learning something that could be
useful for penetrating another website, as cybersecurity expert Prof. Herbert S. Lin of
Stanford University explained to me in an interview. But including any incident in which that
motive was theoretical meant that any state website could be included on the DHS list, without
any evidence it was related to a political motive.
Arizona's further exchanges with DHS revealed just how far DHS had gone in exploiting that
escape clause in order to add more states to its "targeted" list. Arizona Secretary of State
Michele Reagan tweeted that DHS had informed her that "the Russian government targeted our
voter registration systems in 2016." After meeting with DHS officials in early October 2017,
however, Reagan
wrote in a blog post that DHS "could not confirm that any attempted Russian government hack
occurred whatsoever to any election-related system in Arizona, much less the statewide voter
registration database."
What the DHS said in that meeting, as Reagan's spokesman Matt Roberts recounted to me, is
even more shocking. "When we pressed DHS on what exactly was actually targeted, they said it
was the Phoenix public library's computers system," Roberts recalled.
National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. (Wikimedia)
In April 2018, a CBS News "60 Minutes" segment reported that the October 2016 DHS
intelligence report had included the Russian government hacking of a "county database in
Arizona." Responding to that CBS report, an unidentified "senior Trump administration official"
who was well-briefed on the DHS report
told Reuters that "media reports" on the issue had sometimes "conflated criminal hacking
with Russian government activity," and that the cyberattack on the target in Arizona "was not
perpetrated by the Russian government."
NSA Finds a GRU Election Plot
NSA intelligence analysts claimed in a May 2017 analysis to have documented an effort by
Russian military intelligence (GRU) to hack into U.S. electoral institutions. In an
intelligence analysis
obtained by The Intercept and reported in June 2017, NSA analysts wrote that the
GRU had sent a spear-phishing email -- one with an attachment designed to look exactly like one
from a trusted institution but that contains malware design to get control of the computer --
to a vendor of voting machine technology in Florida. The hackers then designed a fake web page
that looked like that of the vendor. They sent it to a list of 122 email addresses NSA believed
to be local government organizations that probably were "involved in the management of voter
registration systems." The objective of the new spear-phishing campaign, the NSA suggested, was
to get control of their computers through malware to carry out the exfiltration of
voter-related data.
But the authors of The Intercept story failed to notice crucial details in the NSA
report that should have tipped them off that the attribution of the spear-phishing campaign to
the GRU was based merely on the analysts' own judgment -- and that their judgment was
faulty.
The Intercept article included a color-coded chart from the original NSA report
that provides crucial information missing from the text of the NSA analysis itself as well as
The Intercept 's account. The chart clearly distinguishes between the elements of the
NSA's account of the alleged Russian scheme that were based on "Confirmed Information" (shown
in green) and those that were based on "Analyst Judgment" (shown in yellow). The connection
between the "operator" of the spear-phishing campaign the report describes and an unidentified
entity confirmed to be under the authority of the GRU is shown as a yellow line, meaning that
it is based on "Analyst Judgment" and labeled "probably."
A major criterion for any attribution of a hacking incident is whether there are strong
similarities to previous hacks identified with a specific actor. But the chart concedes that
"several characteristics" of the campaign depicted in the report distinguish it from "another
major GRU spear-phishing program," the identity of which has been redacted from the report.
The NSA chart refers to evidence that the same operator also had launched spear-phishing
campaigns on other web-based mail applications, including the Russian company "Mail.ru." Those
targets suggest that the actors were more likely Russian criminal hackers rather than Russian
military intelligence.
Even more damaging to its case, the NSA reports that the same operator who had sent the
spear-phishing emails also had sent a test email to the "American Samoa Election Office."
Criminal hackers could have been interested in personal information from the database
associated with that office. But the idea that Russian military intelligence was planning to
hack the voter rolls in American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory with 56,000
inhabitants who can't even vote in U.S. presidential elections, is plainly risible.
The Mueller Indictment's Sleight of Hand
The Mueller indictment of GRU officers released on July 13 appeared at first reading to
offer new evidence of Russian government responsibility for the hacking of Illinois and other
state voter-related websites. A close analysis of the relevant paragraphs, however, confirms
the lack of any real intelligence supporting that claim.
Mueller accused two GRU officers of working with unidentified "co-conspirators" on those
hacks. But the only alleged evidence linking the GRU to the operators in the hacking incidents
is the claim that a GRU official named Anatoly Kovalev and "co-conspirators" deleted search
history related to the preparation for the hack after the FBI issued its alert on the hacking
identifying the IP address associated with it in August 2016.
A careful reading of the relevant paragraphs shows that the claim is spurious. The first
sentence in Paragraph 71 says that both Kovalev and his "co-conspirators" researched domains
used by U.S. state boards of elections and other entities "for website vulnerabilities." The
second says Kovalev and "co-conspirators" had searched for "state political party email
addresses, including filtered queries for email addresses listed on state Republican Party
websites."
Mueller: Don't read the fine print. (The White House/Wikimedia)
Searching for website vulnerabilities would be evidence of intent to hack them, of course,
but searching Republican Party websites for email addresses is hardly evidence of any hacking
plan. And Paragraph 74 states that Kovalev "deleted his search history" -- not the search
histories of any "co-conspirator" -- thus revealing that there were no joint searches and
suggesting that the subject Kovalev had searched was Republican Party emails. So any deletion
by Kovalev of his search history after the FBI alert would not be evidence of his involvement
in the hacking of the Illinois election board website.
With this rhetorical misdirection unraveled, it becomes clear that the repetition in every
paragraph of the section of the phrase "Kovalev and his co-conspirators" was aimed at giving
the reader the impression the accusation is based on hard intelligence about possible collusion
that doesn't exist.
The Need for Critical Scrutiny of DHS Cyberattack Claims
The DHS campaign to establish its role as the protector of U.S. electoral institutions is
not the only case in which that agency has used a devious means to sow fear of Russian
cyberattacks. In December 2016, DHS and the FBI published a long list of IP addresses as
indicators of possible Russian cyberattacks. But most of the addresses on the list had no
connection with Russian intelligence, as former U.S. government cyber-warfare officer Rob Lee
found on close
examination .
When someone at the Burlington, Vt., Electric Company spotted one of those IP addresses on
one of its computers, the company reported it to DHS. But instead of quietly investigating the
address to verify that it was indeed an indicator of Russian intrusion, DHS immediately
informed The Washington Post. The result was a sensational story that Russian hackers
had penetrated the U.S. power grid. In fact, the IP address in question was merely Yahoo's
email server, as Rob Lee told me, and the computer had not even been connected to the power
grid. The threat to the power grid was a tall tale created by a DHS official, which the Post
had to embarrassingly
retract.
Since May 2017, DHS, in partnership with the FBI, has begun an even more ambitious campaign
to focus public attention on what it says are Russian "targeting" and "intrusions" into "major,
high value assets that operate components of our Nation's critical infrastructure", including
energy, nuclear, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors. Any evidence of such an
intrusion must be taken seriously by the U.S. government and reported by news media. But in
light of the DHS record on alleged threats to election infrastructure and the Burlington power
grid, and its well-known ambition to assume leadership over cyber protection, the public
interest demands that the news media examine DHS claims about Russian cyber threats far more
critically than they have up to now.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn
Prize for journalism. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran
Nuclear Scare .
If you valued this original article, please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
David G , August 29, 2018 at 2:42 am
From yesterday's (8/28) NY Times, p. A19, Corrections:
"An article on Thursday [print edition; Wednesday web] about a suspected hacking of the
Democratic National Committee misstated what cybersecurity officials said about hackers'
efforts to gain access to the organization's voter database. The officials said the hackers
*may* have sent so-called spearphishing emails to D.N.C. officials, not that they *did* send
such emails."
[*emphasis added*]
Charming. But wait, there's more!
Unmentioned in this correction is that the entire original article was rendered nugatory
the next day (i.e. last Thursday), when the Times reported that (oops), "[t]he suspected
hacking attempt of the Democratic National Committee's voter database this week was a false
alarm, and the unusual activity that raised concern was merely a test, party officials said
on Thursday."
But while the original article – which had "Russia" sprinkled liberally throughout,
despite no claim of a Russian connection to the alleged attempted hack being reported –
appeared in the print edition (8/23), the follow-up saying the whole thing was just a mistake
and never-mind was web-only. (This puts the Times's motto "All the news that's fit to print",
if taken literally, in a curious new light.)
And (to repeat) the correction in yesterday's paper referred only to the original article
on an alleged hacking attempt, not to the followup article saying it never happened.
And so it goes.
Craig , August 29, 2018 at 1:40 am
I had impression that they said that there was not found that voter sites had been
hacked.
Has it not been great propaganda campaign?
Gen Dao , August 29, 2018 at 12:22 am
Another great report by Gareth Porter. It should be top news at NYT, WaPo, CNN, and MSNBC,
but unfortunately it won't be, because all four have degenerated into military industrial
surveillance state propaganda outlets. Russiagate is the biggest hoax since Iraqi WMDs and
Remember the Maine! If we didn't have outstanding real journalists like Porter, we would
probably be at war with Russia right now. What this article shows very clearly is that our
electoral system is under constant assault from criminal elements and political cheaters. We
need to be having a national conversation right now on eliminating all digital voting
machines and switching to paper ballots, but any questioning of the present system would
upset the present advanced state of voter electoral fraud in the US and those who profit from
it. Blaming electoral corruption and cheating in the US on a foreign boogeyman such as Russia
(soon it will probably be China) is pretty obviously a method of hiding the real, domestic
sources of various kinds of US electoral wrongdoing and of ensuring that those sources,
including the so-called deep state, will continue to be able to operate effectively. The
Clinton wing of the Dem Party is not the only group that regards election rigging as a
justifiable means to a "good" end. I look forward to Mr. Porter's further research.
Events in the physical world now are simply unimportant sidelights since – "reality"
– as it is reported in media – is completely fabricated and concocted out of thin
air within the very mediocre brains of the numbskulls fronting for this dying empire.
Corruption is as corruption does – I think Forrest Gump's mother said that.
KiwiAntz , August 29, 2018 at 1:27 am
Forest Gump's Mama said " Stupid is, as stupid does"! Sounds like the perfect logo to
describe the American Nation State? A stupid Nation run by stupider people!
Jeff Harrison , August 28, 2018 at 6:15 pm
Lies, Damned Lies, and Government press releases. The real question is how long it will
take before the American people really refuse to take the government at its word and demand
proof. One of the worst things that the regime in Washington can do is to make American
citizens mistrustful of the government.
KiwiAntz , August 29, 2018 at 1:20 am
The American people are completely gaslighted beyond belief & "captured" by their
corrupt Govt & Leaders, to such an extent, that they will not question or dispute their
Govt's narratives? Never has a Nation's citizens been so successfully brainwashed, in all of
human history, as the American people have been & the only comparison that can be found
is how Hitler & the Nazi's successfully hoodwinked the german people! The exception here
is the American citizens, who frequent this website & are awake to their Govt's gross
corruption & immoral actions around the globe! The rest of the US populace is asleep
& want to stay that way?
john wilson , August 29, 2018 at 2:20 am
Well, KiwiAntz, you're probably right, but I think the accolade for stupidity, idiocy and
acquiesce goes to we British people. Sheep are one of the worlds most common agricultural
animals and we've got lots of them over here in the UK.
Dr. Ip , August 29, 2018 at 2:57 am
Since when have American citizens NOT been mistrustful of the government?
"... After 40 years as a journalist for a variety of media outlets, none of them fake, ..."
"... Judith Coburn became a private eye, specializing in death-penalty cases and searches for people whom filmmakers and writers want to find for their movies and books. ..."
Now that we know we are surveilled 24/7 by the National Security Agency , the FBI, local police,
Facebook ,
LinkedIn , Google, hackers, the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans, data brokers,
private spyware groups like
Black Cube , and companies from which we've ordered swag on the Internet, is there still
any "right to be forgotten," as the Europeans call it? Is there any privacy left, let alone a
right to
privacy ?
In a world in which most people reveal their intimate secrets voluntarily, posting them on
social media and ignoring the pleas of security experts to protect their data with strong
passwords -- don't use your birth date, your telephone number, or your dog's name -- shouldn't
a private investigator, or PI, like me be as happy as a pig in shit? Certainly, the
totalitarian rulers of the twentieth century would have been, if such feckless openness had
been theirs to abuse.
As it happens, tech -- or surveillance capitalism -- has disrupted the private investigation
business as much as it's ripped through journalism, the taxi business
, war making, and so many other private and public parts of our world. And it's not only
celebrities and presidential candidates whose privacy hackers have burned through.
Israeli spyware can steal the contacts off your phone just as LinkedIn did to market itself
to your friends. Google, the Associated Press
reported recently , archives your location even when
you've turned off your phone. Huge online database brokers like Tracers , TLO , and IRBsearch that law enforcement and private eyes like me use can
trace your address, phone numbers, email addresses, social media accounts, family members,
neighbors, credit reports, the property you own, foreclosures or bankruptcies you've
experienced, court judgments or liens against you, and criminal records you may have rolled up
over the years.
Ten years ago, to subscribe to one of these databases, I had to show proof that I was indeed
a licensed investigator and pass an on-site investigation to ensure that any data I downloaded
would be protected. I was required to have a surveillance camera and burglar alarm on the
building where my office was located, as well as a dead bolt on my office door, a locked filing
cabinet, and double passwords to get into my computer. Now, most database brokers just require
a PI or attorney license and you can sign right up online. Government records -- federal and
state, civil and criminal -- are also increasingly online for anyone to access.
The authoritarian snoops of the last century would have drooled over the surveillance uses
of the smartphones that most of us now carry. Smartphones have, in fact, become one of the
primo law enforcement tools other than the Internet. "Find my iPhone" can even find a dead body
-- if, that is, the victim left her iPhone on while being murdered. And don't get me started on
the proliferation of surveillance cameras in our world.
Take me. I had a classic case that shows just how traceable we all now are. There was a dead
body, a possible murder victim, but no direct evidence: no witnesses, no DNA, no fingerprints,
and no murder weapon found. In San Francisco's East Bay, however, as in most big American
cities, there are so many surveillance cameras mounted on mom-and-pop stores, people's houses,
bars, cafes, hospitals, toll bridges, tunnels, even in parks, that the police can collect
enough video, block by block, to effectively map a suspect driving around Oakland for hours
before hitting the freeway and heading out to dump a body, just as the defendant in my case
did.
Once upon a time, cops and dirty private eyes would have had to attach trackers to the
undercarriages of cars to follow them electronically. No longer. The particular suspect I have
in mind drove his victim's car across a bridge, where cameras videotaped the license plate but
couldn't see inside the car; nor, he must have assumed, could anyone record him on the deserted
road he finally reached where he was undoubtedly confident that he was safe. What he didn't
notice was the CALFIRE video camera placed on that very road to monitor for brush fires. It
caught a car's headlights matching his on its way to the site he had chosen to dump the body.
There was no direct evidence of the murder he had committed, just circumstantial, tech-based
evidence. A jury, however, convicted him in just a few hours.
A World of Tech Junkies
In our world of the unforgotten, tech is seen as a wonder of wonders. Juries love tech. Many
jurors think tech is simply science and so beyond disbelief. As a result, they tend to react
badly when experts are called as defense witnesses to disabuse them of their belief in tech's
magic powers: that, for instance, cellphone calls don't always pinpoint exactly where someone
was when he or she made a call. If too many signals are coming in to the closest tower to a
cell phone, a suspect's calls may be rerouted to a more distant tower. Similarly, the FBI's
computerized fingerprint index often makes mistakes in its matches, as do police labs when it
comes to DNA samples. And facial recognition systems, the hottest new tech thing around (and
spreading
like wildfire across
China ), may be the most
unreliable of all, although that certainly hasn't stopped Amazon from marketing a
surveillance camera with facial recognition abilities.
These days, it's hard to be a PI and not become a tech junkie. Some PIs use tech to probe
tech, specializing, for example, in email investigations in big corporate cases in which they
pore through thousands of emails. I recently asked a colleague what it was like. "It's great,"
he said. "You don't have to leave your office and for the first couple of weeks you entertain
yourself finding out who's having affairs with whom and who's gunning for whom in the target's
office, but after that it's unspeakably tedious and goes on for months, even years."
When I started out, undoubtedly having read too many Raymond Chandler and Sue Grafton
novels, I thought that to be a real private eye I had to do the old-fashioned kind of
surveillance where you actually follow someone in person. So I agreed to tail a deadbeat mom
who claimed to be unemployed and wanted more alimony from her ex. She turned out to be a
scofflaw driver, too, a regular runner of red lights. (Being behind her, I was the one who got
the tickets, which I tried to bill on my expense report to no avail.) But tailing her turned
out to make no difference, except to my bank account. Nor did tech. Court papers had already
given us her phone and address but no job information. Finally, I found her moonlighting at a
local government office. How? The no-tech way: simply by phoning an office where one of her
relatives worked and asking for her. "Not in today," said the receptionist helpfully and I knew
what I needed to know. It couldn't have been less dramatic or noir -ish.
These days, tech is so omnipresent and omnivorous that many lawyers think everything can be
found on the Internet. Two lawyers working on a death-penalty appeal once came to see me about
working on their case. There had been a murder at a gas station in Oakland 10 years earlier.
Police reports from the time indicated that there was a notorious "trap house" where crack
addicts were squatting across from the gas station. The lawyers wanted me to find and interview
some of those addicts to discover whether they'd seen anything that night. It would be a quick
job, they assured me. (Translation: they would pay me chump change.) I could just find them on
the Internet.
I thought they were kidding. Crack addicts aren't exactly known for their Internet presence.
(They may have cell phones, but they tend not to generate phone bills, rental leases, utility
bills, school records, mortgages, or any of the other kinds of databases collect that you might
normally rely on to find your quarry.) This was, I argued, an old-fashioned shoe-leather-style
investigation: go to the gas station and the trap house (if it still existed), knock on doors
to see if neighbors knew where the former drug addicts might now be: Dead? Still on that very
street? Recovered and long gone?
In a world where high-tech is king, I didn't get the job and I doubt they found their
witnesses either.
You'd think that, in a time when tech is the story of the day, month, and year and a
presidential assistant is even
taping without permission in the White House Situation Room, anything goes. But not for
this aging PI. I mean, really, should I rush over to a belly-dancing class in Berkeley to see
if some guy's fiancée and the teacher go back to her motel together? (No.) Should I
break into an ex-lover's house to steal memos she'd written to get him fired? (Are you
kidding?) Should I eavesdrop on a phone call in which a wife is trying to get her husband to
admit that he battered her? (Not in California, where the law requires permission from every
party in a phone call to be on the line, thereby wiping out such eavesdropping as an
investigative tool -- only cops with a warrant being exempt.)
I certainly know PIs who would take such cases and I'm not exactly squeaky clean myself.
After all, as a journalist working for Ramparts magazine back in the 1960s, I broke
into the basement of the National Student
Association (with another reporter) to steal files showing that the group's leaders were
working for the CIA and that the agency actually owned the very building they occupied. In a
similar fashion, on a marginally legal peep-and-trespass in those same years, another reporter
and I crawled through bushes on the grounds of a VA Hospital in Maryland where we had been told
that we could find a replica of a Vietnamese village being used to train American assassins in
the CIA's Phoenix
program . That so-called pacification program would, in the end, kill more than 26,000
Vietnamese civilians. We found the "village," secretly watched some of the training, and filed
the first piece about that infamously murderous program for New York's Village Voice
.
Those ops were, however, in the service of a higher ideal, much like smartphone
videographers today who shoot police violence. But most of surveillance capitalism is really
about making sure that no one in our new world can ever be forgotten. PIs chasing perps in
divorce cases are a small but tawdry part of just that. But what about, to take an extreme case
in which the sleazy meets the new tech world big time, the FBI's pursuit of lovers of kiddy
porn, which I learned something about by taking such a case? The FBI emails a link to a fake
website that it's created to all the contacts a known child pornographer has on his computer or
phone. It has the kind of bland come-on pornographers tend to use. If you click on that link,
you get a menu advertising yet more links to photos with titles like "my 4-year-old daughter
taking a bath." Click on any of those links and you'll be anything but forgotten. The
FBI will be at your door with cuffs within days.
Does someone who devours child porn have a right to be forgotten? Maybe you don't think so,
but what about the rest of us? Do we? It's hardly a question anymore.
The Good and Ugly Gotchas of This Era
When all the surveillance techniques on those information databases work, it's like three
lemons lining up on a one-armed bandit. Recently, for instance, a California filmmaker called
me, desperate. She was producing a movie about the first Nepalese woman to climb Mount Everest.
Her team had indeed reached the summit, but were buried in an avalanche on the way down with
only one survivor. The filmmaker wanted to find that man.
Could I do so? She didn't have enough money to send me to Nepal. (Rats!) But couldn't I find
him on the Internet? His name, she told me, was Pemba Sherpa. What's his family name, I asked?
That's when I found out that "sherpa" isn't just a Western term for Nepalese who guide people
up mountains; it's the surname of many Nepalese. Great! That's like asking me to find John
Smith with no birthdate, social security number, address, or even the Nepalese equivalent of
the state where he lives. In my mind's eye, I could instantly see my database search coming up
with the always frustrating "your search criteria resulted in too many records found." I also
had my doubts that, despite the globalization of our tech world, most Nepalese were on the
Internet.
Amazingly, however, checking out "sherpas," I promptly found a single Pemba in my search,
unfortunately with -- the bane of a PI's life -- not another piece of information.
Okay, Google, I thought, it's all yours. No Pemba on the first five pages of my search
there. (Groan.) But it was late at night and I was feeling obsessive, so I kept going. (Note to
home investigators: don't give up on Google after those first few pages.) From earlier
research, I had discovered that one of the main Nepalese communities outside that country was
in Portland, Oregon, where many mountaineering companies are also based. On maybe my 28th
Google page, I suddenly saw a link to a Portland alternative newspaper story from the
mid-1990s. (Who was even scanning in such articles back then?)
I clicked on it. The piece was about a Portland Pemba Sherpa who had gone back to his native
village to help its inhabitants get electricity. The article went on to say that he had left
Nepal "because too many of his friends had died on the mountain." Hmmm. It also reported that
he was married to a mathematics teacher at a Portland community college.
We're talking about a more-than-20-year-old article! Still, the next morning I doggedly
called the college and yes, his wife was teaching math there. I was patched through to the math
department where, yes again, the wife picked up and, yes, her husband was the sole
survivor of that climb, and she was sure he'd want to be interviewed for the movie.
Bingo! The actual wonders of the Internet and a heartwarming story about someone who needed
to be found. Finding an ancient nanny to invite to the wedding of a guy she had raised -- after
they had been out of contact for decades -- proved a similarly happy search. But that's rare.
The question, not just for PIs but for all of us, is this: Should everyone be so track
down-able, even if they don't wish to be? Some investigators, in the spirit of the moment,
think that if there's an unknowable about anyone, it should be uncovered. The journalist who
outed
novelist Elsa Ferrante really thought he'd done something, but it was just another in an
increasing number of mean-spirited gotchas of our era.
Why do people need privacy anyway? The freedom and community that Internet utopians promised
us has led instead to the scraping open of our lives by law enforcement, social media, hackers,
marketers, and the world's governments. Now we're left largely to our own devices when it comes
to what little we can do about it and the global surveillance culture that it's enmeshed all of
us in.
Back in the late 1960s, Erwin Knoll, editor of the Progressive magazine, made
President Richard Nixon's enemy list. That qualified him to be wiretapped by the FBI, so he
asked his wife Doris to call female friends every day and discourse on grisly gynecological
matters to disturb the listening agents (mostly male in those days). Erwin wondered if they
wouldn't think it was some kind of code.
After 40 years as a journalist for a variety of media outlets, none of them fake,
TomDispatch regularJudith Coburn became a private eye, specializing in
death-penalty cases and searches for people whom filmmakers and writers want to find for their
movies and books.
"... The boundaries for paranoia are moving rapidly. Trump's election appears to have caused the security state to move into overdrive and in its haste drop almost all pretense re the attempts to control access to dissenting narratives. ..."
"... Inertia, or even misplaced patriotism over US corporations like Facebook, is the road to hell. ..."
"... The Second Amendment make specific provision for the people's right to prevent tyranny by their government in the material world. So far, the Constitution lacks a similar provision preventing government tyranny in cyberspace. This does not mean that defense of this right should be fought for any less vigorously and in the 21st century I'd consider it at least as important. ..."
"... Zuck and his ilk Sandberg are doing CYA and using those who have contacts inside the beltway. ..."
Is there something wrong with this picture, or am I just being overly suspicious or even
paranoid?
No, just "inauthentic".
The boundaries for paranoia are moving rapidly. Trump's election appears to have caused the
security state to move into overdrive and in its haste drop almost all pretense re the attempts
to control access to dissenting narratives. I truly fear for SST in this fast-deteriorating
environment. If Trump's presidency does nothing else but bring the thought-control swamp to the
attention of the masses, he will have done his country a great service.
RaisingMac has the right idea.
Rights waste away unless frequently exercised and 'voting' to switch to less censorious
platforms is a vital part of defending the right to free speech. Inertia, or even misplaced
patriotism over US corporations like Facebook, is the road to hell.
The Second Amendment make
specific provision for the people's right to prevent tyranny by their government in the
material world. So far, the Constitution lacks a similar provision preventing government
tyranny in cyberspace. This does not mean that defense of this right should be fought for any
less vigorously and in the 21st century I'd consider it at least as important.
FireEye's tip eventually led Facebook to remove 652 fake accounts and pages. And
Liberty Front Press, the common thread among much of that sham activity, was linked to
state media in Iran, Facebook said on Tuesday.
"... The anti-Russian mania in U.S. politics gives social media companies a welcome excuse to clamp down on promotional schemes for sites like Liberty Front Press by claiming that these are disinformation campaigns run by the U.S. enemy of the day . ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Well this surely shows that Facebook/Twitter is run through the help of US/Western intelligence ..."
"... Sorry, but, if you let any opinion on Facebook or Twitter sway your politics, you're an idiot. ..."
"... fireEye, google, yahoo, facebook and so many other tech companies are all in a few miles radius of one another in San Jose area of California ..."
"... In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted -- what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression. ..."
"... Blogs today represent yesterday's broadsheets, and by using social media, they can increase their exposure to a wider audience. Thus, social media represents a point-of-control for those trying to shape/frame discourse/content. They may be private companies, but they interact with public discourse and ought to be subjected to Free Speech controls like the USA's 1st Amendment. ..."
"... Very many hi-tech companies in the US are working with the CIA. Such as Oracle that has an office on the east coast of the US that keeps a very low profile inside the company. ..."
"... Robert Bridge provides us with a timely written article dealing with the issue at hand: "And if US intel is in bed with Hollywood you can be damn sure they're spending time in the MSM whorehouse as well." ..."
"... IMHO, it would be foolish to presume that the CIA would simply discontinue and to walk away from (as it claims!) a program like Operation Mockingbird. Government agencies have famously infiltrated the Quakers (ferchrissakes!). Facebook was funded and developed by a CIA front shop. Zuckerburg is a dopey kid and a frontispiece. ..."
"... The danger of course is when people start to conclude that any media site permitted by FB or SM is Sanctioned by the Propaganda department of the Ministry of Truth and ignored. ..."
"... Trump would be hailed a savior if he were to morph into President Taft and Bust the Trusts like BigLie Media, its allied telecoms and social media corps. ..."
"... As to a lack authenticity, what about the tweets from outside Egypt pushing and reporting on the "Arab Spring" protests there. We have other examples of "inauthentic" social messaging on other agendas pushed like Syria. What about "A Gay Girl in Damascus?" ..."
"... who still uses facebook? The only people i know who still are active users are senior citizens. ..."
The creation of digital content led to the re-establishment of claqueurs :
By 1830 the claque had become an institution. The manager of a theatre or opera house was
able to send an order for any number of claqueurs. These were usually under a chef de claque
(leader of applause), who judged where the efforts of the claqueurs were needed and to
initiate the demonstration of approval. This could take several forms. There would be
commissaires ("officers/commissioner") who learned the piece by heart and called the
attention of their neighbors to its good points between the acts. Rieurs (laughers) laughed
loudly at the jokes. Pleureurs (criers), generally women, feigned tears, by holding their
handkerchiefs to their eyes. Chatouilleurs (ticklers) kept the audience in a good humor,
while bisseurs (encore-ers) simply clapped and cried "Bis! Bis!" to request encores.
An alternative is to create artificial social media personas who then promote ones content.
That is what the Internet Research Agency , the Russian "troll factory" from St.
Petersburg, did. The fake personas it established on Facebook promoted IRA created
clickbait content like puppy picture pages that was then marketed
to sell advertisements .
The profit orientated social media giants do not like such third party promotions. They
prefer that people pay THEM to promote their content. Selling advertisements is Facebook's
business. Promotional accounts on its own platform are competition.
Yesterday Facebook announced that it deleted a
number of user accounts for "inauthentic behavior":
We've removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that
originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East,
Latin America, UK and US. FireEye, a cybersecurity firm, gave us a tip in July about "Liberty
Front Press," a network of Facebook Pages as well as accounts on other online services.
...
We are able to link this network to Iranian state media through publicly available website
registration information, as well as the use of related IP addresses and Facebook Pages
sharing the same admins. For example, one part of the network, "Quest 4 Truth," claims to be
an independent Iranian media organization, but is in fact linked to Press TV, an
English-language news network affiliated with Iranian state media.
FireEye has identified a suspected influence operation that appears to originate from Iran
aimed at audiences in the U.S., U.K., Latin America, and the Middle East. This operation is
leveraging a network of inauthentic news sites and clusters of associated accounts across
multiple social media platforms to promote political narratives in line with Iranian
interests. These narratives include anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli, and pro-Palestinian themes, as
well as support for specific U.S. policies favorable to Iran, such as the U.S.-Iran nuclear
deal (JCPOA) .
...
Based on an investigation by FireEye Intelligence's Information Operations analysis team, we
assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates from Iranian actors.
The evidence FireEye presents is quite thin. The purpose of its inquest and report is
obviously self-promotion.
Moon of Alabama is also promoting anti-Saudi , anti-Israeli
, and pro-Palestinian themes. It
supports the JCPOA deal. This is, according to FireEye, "in line with Iranian interests".
It may well be. But does that make Moon of Alabama a "suspected influence operation"?
Is it an "inauthentic news site"?
Is the @MoonofATwitter
account showing "coordinated inauthentic behavior" when it promotes the pieces presented on
this site? We, by the way, assess with high confidence that that this activity originates from
a German actor. Is that a reason to shut it down?
Here is another high confidence tip for FireEye. There is proof, and even an admission of
guilt, that a hostile government financed broadcasting organization is creating inauthentic
Facebook accounts to disseminate disinformation. These narratives include
anti-Russian, anti-Syrian, and pro-Saudi views, as well as support for specific U.S. policies
favorable to Israel, such as its financing of the
anti-Iranian headscarf campaign .
This year the U.S. government run Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) will spend more than
$23 million for its Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB). OCB administers Radio and Television
(TV) Martí programs directed at the Cuban public. In its 2019 budget
request to Congress (pdf) the BBG admits that it creates inauthentic Facebook
accounts to increase the distribution of its dreck:
In FY 2018, OCB is establishing on island digital teams to create non-branded local Facebook
accounts to disseminate information . Native pages increase the chances of appearing on Cuban
Facebook users newsfeeds. The same strategy will be replicated on other preferred social
media networks.
How is this different from what the PressTV may have done? When will Facebook shut those
inauthentic BBG accounts down?
At the Defense One Summit last November [2016], former GEC director Michael Lumpkin [GEC,
Pentagon propaganda department] described how the Center was using the data it received as
a Facebook advertiser to maximize the effectiveness of its own targeted appeals.
"Using Facebook ads, I can go within Facebook, I can go grab an audience, I can pick
Country X, I need age group 13 to 34, I need people who have liked -- whether it's Abu Bakr
Al Baghdadi or any other set -- I can shoot and hit them directly with messaging," Lumpkin
said. He emphasized that with the right data, effective message targeting could be done for
"pennies a click."
Ironically, when I created a FB page hangout for my foreign students to disseminate topical
educational materials that were freely available as PDF links, or free 'loss-leader' lessons
from for-profits, or Khan Academy free lesson links ... in other words, organizing a
docent-guided free education feed for terribly poor 3W students ...
FB informed me that this
was an 'illegal' business activity, lol. They shut it down with *zero* warning. One moment it
was a beautiful colorful uplifting education resource, the next it was burnt to ashes. 404.
ATM, on an Anony FB page I launched to reconnect with my students, after a couple
ill-advised comments to their thread posts, discussing what's *really* going on in the world,
FB has blocked any posts that I might want to make. They just never show up when I hit enter.
Like training a bad puppy, lol. All FB lets me do is 'like' or emoji or 'wave' to my
students, so it's a semaphore that I still exist, even in FB lockup.
But I think I'll stop. It's bread-crumbing them to FBs candy-cane house and the boiling
cauldron that awaits. Frog in a Pot!
"...we assess with moderate confidence that this activity originates from Iranian actors."
Jeez, can't they at least produce a "highly likely" for us? On the intelligence community's confidence scale, "moderate" has to be just above
"wishful" and "doubtful"
One of the tricks of corporate propaganda:
Often, when exposed to capitalist propaganda, a socialist gets the impression that he can
have the best of both worlds! - the perceived benefits of capitalism as he keeps his beloved
social benefits.
It isn't until some time after the bmobing has stopped, that he realizes that he has lost
ALL his former social benefits and what he has thereafter is hard capitalism and no
money.
Well this surely shows that Facebook/Twitter is run through the help of US/Western
intelligence.
Only way is to fight back or you will eventually have fines and end up in jail for
thoughtcrimes.
This site and us here commenting is of course already targeted by these scums, besides,
sites like this will certainly be shut down sooner or later.
Remember Facebook also attacked Venezuela recently, "Why Did Facebook Purge TeleSUR English?"
TeleSUR English is a rare voice of dissent to US foreign policy. Is that why Facebook
deleted its page?
b.. thanks... your first paragraph giving context to how the public was swayed going back
close to 200 years ago was very interesting..
The usa gov't has something to sell and something to buy.. fireEye, google, yahoo,
facebook and so many other tech companies are all in a few miles radius of one another in
San Jose area of California.. If Russia was to bomb somewhere in the usa - that would be one good
place to start!
They are all selling to the usa gov't at this point... the usa devotes so
much to propaganda and these corps all try to peddle the needed tools to keep the
fearmongering going, when they're not snooping of course! hey - they can do both - snoop and
sell!!
Long ago before the Hydrocarbon Epoch, the Broadsheet was your typical newscast assembled by
the local printer who was often reporter and editor, and even in small towns there was
competition, with readers of news gathering in coffee shops to discuss their contents. The
vociferousness of many publications was extreme, but as Jefferson observed in the 1790s,
easily disproved hyperbole was far more desirable than censorship -- people were deemed capable
of determining a publication's veracity for themselves and thus their success or failure
would be determined by the marketplace of ideas.
In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas
could be restricted -- what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version
of such repression. With the advent of the personal computer and internet, ease of publishing
exploded, which presented elites determined to control the overall discourse with a huge
problem they are still grappling with. One of the aims of the Independent Media Center on its
founding in 1999 was to turn every activist into a reporter and every computer into a
printing press with contents published collectively at regional Media Centers. Unfortunately,
after a promising first several years, the nascent movement failed and remains in dormancy,
being mostly replaced by personal blogs.
Blogs today represent yesterday's broadsheets, and by using social media, they can
increase their exposure to a wider audience. Thus, social media represents a point-of-control
for those trying to shape/frame discourse/content. They may be private companies, but they
interact with public discourse and ought to be subjected to Free Speech controls like the
USA's 1st Amendment.
Very many hi-tech companies in the US are working with the CIA. Such as Oracle that has an
office on the east coast of the US that keeps a very low profile inside the company. In fact
the first contract that launched the company was a contract with the CIA to implement the IBM
SQL standard. I shouldn't have to explain to anyone here why the CIA would use a relational
database (have to keep all those subversive secret ops in order). Similar connection to CIA
for Google, Facebook, Symantec, etc.
If you are using US software (very likely) then assume CIA and NSA back-doors. Some
solutions are to use Linux and VPNs, and Yandex for cloud storage. Get away from US
software.
Robert Bridge provides us with a timely written article dealing with the issue at hand:
"And if US intel is in bed with Hollywood you can be damn sure they're spending time in the
MSM whorehouse as well."
Sorry, should have included this in 17. As many know, Caitlin Johnstone, a Truth Seeker par
excellence, has also been censored, but prior to that
wrote this essay on the subject at hand, which is all about manufacturing consent as she
sees it:
"This is a setup. Hit the soft target so your oligarch-friendly censorship doesn't look
like what it is, then once you've manufactured consent, go on to shut down the rest of
dissenting media bit by bit."
This is a US government ordered setup supported by the evidence she presents in her intro,
but not by Trump!
IMHO, it would be foolish to presume that the CIA would simply discontinue and to walk away
from (as it claims!) a program like Operation Mockingbird.
Government agencies have famously infiltrated the Quakers (ferchrissakes!). Facebook was funded and developed by a CIA front shop. Zuckerburg is a dopey kid and a
frontispiece.
The danger of course is when people start to conclude that any media site permitted by FB or
SM is Sanctioned by the Propaganda department of the Ministry of Truth and ignored. Then
these few truthful media sites that are unbanned will need to beg these social media giants
to ban them so as to restablish credibility. FB and SM will then need to ban a few controlled
MSM sites so people will believe they are credible and read the propaganda
I guess we are not there yet, or are we? I do not use FB or other SM for news or anything else, although I do occasionally click on
links to them from a web page, but I guess a lot of people do. Maybe that will change.
The battle over Net Neutrality is related to this. Recently,
Verizon blackmailed a California fire department engaged in fighting the state's largest
ever wildfire by throttling its data feed thus threatening public safety for a Few Dollars
More.
Trump would be hailed a savior if he were to morph into President Taft and Bust the Trusts
like BigLie Media, its allied telecoms and social media corps.
Claqueurs. One of the earliest versions of the annoying "laugh track" used in television.
Like Ben 10, I learned something new today.
As to a lack authenticity, what about the tweets from outside Egypt pushing and reporting
on the "Arab Spring" protests there. We have other examples of "inauthentic" social messaging
on other agendas pushed like Syria. What about "A Gay Girl in Damascus?"
As usual, thanks for pointing out the hypocrisy of US govt/media.
Russiagate has deepened the partnership between Washington and Silicon Valley, and leftist websites are among the first
casualties.
Notable quotes:
"... America has a real problem here with accomplishing its goals – which it is obviously achieving, the silencing of legitimate dissent and the prioritization of the national-security narrative – while simultaneously advertising itself as the center of what the evildoers hate for its freedoms. ..."
"... Americans, and everyone who uses their services, are increasingly regulated in everything they do and say, extending now to what you are allowed to see and hear. Actual freedom is dwindling away to a pinpoint, and what the government wants every election cycle is more cops, more law and order and more security. ..."
TheRealNews
Published on 11 Aug 2018
From Alex Jones to alleged Russian trolls, major internet companies are increasingly policing content on their platforms. Max
Blumenthal of the Grayzone Project says the partnership between Facebook and the Atlantic Council highlights "the merger of the
national security state and Silicon Valley."
Russiagate has deepened the partnership between Washington and Silicon Valley, and leftist websites are among the first casualties.
After falsely accusing an anti-white supremacist rally event page of being a fake, Facebook shut down the page of VenezuelaAnalysis.com
for several hours without explanation. We speak to VA founder and TRNN host Greg Wilpert, as well as the Grayzone Project's Max
Blumenthal
Western "freedom" of expression in action. I find it interesting how the voices of a few heretics are supposedly some big threat
to NATzO. That would indicate that NATzO is not quite the bastion of democracy it paints itself to be. It is unstable because
it is based on lies and heretics can initiate the crashing of the facade. But if this is indeed the case, then NATzO is on its
way out since no amount of repression of dissidents will change the fundamental inconsistency of its existence.
America has a real problem here with accomplishing its goals – which it is obviously achieving, the silencing of legitimate dissent
and the prioritization of the national-security narrative – while simultaneously advertising itself as the center of what the
evildoers hate for its freedoms.
Americans, and everyone who uses their services, are increasingly regulated in everything they
do and say, extending now to what you are allowed to see and hear. Actual freedom is dwindling away to a pinpoint, and what the
government wants every election cycle is more cops, more law and order and more security.
Hammer it and remove all EMF's. An old microwave over works as a Faraday cage. Also; if you take a cell phone and wrap it in
just a layer or two of aluminum foil; it will not make or receive calls.
Good point. Save alot of shekkels too. Why just the other day I was standing in grocery line having an imaginary conversation
with my imaginary broker, on my fake phone! The conversation became quite heated. It was all going swell until I ran into the
door on my way out, fell over backwards, spilt the milk carton, and crushed a dozen eggs. No one even noticed ..
They don't need GPS to know where you are, cell towers report the same information to good enough accuracy for most uses. When
Google is tracking you, that is how they are doing it usually.
OSMand replaces google maps very nicely, and works perfectly fine completely off line (by GPS). It also doesn't have to allow
google to update its maps every 30 days to keep it working, download maps for anywhere in the world and just use them.
Lineage OS is a replacement for Android OS. I've had it in 2 phones so far, quite content with it. Open source, so lots of
eyes on it to make sure this sort of shit isn't happening. You can minimize or completely eliminate the google presence, your
choice.
Whether some deep-down shit is tracking me, I have no idea. I assume it is, and act accordingly.
Love to try lineage but I'm on Verizon and their phones since the note 5 are locked down good. Rooting, jailbreaking, or what
ever you call it is the way to go if your concerned about privacy.
Even taking the battery out doesn't work anymore... they've built in transistors that will
hold enough juice to keep the tracking capabilities enabled for several hours after the
battery is removed.
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Google is actually tracking you even when you switch your device settings to Location
History "off" .
As journalist Mark Ames comments in response
to a new Associated Press story exposing Google's ability to track people at all times even when they explicitly tell Google
not to via iPhone and Android settings, "The Pentagon invented the internet to be the perfect global surveillance/counterinsurgency
machine. Surveillance is baked into the internet's DNA."
In but the latest in a continuing saga of big tech tracking and surveillance stories which should serve to convince us all we
are living in the beginning phases of a Minority Report style tracking and pansophical "pre-crime" system, it's now confirmed
that the world's most powerful tech company and search tool will always find a way to keep your location data .
The Associated Press sought the help of Princeton researchers to prove that while Google is clear and upfront about giving App
users the ability to turn off or "pause" Location History on their devices, there are other hidden means through which it retains
the data .
Google says that will prevent the company from remembering where you've been. Google's
support page on the subject states: "You
can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."
For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on
Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are .
And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like "chocolate chip cookies," or "kids science kits," pinpoint your
precise latitude and longitude -- accurate to the square foot -- and save it to your Google account .
The issue directly affects around two billion people using Google's Android operating software and iPhone users relying on Google
maps or a simple search.
Among the computer science researchers at Princeton conducting the tests is Jonathan Mayer, who
told the AP , "If you're going to allow users to turn off something called 'Location History,' then all the places where you
maintain location history should be turned off," and added, "That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have."
Google, for its part, is defending the software and privacy tracking settings , saying the company has been perfectly clear and
has not violated privacy ethics.
"There are a number of different ways that Google may use location to improve people's experience, including: Location History,
Web and App Activity, and through device-level Location Services," a Google statement to the AP reads. "We provide clear descriptions
of these tools, and robust controls so people can turn them on or off, and delete their histories at any time."
According to the AP, there is a way to prevent Google from storing the various location marker and metadata collection possibilities,
but it's somewhat hidden and painstaking.
Google's own description on how to do this as a result of the AP inquiry
is as follows :
To stop Google from saving these location markers, the company says, users can turn off another setting, one that does not
specifically reference location information. Called "Web and App Activity" and enabled by default, that setting stores a variety
of information from Google apps and websites to your Google account.
When paused, it will prevent activity on any device from being saved to your account. But leaving "Web & App Activity" on and
turning "Location History" off only prevents Google from adding your movements to the "timeline," its visualization of your daily
travels. It does not stop Google's collection of other location markers.
You can delete these location markers by hand, but it's a painstaking process since you have to select them individually ,
unless you want to delete all of your stored activity.
Of course, the more constant location data obviously means more advertising profits and further revenue possibilities for Google
and its clients, so we fully expect future hidden tracking loopholes to possibly come to light.
Beginning in 2014, Google has utilized user location histories to allow advertisers to track the effectiveness of online ads at
driving foot traffic . With the continued
possibility of real-time tracking to generate billions of dollars, it should come as no surprise that Google would seek to make it
as difficult (or perhaps impossible?) as it can for users to ensure they aren't tracked.
I was surprised by the reactions (good and bad) to the column. Some readers were sarcastic.
Not having access to Google, Facebook or Twitter? "Lucky them!" wrote one Facebook user. "They
have not missed anything important!" said another.
... ... ...
In other news this week:
Li Yuan is the Asia tech columnist for The Times. She previously reported on China
technology for The Wall Street Journal. You can follow her on Twitter here:
@LiYuan6.
Zone 23 was one of the best novels I've ever read. I'm a big reader, and Zone 23 stands out
as one of the better fiction books in my lifetime. It is sort of a cross between 1984,
Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World, but with better, much funnier, dialogue. It also
introduces the corporate-state-hybrid as a menacing enemy.
"... please recall Bill Clinton's rules of engagement as applied to the Serbs in 1999, wherein he decided that the political leaders, bureaucratic support structure, media infrastructure and intellectual underpinnings of his enemies' war effort were legitimate targets of war. ..."
After observing Skynet's coordinated attack on Alex Jone's Infowars yesterday, we can hardly
wait to implement Bill Clinton's Rules of Engagement on the already identified Enemies
of the People, and eagerly await the God-Emperor's word.
Second, please recall Bill Clinton's rules of engagement as applied to the Serbs in
1999, wherein he decided that the political leaders, bureaucratic support structure, media
infrastructure and intellectual underpinnings of his enemies' war effort were legitimate
targets of war.
No one else may have been paying attention to the unintended consequences of that, but
many folks on our side of the present divide were. Food for thought. A reminder about the shape of the battlefield (legal and otherwise) and Bill Clinton's
Rules of Engagement.
The Ministries of Love , Peace , Plenty , and Truth are
ministries in George Orwell 's futuristic
dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four , set in
Oceania . [1]
Despite the name, no actual "ministers" are mentioned in the book, and all public attention is
focused on the idealized figurehead Big Brother .
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the
Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These
contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy: they are
deliberate exercises in doublethink .
The Ministry of Love ( Newspeak : Miniluv ) serves as Oceania's
interior ministry
. It enforces loyalty to Big Brother through
fear, buttressed through a massive apparatus of security and repression, as well as systematic
brainwashing . The
Ministry of Love building has no windows and is surrounded by barbed wire entanglements, steel
doors, hidden machine-gun nests , and guards armed with
"jointed truncheons ". Referred to as "the
place where there is no darkness", its interior lights are never turned off. It is arguably the
most powerful ministry, controlling the will of the population. The Thought Police are a part of Miniluv.
The Ministry of Love, like the other ministries, is misnamed, since it is largely
responsible for the practice and infliction of misery, fear, suffering and torture . In a sense, however, the name is
apt, since its ultimate purpose is to instill love of Big Brother -- the only form of
love permitted in Oceania -- in the minds of thoughtcriminals as part of the process of
reverting them to orthodox thought. This is typical of the language of Newspeak , in which words and names frequently
contain both an idea and its opposite; the orthodox party member is nonetheless able to resolve
these contradictions through the disciplined use of doublethink .
Room 101 , introduced in the climax of the novel, is the basement torture chamber in the Ministry of
Love, in which the Party attempts to subject a prisoner to his or her own worst nightmare , fear or phobia , with the object of breaking
down their resistance.
You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already.
Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.
Such is the purported omniscience of the state in the society of Nineteen
Eighty-Four that even a citizen's nightmares are known to the Party. The nightmare, and
therefore the threatened punishment, of the protagonist Winston Smith is to be attacked by rats . This is manifested in Room 101 by
confronting Smith with a wire cage that contains two large rats. The front of the cage is
shaped so that it can fit over a person's face. A trap-door is then opened, allowing the rats
to devour the victim's face. This cage is fitted over Smith's face, but he saves himself by
begging the authorities to let his lover, Julia , suffer this torture instead of him.
The threatened torture, and what Winston does to escape it, breaks his last promise to himself
and to Julia: never to betray her. The book suggests that Julia is likewise subjected to her
own worst fear (although it is not revealed what that fear is), and when she and Winston later
meet in a park, he notices a scar on her forehead. The intent of threatening Winston with the
rats was to force him into betraying the only person he loved and therefore to break his
spirit.
Orwell named Room 101 after a conference room at Broadcasting House where he used to sit
through tedious meetings. [2]
When the original room 101 at the BBC was due to be demolished, a plaster cast of it was made
by artist Rachel
Whiteread and displayed in the cast courts of the
Victoria and
Albert Museum from November 2003 until June 2004. [3][4]
The Ministry of Peace ( Newspeak : Minipax ) serves as the war
ministry of Oceania's government, and is in charge of the armed forces , mostly the navy and army . The Ministry of Peace may be the most vital
organ of Oceania, seeing as the nation is supposedly at an ongoing genocidal war with either
Eurasia or Eastasia and requires the right amount of force not to win the war, but keep it in a
state of equilibrium.
As explained in Emmanuel Goldstein 's book,
The Theory
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism , the Ministry of Peace revolves around the
principle of perpetual
war . Perpetual war uses up all surplus resources, keeping most citizens in lives of
constant hardship – and thus preventing them from learning enough to comprehend the true
nature of their society. Perpetual warfare also "helps preserve the special mental atmosphere
that a hierarchical society needs." Since that means the balance of the country rests in the
war, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of fighting the war (mostly centered around Africa and
India), but making sure to never tip the scales, in case the war should become one-sided.
Oceanic telescreens
usually broadcast news reports about how Oceania is continually winning every battle it fights,
though these reports have little to no credibility.
As with all the other Nineteen Eighty-Four ministries, the Ministry of Peace is named
the exact opposite of what it does, since the Ministry of Peace is in charge of maintaining a
state of war. The meaning of peace has been equated with the meaning of war in
the slogan of the party, "War is Peace". Like the names of other ministries, it also has a
literal application. Perpetual war is what keeps the "peace" (the status quo) in Oceania and
the balance of power in the world.
The Ministry of Plenty ( Newspeak : Miniplenty ) is in control of
Oceania's planned
economy . It oversees rationing of food , supplies , and goods . As told in Goldstein's book, the
economy of Oceania is very important, and it's necessary to have the public continually create
useless and synthetic supplies or weapons for use in the war, while they have no access to the
means of
production . This is the central theme of Oceania's idea that a poor, ignorant populace is
easier to rule over than a wealthy, well-informed one. Telescreens often make reports on how Big Brother has been able
to increase economic production, even when production has actually gone down (see §
Ministry of Truth ).
The Ministry hands out statistics which are "nonsense". When Winston is adjusting some
Ministry of Plenty's figures, he explains this:
But actually, he thought as he readjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not
even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of
the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world,
not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as
much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of time
you were expected to make them up out of your head.
Like the other ministries, the Ministry of Plenty seems to be entirely misnamed, since it
is, in fact, responsible for maintaining a state of perpetual poverty , scarcity and financial shortages.
However, the name is also apt, because, along with the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of
Plenty's other purpose is to convince the populace that they are living in a state of perpetual
prosperity. Orwell made a similar reference to the Ministry of Plenty in his allegorical work
Animal Farm
when, in the midst of a blight upon the farm, Napoleon the pig orders the silo to
be filled with sand, then to place a thin sprinkling of grain on top, which fools human
visitors into being dazzled about Napoleon's boasting of the farm's superior economy.
A department of the Ministry of Plenty is charged with organizing state lotteries . These are very popular among the
proles, who buy tickets and hope to win the big prizes – a completely vain hope as the
big prizes are in fact not awarded at all, the Ministry of Truth participating in the scam and
publishing every week the names of non-existent big winners.
The Ministry of Truth ( Newspeak : Minitrue ) is the ministry of propaganda
. As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer
because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of
historical events.
As well as administering truth, the ministry spreads a new language amongst the populace
called Newspeak , in
which, for example, "truth" is understood to mean statements like 2 + 2 = 5 when the situation warrants. In keeping
with the concept of doublethink, the ministry is thus aptly named in that it
creates/manufactures "truth" in the Newspeak sense of the word. The book describes the
doctoring of historical records to show a government-approved version of
events.
Winston Smith ,
the main character of Nineteen Eighty-Four , works at
the Ministry of Truth. [5] It
is an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete rising 300 metres (980 ft) into
the air, containing over 3000 rooms above ground. On the outside wall are the three slogans of
the Party: "WAR IS PEACE," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH." There is also a large
part underground, probably containing huge incinerators where documents are destroyed after
they are put down memory
holes . For his description, Orwell was inspired by the Senate House at the University of London .
[6]
The Ministry of Truth is involved with news media, entertainment, the fine arts and
educational books. Its purpose is to rewrite history to change the facts to fit Party doctrine
for propaganda effect.
For example, if Big
Brother makes a prediction that turns out to be wrong, the employees of the Ministry of
Truth correct the record to make it accurate. This is the "how" of the Ministry of Truth's
existence. Within the novel, Orwell elaborates that the deeper reason for its existence, the
"why", is to maintain the illusion that the Party is absolute. It cannot ever seem to change
its mind (if, for instance, they perform one of their constant changes regarding enemies during
war) or make a mistake (firing an official or making a grossly misjudged supply prediction),
for that would imply weakness and to maintain power the Party must seem eternally right and
strong.
Minitrue plays a role as the news media by changing history, and changing the words in
articles about events current and past, so that Big Brother and his government are always seen
in a good light and can never do any wrong. The content is more propaganda than actual
news.
The novel's popularity has resulted in the term "Room 101" being used to represent a place
where unpleasant things are done.
According to Anna
Funder 's book Stasiland , Erich Mielke , the last Minister of State
Security ( Stasi ) of
East Germany , had
the floors of the Stasi headquarters renumbered so that his second floor office would be
number 101. [7]
In the BBC comedy television series Room 101 , the concept is
radically changed from that of Orwell, and celebrities are invited to discuss their pet hates
and persuade the host to consign them to oblivion, as metaphorically represented by the idea
of Room 101. [ citation needed
]
In the 2005
series of Big
Brother (UK) , a housemate was required to enter a Room 101 to complete tedious and
unpleasant tasks, including sorting different colours of maggots . [ citation needed
]
In The
Ricky Gervais Show , Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant play a game called "Room
102", based on the concept of "Room 101", in which Karl Pilkington has to decide what things
he dislikes enough to put in Room 102. This would result, according to their game, in these
things being erased from existence. [ citation needed ]
The name "Ministry of Peace", and shorthand "Minipax", appear in the US science fiction TV
series Babylon 5 .
The Ministry of Peace first appears in the episode " In the Shadow of Z'ha'dum ". It
is a sinister organisation, created to instill loyalty to the government of Earth and root out
dissent; one of its senior staff is a "Mr Welles". In its role it more closely resembles the
novel's §
Ministry of Love (which is responsible for the Thought Police and the interrogation of
dissidents) than it does the Ministry of Peace depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four . [
citation
needed ]
In the 2011 Doctor
Who episode " The God Complex ", The Doctor and his companions find
themselves in a hotel full of their own personal Room 101s, each with their greatest fear in
it. [8]
Jump up
^ Stansky, Peter (1994). London's Burning . Stanford: Stanford
University Press. pp. 85–86. ISBN0-8047-2340-0
.
Tames, Richard (2006). London . Oxford Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press. p.
126. ISBN0-19-530953-7
.
Humphreys, Rob (2003). The Rough Guide to London . Rough Guides Limited. p. 146.
ISBN1-84353-093-7
. "Orwell Today,
Ministry of Truth" . Retrieved 2008-08-27 .
