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.
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 .
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.
I think that scarno may have a point. Take a look at the image at the beginning of the
article of Gabbard and then compare it with the one of one of her opponents – Shay Chan
Hodges. That is a tell right there. Gabbard has her faults but the willingness to go to Syria
and see for herself what the actual situation itself was not one of them.
I note too that that OPCW report on the chemical attack was used against Gabbard in this
article. I remember that "attack" which got discredited six ways to Sunday. That was the one
where Jihadists in flip-flops were standing in a crater full of "toxic" chemical weapon
residue taking samples for the OPCW. And the OPCW believed their chain of custody claims.
The Intercept may be a serious publication but I note that it was a newly-minted journalist (
https://theintercept.com/staff/aidachavez/ )
that wrote this story and you certainly wouldn't trust the Intercept to protect you if you
came to them with a hot story – as Reality Winner found out to her cost.
The Intercept is a venue that prints what dot-com scam-billionaire Omidyar asks of
it, or without such instructions, what it's editors' positions happen to be. I think some of
their pieces are well-reasoned and others quite specious, and often enough they are willing
to print what I think is propaganda. Like you, I try to take arguments and evidence as they
come, adjust my analytical framework when necessary, and seek out truth. The process isn't so
different with WaPo or NYT then it is with the Intercept, is it?
The article I linked discusses a primary challenge to Congresswoman Gabbard, who has been
endorsed by Our Revolution, PP; who resigned her vicechair of DNC in 2015 in protest of what
she saw as the sidelining of left interests in the presidential race. Hardly someone who is
likely to face a primary challenge from the left. The article admits, in fact, that she has
no serious primary challengers, yet the article highlights the her un-serious "progressive"
challenger, who is upset that Tulsi has the temerity to oppose US intervention in Syria and
elsewhere. It's typical blob logic: if you oppose murderous war in wherever, you despise
human rights.
Read it. It's a hit piece. And why is it published at all? Omidyar is Hawaii's richest
resident. But perhaps that has nothing to do with it.
It's a well written piece, containing what appear to be accurate assessments of the 2
candidates' stances on a few issues. The author pointed out early on that the opponent is
native Hawaiian, and that Gabbard is not.
It drips with implications about Gabbard's foreign policy views; the only coverage of her
representation of her district is in a quote from her opponent, who claims she spoke to
constituents and "found" they couldn't point to anything Gabbard had done for them. Gabbard's
whiteness was used very skillfully against her, along with a few dog whistles about her
military background and anti-jihadist views.
It was a skillful, Identitarian hit piece. The haute doyens of left coast "leftist"
propriety do not like Gabbard.
"Outside of cultivating her image as an anti-interventionist, however, Gabbard has urged a
continuation of the so-called war on terror. She's also won the approval of some
conservatives and members of the far right. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon
reportedly arranged her November 2016 meeting with President Donald Trump, and former Ku Klux
Klan grand wizard David Duke has praised some of her foreign policy positions."
The first sentence is a sensible criticism. The rest is innuendo, guilt by association. Is
that serious?
Zuckerberg states that Facebook will have a huge "counterterrorism" team. Any counterterrorism
team doubles as anti-dissidents team.
Notable quotes:
"... The team is comprised of 200 people, who he said are just focused on counterterrorism. Zuckerberg said content reviewers also go over flagged information. ..."
"... "I think we have capacity in 30 languages that we are working on and in addition to that, we have a number of AI tools that we are developing like the one's that I mentioned that can proactively go flag the content," he said in response to a question from Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana. ..."
Actually there were a couple of moments in this dog and pony show where truth surfaced
;-)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers today that his company has a counterterrorism
team.
The team is comprised of 200 people, who he said are just focused on counterterrorism.
Zuckerberg said content reviewers also go over flagged information.
"I think we have capacity in 30 languages that we are working on and in addition to that,
we have a number of AI tools that we are developing like the one's that I mentioned that can
proactively go flag the content," he said in response to a question from Rep. Susan Brooks of
Indiana.
She asked Zuckerberg how the team stops terrorist groups from recruiting and
communicating.
He said the team first identifies those groups' patterns of communicating. They then
design systems that proactively flag the messaging, so those accounts could be removed.
The company outlined its counterterrorism approach in 2017 in a
blog post , where it
said that the team included "academic experts on counterterrorism, former prosecutors, former
law enforcement agents and analysts, and engineers."
To a certain extent Facebook success is the success of narcissism and herd mentality. There is not much of value in Facebook and
the level programming at least several years ago was really primitive (although implementation was not -- due to giant scale they faced
all king of complex problems)
In a way people who use Facebook for email are idiots. People who post all kind of personal information on their Facebook pages
are sick (ersatz collectivism at one time popular among adolescents).
Who help Zuckerberg to grow the company to this level is a very interesting question indeed. If definitely is a part of Prism like
Google, Yahoo and Hotmail?
His testimony before the Congress raises certain questions.
Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress - watch live is
very educational listering to any Facebook user. It is essentially intelligence company masking as a social site with advertizing as
the core business model.
I wrote just
one post last week and it centered around the dangers posed to society by U.S. tech giants . I specifically called out Facebook,
pointing out how company executives are currently groveling to politicians in order to prevent legislation that might deem it a monopoly
and curtail its power.
I explained how U.S. politicians prefer to use the power and reach of tech giants for their own ends rather than take them down
a notch. Politicians aren't at all concerned about the outsized influence of centralized tech behemoths engineering society using
secret algorithms, they just want to be in control of how this power is abused.
Meanwhile, today's biggest news is the uniform move by three U.S. tech giants to de-platform Alex Jones and his Infowars website.
The main companies involved are Apple, Facebook and Google (via YouTube), as reported in
The Guardian
:
All but one of the major content platforms have banned the American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as the companies raced
to act in the wake of Apple's decision to remove five podcasts by Jones and his Infowars website.
Facebook unpublished four pages run by Jones for "repeated violations of community standards", the company said on Monday.
YouTube terminated Jones's account over him repeatedly appearing in videos despite being subject to a 90-day ban from the website,
and Spotify removed the entirety of one of Jones's podcasts for "hate content"
Facebook's and YouTube's enforcement action against Jones came hours after
Apple removed Jones from its podcast directory. The
timing of Facebook's announcement was unusual, with the company confirming the ban at 3am local time.
Put aside what you think of Alex Jones for a moment. If they can do this to him and not fear the repercussions, they can do it
to anybody. This is about power, and these platforms together account for a massive share of content distribution in the U.S. Ultimately,
this is just a particularly muscular and in your face example of what's known as
Silicon
Valley's cultural imperialism .
I know a lot of people think the answer is to get Congress to do something, as if those monumentally corrupt donor puppets have
any interest in helping the public.
... ... ...
I'd also like to point out that Facebook's stock was up over 4% today, completely shrugging off any potential backlash from users.
Executives assume its users are all addled junkies unwilling to give up convenience and their addiction no matter what the company
does. Are they right?
Speaking of which, on the same day the move against Jones was announced we learn Facebook is in talks with mega banks to get your
financial information.
The social media giant has asked large U.S. banks to share detailed financial information about their customers, including
card transactions and checking account balances, as part of an effort to offer new services to users.
Facebook increasingly wants to be a platform where people buy and sell goods and services, besides connecting with friends.
The company over the past year asked JPMorgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and U.S. Bancorp to discuss potential
offerings it could host for bank customers on Facebook Messenger, said people familiar with the matter.
Facebook executives don't actually care about anything besides their profits and power, so the only way you can take any individual
action against the company is to delete your account. I haven't engaged with Facebook since 2012, so permanently deleting it wasn't
a personal sacrifice, but I did it anyway earlier today.
... ... ...
Don't wait for other people to change things for you, stop whining and take some individual responsibility. If you agree that
Facebook's primarily a nefarious narcissism-factory wasteland masquerading as a platform just delete it... before it deletes you.
* * *
If you liked this article and enjoy my work, consider becoming a monthly
Patron , or visit the
Support Page to show your appreciation for
independent content creators.
TASS reported that August 1 was the
five year anniversary of Edward Snowden's being granted temporary asylum in the Russian
Federation. This happened after his release of an enormous trove of information showing
clandestine and illegal practices being carried out by the US intelligence agencies to gather
information on just about anyone in the world, for any – or no – reason at
all.
Edward Snowden, 35, is a computer security expert. In 2005-2008, he worked at the
University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language sponsored by the National
Security Agency (NSA) and at the global communications division at CIA headquarters in
Langley, Virginia. In 2007, Snowden was stationed with diplomatic cover at the US mission to
the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2009, he resigned from the CIA to join the Dell
company that sent him to Hawaii to work for the NSA's information-sharing office. He was
particularly employed with the Booz Allen Hamilton consulting firm.
In June 2013, Snowden leaked classified information to journalists Glenn Greenwald and
Laura Poitras, which revealed global surveillance programs run by US and British intelligence
agencies. He explained the move by saying that he wanted to tell the world the truth because
he believed such large-scale surveillance on innocent citizens was unacceptable and the
public needed to know about it.
The Guardian and The Washington Post published the first documents concerning the US
intelligence agencies' spying on Internet users on June 6, 2013. According to the documents,
major phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T and Sprint Nextel, handed records of their
customers' phone conversations over to the NSA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
who also had direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Skype,
YouTube, Paltalk, AOL and Apple. In addition, Snowden's revelations showed that a secret
program named PRISM was aimed at collecting audio and video recordings, photos, emails and
information about users' connections to various websites.
The next portion of revelations , which was published by the leading newspapers such as
The Guardian, Brazil's O Globo, Italy's L'Espresso, Germany's Der Spiegel and Suddeutsche
Zeitung, concerned the US spying on politicians. In particular, it became known that the NSA
and Great Britain's Government Communications Headquarters intercepted the phone calls that
foreign politicians and officials made during the G20 summit in London in 2009. British
intelligence agencies particularly tried to intercept then Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev's phone calls. US intelligence monitored the phone calls of 35 world leaders,
including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
According to the disclosed information, the NSA regularly gathered intelligence at the New
York and Washington offices of the European Union's mission. The agency also achieved access
to the United Nations' internal video conferences and considers the Vienna headquarters of
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as one of its major targets for spying.
The leaks also uncovered details about the Blarney and Rampart-T secret surveillance
programs. Blarney, which started in 1978, is used to collect information related to
counter-terrorism, foreign diplomats and governments, as well as economic and military
targets. Rampart-T has been used since 1991 to spy on foreign leaders. The program is focused
on 20 countries, including Russia and China.
Snowden also let the world know that Germany's Federal Intelligence Service and Federal
Office for the Protection of the Constitution used the NSA's XKeyScore secret computer system
to spy on Internet users, monitoring their web activities. In addition, the NSA and Great
Britain's Government Communications Headquarters developed methods that allowed them to hack
almost all the encryption systems currently used on the Internet. Besides, the leaked
documents said that the NSA had secretly installed special software on about 100,000
computers around the globe that provided access to them and made cyber attacks easier. In
particular, the NSA used a secret technology that made it possible to hack computers not
connected to the Internet.
Portions of the information Snowden handed over to Greenwald and Poitras continue to be
published on The Intercept website .
According to edwardsnowden.com – a website commissioned by the Courage foundation
(dedicated to building support for Snowden), a total of 2,176 documents from the archive have
been published so far.
The NSA and the Pentagon claim that Snowden stole about 1.7 mln classified documents
concerning the activities of US intelligence services and US military operations. He is
charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense
information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information
to an unauthorized person. He is facing up to ten years in prison on each charge.
As can be seen, Mr. Snowden's work is of extreme importance now in the connected Internet
age. But how is his life in Russia now?
Anatoly Kucherena, Edward Snowden's lawyer, has revealed some details of the renowned
whistleblower's life to Sputnik. According to him, Snowden has found a job, is actively
traveling around Russia and is continuing to learn the language.
Kucherena added that Snowden receives visits from his girlfriend, Lindsey Mills, and his
parents. When asked about the whistleblower's favorite place in Russia, his lawyer said that
he likes St Petersburg "a lot."
"He is doing alright: his girlfriend visits him, he has a good job and he's continuing to
study Russian. His parents visit him occasionally. [They] have no problems with visas. At
least they have never complained about having any trouble," the lawyer said.
After Snowden released classified NSA documents, he fled first to Hong Kong, then, on June
23, 2013, arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong. The whistleblower remained in the transit zone of
Sheremetyevo Airport until he was granted temporary asylum in Russia, which was later
prolonged to 2020.
"The Facebook intervention is a qualitative escalation of the McCarthyite offensive."
Facebook has assumed additional political police powers, disrupting a planned counter-demonstration against white
supremacists, set for August 12th in Washington, on the grounds that it was initiated and inspired by "Russians" as part of
a Kremlin campaign to "sow dissention" in the US. The Facebook intervention is a qualitative escalation of the McCarthyite
offensive launched by the Democrat Party and elements of the national security state, and backed by most of the corporate
media, initially to blame Hillary Clinton's 2016 defeat on "collusion" between Wikileaks, "the Russians" and the Trump
campaign to steal and publicize embarrassing Clinton campaign emails.
After failing to produce one shred of hard evidence to support their conspiracy theory, the anti-Russia hysteria mongers
switched gears, focusing on the alleged purchase of about $100,000 in Facebook ads by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a
St. Petersburg-based Russian company, over a multi-year period. The problem was, most of the ads had no direct connection
to the presidential contest, or were posted after the election was over, and many had no political content, at all. The
messages were all over the place, politically, with the alleged Russian operatives posing as Christian activists, pro- and
anti-immigration activists, and supporters of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Special prosecutor Robert Mueller was forced
to flip the script,
indicting 13 Russians
for promoting general "discord" and undermining "public confidence in democracy" in the United
States – thus creating a political crime that has not previously been codified in the United States.
"Mueller was forced to flip the script."
In doubling down on an unraveling conspiracy tale, the Mueller probe empowered itself to tar and feather all controversial
speech that can be associated with utterances by "Russians," even if the alleged "Russians" are, in fact, mimicking the
normal speech of left- or right-wing Americans -- a descent, not into Orwell's world, but that of Kafka (Beyond the Law)
and Heller (Catch-22).
Facebook this week announced that it had taken down 32 pages and accounts that had engaged in "coordinated and inauthentic
behavior" in promoting the August 12 counter-demonstration against the same white supremacists that staged the fatal "Unite
the Right" demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago. Hundreds of anti-racists had indicated their intention
to rally against "Unite the Right 2.0" under the banner of Shut It Down DC, which includes D.C. Antifascist Collective,
Black Lives Matter D.C., Hoods4Justice, Resist This, and other local groups.
Facebook did not contend that these anti-racists' behavior was "inauthentic," but that the first ad for the event was
purchased by a group calling itself "Resisters" that Facebook believes were behaving much like the Internet Research
Agency. "At this point in our investigation, we do not have enough technical evidence to state definitively who is behind
it," said Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's
head of cybersecurity policy
. "But we can say that these accounts engaged in some similar activity and have connected
with known I.R.A accounts."
"The Mueller probe empowered itself to tar and feather all controversial speech that can be associated with
utterances by 'Russians,' even if the alleged 'Russians' are, in fact, mimicking the normal speech of left- or right-wing
Americans."
Chelsea Manning, whose prison sentence for sending secret documents to Wikileaks was commuted by President Obama, said the
counter-protest was "organic and authentic"and that activists had begun organizing several months ago. "Folks from D.C. and
Charlottesville have been talking about this since at least February,"
Manning told
The New York Times.
"This was a legitimate Facebook event that was being organized by Washington, DC locals," says
Dylan
Petrohilos
, of Resist This. Petrohilos was one of the defendants in the Trump inauguration "riot" prosecutions. He
protested Facebook's disruption of legitimate free speech and assembly. "DC organizers had controlled the messaging on the
no UTR fb page and now FB made it harder for grassroots people to organize," he tweeted. The organizers insist the August
12 counter-demonstration -- "No Unite the Right 2 – DC" -- is still a go, as is the white supremacist rally.
Whoever was first to buy a Facebook ad – the suspected Russian "Resisters," or Workers Against Racism, who told the Daily
Beast they decided to host their own anti-"Unite the Right 2.0" event because they thought "Resisters" was an
"inexperienced liberal organizer" – there was no doubt whatsoever that the white supremacists would be confronted by much
larger numbers of counter-demonstrators, in Washington. Nobody in Russia needed to tell US anti-racists to shut the white
supremacists down, or vice versa. The Russians didn't invent American white supremacy, or the native opposition to it. Even
if Mueller, Facebook, the Democratic Party and the howling corporate media mob are to be believed, the "Russians" are
simply mimicking US political rhetoric and sloganeering – and weakly, at that. The Workers Against Racism thought the
"Resisters" weren't worth partnering with, but that the racist rally must be countered. The Shut It Down DC coalition
didn't need the "Resisters" to crystallize their thinking on white supremacism.
"Chelsea Manning said the counter-protest was 'organic and authentic."
The Democratic Party and corporate media, speaking for most of the US ruling class – and actually bullying one of its top
oligarchs, Mark Zuckerberg – is on its own bizarre and twisted road to fascism. (Donald Trump's proto-fascism is the old
fashioned, all-American type that the white supremacists want to celebrate on August 12.) With former FBI Director Robert
Mueller at the head of the pack, they have created a pseudo legal doctrine whereby "Russians" (or US spooks pretending to
be Russians) can be indicted for launching a #MeToo campaign of mimicry, echoing the rhetoric and memes indigenous to US
political struggles, while the genuine, "authentic" American political voices – the people who are being mimicked – are
labeled co-conspirators in a foreign-based "plot," and their rights to speech and assembly are trashed.
That's truly crazy, but devilishly clever, too. If "Russian" mimics (or cloaked spooks) can reproduce the vocabulary and
political program of US dissent, then all of us actual US lefties can be dismissed as "dupes of the Russians" or
"co-conspirators" in the speech crimes of our mimics -- for sounding like ourselves.
"... Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy ..."
"... The War and Peace Report ..."
"... Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy ..."
"... Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy ..."
"... If you want to organize a protest out of the eyes of the government, the worst thing you can do is use Facebook or Twitter in that effort, right? ..."
"... Look, any police department, any state security service anywhere in the world that doesn't infiltrate protest groups or, you know, activist groups that way is foolish, right? It's so easy. Facebook makes surveillance so easy. ..."
"... It's great for motivating people to get into the street, but don't be surprised if there are a couple guys with crew cuts in the crowd with you. ..."
...We speak with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of "Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects
Us and Undermines Democracy." He is a professor of media studies and director of the Center for
Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia.
AMY GOODMAN : Facebook has been at the
center of a number of controversies in the United States and abroad. Earlier this year,
Facebook removed more than 270 accounts it determined to be created by the Russia-controlled
Internet Research Agency. Facebook made that move in early April, just days before founder and
CEO Mark Zuckeberg was question on Capitol Hill about how the voter-profiling company Cambridge
Analytica harvested data from more than 87 million Facebook users without their permission in
efforts to sway voters to support President Donald Trump. Zuckerberg repeatedly apologized for
his company's actions then.
MARK ZUCKERBERG : We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a
big mistake. And it was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm
responsible for what happens here.
AMY GOODMAN : Today we spend the hour with a leading critic of Facebook, Siva Vaidhyanathan,
author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy .
He's professor of media studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the
University of Virginia. We're speaking to him in Charlottesville.
Professor, welcome to Democracy Now!
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Oh, thanks. It's good to be here.
AMY GOODMAN : Well, let's begin with this latest news. There are hearings today that the
Senate Intelligence Committee is holding, and yesterday Facebook removed these -- well, a bunch
of pages, saying they don't know if it's Russian trolls, but they think they are inauthentic.
Talk about these pages, what they mean, what research is being done and your concerns.
... ... ...
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Yeah. Look, Cambridge Analytica was a great story, right? It finally
brought to public attention the fact that for more than five years Facebook had encouraged
application developers to get maximal access to Facebook data, to personal data and activity,
not just from the people who volunteered to be watched by these app developers, but all of
their friends -- right? -- which nobody really understood except Facebook itself and the
application developers. So, thousands of application developers got almost full access to
millions of Facebook users for five years. This was basic Facebook policy. This line was lost
in the storm over Cambridge Analytica.
...You know, Steve Bannon helped run the company for a while. It's paid for by Robert
Mercer, you know, one of the more evil hedge fund managers in the United States. You know, it
had worked for Cruz, for Ted Cruz's campaign, and then for the Brexit campaign and also for
Donald Trump's campaign in 2016. So it's really easy to look at Cambridge Analytica and think
of it as this dramatic story, this one-off. But the fact is, Cambridge Analytica is kind of a
joke. It didn't actually accomplish anything. It pushed this weird psychometric model for voter
behavior prediction, which no one believes works.
And the fact is, the Trump campaign, the Ted Cruz campaign, and, before that, the Duterte
campaign in the Philippines, the Modi campaign in India, they all used Facebook itself to
target voters, either to persuade them to vote or dissuade them from voting. Right? This was
the basic campaign, because the Facebook advertising platform allows you to target people quite
precisely, in groups as small as 20. You can base it on ethnicity and on gender, on interest,
on education level, on ZIP code or other location markers. You can base it on people who are
interested in certain hobbies, who read certain kinds of books, who have certain professional
backgrounds. You can slice and dice an audience so precisely. It's the reason that Facebook
makes as much money as it does, because if you're selling shoes, you would be a fool not to buy
an ad on Facebook, right? And that's drawing all of this money away from commercially based
media and journalism. At the same time, it's enriching Facebook. But political actors have
figured out how to use this quite deftly.
AMY GOODMAN : "Every Breath You Take" by The
Police. This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report .
We're spending the hour with professor Siva Vaidhyanathan, who is author of Antisocial
Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy . He's speaking to us from
Charlottesville, from the University of Virginia, professor of media studies and head of the
Center for Media and Citizenship at UVA . Your book, Antisocial Media: How Facebook
Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy .
I want to go back to the beginning of this interview, where we talked about Facebook taking
down more than 30 pages, saying that they are not authentic. We immediately got responses from
all over saying the protest against the Unite the Right rally in Washington, D.C., in August,
around the anniversary of the attacks at your university, University of Virginia, are real.
These protests against Unite the Right are real. So, this goes to a very important issue,
Professor, that you now have Facebook, this corporation, deciding what we see and what we don't
see. It's almost as if they run the telephone company and they're listening to what we say and
deciding what to edit, even if some of the stuff is absolutely heinous that people are talking
to each other about -- the idea of this multinational corporation becoming the publisher and
seen as that and determining what gets out. So, yes, there's a protest against Unite the Right.
That is very real. They've taken down one page, that might not have been real, organizing the
protest against Unite the Right. And the Unite the Right rally is supposed to be happening.
What, for example, would happen if there was a protest against Facebook, Siva?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Yeah, you can't use Facebook to protest against Facebook, by the way.
You can't even use Facebook to advertise a book about Facebook, for actually one --
AMY GOODMAN : What do you mean?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Well, they will not allow a group or a page or an advertisement to
contain the word "Facebook." And it's not just to insulate themselves from criticism. That is a
nice bonus for them. But it's really because they don't want any sort of implication that the
company itself is endorsing any group or page or product. So, the use of the word -- look, the
only way Facebook operates is algorithmically, right? It has machines make very blunt
decisions. So the very presence of the word "Facebook" will knock a group down or knock a page
down. And so you can't use Facebook to criticize Facebook, not very effectively.
AMY GOODMAN : So what about your book, which has the word "Facebook" in it?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Right. I can't -- I can't buy ads on Facebook about it. But that's OK.
I think I'll do OK.
... ... ...
But in addition, Facebook has the ability to get hijacked, because what it promotes mostly
are items that generate strong emotions. What generates strong emotions? Well, content that is
cute or lovely, like puppies and baby goats, but also content that is extreme, content that is
angry, content that is hateful, content that feeds conspiracy theories. And this hateful, angry
conspiracy theory collection doesn't just spread because people like it. In fact, it, more
often than not, spreads because people have problems with it. If I were to post some wacky
conspiracy theory on my Facebook page today, nine out of 10 of the comments that would follow
it would be friends of mine arguing against me, telling me how stupid I was for posting this.
The very act of commenting on that post amplifies its reach, puts it on more people's news
feeds, makes it last longer, sit higher. Right? So the very act of arguing against the crazy
amplifies the crazy. It's one of the reasons that Facebook is a terrible place to deliberate
about the world. It's a really effective place if you want to motivate people toward all sorts
of ends, like getting out to a rally. But it's terrible if you actually want to think and
discuss and deliberate about the problems in the world. And what the world needs now more than
anything are more opportunities to deliberate calmly and effectively and with real information.
And Facebook is working completely against that goal.
by around 2002, Google figured out how to target ads quite effectively based on the search
terms that you had used. By about 2007, Facebook was starting to build ads into its platform,
as well. And because it had so much more rich information on our interests and our connections
and our habits, and even, once we put Facebook on our mobile phones, our location -- it could
trace us to whatever store we went into, whatever church or synagogue or mosque we went into;
it could know everything about us -- at that point, targeting ads became incredibly efficient
and effective. That's what drove the massive revenues for both Facebook and Google. That's why
Facebook and Google have all the advertising money these days, right? It's why the traditional
public sphere is so impoverished, why it's so hard to pay reporters a living wage these days,
because Facebook and Google is taking all that money -- are taking all that money, because they
developed something better than the display ad of a newspaper or magazine, frankly. But there
was just no holding back on that. As a result, once Facebook goes big, once Twitter emerges
around 2009, you start seeing --
... ... ...
Right now, there are 220 million Americans who regularly use Facebook. That's
pretty flat. But there are 250 million people in India who regularly use Facebook, so more than
in the United States. And that's only a quarter of the population of India. So, not only is the
future of Facebook in India, the present of Facebook is in India. So let's keep that in mind.
This is a global phenomenon. The United States matters less and less every day.
Yet the United States Congress has inordinate power over Facebook. The fact that its
headquarters is here, for one thing. The fact that the major stock markets of the world pay
strong attention to what goes on in our country, right? So we have the ability, if we cared to,
to break up Facebook. We would have to revive an older vision of antitrust, one that takes the
overall health of the body politic seriously, not just the price to consumers seriously. But we
could and should break up Facebook. We never should have -- excuse me -- allowed Facebook to
purchase WhatsApp. We should never have allowed Facebook to purchase Instagram. Those are two
of the potential competitors to Facebook. If those two companies existed separately from
Facebook and the data were not shared among the user files with Facebook, there might be a
chance that market forces could curb the excesses of Facebook. That didn't happen. We really
should sever those parts. We should also sever the virtual reality project of Facebook, which
is called Oculus Rift. Virtual reality has the potential to work its way into all sorts of
areas of life, from pilot training to surgeon training to pornography. In all of these ways --
to shopping -- right? -- to tourism. In all of these ways, we should be very concerned that
Facebook itself is likely to control all of the data about one of the more successful and
leading virtual reality companies in the world. That's a problem. Again, we should spin that
off. But we should also limit what Facebook can do with its data. We should have strong data
protection laws in this country, in Canada, in Australia, in Brazil, in India, to allow users
to know when their data is being used and misused and sold.
Those are necessary but, I'm afraid, insufficient legislative and regulatory interventions.
Ultimately, we are going to have to put Facebook in its place and in a box. We are going to
have to recognize, first of all, that Facebook brings real value to people around the world.
Right? There are not 2.2 billion fools using Facebook. There are 2.2 billion people using
Facebook because it brings something of value to their lives, often those puppy pictures or
news of a cousin's kid graduating from high school, right? Those are important things. They are
not to be dismissed. There are also places in the world where Facebook is the entire media
system, or at least the entire internet, places like sub-Saharan Africa, places like Myanmar,
places like Sri Lanka, and increasingly in India, Facebook is everything. And we can't dismiss
that, as well. And so, we are -- AMY GOODMAN : Well, I mean, the government works with
Facebook. For example, you talk about --
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN : -- Myanmar, Burma. It's more expensive to get internet on your phone if you're
trying to access a site outside of Facebook.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : That's right.
AMY GOODMAN : It's free to use Facebook services on your phone.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Right, Facebook -- use of Facebook does not count against your data cap
in Myanmar and in about 40 other countries around the world, the poorest countries in the
world. So, the poorest places in the world are becoming Facebook-dependent at a rapid rate.
This was -- Facebook put this plan forward as a philanthropic arm. And one could look at it
cynically and say, "Well, you were just trying to build Facebook customers." But the people who
run Facebook are true believers that the more people use Facebook for more hours a day, the
better humanity will be. I think we've shown otherwise. I know my book shows otherwise. And I
think we've built -- we've allowed Facebook to build this terrible monster that is taking great
advantage of the people who are most vulnerable. And it's one reason I think we should pay less
attention to what's going on.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, but, Professor Vaidhyanathan, I think also, though, the
importance of your book is that while you concentrate on Facebook, you make the point over and
over again that it's not just Facebook. I think in the conclusion to your book -- I want to
read a section where you talk about technopoly. And you say, "Between Google and Facebook we
have witnessed a global concentration of wealth and power not seen since the British and Dutch
East India Companies ruled vast territories, millions of people, and the most valuable trade
routes." And then you go on to say, "Like the East India Companies, they excuse their zeal and
umbrage around the world by appealing to the missionary spirit: they are, after all, making the
world better, right? They did all this by inviting us in, tricking us into allowing them to
make us their means to wealth and power, distilling our activities and identities into data,
and launching a major ideological movement" -- what Neil Postman, the famous NYU critic, called
technopoly. And then you go on to say, "'Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state
of mind. It consists of the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its
authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from
technology.'" You could say this about Uber, about Airbnb, about all these folks that are
saying that data and technology will save the world.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : That's right. It's a false religion. And what we really need is to
rehumanize ourselves. That is the long, hard work. So, I can propose a few regulatory
interventions, and they would make a difference, but not enough of a difference. Fundamentally,
we have to break ourselves out of this habit of techno-fundamentalism -- trying to come up with
a technological solution to make up for the damage done by the previous technology. It's a very
bad habit. It doesn't get us anywhere. If we really want to limit the damage that Facebook has
done, we have to invest our time and our money in institutions that help us think, that help us
think clearly, that can certify truth, that can host debate -- right? -- institutions like
journalism, institutions like universities, public libraries, schools, other forms of public
forums, town halls. We need to put our time and our energy into face-to-face politics, so we
can look our opponents in the eye and recognize them as humans, and perhaps achieve some sort
of rapprochement or mutual understanding and respect. Without that, we have no hope. If we're
engaging with people only through the smallest of screens, we have no ability to recognize the
humanity in each other and no ability to think clearly. We cannot think collectively. We cannot
think truthfully. We can't think. We need to build -- rebuild, if we ever had it, our ability
to think. That's ultimately the takeaway of my book. I hope we can figure out better, richer
ways to think. We're not getting rid of Facebook. We're going to be with it -- we're going to
have it for a long time. We might even learn to use it better, and we might rein it in a little
better. But, ultimately, the big job is to train ourselves to think better.
AMY GOODMAN : So, Siva, let me ask you about WeChat in China. I mean, WeChat is everything
there. It's Yelp, PayPal, Google, Instagram, Facebook, all rolled into one. You write, "With
almost a billion users, WeChat has infused itself into their lives in ways Facebook wishes it
could."
... ... ...
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : The other part of their long-term strategy is, Mark
Zuckerberg wants to get into the Chinese market. That is the one place in the world where he
can't do business effectively. He would love to take on WeChat directly. But here's the big
difference. WeChat, like every other application or software platform in the People's Republic
of China answers to the People's Republic of China. There is constant, full surveillance by the
government. WeChat cannot operate without that. Facebook seems to be willing to negotiate on
that point. If Facebook became more like WeChat, it's very likely that around the world it
would have to cut very strong agreements with governments around the world that would allow for
maybe not Chinese level of surveillance, but certainly a dangerous level of surveillance and
licensing. And so, again, we might not sweat that in the United States or in Western Europe,
where we still have some basic civil liberties -- at least most of us do -- but people in
Turkey, people in Egypt, people in India should be very worried about that trend.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about the issue, that's been much publicized, of the role of
Facebook and Twitter and other social media in protest movements, in dissident movements around
the world, whether it's in Egypt during the Tahrir Square protests or other parts of the
world?
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : I think one of the great tragedies of this story is that we were misled
into thinking that social media played a direct and motivating role in the uprisings in 2011.
In fact, almost nobody in Egypt used Twitter at the time. The handful of people who did were
cosmopolitans who lived in Cairo. And what they did, they used Twitter to inform the rest of
the world, especially journalists, what was going on in Egypt. That was an important function,
but it wasn't used to organize protests. Neither was Facebook, really, for the simple reason
that the government watches Facebook, right? The government watches Twitter. If you want to
organize a protest out of the eyes of the government, the worst thing you can do is use
Facebook or Twitter in that effort, right? In addition, when we think about the Arab
Spring, the alleged Arab Spring, we often focus on --
... ... ...
AMY GOODMAN : The Guardianreports
today, quote, "A trove of documents released by the city of Memphis late last week appear to
show that its police department has been systematically using fake social media profiles to
surveil local Black Lives Matter activists, and that it kept dossiers and detailed power point
presentations on dozens of Memphis-area activists along with lists of their known associates."
The report reveals a fake Memphis Police Department Facebook profile named "Bob Smith" was used
to join private groups and pose as an activist. We have just 30 seconds, Siva.
SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN : Yeah. Look, any police department, any state security service
anywhere in the world that doesn't infiltrate protest groups or, you know, activist groups that
way is foolish, right? It's so easy. Facebook makes surveillance so easy.
My friends who do activism, especially human rights activism, in parts of the world that are
authoritarian, the first thing they tell people is get off of Facebook. Use other services to
coordinate your activities. Right? Use analog services and technologies. Right? Facebook is the
worst possible way to stay out of the gaze of the state. It's great for motivating people
to get into the street, but don't be surprised if there are a couple guys with crew cuts in the
crowd with you.
How much does Google really know about you? We did a deep-dive into the data the company
collects to find out...
Google might just know you better than anyone.
Thanks to the data the tech giant collects in order to sell ads, Google has a wealth of
information on you -- from what you look like to where you live and where you've traveled. The
corporation may even be able to guess your favorite food.
Just how does Google know all of this? Jump to our
infographic for a quick overview of everything Google knows about you, or check out our
full guide by clicking on the icons below.
Although "Google it" has officially entered the cultural lexicon, the mega-corporation is
much more than a search engine. It's through its apps, internet-related services, acquired
companies and more that the technology company collects data on you. Below, we've broken down
the most common app, product or service Google uses to track data, as well as an overview of
the specific data collected.
From what you've searched online and the websites you've visited to who your contacts are
and what you talk about, Google knows a lot about you. The company is then able to take this
information and make informed decisions regarding what you might be interested in, which they
show you in the form of ads.
Google's apps give the company a wealth of information on you, from the personal details
that make up who you are to your interests, your past travels and your future goals.
Who
You Are
From facial recognition to audio recordings and intuitive search, Google is able to create a
comprehensive -- and unnervingly correct -- profile about what makes you, you.
Your appearance
Thanks to facial recognition in Google Photos, the search engine probably has a pretty good
idea of what you look like. In fact, you can create a "label" within Google Photos that's
essentially a tag for each person in your images, and Google is able to separate out that
person from every photo you upload -- even if the photo only includes a partial picture or is
obscured.
Your voice
If you've ever used voice commands with Google Home, an Android device, or any other Google
product or device, the site has a log of it. In fact, not only can you view your past voice
commands in the " Voice and Audio " section
of Google's My Activity section, you can hear them as well. The site keeps a full history of
your audio commands, including voice recordings.
Your religious/political beliefs
Have you searched Google for how to donate to a political campaign? Visited a candidate's
website? Watched a sermon on YouTube? Google uses all of this information to build a
comprehensive profile that covers everything from whether you're more religious or spiritual to
who you're probably voting for in the next election.
Your health status
If you use Google Fit, the company probably has a pretty good overview of your health, from how
active you are to the calories you burn a day to your fitness goals. But even if you don't use
this Google app, the site probably has a pretty good understanding of the state of your immune
system -- or at least how you view it -- from your Google searches. In fact, compiling search
engine data and cross-referencing it against patterns may even allow Google to tell if you're
getting sick or dealing with a medical issue.
Your personal details
Searched Google for the best lactose-free milk? For what to expect when you're expecting? For
how to learn Spanish fast? Everything you search is tracked by Google, which can be used to
better understand personal details about your life, from whether you have dietary restrictions
to what languages you speak.
Everywhere You've Ever Been
Location tracking is one of the areas Google excels in -- thanks to advanced location
recognition technology, the company knows everything from where you went on vacation two
summers ago to what restaurant you eat at most often.
Your home and office
Android phones, which run off of Google's services, and Pixel, Google's own phone, track and
record your location through several means, including Wi-Fi, GPS and cellular networks. This
means that the phone knows everywhere you are, every day, and how long you're there for.
Google is able to interpret that data and draw conclusions from it -- for example, where you
live is probably where your phone is for the majority of nights and weekends. In fact, it
may only take Google Now three days to determine where you live. For those on Apple devices
or other operating systems, Google Maps works in a similar way.
Places you visit
In addition to collecting information about where you live and work, Google is able to track
the other places you visit most often. Do you have a favorite coffee shop? A running route? A
daycare center you use every weekday? Google probably knows about it.
Places you've traveled
Google doesn't just know the ins and outs of your everyday life. The tech company knows where
you've traveled too, be it a weekend getaway or a month-long trip to a different country.
Not only can Google track the places you've traveled to, it can see what you did while you
were there. If you visited a museum in Paris or went line-dancing in Texas, Google knows --
down to the exact time you arrived, how long you stayed, and how long it took you to get from
one destination to another. The location tracking can even tell the method of transportation
you used, like if you walked or took a train.
Additionally, Google's acquisition of Waze means the site can collect data on where you've
been even if you're not connected to Maps or on a Google device.
Who Your Friends Are
Between your contacts and conversations in Gmail and Hangouts and the appointments you make
in Google Calendar, the company knows everything from who you're talking with to when and where
you're seeing them.
Who you talk to
If you use Gmail for your personal or work email, Google has a list of all your contacts,
including who you talk to the most: navigate to Google's " Frequently contacted " section to see which of your
Gmail contacts you spend the most time conversing with (and to check if Google's assessment of
who you like the most aligns with your own). Android and Pixel users also give Google access to
their phone contacts and text messages.
Where you meet
Meeting a friend for coffee later? If it's on your Google Calendar, the company knows about it
-- and, thanks to location tracking, can map your trip from your house to the coffee shop and
back. If you take a picture with your friend at the shop and upload it to Google Photos, Google
can use facial recognition to add them to their own specific photo album. You can also tag the
location the photo was taken as well.
If, years later, you're trying to remember who you grabbed coffee with that day, Google can
help you remember.
What you talk about
Does Google keep track of what you talk about over Gmail? It's an issue up for debate -- the
company announced in
2017 that they would stop reading emails for the purposes of creating targeted
advertisements. Whether they've actually stopped reading them altogether is another
matter.
What You Like and Dislike
Google is in the business of knowing what you're into -- it's how the search engine creates
and sells such a personalized advertising experience. From your favorite movie genre to your
favorite type of food, Google knows your preferences.
Food, books and movies
Google can use search engine data, like recipes you've researched or book titles you've
searched for, to form an idea of what you like and dislike. Certain apps like Google Books,
which keeps tracks of the books you've searched and read, deepen this knowledge. Additionally,
Google owns YouTube, which means they know which movie trailers you've been seeking out.
Google uses this information, as well as the websites you've visited and the ads you've
clicked on, to create a profile of the subjects they think you're interested in. You can see a
full list of who they think you are -- down to what shows you watch and what hobbies you pursue
in your free time -- in their ads
dashboard .
Where you shop and what you buy
If you've ever used Google Shopping to compare the prices of online vendors, Google knows about
it. They also know what products you've searched and clicked on through Google Search and can
track your website visits and what products you've viewed on retailer websites through Google
Chrome.
Your Future Plans
Google's knowledge isn't limited to what you've done in the past or are doing in the
present. The company can also use data from their applications and search engine to make
predictions about what you'll be doing in the future.
What you're interested in buying, seeing or eating
Interested in seeing a new movie? Checking out a new restaurant or taking a weekend trip to a
new city? If you've used Google Search to look up the movie times, make an online reservation
or scout out the best tourist activity, Google knows.
Upcoming trips and reservations
Have you searched restaurants to eat at and shows to go to in the city you're visiting? Have
you created an itinerary in Google Calendar? Google can collect that data in order to assess
your upcoming trips. Google also scans your emails to see what flights you have coming up and
can automatically add restaurant reservations to your schedule based on confirmations that have
been sent to Gmail.
Future life plans
Have you been searching about homeownership? About when the best age to have children is? About
tips for travelling to China? Google uses this information to understand more about you and
what you want in the future, to better tailor online advertisements to your needs.
Your
Online Life
At its most basic, Google is a search engine and internet services company. So, it's no
surprise that in addition to knowing a wealth of your personal details, the site also knows
everything there is to know about what you do online.
Websites you've visited
Google keeps a comprehensive list of every site you've visited on Chrome, from any device. The
site also keeps a running tab of every search you've run, every ad you've clicked on and every
YouTube video you've watched.
Your browsing habits
From how many sites you have bookmarked to how many passwords Chrome auto-fills, Google has a
comprehensive understanding of your browser habits, including:
Your apps from the Chrome Web Store and the Google Play Store
Your extensions from the Chrome Web Store
The browser settings you've changed in Chrome
Email addresses, addresses and phone numbers you've set to autofill in Chrome
All the website addresses you've ever entered in the address bar
The pages you have bookmarked in Chrome
All the passwords you've asked Chrome to save for you
A list of sites you've told Chrome not to save passwords for
All the Chrome tabs that are open across your devices
The number of Gmail conversations you've had
How many Google searches you've made this month
If you're unnerved by the amount of information Google has on you, there are several steps
you can take to get around the company's relentless tracking.
1. Use a VPN
A Virtual
Private Network (VPN) is a secure option to keep Google from tracking you while you're
online. Although virtual private networks can't completely keep the company from accessing
your data, they do hide your IP
address , encrypt your internet traffic and make your browsing history private, keeping
your online actions much more secure.
2. Use private browsing
Use Google's Incognito Mode to ensure that the pages you access won't show up in your
browsing history or search history. Be aware, however, that other websites can still collect
and share information about you, even when you're using private browsing.
3. Adjust your privacy settings
Check out Google's Activity Controls to change what
data is stored about you and visit your Activity Page to delete stored history and
activity.
4. Turn off location reporting
In Google Maps -- as well as in your Android and Pixel device settings, if you use those
products -- disable location reporting to keep Google from tracking where you are and where
you go. If you use Google Maps or Waze for directions, though, the company can still collect
location data on you when you're using those apps.
5. Use a different browser and search engine
To stop Google from tracking your searches and website visits, you can use another browser
and search engine, like Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Bing. However, this will only stop
Google from tracking you -- Microsoft (or whatever company owns the browser you switch to)
will get your data instead.
6. Delete your Google accounts
To truly stop the tech giant from tracking you, you'll need to take drastic measures --
namely, disavowing the use of any of the company's products. That means deleting any apps
linked to the company, including Gmail, Google Drive and any Android devices, and moving to a
different browser and search engine.
Google has made life a lot simpler in many ways. Google Search has made answers just a click
away. Google Maps has made directions easy to find and understand. Google Drive has made
working across multiple platforms seamless.
This convenience comes with a price: privacy. If you're concerned about how Google is
tracking you -- and what they're doing with the data -- follow the steps above to keep yourself
safe, and visit Google's Privacy
Site for a more comprehensive overview of what data Google is tracking and how they use
it.
"... When monopolies are allowed flourish, giants develops. Giants tend to covet the source of their monopolies. In the case of Information monopolies, removing available information and omitting it from search engine searches and public indexes, often start as a means to offer access in exchange for money , but soon evolves into using technology to control the entire information environment . ..."
"... Gating access to information and controlling one's information environment allows to engineer a persons culture, sense of self, and level of satisfaction (as in pacification) this is done much the same way a psychiatrist might do to a rat caged in a research lab. ..."
re: 37 .. get Tor Browswer use Duckduckgo.com which I believe is free from tracking .
Google Facebook MSN, and Twitter are all highly suspect.. as is email that is secretly
maintained by our largest communications giant. IMHO. the biggest danger to democracy I see is not trade corruption between leaders of nation states,
but on-going removal of available information from view of the common ordinary people (denial
of access is one thing, but denial of awareness that certain information might exist is
quite another ).
At the moment the American Disabilities act is forcing colleges and educational institutions to
remove educational materials from public access and denying the public the use of such
educational materials.
When monopolies are allowed flourish, giants develops. Giants tend to covet the source of
their monopolies. In the case of Information monopolies, removing available information and
omitting it from search engine searches and public indexes, often start as a means to offer
access in exchange for money , but soon evolves into using technology to control the
entire information environment .
Gating access to information and controlling one's information environment allows to
engineer a persons culture, sense of self, and level of satisfaction (as in pacification) this
is done much the same way a psychiatrist might do to a rat caged in a research lab. .
There are two faces of Google: evil (systematic collection of user data, collision with the
intelligence agencies( Snowden revelations about PRISM, Gmail) and good (Googlemap (rumored to be
a present from the US military), Youtube, Google translator, Google scholar, and several other
projects).
It documents that Eric
Emerson Schmidt , the Executive Chairman of Alphabet – an American multinational
conglomerate that owns a lot and among them Google – is working on "de-ranking" alleged
propaganda outlets such as Russia Today, RT – the world's third largest television
network – and Sputnik.
Who is Eric Schmidt?
On the Wikipedia link you can read more about Mr. Schmidt , one of the
richest person on earth, an advocate of net neutrality, a corporate manager and owner of a lot,
a collector of modern art, etc. And you can read about his heavy involvement with Hillary
Clinton's recent campaign and the Obama administration and about Schmidt's involvement with
Pentagon, too.
Eric Emerson Schmidt's name is associated with the world's largest and most systematic data
collecting search engine , Google, that millions upon millions use. School children, teachers,
parents, media people, politicians and you and I all daily "google" what we need to know.
While we do that, Google tracks everything about us and if you are searching for a thing to
buy, say a camera, be sure that camera ads will shortly after turn up on your screen. And they
know everything we are interested in through our "googling" including political interests and
hobbies.
Playing God
This very powerful corporate leader with a open political orientation has decided - as will
be seen 58 seconds into the video – that the Internet and his hugely dominating search
engine a) shall cave in to political pressure, b) de-rank at least these two Russian media
organizations because c) he knows they are "propaganda outlets" (it isn't discussed at all or
compared with US or other countries' media) and d) in the name of political correctness it is
OK to limit the freedom of opinion-formation.
In fact, he says in a few words that he – well, not he himself but a computer program
and mechanism called an algorithm – shall decide what you are I shall be able to find.
Google as Good, Google as God.
Conspicuously, his de-ranking – read censorship – policy shall not hit media (as
far as we can understand from this clip at least and not from
this backgrounder either) that have, for instance, been using fake news and planted
stories, omitted facts and perspectives and sources and told us propaganda and worse about,
say, US wars around the world.
It's Russia's media. And naturally you ask: Whose next? And where does that end? ("Wherever
they burn books, in the end will also burn human beings." – Heinrich
Heine).
Obvious human rights violation
This type of political paternalism is not only totally unethical and foolish, it's a
violation of human rights. It cannot be defended with the argument that other countries and
media outlets also use propaganda. The Western world – the U.S. in particular –
calls itself 'the free world" and gladly, without the slightest doubts, fights and kills to
spread that freedom around the world and has done so for decades.
We humans have right to information without interference – at least if international
law counts. Article 19 of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights states states that "Everyone has the right to freedom
of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of
frontiers."
You abuse power, Mr. Schmidt
Mr Schmidt, you are blatantly and clearly interfering in the rights of millions, if not
billions, to know. To seek information. To shape their opinions.
With your few words you abuse your almost unlimited digital, political, economic and
'defence' power – much much worse than if you had sexually abused just one woman for
which older men today are fired or choose to resign.
This has to be stated irrespective of whether we like or dislike Russia and its media. That
is not the issue here. This has to be fought against because it is slippery slope, Mr
Schmidt.
You ought to stand up and use your powers with principles and vision: To protect the
Internet against every and each reduction of freedom. Freedom for all, also the fake
news-makers however we define them. Yes, there is another solution for that problem and it is
not your paternalism.
It just cannot be for you to decide what is good for others and collect data about us all
which is only good for you.
Has the West really become so insecure about itself?
Censorship – de-ranking – and information warfare is not the solution to
anything. A strong society or culture that believes in its own moral value and vitality does
not censor. Dictatorships – "regimes" – do.
Mr. Schmidt has much more power than many state leaders but he is not up to it and how would
he be able to re-rank themes and media again in the future.
Has the West, the US and Western culture become so weak, so trembling at the sight of the
global future and so morally deranged that it cannot live with – does not believe it can
compete factually and intelligently with – other views? With fake? With propaganda by
others? If so, that is where the Soviet Union was in the early 1980s. And if so, watch the
writing of the Western walls!
Education and trust
There are much better solutions – if you think. Mr. Schmidt may also google them
It's education – education of young and old to learn to identify what is trustworthy
and what is not. Learning to learn on the Internet. It is dialogue and it is dignity –
instead of succumbing to the lowest of levels that he accuses others of being at.
And there is more solutions.
Making democracy, freedom and human rights stronger – by believing in human beings,
their intelligence and solidarity. When Google de-ranks, it de-humanises. It offends the
intelligence of the world's users of the Google search engine.
It sinks to the low level where fakers and liars are – devoid of morals but passionate
about selling a particular message even if totally unfounded.
What are you so afraid of,
Mr. Schmidt?
If I were Eric Schmidt, I think I would be afraid of being perceived as a "useful idiot" or
an an evil operator on behalf of US militarism – since he is targeting Russia in a the
new Cold War atmosphere.
After all is/was a
member also of various US government security and Pentagon related boards. And after all,
he spoke at the Halifax Security
Forum filled with military defence people and hardliners who see only Russia, North Korea
and Iran as problems, never the US itself. One of the panels deals with the "Post-Putin
Prep"!
Regime change in Russia too in the future and with truthful news from Google?
Mr. Schmidt and his corporate fellows should also be afraid that millions will become more
sympathetic to Russia Today, Sputnik and even Russia itself precisely because of his words.
There are no wars on the ground without information war. If Schmidt's Google fights
political wars with de-ranking, many of us will be de-parting to more peaceful,
rights-respecting and ethical search engines than his. ...
Right, considering Schmidt is known to have hung out at the Playboy manor and has loved up
more than his share of the babes... No proof, but this sounds like damage control.
Never understood why Google went anywhere. It wasn't superior to anything search-wise
until the mid 2000s and earlier in the decade was little more than a joke with a curious
name. "PageRank" was nothing particularly interesting, and was generally too computationally
complex to implement anyways. Almost nothing was uniquely invented at Google, a company that
mostly leveraged open source software created elsewhere. So what is Google really? And why do
they have such a cult following?
Yahoo atrophied in the face on millions of websites, Alta Vista conquered that but the
user still had read thru wads of results, then Google came along and it was a breath of fresh
air, then Google accrued too much power and became Goolag.
Hundreds of employees of online store Amazon on zero hours contracts are subjected to a
regime described as "horrendous" and "exhausting", it is claimed.
The place is full of favoritism and you MUST hit target at all times regardless of what
barriers you face. Mostly I have enjoyed my job there but I am starting to be picked on.
This is the worst place to ever work. They say you have two 15 minute breaks but it's
actually a lot less. The amount of people waiting to go through 2 metal detector doors is
unreal. It's more like a 7 minute break if you're lucky, same with the lunch. So glad that
I'm not working at this company anymore, I now have a much better job with better hours and
pay.
I worked for amazon in 2014, the interview was via an agency where a group of us has to do
a couple of written tests and then urinate into pots. I applied for the picker and packer
team and when I got started I was put on the heavy lifting section.
Once I got my first
shift/training the "team leaders" were useless and anytime you asked a question it was like
an issue to them. One female team leader tried to ignore me for as long as she could until i
finally got her attention and she answered with a nasty attitude.
On my second day which was
my first time doing the heavy lifting, "team leaders" walking across a skywalk just above our
heads and constantly monitoring what everything was doing even going as far as to smack a
stick on the railing to stop a conversation.
They would occasionally be walking behind you aswell. It felt more like work in a prison being watched by guards.
The security staff were
the biggest bunch of overly macho idiots I've ever seen, walking around with the chests
pushed out and shouting silly jokes at the workers expense. You're not allowed nothing in
your pockets while in the warehouse and I was told a lighter would be fine by one of the team
leaders, but once I went to leave through the metal detectors one of the said macho bunch
came over and spoke to me like dirt demanding my name and when I tried to explain it to him
his attitude become more hostile to me.
Needless to say after my 2nd shift I quit as I was
not about to put myself through something like that.
When I went into hand my ID card in 2
team leaders and 2 security were at reception and even giving that back consisted of a nasty
attitude and asking what I was doing and why I was leaving. I simply smiled and said better
job offer and left without giving them a chance to talk. It truly is a horrible place to work
for and could be advertised as a prison job experience!
Bezos is yet another disgusting immoral man driven by his mortal greed - with proof. if
every amazon user that is aware of this reality decided to not buy from amazon again, this
would be the fairest punishment. I wish everyone has an alternative choice for work and never
has to choose to work for this greedy and inhumane corporation called amazon. absolutely
revolting.
By clicking 'Sign Up,' I acknowledge that I have read and agree to Hachette Book Group's
Privacy Policy
and
Terms of Use
What's Inside
Prologue
Oakland, California
I
t was February 18, 2014, and already dark when I
crossed the Bay Bridge from San Francisco and parked my car in downtown Oakland. The streets were
deserted, save for a couple of homeless men slumped in a heap against a closed storefront. Two police
cruisers raced through a red light, sirens blaring.
I approached Oakland's city hall on foot. Even from a distance, I could see that something unusual
was going on. A line of parked police cars ran down the block, and news anchors and TV camera crews
scampered about, jockeying for position. A large group of people milled near the entrance, a few of
them setting up what looked like a giant papier-mâché rat, presumably intended as a symbol for
snitching. But the real action was inside. Several hundred people packed Oakland's ornate high-domed
city council chamber. Many of them carried signs. It was an angry crowd, and police officers flanked
the sides of the room, ready to push everyone out if things got out of hand.
The commotion was tied to the main agenda item of the night: the city council was scheduled to vote
on an ambitious $11 million project to create a citywide police surveillance hub. Its official name
was the "Domain Awareness Center" -- but everyone called it "the DAC." Design specs called for linking
real-time video feeds from thousands of cameras across the city and funneling them into a unified
control hub. Police would be able to punch in a location and watch it in real time or wind back the
clock. They could turn on face recognition and vehicle tracking systems, plug in social media feeds,
and enhance their view with data coming in from other law enforcement agencies -- both local and federal.
1
Plans for this surveillance center had been roiling city politics for months, and the outrage was
now making its presence felt. Residents, religious leaders, labor activists, retired politicians,
masked "black bloc" anarchists, and reps from the American Civil Liberties Union -- they were all in
attendance, rubbing shoulder to shoulder with a group of dedicated local activists who had banded
together to stop the DAC. A nervous, bespectacled city official in a tan suit took the podium to
reassure the agitated crowd that the Domain Awareness Center was designed to protect them -- not spy on
them. "This is not a fusion center. We have no agreements with the NSA or the CIA or the FBI to access
our databases," he said.
The hall blew up in pandemonium. The crowd wasn't buying it. People booed and hissed. "This is all
about monitoring protesters," someone screamed from the balcony. A young man, his face obscured by a
mask, stalked to the front of the room and menacingly jammed his smartphone in the city official's
face and snapped photos. "How does that feel? How do you like that -- being surveilled all the time!" he
yelled. A middle-aged man -- bald, wearing glasses and crumpled khakis -- took the podium and tore into the
city's political leaders. "You council members somehow believe that the Oakland Police Department,
which has an unparalleled history of violating the civil rights of Oaklanders and which cannot even
follow its own policies, be it a crowd control policy or a body camera policy, can somehow be trusted
to use the DAC?" He left with a bang, yelling: "The only good DAC is a dead DAC!" Wild applause
erupted.
Oakland is one of the most diverse cities in the country. It's also home to a violent, often
unaccountable police department, which has been operating under federal oversight for over a decade.
The police abuse has been playing out against a backdrop of increasing gentrification fueled by the
area's Internet boom and the spike in real estate prices that goes along with it. In San Francisco,
neighborhoods like the Mission District, historically home to a vibrant Latino community, have turned
into condos and lofts and upscale gastro pubs. Teachers, artists, older adults, and anyone else not
making a six-figure salary are having a tough time making ends meet. Oakland, which for a time was
spared this fate, was now feeling the crush as well. But locals were not going down without a fight.
And a lot of their anger was focused on Silicon Valley.
The people gathered at city hall that night saw Oakland's DAC as an extension of the tech-fueled
gentrification that was pushing poorer longtime residents out of the city. "We're not stupid. We know
that the purpose is to monitor Muslims, black and brown communities and protesters," said a young
woman in a headscarf. "This center comes at a time when you're trying to develop Oakland into a
playground and bedroom community for San Francisco professionals. These efforts require you to make
Oakland quieter, whiter, less scary and wealthier -- and that means getting rid of Muslims, black and
brown people and protesters. You know this and so do developers. We heard them at meetings. They are
scared. They verbally admit it."
She had a point. A few months earlier, a pair of Oakland investigative journalists had obtained a
cache of internal city-planning documents dealing with the DAC and found that city officials seemed to
be interested more in using the proposed surveillance center to monitor political protests and labor
union activity at the Oakland docks than in fighting crime.
2
There was another wrinkle. Oakland had initially contracted out development of the DAC to the
Science Applications International Corporation, a massive California-based military contractor that
does so much work for the National Security Agency that it is known in the intelligence business as
"NSA West." The company is also a major CIA contractor, involved in everything from monitoring agency
employees as part of the agency's "insider threat" programs to running the CIA's drone assassination
fleet. Multiple Oakland residents came up to blast the city's decision to partner with a company that
was such an integral part of the US military and intelligence apparatus. "SAIC facilitates the
telecommunications for the drone program in Afghanistan that's murdered over a thousand innocent
civilians, including children," said a man in a black sweater. "And this is the company you chose?"
I looked around the room in amazement. This was the heart of a supposedly progressive San Francisco
Bay Area, and yet the city planned on partnering with a powerful intelligence contractor to build a
police surveillance center that, if press reports were correct, officials wanted to use to spy on and
monitor locals. Something made that scene even stranger to me that night. Thanks to a tip from a local
activist, I had gotten wind that Oakland had been in talks with Google about demoing products in what
appeared to be an attempt by the company to get a part of the DAC contract.
Google possibly helping Oakland spy on its residents? If true, it would be particularly damning.
Many Oaklanders saw Silicon Valley companies such as Google as being the prime drivers of the
skyrocketing housing prices, gentrification, and aggressive policing that was making life miserable
for poor and low-income residents. Indeed, just a few weeks earlier protesters had picketed outside
the local home of a wealthy Google manager who was personally involved in a nearby luxury real estate
development.
Google's name never came up during the tumultuous city council meeting that night, but I did manage
to get my hands on a brief email exchange between a Google "strategic partnership manager" and an
Oakland official spearheading the DAC project that hinted at something in the works.
3
In the weeks after the city council meeting, I attempted to clarify this relationship. What kinds
of services did Google offer Oakland's police surveillance center? How far did the talks progress?
Were they fruitful? My requests to Oakland were ignored and Google wasn't talking either -- trying to get
answers from the company was like talking to a giant rock. My investigation stalled further when
Oakland residents temporarily succeeded in getting the city to halt its plans for the DAC.
Though Oakland's police surveillance center was put on hold, the question remained: What could
Google, a company obsessed with its progressive "Don't Be Evil" image, offer a controversial police
surveillance center?
At the time, I was a reporter for
Pando
, a small but fearless San Francisco magazine that
covered the politics and business of Silicon Valley. I knew that Google made most of its money through
a sophisticated targeted advertising system that tracked its users and built predictive models of
their behavior and interests. The company had a glimpse into the lives of close to two billion people
who used its platforms -- from email to video to mobile phones -- and it performed a strange kind of
alchemy, turning people's data into gold: nearly $100 billion in annual revenue and a market
capitalization of $600 billion; its cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin had a combined personal
wealth estimated to be $90 billion.
Google is one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world, yet it presents itself
as one of the good guys: a company on a mission to make the world a better place and a bulwark against
corrupt and intrusive governments all around the globe. And yet, as I traced the story and dug into
the details of Google's government contracting business, I discovered that the company was already a
full-fledged military contractor, selling versions of its consumer data mining and analysis technology
to police departments, city governments, and just about every major US intelligence and military
agency. Over the years, it had supplied mapping technology used by the US Army in Iraq, hosted data
for the Central Intelligence Agency, indexed the National Security Agency's vast intelligence
databases, built military robots, colaunched a spy satellite with the Pentagon, and leased its cloud
computing platform to help police departments predict crime. And Google is not alone. From Amazon to
eBay to Facebook -- most of the Internet companies we use every day have also grown into powerful
corporations that track and profile their users while pursuing partnerships and business relationships
with major US military and intelligence agencies. Some parts of these companies are so thoroughly
intertwined with America's security services that it is hard to tell where they end and the US
government begins.
Since the start of the personal computer and Internet revolution in the 1990s, we've been told
again and again that we are in the grips of a liberating technology, a tool that decentralizes power,
topples entrenched bureaucracies, and brings more democracy and equality to the world. Personal
computers and information networks were supposed to be the new frontier of freedom -- a techno-utopia
where authoritarian and repressive structures lost their power, and where the creation of a better
world was still possible. And all that we, global netizens, had to do for this new and better world to
flower and bloom was to get out of the way and let Internet companies innovate and the market work its
magic. This narrative has been planted deep into our culture's collective subconscious and holds a
powerful sway over the way we view the Internet today.
But spend time looking at the nitty-gritty business details of the Internet and the story gets
darker, less optimistic. If the Internet is truly such a revolutionary break from the past, why are
companies like Google in bed with cops and spies?
I tried to answer this seemingly simple question after visiting Oakland that night in February.
Little did I know then that this would take me on a deep dive into the history of the Internet and
ultimately lead me to write this book. Now, after three years of investigative work, interviews,
travel across two continents, and countless hours of correlating and researching historical and
declassified records, I know the answer.
Pick up any popular history of the Internet and you will generally find a combination of two
narratives describing where this computer networking technology came from. The first narrative is that
it emerged out of the military's need for a communication network that could survive a nuclear blast.
That led to the development of the early Internet, first known as ARPANET, built by the Pentagon's
Advanced Research Projects Agency (known today as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or
DARPA). The network went live in the late 1960s and featured a decentralized design that could route
messages even if parts of the network were destroyed by a nuclear blast. The second narrative, which
is the most dominant, contends that there was no military application of the early Internet at all. In
this version, the ARPANET was built by radical young computer engineers and playful hackers deeply
influenced by the acid-drenched counterculture of the San Francisco Bay Area. They cared not a damn
about war or surveillance or anything of the sort, but dreamed of computer-mediated utopias that would
make militaries obsolete. They built a civilian network to bring this future into reality, and it is
this version of the ARPANET that then grew into the Internet we use today. For years, a conflict has
raged between these historical interpretations. These days, most histories offer a mix of the
two -- acknowledging the first, yet leaning much more heavily on the second.
My research reveals a third historical strand in the creation of the early Internet -- a strand that
has all but disappeared from the history books. Here, the impetus was rooted not so much in the need
to survive a nuclear attack but in the dark military arts of counterinsurgency and America's fight
against the perceived global spread of communism. In the 1960s, America was a global power overseeing
an increasingly volatile world: conflicts and regional insurgencies against US-allied governments from
South America to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. These were not traditional wars that involved big
armies but guerrilla campaigns and local rebellions, frequently fought in regions where Americans had
little previous experience. Who were these people? Why were they rebelling? What could be done to stop
them? In military circles, it was believed that these questions were of vital importance to America's
pacification efforts, and some argued that the only effective way to answer them was to develop and
leverage computer-aided information technology.
The Internet came out of this effort: an attempt to build computer systems that could collect and
share intelligence, watch the world in real time, and study and analyze people and political movements
with the ultimate goal of predicting and preventing social upheaval. Some even dreamed of creating a
sort of early warning radar for human societies: a networked computer system that watched for social
and political threats and intercepted them in much the same way that traditional radar did for hostile
aircraft. In other words, the Internet was hardwired to be a surveillance tool from the start. No
matter what we use the network for today -- dating, directions, encrypted chat, email, or just reading
the news -- it always had a dual-use nature rooted in intelligence gathering and war.
As I traced this forgotten history, I found that I was not so much discovering something new but
uncovering something that was plainly obvious to a lot of people not so long ago. Starting in the
early 1960s in the United States, a big fear about the proliferation of computer database and
networking technologies arose. People worried that these systems would be used by both corporations
and governments for surveillance and control. Indeed, the dominant cultural view at the time was that
computers and computing technology -- including the ARPANET, the military research network that would
grow into the Internet we use today -- were tools of repression, not liberation.
In the course of my investigation, I was genuinely shocked to discover that as early as 1969, the
first year that the ARPANET came online, a group of students at MIT and Harvard attempted to shut down
research taking place at their universities under the ARPANET umbrella. They saw this computer network
as the start of a hybrid private-public system of surveillance and control -- "computerized
people-manipulation" they called it -- and warned that it would be used to spy on Americans and wage war
on progressive political movements. They understood this technology better than we do today. More
importantly, they were right. In 1972, almost as soon as the ARPANET was rolled out on a national
level, the network was used to help the CIA, the NSA, and the US Army spy on tens of thousands of
antiwar and civil rights activists. It was a big scandal at the time, and the ARPANET's role in it was
discussed at length on American television, including
NBC Evening News
.
This episode, which took place forty-five years ago, is a vital part of the historical record,
important to anyone who wants to understand the network that mediates so much of our lives today. Yet
you won't find it mentioned in any recent book or documentary on the origins of the Internet -- at least
not any that I could find, and I read and watched just about all of them.
Surveillance Valley
is an attempt to recover part of this lost history. But it is more
than that. The book starts in the past, going back to the development of what we now call the Internet
during the Vietnam War. But it quickly moves into the present, looking at the private surveillance
business that powers much of Silicon Valley, investigating the ongoing overlap between the Internet
and the military-industrial complex that spawned it half a century ago, and uncovering the close ties
that exist between US intelligence agencies and the antigovernment privacy movement that has sprung up
in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks.
Surveillance Valley
shows that little has changed over
the years: the Internet was developed as a weapon and remains a weapon today. American military
interests continue to dominate all parts of the network, even those that supposedly stand in
opposition.
"... In Orwell's imagination, society was ruled in the future by Big Brother. It wasn't a computer, but rather the collective expression of the Party. But not like the Republicans; this Party was an autonomous bureaucracy and advanced surveillance state interested only in perpetuating itself as a hierarchy. In this dystopia, "the people" had become insignificant, without the power of "grasping that the world could be other than it is." ..."
"... Concepts like freedom were perverted by a ruthless Newspeakperpetuated by the Party through the media. A Goodthinker was someone who followed orders without thinking. Crimestop was the instinctual avoidance of any dangerous thought, and Doublethink was the constant distortion of reality to maintain the Party's image of infallibility. ..."
"... Writing in 1948, Orwell was projecting what could happen in just a few decades. By most measures, even 70 years later we're not quite there yet. But we do face the real danger that freedom and equality will be seriously distorted by a new form of Newspeak, a Trumpian version promoted by the administration and its allies through their media. We already have Trumpian Goodthinkers -- the sychophantic surrogates who follow his lead without thinking, along with Crimestop -- the instinctual avoidance of "disloyal" thought, and Doublethink -- the constant distortion of reality to maintain Trump's insatiable ego and image of infallibility. Orwellian ideas are simply resurfacing in a post-modern/reality TV form. ..."
"... As community life unravels and more institutions fall into disrepute, media have become among of the few remaining that can potentially facilitate some social cohesion. Yet instead they fuel conflict and crisis. It's not quite Crimestop, but does often appeal to some of the basest instincts and produce even more alienation and division. ..."
"... In 1980, Ralph Nader called the race for president at that time -- between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan -- a choice between mediocrity and menace. It was funny then, but now we can see what real menace looks like. Is Trump-ism what Orwell warned us about? Not quite, though there are similarities. Like Trump, you can't talk to Big Brother. And he rarely gives you the truth, only doublespeak. But Trump is no Big Brother. More like a Drunk Uncle with nukes. ..."
"... Security is tight and hard to avoid, on or offline. There are cameras everywhere, and every purchase and move most people make is tracked by the state. Still, there are four bombings in the first week of the Games. There is also another kind of human tragedy. Four runners collapse during preliminary rounds as a result of a toxic mix -- heat and pollution. ..."
"... Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire, Big Lies, and The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution. ..."
"... This article was originally published by Greg Guma: For Preservation & Change . ..."
More people are becoming alienated, cynical, resentful or resigned, while too much of
mass and social media reinforces less-than-helpful narratives and tendencies. The frog's in the
frying pan and the heat is rising.
On the big screens above us beautiful young people demonstrated their prowess. We were
sitting in the communications center, waiting for print outs to tell us what they'd done before
organizing the material for mass consumption. Outside, people were freezing in the snow as they
waited for buses. Their only choice was to attend another event or attempt to get home.
The area was known as the Competition Zone, a corporate state created for the sole purpose
of showcasing these gorgeous competitors. Freedom was a foreign idea here; no one was more free
than the laminated identification card hanging around your neck allowed.
Visitors were more restricted than anyone. They saw only what they paid for, and had to wait
in long lines for food, transport, or tickets to more events. They were often uncomfortable,
yet they felt privileged to be admitted to the Zone. Citizens were categorized by their
function within the Organizing Committee's bureaucracy. Those who merely served -- in jobs like
cooking, driving and cleaning -- wore green and brown tags. They could travel between their
homes and work, but were rarely permitted into events. Their contact with visitors was also
limited. To visit them from outside the Zone, their friends and family had to be screened.
Most citizens knew little about how the Zone was actually run, about the "inner community"
of diplomats, competitors and corporate officials they served. Yet each night they watched the
exploits of this same elite on television.
The Zone, a closed and classified place where most bad news went unreported and a tiny elite
called the shots through mass media and computers, was no futuristic fantasy. It was Lake
Placid for several weeks in early 1980 -- a full four years before 1984.
In a once sleepy little community covered with artificial snow, the Olympics had brought a
temporary society into being. Two thousand athletes and their entourage were its royalty, role
models for the throngs of spectators, townspeople and journalists. This convergence resulted in
an ad hoc police state, managed by public and private forces and a political elite that
combined local business honchos with an international governing committee. They dominated a
population all too willing to submit to arbitrary authority.
Even back then, Lake Placid's Olympic "village" felt like a preview of things to come. Not
quite George Orwell's dark vision, but uncomfortably close.
In Orwell's imagination, society was ruled in the future by Big Brother. It wasn't a
computer, but rather the collective expression of the Party. But not like the Republicans; this
Party was an autonomous bureaucracy and advanced surveillance state interested only in
perpetuating itself as a hierarchy. In this dystopia, "the people" had become insignificant,
without the power of "grasping that the world could be other than it is."
Concepts like freedom were perverted by a ruthless Newspeakperpetuated by the Party through
the media. A Goodthinker was someone who followed orders without thinking. Crimestop was the
instinctual avoidance of any dangerous thought, and Doublethink was the constant distortion of
reality to maintain the Party's image of infallibility.
Writing in 1948, Orwell was projecting what could happen in just a few decades. By most
measures, even 70 years later we're not quite there yet. But we do face the real danger that
freedom and equality will be seriously distorted by a new form of Newspeak, a Trumpian version
promoted by the administration and its allies through their media. We already have Trumpian
Goodthinkers -- the sychophantic surrogates who follow his lead without thinking, along with
Crimestop -- the instinctual avoidance of "disloyal" thought, and Doublethink -- the constant
distortion of reality to maintain Trump's insatiable ego and image of infallibility. Orwellian
ideas are simply resurfacing in a post-modern/reality TV form.
Our fast food culture is also taking a long-term toll. More and more people are becoming
alienated, cynical, resentful or resigned, while too much of mass and social media reinforces
less-than-helpful narratives and tendencies. The frog's in the frying pan and the heat is
rising.
Much of what penetrates and goes viral further fragments culture and thought, promoting a
cynicism that reinforces both rage and inaction. Rather than true diversity, we have the mass
illusion that a choice between polarized opinions, shaped and curated by editors and networks,
is the essence of free speech and democracy. In reality, original ideas are so constrained and
self-censored that what's left is usually as diverse as brands of peppermint toothpaste.
When the Bill of Rights was ratified, the notion that freedom of speech and the press should
be protected meant that the personal right of self-expression should not be repressed by the
government. James Madison, author of the First Amendment, warned that the greatest danger to
liberty was that a majority would use its power to repress everyone else. Yet the evolution of
mass media and the corporate domination of economic life have made these "choicest privileges"
almost obsolete.
As community life unravels and more institutions fall into disrepute, media have become
among of the few remaining that can potentially facilitate some social cohesion. Yet instead
they fuel conflict and crisis. It's not quite Crimestop, but does often appeal to some of the
basest instincts and produce even more alienation and division.
In general terms, what most mass media bring the public is a series of images and anecdotes
that cumulatively define a way of life. Both news and entertainment contribute to the illusion
that competing, consuming and accumulating are at the core of our aspirations. Each day we are
repeatedly shown and told that culture and politics are corrupt, that war is imminent or
escalating somewhere, that violence is random and pervasive, and yet also that the latest
"experts" have the answers. Countless programs meanwhile celebrate youth, violence, frustrated
sexuality, and the lives of celebrities.
Between the official program content are a series of intensely packaged sales pitches. These
commercial messages wash over us, as if we are wandering in an endless virtual mall, searching
in vain for fulfillment as society crumbles.
In 1980, Ralph Nader called the race for president at that time -- between Jimmy Carter and
Ronald Reagan -- a choice between mediocrity and menace. It was funny then, but now we can see
what real menace looks like. Is Trump-ism what Orwell warned us about? Not quite, though there
are similarities. Like Trump, you can't talk to Big Brother. And he rarely gives you the truth,
only doublespeak. But Trump is no Big Brother. More like a Drunk Uncle with nukes.
So, is it too late for a rescue? Will menace win this time? Or can we still save the
environment, reclaim self-government, restore communities and protect human rights? What does
the future hold?
It could be summer in Los Angeles in 2024, the end of Donald Trump's second term. The
freeways are slow-moving parking lots for the Olympics. Millions of people hike around in the
heat, or use bikes and cycles to get to work. It's difficult with all the checkpoints, not to
mention the extra-high security at the airports. Thousands of police, not to mention the
military, are on the lookout for terrorists, smugglers, protesters, cultists, gangs, thieves,
and anyone who doesn't have money to burn or a ticket to the Games.
Cash isn't much good, and gas has become so expensive that suburban highways are almost
empty.
Security is tight and hard to avoid, on or offline. There are cameras everywhere, and every
purchase and move most people make is tracked by the state. Still, there are four bombings in
the first week of the Games. There is also another kind of human tragedy. Four runners collapse
during preliminary rounds as a result of a toxic mix -- heat and pollution.
... ... ...
Greg Guma is the Vermont-based author of Dons of Time, Uneasy Empire, Spirits of Desire,
Big Lies, and The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution.
"... There is a vast literature analyzing the political prophecy of George Orwell 's Nineteen Eighty-Four . Big Brother, double-speak, telescreens, crimestop, etc. – all applied to our current political situation. The language has become part of our popular lexicon, and as such, has become clichéd through overuse. Blithe, habitual use of language robs it of its power to crack open the safe that hides the realities of life. ..."
"... There is no doubt that Orwell wrote a brilliant political warning about the methods of totalitarian control. But hidden at the heart of the book is another lesson lost on most readers and commentators. Rats, torture, and Newspeak resonate with people fixated on political repression, which is a major concern, of course. But so too is privacy and sexual passion in a country of group-think and group-do, where "Big Brother" poisons you in the crib and the entertainment culture then takes over to desexualize intimacy by selling it as another public commodity. ..."
"... The United States is a pornographic society. By pornographic I do not just mean the omnipresent selling of exploitative sex through all media to titillate a voyeuristic public living in the unreality of screen "life" and screen sex through television, movies, and online obsessions. I mean a commodified consciousness, where everyone and everything is part of a prostitution ring in the deepest sense of pornography's meaning – for sale, bought. ..."
"... As this happens, words and language become corrupted by the same forces that Orwell called Big Brother, whose job is total propaganda and social control. Just as physical reality now mimics screen reality and thus becomes chimerical, language, through which human beings uncover and articulate the truth of being, becomes more and more abstract. People don't die; they "pass on" or "pass away." Dying, like real sex, is too physical. Wars of aggression don't exist; they are "overseas contingency operations." Killing people with drones isn't killing; it's "neutralizing them." There are a "ton" of examples, but I am sure "you guys" don't need me to list any more. ..."
"... This destruction of language has been going on for a long time, but it's worth noting that from Hemingway's WW I through Orwell's WW II up until today's endless U.S. wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, etc., there has been the parallel development of screen and media culture, beginning with silent movies through television and onto the total electronic media environment we now inhabit – the surround sound and image bubble of literal abstractions that inhabit us, mentally and physically. In such a society, to feel what you really feel and not what, in Hemingway's words, "you were supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel" has become extremely difficult. ..."
"... But understanding the history of public relations, advertising, propaganda, the CIA, the national security apparatus, technology, etc., makes it clear that such hope is baseless. For the propaganda in this country has penetrated far deeper than anyone can imagine, and it has primarily done this through advanced technology and the religion of technique – machines as pure abstractions – that has poisoned not just our minds, but the deepest wellsprings of the body's truths and the erotic imagination that links us in love to all life on earth. ..."
"... Orwell makes it very clear that language is the key to mind control, as he delineates how Newspeak works. I think he is right. And mind control also means the control of our bodies, Eros, our sex, our physical connections to all living beings and nature. Today the U.S. is reaching the point where "Oldspeak" – Standard English – has been replaced by Newspeak, and just "fragments of the literature of the past" survive here and there. ..."
"Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but
degenerated to Vice." – Frederick Nietzsche , Beyond Good and Evil
"Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has
happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little
hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or
scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen." –
D. H. Lawrence , Lady Chatterley's Lover
"The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a
second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The
need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing gadgets, devices, instruments,
engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of
one's own destruction, has become a 'biological' need." – Herbert Marcuse , One
Dimensional Man
There is a vast literature analyzing the political prophecy of George Orwell 's Nineteen
Eighty-Four . Big Brother, double-speak, telescreens, crimestop, etc. – all applied
to our current political situation. The language has become part of our popular lexicon, and as
such, has become clichéd through overuse. Blithe, habitual use of language robs it of
its power to crack open the safe that hides the realities of life.
There is no doubt that Orwell wrote a brilliant political warning about the methods of
totalitarian control. But hidden at the heart of the book is another lesson lost on most
readers and commentators. Rats, torture, and Newspeak resonate with people fixated on political
repression, which is a major concern, of course. But so too is privacy and sexual passion in a
country of group-think and group-do, where "Big Brother" poisons you in the crib and the
entertainment culture then takes over to desexualize intimacy by selling it as another public
commodity.
The United States is a pornographic society. By pornographic I do not just mean the
omnipresent selling of exploitative sex through all media to titillate a voyeuristic public
living in the unreality of screen "life" and screen sex through television, movies, and online
obsessions. I mean a commodified consciousness, where everyone and everything is part of a
prostitution ring in the deepest sense of pornography's meaning – for sale, bought.
And
consumed by getting, spending, and selling. Flicked into the net of Big Brother, whose job is
make sure everything fundamentally human and physical is debased and mediated, people become
consumers of the unreal and direct experience is discouraged. The natural world becomes an
object to be conquered and used. Animals are produced in chemical factories to be slaughtered
by the billions only to appear bloodless under plastic wrap in supermarket coolers. The human
body disappears into hypnotic spectral images. One's sex becomes one's gender as the words are
transmogrified and as one looks in the mirror of the looking-glass self and wonders how to
identify the one looking back.
Streaming life from Netflix or Facebook becomes life the movie.
The brilliant perverseness of the mediated reality of a screen society – what Guy Debord
calls The Society of the
Spectacle – is that as it distances people from fundamental reality, it promotes that
reality through its screen fantasies. "Get away from it all and restore yourself at our spa in
the rugged mountains where you can hike in pristine woods after yoga and a breakfast of locally
sourced eggs and artisanally crafted bread." Such garbage would be funny if it weren't so
effective. Debord writes,
The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by
images .Where the real world changes into simple images, the simple images become real beings
and effective motivations of hypnotic behavior.
Thus sex with robots and marrying yourself are not aberrations but logical extensions of a
society where solipsism meets machine in the America dream.
As this happens, words and language become corrupted by the same forces that Orwell called
Big Brother, whose job is total propaganda and social control. Just as physical reality now
mimics screen reality and thus becomes chimerical, language, through which human beings uncover
and articulate the truth of being, becomes more and more abstract. People don't die; they "pass
on" or "pass away." Dying, like real sex, is too physical. Wars of aggression don't exist; they
are "overseas contingency operations." Killing people with drones isn't killing; it's
"neutralizing them." There are a "ton" of examples, but I am sure "you guys" don't need me to
list any more.
Orwell called Big Brother's language Newspeak, and Hemingway preceded him when he so
famously wrote in disgust In a Farewell to Arms ,
"I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice, and the expression
in vain. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene "
This destruction of language has been going on for a long time, but it's worth noting that
from Hemingway's WW I through Orwell's WW II up until today's endless U.S. wars against
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, etc., there has been the parallel development of screen
and media culture, beginning with silent movies through television and onto the total
electronic media environment we now inhabit – the surround sound and image bubble of
literal abstractions that inhabit us, mentally and physically. In such a society, to feel what
you really feel and not what, in Hemingway's words, "you were supposed to feel, and had been
taught to feel" has become extremely difficult.
... ... ...
But as we learn in 1984 and should learn in the U.S.A. today , "seemed" is the
key word. Their triumph was temporary. For sexual passion reveals truths that need to be
confirmed in the mind. In itself, sexual liberation can be easily manipulated, as it has been
so effectively in the United States. "Repressive de-sublimation" Herbert Marcuse called it
fifty years ago. You allow people to act out their sexual fantasies in commodified ways that
can be controlled by the rulers, all the while ruling their minds and potential political
rebelliousness. Sex becomes part of the service economy where people service each other while
serving their masters. Use pseudo-sex to sell them a way of life that traps them in an
increasingly totalitarian social order that only seems free. This has been accomplished
primarily through screen culture and the concomitant confusion of sexual identity. Perhaps you
have noticed that over the past twenty-five years of growing social and political confusion, we
have witnessed an exponential growth in "the electronic life," the use of psychotropic drugs,
and sexual disorientation. This is no accident. Wars have become as constant as Eros –
the god of love, life, joy, and motion – has been divorced from sex as a stimulus and
response release of tension in a "stressed" society. Rollo May, the great American
psychologist, grasped this:
Indeed, we have set sex over against eros, used sex precisely to avoid the
anxiety-creating involvements of eros We are in flight from eros and use sex as the vehicle for
the flight Eros [which includes, but is not limited to, passionate sex] is the center of
vitality of a culture – its heart and soul. And when release of tension takes the place
of creative eros, the downfall of the civilization is assured.
Because Julia and Winston cannot permanently escape Oceania, but can only tryst, they
succumb to Big Brother's mind control and betray each other. Their sexual affair can't save
them. It is a moment of beauty and freedom in an impossible situation. Of course the
hermetically sealed world of 1984 is not the United States. Orwell created a society in
which escape was impossible. It is, after all, an admonitory novel – not the real world.
Things are more subtle here; we still have some wiggle room – some – although the
underlying truth is the same: the U.S. oligarchy, like "The Party," "seeks power entirely for
its own sake" and "are not interested in the good of others," all rhetoric to the contrary. Our
problem is that too many believe the rhetoric, and those who say they don't really do at the
deepest level. Fly the flag and play the national anthem and their hearts are aflutter with
hope. Recycle old bromides about the next election when your political enemies will be swept
out of office and excitement builds as though you had met the love of your life and all was
well with the world.
But understanding the history of public relations, advertising, propaganda, the CIA, the
national security apparatus, technology, etc., makes it clear that such hope is baseless. For
the propaganda in this country has penetrated far deeper than anyone can imagine, and it has
primarily done this through advanced technology and the religion of technique – machines
as pure abstractions – that has poisoned not just our minds, but the deepest wellsprings
of the body's truths and the erotic imagination that links us in love to all life on earth.
In "Defence of Poetry," Percy Bysshe Shelley writes:
The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our nature, and an identification of
ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man,
to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the
place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasure of his species must become his
own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.
We are now faced with the question: Can we escape the forces of propaganda and mind control
that run so very deep into American life? If so, how? Let's imagine a way out.
Orwell makes it very clear that language is the key to mind control, as he delineates how
Newspeak works. I think he is right. And mind control also means the control of our bodies,
Eros, our sex, our physical connections to all living beings and nature. Today the U.S. is
reaching the point where "Oldspeak" – Standard English – has been replaced by
Newspeak, and just "fragments of the literature of the past" survive here and there.
This is
true for the schooled and unschooled. In fact, those more trapped by the instrumental logic,
disembodied data, and word games of the power elite are those who have gone through the most
schooling, the indoctrination offered by the so-called "elite" universities. I suspect that
more working-class and poor people still retain some sense of the old language and the
fundamental meaning of words, since it is with their sweat and blood that they "earn their
living." Many of the highly schooled are children of the power elite or those groomed to serve
them, who are invited to join in living the life of power and privilege if they swallow their
consciences and deaden their imaginations to the suffering their "life-styles" and ideological
choices inflict on the rest of the world. In this world of TheNew York Times ,
Harvard, The New Yorker , Martha's Vineyard, TheWashington Post , Wall
St., Goldman Sachs, the boardrooms of the ruling corporations, all the corporate media, etc.,
language has become debased beyond recognition. Here, as Orwell said of Newspeak, "a heretical
thought should be literally unthinkable, at least as far as thought is dependent on words. Its
vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every
meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express." The intelligently orthodox, he
adds, must master the art of "doublethink" wherein they hold two contradictory ideas in their
minds simultaneously, while accepting both of them. This is the key trick of logic and language
that allows the power elites and their lackeys in the U.S. today to master the art of
self-deception and feel good about themselves as they plunder the world. In this "Party" world,
the demonization, degradation, and killing of others is an abstraction; their lives are
spectral. Orwell describes doublethink this way:
To tell deliberate lives while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has
become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion
for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while
to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in
using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink . For by using
the word one admits one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one
erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the
truth.
... ... ...
*
Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely; he is a frequent contributor
to Global Research. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website
is http://edwardcurtin.com/ .
"... Amen to the part about Google. Once upon a time I could start a Google search with a high probability of finding something useful. These days I have to darned near know the result before I'll find anything. ..."
"... I agree that Google search is not as good as it once was but it could be that the web itself has changed with far more commercial and bubble gum content. There was a time long ago when only nerds used computers. ..."
"... I find Google regularly overriding specific search terms, particularly when I put in a short phrase in quotes, which means Google is supposed to deliver results that match that exact phrase. First page, even the very first result, regularly violate the search criteria. Never happened before ~ 2 years ago. ..."
"... "Isikoff checked the facts for his new book so hard, they were carried off unconscious, and remain in a coma" ..."
I am a blogger. It is my job to blog, which I've been doing on a daily basis since 2003.
Reading and writing is what I do all day. I'm lucky to be able to survive doing it, and I'm
happy to be doing it[1]. I hate Google because it tries to make me a stupid reader. I hate
Twitter and Facebook because they make me a stupid writer. I've been wanting to get this off my
chest for some time, so allow me to explain.
Let's where I start, with reading. As a blogger, I need to process and filter enormous
amounts of newsworthy content hours a day, every day (as does Yves). I am like an enormous
baleen whale nourished by krill. So here is how the insanely stupid and wasteful Google News
helps me -- and you, dear readers! -- do this:
(I've erased the Weather box at top right, which is Google's little way of letting me know
it's tracking my location even though cookies are off.) First, look at the page, which is a
complete screenful on a laptop (i.e., on the screen of professional content creator who values
his time, not a teensy little cellphone screen). In the news links column at left, there are a
grand total of nine (9) stories. Please, can we get the steam-era list of blue links back,
where we could scan 30 or 40 headlines in a single second's saccade? And note the sources: CNN,
HuffPost, Fox, WaPo, NBC News, NPR, CNN, and the WSJ. This is an ecoystem about as barren as my
neighbor's lawn! (And if you click on the laughingly named "View full coverage" link, you'll
see a page just as empty and vacuous though slightly less barren, with more obcure sources,
like Reuters. Or Salon.) You will also note the obvious way in which the page has been gamed by
gaslighters and moral panic engineers, who can drive every other story off the front page
through sheer volume Finally, you'll note that the fact checkers include organs
of state security , in the form of polygraph.info , "a fact-checking website produced
by Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty."
Now let's try to use Google News for search. (I find Google proper, though still crapified,
better for news, especially if I limit the search by time.) I chose "start treaty," for
obvious reasons. Here is the results page:
Yes, on a complete, entire laptop page, there are in total five (5) hits, 3 from the
impoverished ecosytem noted above, and one from an organ of state security
(RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty). The last hit, from Vox, is twelve (12) days old .
Surely there's something more current? Note also the random ordering of the hits: Today,
yesterday, 6 days ago, 2 days ago, 12 days ago. (There is, of course, no way to change the
ordering.) A news feed that doesn't organize stories chronologically? That doesn't surface
current content? What horrible virus has rotted the brain matter of the Google engineers who
created this monstrosity? And one more thing:
Famously, the normal Google search page ends with "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next." Crapified
though Google search results are, if you spend some time clicking and scanning, you'll
generally be able to come up with something useful five or ten pages in, maybe (if you're
lucky) from a source you don't already know exists. Not so with Google "News." When the page
ends, it just ends. When the algo has coughed up whatever hairball it's coughed up, it's done.
No more. Again, this is news? What about the same story a week ago? A month ago? What does "our
democracy" have a free press for, if Google gets in the way of being able to find anything?
So, the Google News experience is so vile and degrading in its stupidity and insolence that
I use another tool for reading the news: Twitter. And despite its well-deserved reputation as a
hell-site, Twitter -- carefully curated -- does the job, as long as you don't ask too
much of it, like news that's more than a month or so old. My beef with Twitter is not as a
reader, but as a writer. Here is how you create a tweet in Twitter:
I'll have a sidebar on those miserably inadequate writing tools, at left, in a moment. For
now, look at the bottom right: Those disruptive Silicon Valley engineers have innovated the
paragraph :
When you click that plus sign, you get A second Tweet, connected to the first, in an
easy-to-close-accidentally modal dialog box!
Here, I remind you of the steam age of Blogger, where you could -- hold onto your hats,
here, folks -- create a post, composed of paragraphs -- or, if you were a poet, lines; or an
artist, images and captions; or an accountant, tables -- all with at least some degree of
"flow" and ease. You could even have subheads, to divide your content into sections! The
billionaire brainiacs at Twitter have managed to create that first, minimal functionality --
the paragraph -- but without the ability to re-arrange, or even to edit your paragraphs after
posting! Does Jack laugh alone at night?[2].
Amen to the part about Google. Once upon a time I could start a Google search with a high
probability of finding something useful. These days I have to darned near know the result
before I'll find anything. Google News used to have a dense list of news stories. I don't
have a bookmark to the place anymore, relying instead on blog headlines and the like.
Since I've heard nothing good about Facebook I'm agreeable to the notion the site isn't
something for me. Never tried "tweeting" and have no plans to do so.
I agree that Google search is not as good as it once was but it could be that the web
itself has changed with far more commercial and bubble gum content. There was a time long ago
when only nerds used computers.
But I don't agree that Google News was ever very useful. Google always admitted that it
was edited by algo and it seemed to be a kind of Headline News news summary–the
opposite of what a hard core news junkie would want.
RSS is still around and IMO the most useful tool for keeping track of a large number of
websites. For off the beaten path links that may not show up on a favorite site there are
websites like this one (thanks Yves and Lambert and Jerri-Lynn).
I find Google regularly overriding specific search terms, particularly when I put in a
short phrase in quotes, which means Google is supposed to deliver results that match that
exact phrase. First page, even the very first result, regularly violate the search criteria.
Never happened before ~ 2 years ago.
Google in recent years has optimized for:
Shopping
Recency
"Authoritativeness" of sites. The latter criterion, as interpreted by Google = MSM
above all. Academic sites get downranked too.
So much truth here. Similar story with YouTube: even though Jimmy Dore Is my most watched
YouTuber by a long shot, notifications for new vids NEVER, ever, ever appear in my
notification thingy or at the top of the page. Never. Google engineers are braniac math
scientists (as Jimmy Dore might say), so this is a feature, not a bug. This is deliberate
suppression. Inverted totalitarianism.
I can attest to the same thing. And when I type jimmy on the search box, I always get
jimmy Fallon as the first option even though I constantly search for Jimmy Dore.
YouTube, for whatever reason, splits the functionality into two parts: subscribing and
notifications. If you "just" subscribe, you will not get a number badge indicating a
notification at the top right of your YouTube page -- you have to click the "notifications
bell" in order to get notifications.
On the YouTube Settings | Notifications page you can also choose to get email messages
regarding notifications and choose some other options regarding notifications for YouTube
activity. On that same page, if you click Manage all subscriptions (which is buried in the
text under Channel subscriptions ), you can see all your subscriptions and which ones have
the bell clicked or not.
If you click the hamburger (three bar) icon on the upper left, next to the YouTube logo,
that toggles a pane where you can see your history, your subscriptions, your settings and
some other things. Even if you haven't clicked the notifications bell, you can see, under
Subscriptions , the number of not-yet-watched videos you have, listed by individual channel
you've subscribed to. (That's how I generally know that there is a new Jimmy Dore video since
I am subscribed to the channel but I don't have notifications turned on.)
All of this is such poorly implemented usability that I hesitate to call it deliberate
anything but I won't discount it, either.
As of September 28th, Alphabet (a/k/a Google), Facebook and Twitter will join an all-new
Communications Services sector. Its core is the old Telecommunications Services sector, which
has shrunk to but three companies in the S&P 500 (Verizon, AT&T and CenturyLink).
Also joining Communications Services will be media and cable companies -- a full roster of
corporate villainy, as it were. The complete list of 22 constituents appears here:
A Communications Services ETF is already trading in advance of the sector's official debut
in September. Owing to the exit of seven current Information Technology stocks (including
Alphabet, Facebook and Twitter, the targets of Lambert's ire) and 16 Consumer Discretionary
stocks (including Comcast, Disney and Netflix), these sectors will change in composition on
Sep 28th.
In this exclusive chart, the new post-Sep 28th sectors are backcast as if they all existed
today:
Communications Services had been lagging the S&P 500 until last month, when government
approval of AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner set off a frenzy in other media stocks
which might be bought or merged. With Alphabet and Facebook making up 44.3% of Communications
Services by weight, these two giants will tend to dominate its performance.
The future is federated. Individual instances, hosted by whoever wants to set one up, that
can link to each other, for a fully customizable experience. I like Mastodon (a bird-site
replacement), and my particular instance at social.coop, even though it doesn't have any of
your writerly tools either. But it's open source, so the ability to add them is there:
Lambert, you can get back your Old Google News format (pre-AI change) by using this link
instead as follows: https://news.google.com/news/feeds?output=rss&q=%
It doesn't take away Google's attempt at controlling our information flow with its new AI
Gnews format But it should help you get your blue links & sections back ;) – with
the caveat that you can't click on said headlines/sections' "see real time coverage" (in
which case you go back to our Ministry of Information's AI approved interface). However you
can expand on the little down arrow next to each headlines and click on the working
links.
If you are letting algorithms decide what you watch or read, you are basically giving up.
At least use a search engine like Duck Duck Go and never read the news on FB or Twit.
Duck Duck Go has its own news section which I've used a few times, and it seemed to have
way more links than Lambert's screenshot of Google News. Don't know what sites DDG includes
but maybe it could be an alternative.
Sadly though I find the same problem with DuckDuckGo. Meaning, it returns the results it
wants, rather than what I asked for. Even if I ask for results from the past week I get stuff
from 8 years ago. And if I ask for something like Stereo Speakers I get things like "speakers
at this years conference ..", etc. Just pure garbage. And the key complaint I have is that
Amazon shows up every other result for page after page. If I search for "how to best
fertilize tomatoes in Colorado", I get a result showing tomatoes available on Amazon.com. And
at the top of every search is a "ribbon" of results from Amazon almost exclusively and with
"Prime" in the results box. I hate Amazon and wish I could never see that word again, or the
words Jeff Bezos. Sigh.
I have the same issue with DDG. My understanding is that it is not different from Google
in terms of search results, but simply that it won't surveil you:
Their ad campaign: "Same s*&$ results as Google, but no one will know you're
looking!"
What about Qwant? I do not like how it feels it has to open links and images in a separate
tab automatically, and it takes forever to load images, but I have heard good things about
the search engine.
I've been using other methods like -siteihate.com or site:.edu to find papers etc on a
topic. For geopolitics I try to find a human rights group nearby to see what they say. News
is hard to sift through
I don't do Twitter, thank you, but Facebook has News? Hoocoodanode? It's not something I
would ever think of using, but one of my friends (who is always threatening to unfriend me)
once ranted that she knew the Russians interfered with our election because she saw the bots
and memes. When I asked her how she knew a bot she never answered. She's a solid Russiagate
cult believer. I suspect she must get her news from FB.
I've noticed it's really, really tough now to find via Google any serious, longform blogs
on investing, energy, etc. Almost everything that comes up when I search a topic is a
listicle/clickbait, a Salon article, some horrible startup platform with only 10-50 active
users, or something locked behind a paywall.
I always thought the best metaphor for this is the end of the "Old West" – all the
territory is fenced off and none of the owners want you trespassing on their land. I actually
do think the best internet tools were all de-centralized – "federated" as one of your
commenters put it.
For instance, wasn't it great when you could make an RSS feed out of literally any series
of sites and just click on what you find interesting? Granted, I still think that's possible
but I don't see nearly as many websites pushing that compatibility anymore. Instead it's all
SEO and racing to be "discoverable" by the big platforms. Information, writing, and the
exchange of ideas have suffered as a result.
I've been very happy since switching to Duck Duck Go. Occasionally I can't find something
and think, "I'm going to actually go into google.com and see if it runs a better search" and
it almost never does.
To me the more interesting point here is Lambert's second/third one, which is that,
although both Twitter and Facebook decry the rise of fake news, their format is an especially
hard one to write a nuanced critique in. It's difficult (if not impossible) to put a string
of URLs in a Facebook post without actually putting the whole jumbled up 200-character
strings of the URLs in – instead of just hotlinking a word! – and you can't
format headings, sections, and subsections easily – so any discussion just basically
devolves into "No, read this!" "Well, read this!" "What about this!", etc. And they don't
always post comments chronologically, or in an order I can make sense of anyway, so you can't
follow the ongoing discussion clearly anyway.
Interestingly, as apparently the default, Firefox gives me a drop down list of "Latest
News" headlines (? at least 50) which are I think entirely from the Guardian and BBC. Not
great, too much human interest and soccer scores, and the articles are too often small or
video, but god knows better than NYT and WaPo, and I can and do go on from there to the rest
of the Guardian site. I don't know if that is configurable, if I could replace it with
al-jazerra, Asia Times or RT
But I also have Jacobin Naked Capitalism and Counterpunch in quick buttons and I spend my
time there. Should nuclear war start, I would want analysis before headlines. I am content
with being a few days or week behind.
When Google News changed to whatever it is now I stopped using it entirely. It's not an
aggregator in any sense at all, to me. I used to use Google as the home page and hit up the
news page and felt like I had a newspaper to go with my morning coffee. It's ludicrous now. I
just go directly to NC links and watercooler actually, and find my way around from there and
from my local online paper. "Sad!"
Google News has been slipping for a couple of years now, and has gotten exceptionally bad
since it deployed the new layout. I now check it once or twice a week at the most and mainly
just to read the headlines in order to find out what I'm supposed to believe.
The first site I open every morning is this site, read the articles of the titles that
catch my interest (most) and then settle in with a cup of coffee or two and the Links
Page.
The only serious problem I have with Naked Capitalism and its Links Section is that I'm
often late for work as a direct result of opening the Links page (which reminds me, It's
getting near my semi-annual donation :-)
This is a good opportunity for me to get something off of my chest, something that
infuriates me.
I don't know what entity is responsible for designing the auto-correct function in (most,
if not all) internet comment fields, but the result is shockingly bad.
First, it is fundamentally flawed. When the system offers a possible correction, it should
allow the user to ignore the suggestion and continue typing. Instead, having implemented the
tool completely backwards, it forces the user to close the suggestion, resulting in an
obvious waste of time. The arrogance of assuming that the program is likely to be correct is
compounded tremendously by the fact that – unbelievably – it does the exactly
same thing for words that are capitalized!
I am dumfounded that anyone could be so stupid as to implement a program that attempts to
correct proper names.
The fact that those involved in the initial design haven't yet discerned these obvious
flaws, and there hasn't been widespread outrage over this issue, reflects very poorly on all
involved.
I can attest that I usually run into spell check functions with abysmally poor
vocabularies. (I just noticed that 'spell check' has connotations of Ye Darke Artes.) I have
become inured to leaving those wavy red underlines in place when I 'post' a comment.
As for stupidity .
I knew something was up when every embedded(i guess) spellcheck i ran across couldn't
spell Nietzsche and insisted that i always capitalise walmart(and cease using cambridge
spelling immediately!).
i usually ignore the red squiggly, too
the worst was a samsung phone my wireless company gave me as an "upgrade". the text function
had a "learning" spellcheck/autocorrect that you were supposed to just keep using so that it
could eventually figure out what you were trying to say so at the beginning, every single
word opened up a sort of square flower thing of unrelated(as a rule) words.
it was impossible I gather more so due to my habit of using archaic and obscure language and
after you disabled it, it turned itself back on.
as a convenience.
It all goes back to Unix days, and DWIM. Do what I mean. According to the Hacker's
Dictionary, the guy who invented DWIM has a permanent death sentence on assigned to him
;-)
Nice to see the Hacker's Dictionary quoted. It's a wonderful resource, and a reminder that
not all programmers suck (just the ones riding scooters to their regulatory arbitrage
start-ups in Silicon Valley).
Agree entirely. Alas, it is often not the "program" doing this. My ipad has a popup
touchscreen keyboard (courtesy of iOS) that tries to enforce English spellings in every
text-entry situation including non-English webpages. As Lambert says, hilarity ensues.
My smartypants phone has detected me reading Voltaire (copyright-free Kindle for sitting
and waiting) and decided when I stammer texts to communicate with under-50s that I must be
speaking French. So my word-salads are bi-lingual. But the youth of today don't think I'm
erudite, they think I'm crazy. Dunno why, monolingual stammering isn't much better. But
unless I get a Trump-style thumb job, I can't type on my telephone (which is as it should be,
but I'm so old I remember when people answered their phones).
I did a C-list version of what Lambert does during that golden period of blogging he
mentions. He doesn't really give enough shrift to the amount of time he spends reading each
day, and it would be impossible to know how much effort goes into his interpretive remarks
that all too often spare me the bother of reading establishment tripe.
This is the gold standard for aggregation blogging: ample links, clarifying remarks,
snark. Reading this blog turned my old blog into a watered down version of this blog. I stole
a lot from Lambert Strether because he does this better than anyone else. (Pro tip: don't
steal from crappy writers)
I suspect Robot Wisdom as a prior influence, but now we're talking super old-timey
stuff.
Never read Robot Wisdom! I came in after that point. I first encountered the blogosphere
when Paul Krugman mentioned Atrios in one of his columns and I went to look. And that was
that. I was unemployed at the time, and spent most of my time reading blogs instead of
looking for work
Thanks for including labeled screen shots in your critique of FB, Goog, Twit. For those of
us who don't use those sites, it really helped comprehension.
Great post. I guess there really are a million ways to discourage people from thinking
clearly, including bs silicon valley editing tools.
I'm re-writing a historical romantic drama that i first completed in 1985, set mostly in
Paris and Vienna in the 1870s. I did major rewrites in the 1990s for a major star, who soon
got a contract to earn tens (or maybe hundreds of times) what a low-budget art house film
would have paid and promptly walked the project. As soon as your star is gone, your project
isn't one of the walking dead, it's totally graveyard dead.
The Internet was just coming into its own in the mid-1990s, and I have dozens of pages of
incredibly useful research material I downloaded from the web.
Fast forward to 2018, and a studio is again interested in the project. But it wants the
script rewritten from the female protagonist's viewpoint.
I again turned to the Internet to research the era.
Guess what?
No matter what set of keywords I use, no matter how I structure my Boolean searches, I get
hundreds and hundreds of links to commercial sights, advertisements for Viennese and Parisian
stores popping up left right and center.
Out of 100 links, maybe one has useful information.
Fortunately, not yet having had an intervention on an episode of HOARDERS, I managed to
locate in a mislabeled several thousand pages I photocopied from out-of-print books on the
subject.
God bless the Brooklyn Public Library and their hard-working Reference Desk librarians.
There's a special place in Heaven for them.
But their worldview already inclined them in the direction management wished them to go.
(And sometimes management doesn't even know what it wants anyhow.)
I noticed when I looked up Elon Musk Mars trip. I went through page after page of links to
how great it was that he launched a car into outer space with no reference that he actually
missed Mars.
I do things the old-fashioned way by compiling feeds from a list of 15, or so, sites into
a js reader on my website. I don't use Google at all and have no use for any corporate
website. What I will do, however, is browse the yahoo news stream just so I can get a feel of
the day's mood but I never follow a link. The only site that I visit not via my news reader
is NC.
Never heard of that one before now. I just checked it out all the news promoting Cold War
2.0 right at your fingertips at least that's the way it looks tonight.
I'm deep in the pit of learning about SEO optimization, and I can tell you that Google's
search algorithms–together with Google AdWords–are to blame for the lousy quality
of Google searches these days.
Google gives priority to websites based on:
t1) site speed (which means that unless you pay extra $$$ for superior hosting and upgraded
cloud services, your site will drop in the rankings. And hey, guess who owns one of the
fastest worldwide cloud hosting services? Google.)
2) Rules that force you to write "stupid" (or at least with zero flair and style) in order to
get your website onto the first page of a search. The keyword has to be right up top, the
header and meta-text have to be written just so, and within a character limit. You can't be
arch or subtle or creative. Break a rule and you get no mercy from Google's ranking
algorithm. You're just buried in the back.
3) Speaking of back, Google prioritizes sites and pages for backlinks, that is, for other
sites that link back to your website or article. While that may seem to be a way of pushing
quality websites to the top of a search, in actual practice this backlink thing is a game. My
site has backlinks from the New York Times, CNN, National Geographic, Conde Nast Traveler,
and a host of other very authoritative high quality sites. However my competitor has a
greater NUMBER of backlinks from more domains, and that counts for more, even though the
links are from unknown travel bloggers.
4) Finally, the biggest drag on Google Search is the ads, which can take up the first half of
the page before you get to a "real" search result.
It occurred to me the other day that scrapping or saving Net Neutrality may not really
matter all that much. Google is so powerful that effectively they function like a commerce
gateway, keeping out small businesses and websites that can't afford to hire the expensive
software engineers and experts that you need nowadays to tweak and craft your site's backend
so that it will show up in a Google search. Not to mention the added cost of fast hosting
servers.
And the time suck of having to become familiar with all this stuff just so I can stay
alive as a business!
For real – it's gone down the crapper almost entirely.
One blog we started in 2005 was a gold mine for five to eight years. Then the revenue
tumbled – for no logical reason to us. We were dissed. Maybe we didn't change the
keywords or whatever to "keep up with the times," but good original content that wasn't pop
culture or groupthink was shunned.
Fast forward to 2018, as we try to start up another new blog (this time promoting on the
top four major "social media" sites), it's been tough going.
It seems that people don't want to find interesting, common sense oriented, critical
thinking based content anymore.
If you're not talking about some utterly useless celebrity or bone-headed politician or
dreadful sad story – no one cares to exercise those wonderful abilities they have to
contemplate and reflect anymore. Deep thinkers are a dying breed.
Even searching for simple things on Google has gotten horrific.
I'm with others here. RSS reader (we use InoReader – awesome). When you stumble on a
quality site – instantly subscribe. Your own curated "timeline" or "newsfeed."
Read all the articles on those sites you subscribe to, because they often link to other
quality sites you can add to your museum of good publications.
Even if they're not exactly your ball of wax – keep them anyway. Not every post has
to be up your alley.
The independent publisher with unique thoughts is an endangered species. Not because we're
dying off – but because they're trying to kill us off via financial starvation.
There has to be a change of the tide eventually. Hopefully before it's too late.
My Twitter feed is extremely carefully curated. I do not subscribe directly to the usual
sources (like CNN, etc.)
So I hear about a story only when someone I trust brings it to my attention, not when they
do.
In addition I have a large number of quirky people with a wide skillset.
I originally joined Twitter to follow Black Lives Matter. It was invaluable, and not only
because I got news and images I could get nowhere else, but because Black Twitter is really
neat.
And this is what happens when we let billionaires control what we see and do on the net. I
have been a newshound for years and use to go through Google News and then a few favoured
sites. These days I have reversed it around as Google News has become so crappified, so
stripped of content and so cumbersome to use that I have switched it around.
As for Facebook and Twitter – not on your nelly though I know lots of people have to
use it for professional reasons or for staying in contact with groups that do not have a
presence elsewhere. The past several years I have found that I visit a lot of Russian sites
as I tend to find more news of interest there which five years ago I would have found weird.
The times they are a changin'.
Want to know what the future will be like. Take a look at the following clip from the film
"Rollerball" – the first one – and you will see. The main character goes to visit
the world computer for information as all of it is stored there. Upon arrival he finds that
the computer has "lost" all the information on the 13th century in talking to the lead
scientist. Here is that clip of our future-
I hate the "editor" in Facebook, too, but because there's no way to format anything. That
big type you call their default? That goes away when you type three lines or so. It's only
been there a couple of years and I don't know what they were thinking of when they added it.
Why can't I choose my type size? Why can't I make text bold or italic? NC at least has those
options. Other blogs let me enter most HTML formatting tags. Those "disruptive" engineers
must be pretty weird people. Why would I want my post to be in HUGE type if I'm only posting
one or two lines?
Thing I wanted to ask, how do you make google search time periods. Is that something
they've added? A few years ago, after many people entered "I have the same question" they
admitted they had no way to do so. Is it something you have to use advanced search for?
Because I think I remember seeing something there, but I haven't used it for many years.
I just checked Google. I could be missing it. What I do see is simpler, less precise, and
not as useful as the previous time period search. I use to use to be to chop off precisely
the exact dates I wanted searched. For example any articles, websites, or just news on the
Humbolt Squid from 1/1/1984 to 1/2/1986.
If I missed that option please tell me as it was useful.
Procopius,
Yes, your memory is fine as Google did make it fairly easy to search periods of time and to
use Boolean search terms. Brief tutorials and instructions easy to find. Googleborg has been
getting less useful for using the interwebs but it is easier to find stuff to buy. Strange is
it not?
Lambert,
When I think about the crapification of Google et al I also think about the siloing of
economics, political science, history and other fields, which are stripped of anything
considered extraneous, and reduced to dry misinformative stats, formulae, and over simplied
stories. Going from the broad interconnected field of anthropology to what is misleading
labeled "economics" is like going from a real forest full of life to a museum diorama
consisting of some ratty stuff animals, plastic plants, and some awfully painted background
and being told both are comparable.
I think what used to be political economics, but now just economics, was still not broad
enough but the current field of economics had everything not describing and validating
neoliberal capitalist free market economics removed. Adam Smith's own complete writings would
get him labeled a socialist. I cannot think that the deliberate, and it was deliberate, to
simplify away all inconvenient facts, ideas, and theories from what is laughing called
economics so that only a few pre-approved answers to the approved narrative is like Google,
Twitter, and Facebook's near uselessness.
I was actually working with FB (as a vendor) when they implemented that big-type
"feature". They were concerned that it was becoming almost mandatory to include a picture
with your posts – essentially every ad on the site has a picture, links to articles and
most any URLs automatically include a picture, and users were including more and more
pictures themselves as most people switched their Facebook time to smartphones. As a result,
if you posted a short, tweet-length text only message, it was easy to miss. So they inflated
the font size to make short messages take up a similar amount of space as longer ones or ones
with pictures.
It's not my preference at all, stylistically (especially with those hideous colored
backgrounds) but, well A/B testing told them it resulted in increased eyeballs on those short
posts.
Facebook demanding you to enable cookies is not only for the advertisers, but it's
required by the server so that it can do some essential things that are required to deliver
an interactive web page. For example when you try to post a message on Facebook your browser
will send a request to Facebook server. That request must be accompanied by the cookie so
that server knows that the request came from you and not from someone else.
If you don't want cookies tracking you, you can still enable them, but you can delete all
cookies before you close your browser. Many browsers will allow you to automatically delete
cookies when you close the browser.
Have you tried Feedly ? Until 2013 it
was owned by Google (where it was known as Google Reader) but it was actually a decent piece
of software so of course they had to get rid of it. IMNSHO it leaves the competition in the
dust and is still, by far, the best news aggregator available.
I am officially adopting the policy of understanding the word "check" in "fact check", to
have the same meaning as when it is used in the context of ice hockey, i.e. "Isikoff
checked the facts for his new book so hard, they were carried off unconscious, and remain in
a coma"
I blogged on blogger for 5 years, after which I had maybe 200 hits a day, most of which
were bots. Unless you googled my full name, the blog would never be listed.
Facebook was never meant to be anything but a ghetto, to put people in pens to make a few
people rich rich rich.
Twitter was always about making people twits. See: Trump, Hillary-bots, the
sports/movie/tv complex .
Great piece, it reminds me of Edward Tufte's classic "The Cognitive Style of
PowerPoint".
Of course, in spite of ET's popularity as a corporate tent revivalist, packing hotel
ballrooms at $250 a seat, there's been no interruption in the steady dumbing down of
communication, both written and graphic.
Damnit. My comment disappeared.
I ended it asking if Naked Capitalism would become financially secure were it to own its own
Servers that operated for profit regardless of content supported?
IT professionals Serve the Servers.
Drug dealers don't have to advertise.
Servers don't have to advertise, is what I thought.
I read the article. I read the comments. An idea appears above my eyes
between my eyebrows. 'Am I right or am I wrong?'
I love Naked Capitalism. Thanks
The New York Times and Washington Post this week published reports of a
private meeting last month between eight major technology and social media corporations and the
US intelligence agencies, to discuss their censorship operations in the lead-up to the November
2018 mid-term elections.
The meeting was convened at Facebook's Menlo Park, California, headquarters on May 23, and
was attended by representatives from Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Snap, Twitter and Oath,
owner of Yahoo! and a subsidiary of the telecommunications giant Verizon, along with agents
from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Post described the meeting, organized at the request of Facebook, as a "new
overture by the technology industry to develop closer ties to law enforcement." Both articles
were based on anonymous statements by individuals who attended. One attendee told the
Post that the conversation was a "back-and-forth, with both sides talking about how
they were thinking about the problem and how we were looking for opportunities to work
together."
The meeting is yet another testament to the increasing integration of the technology giants
with the US military/intelligence apparatus. These companies, which provide a growing share of
the technical infrastructure for the repressive apparatus of the state, increasingly see the
censorship of left-wing, anti-war, and progressive viewpoints as an integral part of their
business strategy.
"... The U.S. was in talks for a deal with Julian Assange but then FBI Director James Comey ordered an end to negotiations after Assange offered to prove Russia was not involved in the DNC leak, as Ray McGovern explains. ..."
"... Special to Consortium News ..."
"... The report does not say what led Comey to intervene to ruin the talks with Assange. But it came after Assange had offered to "provide technical evidence and discussion regarding who did not engage in the DNC releases," Solomon quotes WikiLeaks' intermediary with the government as saying. It would be a safe assumption that Assange was offering to prove that Russia was not WikiLeaks' source of the DNC emails. ..."
"... If that was the reason Comey and Warner ruined the talks, as is likely, it would reveal a cynical decision to put U.S. intelligence agents and highly sophisticated cybertools at risk, rather than allow Assange to at least attempt to prove that Russia was not behind the DNC leak. ..."
"... On March 31, 2017, though, WikiLeaks released the most damaging disclosure up to that point from what it called "Vault 7" -- a treasure trove of CIA cybertools leaked from CIA files. This disclosure featured the tool "Marble Framework," which enabled the CIA to hack into computers, disguise who hacked in, and falsely attribute the hack to someone else by leaving so-called tell-tale signs -- like Cyrillic, for example. The CIA documents also showed that the "Marble" tool had been employed in 2016. ..."
"... In fact, VIPS and independent forensic investigators, have performed what former FBI Director Comey -- at first inexplicably, now not so inexplicably -- failed to do when the so-called "Russian hack" of the DNC was first reported. In July 2017 VIPS published its key findings with supporting data. ..."
"... Why did then FBI Director Comey fail to insist on getting direct access to the DNC computers in order to follow best-practice forensics to discover who intruded into the DNC computers? (Recall, at the time Sen. John McCain and others were calling the "Russian hack" no less than an "act of war.") A 7th grader can now figure that out. ..."
Did Sen. Warner and Comey 'Collude' on Russia-gate? June 27, 2018 •
68 Comments
The U.S. was in talks for a deal with Julian Assange but then FBI Director James Comey
ordered an end to negotiations after Assange offered to prove Russia was not involved in the
DNC leak, as Ray McGovern explains.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
An explosive
report by investigative journalist John Solomon on the opinion page of Monday's edition of
The Hill sheds a bright light on how Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and then-FBI Director
James Comey collaborated to prevent WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange from discussing "technical
evidence ruling out certain parties [read Russia]" in the controversial leak of Democratic
Party emails to WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.
A deal that was being discussed last year between Assange and U.S. government officials
would have given Assange "limited immunity" to allow him to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in
London, where he has been exiled for six years. In exchange, Assange would agree to limit
through redactions "some classified CIA information he might release in the future," according
to Solomon, who cited "interviews and a trove of internal DOJ documents turned over to Senate
investigators." Solomon even provided a
copy of the draft immunity deal with Assange.
But Comey's intervention to stop the negotiations with Assange ultimately ruined the deal,
Solomon says, quoting "multiple sources." With the prospective agreement thrown into serious
doubt, Assange "unleashed a series of leaks that U.S. officials say damaged their cyber warfare
capabilities for a long time to come." These were the Vault 7 releases, which led then CIA
Director Mike Pompeo to call WikiLeaks "a hostile intelligence service."
Solomon's report provides reasons why Official Washington has now put so much pressure on
Ecuador to keep Assange incommunicado in its embassy in London.
Assange: Came close to a deal with the U.S. (Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter
Erichsen)
The report does not say what led Comey to intervene to ruin the talks with Assange. But it
came after Assange had offered to "provide technical evidence and discussion regarding who did
not engage in the DNC releases," Solomon quotes WikiLeaks' intermediary with the government as
saying. It would be a safe assumption that Assange was offering to prove that Russia was not
WikiLeaks' source of the DNC emails.
If that was the reason Comey and Warner ruined the talks, as is likely, it would reveal a
cynical decision to put U.S. intelligence agents and highly sophisticated cybertools at risk,
rather than allow Assange to at least attempt to prove that Russia was not behind the DNC
leak.
The greater risk to Warner and Comey apparently would have been if Assange provided evidence
that Russia played no role in the 2016 leaks of DNC documents.
Missteps and Stand Down
In mid-February 2017, in a remarkable display of naiveté, Adam Waldman, Assange's pro
bono attorney who acted as the intermediary in the talks, asked Warner if the Senate
Intelligence Committee staff would like any contact with Assange to ask about Russia or other
issues. Waldman was apparently oblivious to Sen. Warner's stoking of Russia-gate.
Warner contacted Comey and, invoking his name, instructed Waldman to "stand down and end the
discussions with Assange," Waldman told Solomon. The "stand down" instruction "did happen,"
according to another of Solomon's sources with good access to Warner. However, Waldman's
counterpart attorney David Laufman , an accomplished federal prosecutor picked by the
Justice Departent to work the government side of the CIA-Assange fledgling deal, told Waldman,
"That's B.S. You're not standing down, and neither am I."
But the damage had been done. When word of the original stand-down order reached WikiLeaks,
trust evaporated, putting an end to two months of what Waldman called "constructive, principled
discussions that included the Department of Justice."
The two sides had come within inches of sealing the deal. Writing to Laufman on March 28,
2017, Waldman gave him Assange's offer to discuss "risk mitigation approaches relating to CIA
documents in WikiLeaks' possession or control, such as the redaction of Agency personnel in
hostile jurisdictions," in return for "an acceptable immunity and safe passage agreement."
On March 31, 2017, though, WikiLeaks released the most damaging disclosure up to that
point from what it called "Vault 7" -- a treasure trove of CIA cybertools leaked from CIA
files. This disclosure featured the tool "Marble Framework," which enabled the CIA to hack into
computers, disguise who hacked in, and falsely attribute the hack to someone else by leaving
so-called tell-tale signs -- like Cyrillic, for example. The CIA documents also showed that the
"Marble" tool had been employed in 2016.
Misfeasance or Malfeasance
Comey: Ordered an end to talks with Assange.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which includes among our members two former
Technical Directors of the National Security Agency, has repeatedly called
attention to its conclusion that the DNC emails were leaked -- not "hacked" by Russia or
anyone else (and, later, our suspicion that someone may have been playing Marbles, so to
speak).
In fact, VIPS and independent forensic investigators, have performed what former FBI
Director Comey -- at first inexplicably, now not so inexplicably -- failed to do when the
so-called "Russian hack" of the DNC was first reported. In July 2017 VIPS published its
key
findings with supporting data.
Two month later , VIPS published the results of
follow-up experiments conducted to test the conclusions reached in July.
Why did then FBI Director Comey fail to insist on getting direct access to the DNC computers
in order to follow best-practice forensics to discover who intruded into the DNC computers?
(Recall, at the time Sen. John McCain and others were calling the "Russian hack" no less than
an "act of war.") A 7th grader can now figure that out.
Asked on January 10, 2017 by Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr (R-NC) whether
direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation,
Comey replied
: "Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server
that's involved, so it's the best evidence."
At that point, Burr and Warner let Comey down easy. Hence, it should come as no surprise
that, according to one of John Solomon's sources, Sen. Warner (who is co-chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee) kept Sen. Burr apprised of his intervention into the negotiation with
Assange, leading to its collapse.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then a CIA
analyst for a total of 30 years and prepared and briefed, one-on-one, the President's Daily
Brief from 1981 to 1985.
If you enjoyed this original article please consider
making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this
one.
says:
May 21, 2017 at 2:30 am GMT 200 Words While the "progressives" badmouth bad-bad russkies
for "destroying our democracy," an obscene spectacle of persecution of the most important
whistleblower of our times continues.
"Getting Assange: the Untold Story," by JOHN PILGER
"Hillary Clinton, the destroyer of Libya and, as WikiLeaks revealed last year, the secret
supporter and personal beneficiary of forces underwriting ISIS, proposed, "Can't we just drone
this guy." According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington's bid to get Assange is
"unprecedented in scale and nature." In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought
for almost seven years to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. Assange's
ability to defend himself in such a Kafkaesque world has been severely limited by the US
declaring his case a state secret. In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release
of all information about the "national security" investigation against WikiLeaks, because it
was "active and ongoing" and would harm the "pending prosecution" of Assange. The judge,
Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show "appropriate deference to the executive in
matters of national security." This is a kangaroo court."
[Hayden] is another legacy of George W. Bush, who appointed this buffoon to the CIA and
the NSA.
Actually, Hayden was initially a Bill Clinton appointee (in 1999), before his
reappointment by Bush.
Further, he was not merely appointed, but appointed out of order. Hayden was the second
consecutive USAF DIRNSA.
Here is
the list of DIRNSA's (I have attempted to show some sort of pattern in the
appointments):
USA (Canine), USAF (Samford), USN (Frost),
USAF (Blake), USA (Carter), USN (Gayler),
USAF (Phillips), USAF (Allen (Phillips only served 2 years before he got kicked upstairs
to run the USAF Systems Command)), USN (Inman),
USAF (Faurer), USA (Odom),
USN (Studeman), USN (McConnell),
USAF (Minihan), USAF (Hayden),
USA (Alexander), USN (Rogers), USA (Nakasone).
So the question is: Why did Clinton pick Hayden in 1999, rather than an Army
general?
I read a profile of Hayden in WaPo where he was depicted as doing the cooking in
the family.
Maybe that endeared him to the Clinton administration decision-makers.
And, if I recall correctly, in his memoir Playing to the Edge , he writes of his work to advance the careers of
women.
No doubt a real plus in some administrations.
As a point of information, WaPo has a pretty extensive profile of Hayden (but not
the one I remember) here:
"Test of Strength"
by Vernon Loeb (who IMO was a quite good reporter on the IC), WaPo , 2001-07-29 (i.e, before 9/11)
It goes into some detail on why and how Hayden transformed the NSA.
BTW, back in the 1970s NSA was divided into groups, A, B, G, S, R, T, ....
Some were mission-specific, some were function-specific.
Somewhat of a matrix organization.
Evidently that organization was deemed inadequate.
Let me bring up another issue here:
Compartmentation versus information-sharing.
In those days compartmentation was quite strict.
People walked around with metal tags attached to their lanyards,
showing which compartments they had been read into,
and thus which parts of the building they could enter.
The 9/11 report faulted such compartmentalization, calling it "stovepipes".
So now we Snowden, say, having access to a vast area of information.
I wonder if it was a bad decision to break down the compartments,
and if the old days of compartmentation should be restored.
Among the array of nasty USAF intelligence generals I dealt with as an SES in DIA I don't
remember Haydon at all. They tended to be filled with animus against the Army and
determined to take over all joint organizations. Maybe he cooked at backyard parties?
Hayden transformed the NSA when he was there. He moved it from just sucking signals out
of the air to vacuuming up all manner of digital information. It was a needed and
successful transformation. Of course it also led to the excessive collection of US
communications.
Right. Just ask Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis and Thomas Drake about how Hayden
"transformed" the NSA. He's a corrupt bastard in my book more keen on playing politics
than doing the right thing.
A 29-year-old former CIA computer engineer, Joshua Adam Schulte, was indicted Monday by the
Department of Justice on charges of masterminding the largest leak of classified information in the spy agency's history .
Schulte, who created malware for the U.S. Government to break into adversaries computers, has been sitting in jail since his August
24, 2017 arrest on unrelated charges of posessing and transporting child pornography - which was discovered in a search of his New
York apartment after Schulte was named as the prime suspect in the cyber-breach one week after WikiLeaks published the "Vault 7"
series of classified files. Schulte was arrested and jailed on the child porn charges while the DOJ ostensibly built their case leading
to Monday's additional charges.
[I]nstead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with
possessing child pornography, saying agents had found 10,000 illicit images on a server he created as a business in 2009 while
studying at the University of Texas at Austin.
Court papers quote messages from Mr. Schulte that suggest he was aware of the encrypted images of children being molested by
adults on his computer, though he advised one user, "Just don't put anything too illegal on there." -
New York Times
Monday's DOJ announcement adds new charges related to stealing classified national defense information from the Central Intelligence
Agency in 2016 and transmitting it to WikiLeaks ("Organization-1").
The Vault 7 release - a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 - reveal that the CIA had a wide variety
of tools to use against adversaries, including the
ability to "spoof" its malware to appear as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency , as well as the ability to
take control of Samsung Smart TV's and surveil a target using a "Fake Off" mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping.
The CIA's hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a "fingerprint"
that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity .
...
The CIA's Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques 'stolen'
from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.
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 .
Schulte previously worked for the NSA before joining the CIA, then "left the intelligence community in 2016 and took a job in
the private sector," according to a statement reviewed in May by
The Washington Post .
Schulte also claimed that he reported "incompetent management and bureaucracy" at the CIA to that agency's inspector general
as well as a congressional oversight committee. That painted him as a disgruntled employee, he said, and when he left the CIA
in 2016, suspicion fell upon him as "the only one to have recently departed [the CIA engineering group] on poor terms," Schulte
wrote. - WaPo
Part of that investigation, reported WaPo, has been analyzing whether the Tor network - which allows internet users to hide their
location (in theory) "was used in transmitting classified information."
In other hearings in Schulte's case, prosecutors have alleged that he used Tor at his New York apartment, but they have provided
no evidence that he did so to disclose classified information. Schulte's attorneys have said that Tor is used for all kinds of
communications and have maintained that he played no role in the Vault 7 leaks. - WaPo
Schulte says he's innocent: " Due to these unfortunate coincidences the FBI ultimately made the snap judgment that I was guilty
of the leaks and targeted me," Schulte said. He launched
Facebook and GoFundMe pages
to raise money for his defense, which despite a $50 million goal,
has yet to r eceive a single donation.
The Post noted in May, the Vault 7 release was one of the most significant leaks in the CIA's history , "exposing secret cyberweapons
and spying techniques that might be used against the United States, according to current and former intelligence officials."
The CIA's toy chest includes:
Tools code named " Marble " can misdirect forensic investigators from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to
their agency by inserted code fragments in foreign languages. The tool was in use as recently as 2016. Per the
WikiLeaks release:
"The source code shows that Marble has test examples not just in English but also in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.
This would permit a forensic attribution double game, for example by pretending that the spoken language of the malware creator
was not American English, but Chinese, but then showing attempts to conceal the use of Chinese, drawing forensic investigators
even more strongly to the wrong conclusion, --- but there are other possibilities, such as hiding fake error messages."
iPads / iPhones / Android devices and Smart TV's are all susceptible to hacks and malware. The agency's "Dark Matter" project
reveals that the CIA has been bugging "factory fresh" iPhones since at least 2008 through suppliers. Another, " Sonic Screwdriver
" allows the CIA to execute code on a Mac laptop or desktop while it's booting up.
The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell's 1984, but "Weeping Angel",
developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB)
, which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
The Obama administration promised to disclose all serious vulnerabilities they found to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other
US-based manufacturers. The US Government broke that commitment.
"Year Zero" documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration's commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in
the CIA's cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.
In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its
hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate (
"Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe" or CCIE)
are given diplomatic ("black") passports and State Department cover.
Instant messaging encryption is a joke.
These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking
the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.
The CIA laughs at Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware programs.
"Joshua Schulte, a former employee of the CIA, allegedly used his access at the agency to transmit classified material to an outside
organization . During the course of this investigation, federal agents also discovered alleged child pornography in Schulte's New
York City residence ," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman.
On March 7, 2017, Organization-1 released on the Internet classified national defense material belonging to the CIA (the "Classified
Information"). In 2016, SCHULTE, who was then employed by the CIA, stole the Classified Information from a computer network at
the CIA and later transmitted it to Organization-1. SCHULTE also intentionally caused damage without authorization to a CIA computer
system by granting himself unauthorized access to the system, deleting records of his activities, and denying others access to
the system . SCHULTE subsequently made material false statements to FBI agents concerning his conduct at the CIA.
Schulte faces 135 years in prison if convicted on all 13 charges:
Illegal Gathering of National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(b) and 2
Illegal Transmission of Lawfully Possessed National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(d) and 2
Illegal Transmission of Unlawfully Possessed National Defense Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e) and 2
Unauthorized Access to a Computer To Obtain Classified Information, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(1) and 2
Theft of Government Property, 18 U.S.C. §§ 641 and 2
Unauthorized Access of a Computer to Obtain Information from a Department or Agency of the United States, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(2)
and 2
Causing Transmission of a Harmful Computer Program, Information, Code, or Command, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1030(a)(5) and 2
Making False Statements, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1001 and 2
Obstruction of Justice, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1503 and 2
Receipt of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(2)(B), (b)(1), and 2
Possession of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2252A(a)(5)(B), (b)(2), and 2
Transportation of Child Pornography, 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(1)
Seems like everyone has kiddy porn magically appear and get discovered after they piss off the deep state bastards.
And the best part is that it's probably just the deep state operatives' own private pedo collections that they use to frame
anyone who they don't like.
I was thinking about the advancement of the technology necessary for that. They can do perfect fake stills already.
My thought is that you will soon need to film yourself 24/7 (with timestamps, shared with a blockchain-like verifiably) so
that you can disprove fake video evidence by having a filmed alibi.
Ironically, every single ex gov whistle blower (/pedophile) has the exact same kiddie porn data on their secret server (hidden
in plane view at the apartment). Joe CIA probably has a zip drive preloaded with titled data sets like "Podesta's Greatest Hits",
"Hillary's Honey bunnies" or "Willy go to the zoo". Like the mix tapes you used to make for a new gal you were trying to date.
Depending upon the mood of the agent in charge, 10,000 images of Weiner's "Warm Pizza" playlist magically appear on the server
in 3-2-1... Gotcha!
These false fingerprint tactics were all over the trump accusations which started the whole Russia Russia Russia ordeal. And
the Russia ordeal was conceptualized in a paid report to Podesta by the Bensenson Group called the Salvage Program when it was
appearant that Trump could possible win and the DNC needed ideas on how to throw the voters off at the polls. Russia is coming
/Red dawn was #1 or #2 on the list of 7 recommended ploys. The final one was crazy.. If Trump appeared to win the election, imagery
of Jesus and an Alien Invasion was to be projected into the skies to cause mass panic and create a demand for free zanex to be
handed out to the panic stricken.
Don't forget Black Lives Matters. That was idea #4 of this Bensenson report, to create civil unrest and a race war. Notice
how BLM and Antifa manically disappeared after Nov 4. All a ploy by the Dems & the deep state to remain in control of the countrys
power.
Back to the topic at hand. Its a wonder he didn't get Seth Riched. Too many porn servers and we will begin to question the
legitimacy. Oh wait...
You won't find any kiddie porn on Hillary's or DeNiros laptop. Oh its there. You just will never ever hear about it.
The Vault 7 release - a series of 24 documents which began to publish on March 7, 2017 - reveal that the CIA had a wide
variety of tools to use against adversaries, including
the ability to "spoof" its malware to appear
as though it was created by a foreign intelligence agency ....
It probably can spoof child porn as well.
Is he charged with copyright infringement for pirating child porn?
The intel community sure has a knack for sussing out purveyors of child pornography. It's probably just a coincidence govt
agencies and child pornography are inextricably linked.
It's very easy for a criminal spook to plant child porn on some poor slob's machine - especially when they want to keep him
on the hook to sink his ass for something bigger in the future. Who knows... this guy may have done some shit but I'm willing
to bet he was entirely targeted by these IC assholes. Facing 135 years in prison... yet that baggy ass cunt Hillary walks free...
Funny how they always seem to have a "sting" operation in progress when there's anyone the DC rats want to destroy but strangely,
or not, silent as the grave when one of the special people are fingered.
