The U.S. Justice Department said on Friday a Chinese national had been arrested for stealing
trade secrets from a U.S.-based petroleum company, his employer, related to a product worth
more than $1 billion.
The department alleged Hongjin Tan downloaded hundreds of files related to the manufacture
of a "research and development downstream energy market product," which he planned to use to
benefit a company in China that had offered him a job. He was arrested on Thursday in Oklahoma
and will next appear in court on Wednesday, the department said.
Tan's LinkedIn page said he has worked as a staff scientist for Phillips 66 (PSX.N) in
Bartlesville, Oklahoma, since May 2017.
Phillips 66 said in a statement it was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation
in a probe involving a "former employee at our Bartlesville location," but declined to comment
further.
An FBI affidavit said Phillips 66 called the agency last week to report the theft of trade
secrets and Tan told a former co-worker he was leaving to return to China.
The FBI found on Tan's laptop an employment agreement from a Chinese company that has
developed production lines for lithium ion battery materials.
Tan accessed files for marketing the trade secret "in cell phone and lithium-based battery
systems," the FBI said. Phillips 66 said it has one of two refineries in the world that
manufacture the unspecified product.
Tan was responsible for research and development of the U.S. company's battery programme and
developing battery technologies using its proprietary processes. Phillips 66 told the FBI it
had earned an estimated $1.4 billion to $1.8 billion from the unspecified technology.
"... Nik Williams, the policy advisor for Scottish PEN, the Scottish centre of PEN International. We are leading the campaign opposing suspicionless surveillance and protecting the rights of writers both in Scotland and across the globe. Find out more on Twitter at @scottishpen and @nikwilliams2 . Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... In 2013, NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government surveillance that enables intelligence agencies to capture the data of internet users around the world. Some of the powers revealed enable agencies to access emails in transit, files held on devices, details that document our relationships and location in real-time and data that could reveal our political opinions, beliefs and routines. ..."
"... As big data and digital surveillance is interwoven into the fabric of modern society there is growing evidence that the perception of surveillance affects how different communities engage with the internet. ..."
"... In 2013, PEN America surveyed American writers to see whether the Snowden revelations impacted their willingness to explore challenging issues and continue to write. In their report, Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives US Writers to Self-Censor , PEN America found that "one in six writers avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to surveillance". ..."
"... At times, surveillance appears unavoidable and this was evident in many of the writers' responses to whether they could take actions to mitigate the risks of surveillance. Without knowing how to secure themselves there are limited options: writers either resign themselves to using insecure tools or choose to avoid the internet all together, cutting them off from important sources of information and potential communities of readers and support. ..."
"... Although not explicitly laid out in the post, I'm inclined to believe any online research on PETs might single one out as a "Person of Interest" ..."
"... we know better now – EVERYTHING is recorded and archived. Privacy may not be dead yet, but now exists only in carefully curated offline pockets, away from not just the phone and the laptop, but also the smart fridge's and the face-recognising camera's gimlet eye. ..."
"... And it's not just off centre political opining that could be used in such efforts. The percentages of internet users who have accused [people of using] porn sites suggests there would be some serious overlap between the set of well known and/or 'important' people and the set of porn hounds. Remember the cack-handed attempts to smear Hans Blix? ..."
"... Most of us (real writers or just people who write) need to hold down a job and increasingly HR depts don't just 'do a Google' on all potential appointees to important roles but in large concerns at least, use algorithmic software connected to the web and the Cloud to process applications. ..."
We know what censorship looks like: writers being murdered, attacked or imprisoned; TV and
radio stations being shut down; the only newspapers parrot the state; journalists lost in the
bureaucratic labyrinth to secure a license or permit; government agencies approving which
novels, plays and poetry collections can be published; books being banned or burned or the
extreme regulation of access to printing materials or presses. All of these damage free
expression, but they leave a fingerprint, something visible that can be measured, but what
about self-censorship? This leaves no such mark.
When writers self-censor, there is no record, they just stop writing or avoid certain topics
and these decisions are lost to time. Without being able to record and document isolated cases
the way we can with explicit government censorship, the only thing we can do is identify
potential drivers to self-censorship.
In 2013, NSA whistle blower, Edward Snowden revealed the extent of government surveillance
that enables intelligence agencies to capture the data of internet users around the world. Some
of the powers revealed enable agencies to access emails in transit, files held on devices,
details that document our relationships and location in real-time and data that could reveal
our political opinions, beliefs and routines. Following these revelations, the UK government
pushed through the Investigatory Powers Act ,
an audacious act that modernised, consolidated and expanded digital surveillance powers. This
expansion was opposed by civil rights organisations, (including Scottish PEN where I work),
technologists, a number of media bodies and major tech companies, but on 29th November 2016, it
received royal assent.
But what did this expansion do to our right to free expression?
As big data and digital surveillance is interwoven into the fabric of modern society there
is growing evidence that the perception of surveillance affects how different communities
engage with the internet. Following the Snowden revelations, John Penny at the Oxford
Internet Institute analysed traffic to Wikipedia pages on topics designated by the Department
of Homeland Security as sensitive and identified "a 20 percent decline in page views on
Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned 'al Qaeda,' 'car bomb'
or 'Taliban.'" This report was in line with a study by Alex Marthews and
Catherine Tucker who found a similar trend in the avoidance of sensitive topics in Google
search behaviour in 41 countries. This has significant impact on both free expression and
democracy, as
outlined by Penney: "If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy
matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic
debate."
But it doesn't end with sourcing information. In a study of Facebook, Elizabeth Stoycheff
discovered that when faced with holders of majority opinions and the knowledge of government
surveillance, holders of minority viewpoints are more likely to "self-censor their dissenting
opinions online". If holders of minority opinions step away from online platforms like
Facebook, these platforms will only reflect the majority opinion, homogenising discourse and
giving a false idea of consensus. Read together, these studies document a slow erosion of the
eco-system within which free expression flourishes.
In 2013, PEN America surveyed American writers to see whether the Snowden revelations
impacted their willingness to explore challenging issues and continue to write. In their
report, Chilling Effects:
NSA Surveillance Drives US Writers to Self-Censor , PEN America found that "one in six
writers avoided writing or speaking on a topic they thought would subject them to
surveillance". But is this bigger than the US? Scottish PEN, alongside researchers at the
University of Strathclyde authored the report,
Scottish Chilling: Impact of Government and Corporate Surveillance on Writers to explore
the impact of surveillance on Scotland-based writers, asking the question: Is the perception of
surveillance a driver to self-censorship? After surveying 118 writers, including novelists,
poets, essayists, journalists, translators, editors and publishers, and interviewing a number
of participants we uncovered a disturbing trend of writers avoiding certain topics in their
work or research, modifying their work or refusing to use certain online tools. 22% of
responders have avoided writing or speaking on a particular topic due to the perception of
surveillance and 28% have curtailed or avoided activities on social media. Further to this, 82%
said that if they knew that the UK government had collected data about their Internet activity
they would feel as though their personal privacy had been violated, something made more likely
by the passage of the investigatory Powers Act.
At times, surveillance appears unavoidable and this was evident in many of the writers'
responses to whether they could take actions to mitigate the risks of surveillance. Without
knowing how to secure themselves there are limited options: writers either resign themselves to
using insecure tools or choose to avoid the internet all together, cutting them off from
important sources of information and potential communities of readers and support.
Literacy
concerning the use of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (oftentimes called PETs) is a vital part
of how we protect free expression in the digital age, but as outlined by the concerns of a
number of the participants, it is largely under-explored outside of the tech community: "I
think probably I need to get educated a wee bit more by someone because I think we probably are
a bit exposed and a wee bit vulnerable, more than we realize." Another was even more stark
about their worries about the available alternatives: "I have no idea about how to use the
Internet 'differently'".
When interviewed, a number of writers expressed concerns about how their writing process has
changed or is in danger of changing as a result of their awareness of surveillance. One
participant who had covered the conflict in Northern Ireland in 70s and 80s stated that they
would not cover the conflict in the same manner if it took place now; another stopped writing
about child abuse when they thought about what their search history may look to someone else;
when they heard of a conviction based on the ownership of the Anarchist Cookbook, a participant
who bought a copy for research shredded it. Further to this a participant stated: "I think I
would avoid direct research on issues to do with Islamic fundamentalism. I might work on
aspects of the theory, but not on interviewing people in the past, I have interviewed people
who would be called 'subversives'."
These modifications or avoidance strategies raise a stark and important question: What are
we as readers being denied if writers are avoiding sensitive topics? Put another way, what
connects the abuse of personal data by Cambridge Analytica, the treatment of asylum seekers by
the Australian government on Manus and Nauru, the hiding of billions of pounds by wealthy
individuals as revealed in the Panama and Paradise Papers, the deportation of members of the
'Windrush Generation' and the Watergate scandal? In each case, writers revealed to the world
what others wanted hidden. Shadows appear less dense if writers are able to explore challenging
issues and expose wrongdoing free from the coercive weight of pervasive surveillance. When
writers are silenced, even by their own hand, we all suffer.
Surveillance is going nowhere – it is embedded into the fabric of the internet. If we
ignore the impact it has on writers, we threaten the very foundations of democracy; a vibrant
and cacophonous exchange of ideas and beliefs, alongside what it means to be a writer. In the
words of one participant: "You can't exist as a writer if you're self-censoring."
Thanks Yves, this is an important topic. Although not explicitly laid out in the post, I'm
inclined to believe any online research on PETs might single one out as a "Person of
Interest" (after all the state wants unfettered access to our digital lives and any attempt
by individuals to curtail such access is viewed with suspicion, and maybe even a little
contempt).
I trust the takeaway message from this post will resonate with any person who holds what
might be considered "heretical" or dissenting views. I'd also argue that it's not just
writers who are willingly submitting themselves to this self-censorship straitjacket,
ordinary people are themselves sanitizing their views to avoid veering too far off the
official line/established consensus on issues, lest they fall foul of the machinery of the
security state.
Yes – not just 'writers' as in 'those who write for a living or at least partly
define themselves as writers in either a creative or an activist sense, or both' – but
all of us who do not perceive ourselves as 'writers', only as people who in the course of
their lives write a bit here and there, some of it on public platforms such as this, but much
of it in emails and texts to friends and family. It wouldn't be quite so bad if the
surveillance was only of the public stuff, but we know better now – EVERYTHING is
recorded and archived. Privacy may not be dead yet, but now exists only in carefully curated
offline pockets, away from not just the phone and the laptop, but also the smart fridge's and
the face-recognising camera's gimlet eye.
Staying with the 'not just' for a moment – the threat is not just government
security agencies and law enforcement, or indeed Surveillance Valley. It is clear that if
egghead techs in those employments are able to crack our lives open then egghead techs in
their parent's basement around the corner may be capable of the same intrusions, their
actions not subject to any of the official box-ticking govt actors with which govt actors
must (or at least should) comply.
And it is not just the danger of govt/sinister 3rd parties identifying potential security
(or indeed political or economic) threats out of big data analysis, but the danger of govt
and especially interested third parties targeting particular known individuals –
political enemies to be sure, but also love rivals, toxic bosses, hated alpha males or queen
bitches, supporters of other football clubs, members of other races not deemed fully human,..
the list is as long as that of human hatreds and jealousies. The danger lies not just in the
use of the tech to ID threats (real or imagined) but in its application to traduce threats
already perceived.
And it's not just off centre political opining that could be used in such efforts. The
percentages of internet users who have accused [people of using] porn sites suggests there would be some
serious overlap between the set of well known and/or 'important' people and the set of porn
hounds. Remember the cack-handed attempts to smear Hans Blix? Apparently no fire behind that
smoke, but what if there was? The mass US surveillance of other parties prior to UN Iraq
deliberations (from the Merkels down to their state-level support bureaucrats) was a fleeting
and hastily forgotten glimpse of the reach of TIA, its 'full spectrum dominance', from the
heights of top level US-free strategy meetings down to the level of the thoughts and hopes of
valets and ostlers to the leaders, who may be useful in turning up references to the
peccadilloes of the higher-ups 'go massive – sweep it all up, things related and
not'
And it's not just the fear of some sort of official retribution for dissenting political
activism that guides our hands away from typing that deeply held but possibly inflammatory
and potentially dangerous opinion. Most of us (real writers or just people who write) need to
hold down a job and increasingly HR depts don't just 'do a Google' on all potential
appointees to important roles but in large concerns at least, use algorithmic software
connected to the web and the Cloud to process applications.
This is done without human
intervention at the individual level but the whole process is set up in such a way that the
algorithms are able to neatly, bloodlessly, move applicants for whom certain keywords turned
up matches (union or party membership, letters to the editor or blog posts on financial
fraud, climate change vanguardism, etc) to the back of the queue, in time producing a grey
army of yes people in our bureaucracies.
The normal person's ability to keep pace with (let alone ahead of) the tech disappeared
long ago. So when a possible anonymising solution – Tor – crops up but is soon
exposed as yet another MI/SV bastard love child, the sense of disappointment is profound.
Shocked but not surprised.
"Then they got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables. – I remember a
conversation I had with a person who claimed to be a Christian. He said: Perhaps it's right,
these incurably sick people just cost the state money, they are just a burden to themselves
and to others. Isn't it best for all concerned if they are taken out of the middle [of
society]? "
We already
know insurers have been using online searches to discriminate amongst the victimae. The
married/unmarried differences in cancer treatments are a confirmation. Self-censorship is a
rational decision in seeking information in a linked world. (I gave up on affording
insurance, and I do searches for friends; the ads I get are amusing.)
It could be said that journalists have a professional duty, but as the man said, "If you
believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
As the woman said, "If your business depends on a platform, your business is already
dead."
(As for the above quote, check the provenance for the relevance.)
I confess I do concatenate your quotes on
occasion: "For a currency to function as a reserve currency is tantamount to exporting jobs."
Some of your most illuminating statements are in side comments to linked articles.
Means I spend a lot of time reading the site. But then I get to recategorize most other
current events sites as 'Entertainment.' And since they're not very, they've been
downregulated.
My choice being shackled e'n more to chains of FIRE, or living a healthy happy life,
rather than increasing my stress by fighting institutions, we're investing in ourselves. Good
sleep, good food, good exercise.
The basis of our diet is coffee, with cocoa (7% daily fiber with each tablespoon) and
organic heavy whipping cream (your fats should be organic (;)). That cream's not cheap; well,
actually it is amazingly cheap considering the energy inputs. I'll be fasting soon to murder
cancer cells, and fasting also costs, lets see, nothing.
That the best thing you can do is nothing, occasionally, is a strong offset to the
institutional framework. Janet's been a nurse 40 years, and every day (truth) we get another
instance of not wanting the probisci inserted. Even when we get M4A, we'll be cautious in our
approach.
I suppose that here we are looking at the dogs that did not bark for evidence of
self-censorship. Certainly my plans to take over the world I do not keep on my computer. I
had not considered the matter but I think that a case could be made that this may extend
further than just writers. The number of writers that cannot publish in the US but must
publish their work in obscure overseas publications is what happens to those who do not seek
to self censor. There are other forms of censorship to be true. I read once where there was
an editorial meeting for either the Washington Post or New York Times when a story came up
that would make Israel look bad. The people at the table looked around and without so much as
a nod that story was dropped from publication. Now that is self-censorship.
But I can see this self censorship at work elsewhere. To let my flight take fancy, who will
paint the modern "Guernica" in this age? Would there be any chance that a modern studio would
ever film something like "The Day After" mentioned in comments yesterday again? With so many
great stories to be told, why has Hollywood run itself into a creative ditch and is content
to film 1960s TV shows as a movie or a version of Transformers number 32? Where are the
novels being written that will come to represent this era in the way that "The Great Gatsby"
came to represent the 1920s? My point is that with a total surveillance culture, I have the
feeling that this is permeating the culture and creating a chilling effect right across the
board and just not in writing.
What we are experiencing censorship-wise is nothing new, just more insidious. It is not
even a Left/Right politics issue. We just saw Trumpist fascist conservatives KILL the
Weekly Standard (an action praised by Trump) for advocating the wrong
conservativism. The shift in the televised/streamed media from news to infotainment has
enabled neoliberal capitalism to censor any news that might alienate viewers/subscribers to
justify obscene charges for advertising. Hilariously, even fascist Laura Ingram got gored by
her own neolib ox.
Of course, a certain amount of self-censorship is prudent. Insulting, inflammatory,
inciteful, hateful speech seldom animates beneficial change – just pointless violence
(an sometimes law suits). Americans especially are so hung up on "free speech" rights that
they too often fail to realize that no speech is truly free . There are always consequences
for the purveyor, good and bad. Ask any kid on the playground with a bloody nose.
I would like to see some Google traitor write an article on the latest semantic analysis
algorithms and tools. Thanks to the government, nobody but the FEDs and Google have access to
these new tools that can mine terabytes of speech in seconds to highlight global patterns
which might indicate plotting or organizing that might be entirely legal. I have been trying
for years to get access to the newer unobtainable tools to help improve the development of
diagnostic and monitoring self-report health measures. Such tools can also quickly scan
journals to highlight and coordinate findings to accelerate new discoveries. For now, they
are used to determine if your emails indicate you are a jihadist terrorist or dope peddler,
or want to buy a Toyota or a Ford.
Rhetorical I know, but Don DeLillo is quite good. It was in his novel Libra ,
although arguably from/about a different era at this point, where it first hit home to me
that the Blob really does manipulate the media to its own ends all the time. And you can't
swing a cat without hitting a terrorist in his books.
But to your point, DeLillo is pretty old at this point and I'm hard pressed to think of
anyone picking up his mantle. And none of his novels, as brilliant as some of them might be,
rise to the level of The Great Gatsby in the popular imagination to begin with.
The surveillance people are the nicest, kindest human beings that have only your best
interest at heart.
They would never break down your door and terrorize you for searching online for a
pressure cooker and if you heard stories that they did that, the surveillancers have an
answer for you, it's fake news, and if you persisted in not believing them, there are other
methods of persuasion to get you to change your mind or at least shut up about it.
That pressure cooker story gets a lot of mileage. While there is undoubtedly a lot of
surveillance it might be interesting to see a story on just how much of it leads to actual
arrests on real or trumped up charges. Here's suggesting that the paranoia induced by books
like Surveillance Valley is over the top in the same way that TV news' focus on crime stories
causes the public to think that crime is rampant when it may actually be declining.
That said, journalists who indulge their vanity with Facebook or Twitter accounts are
obviously asking for it. And the journalistic world in general needs to become a lot more
technologically "literate" and realize that Youtube videos can be faked as well as how to
separate the internet wheat from the chaff. Plus there's that old fashioned way of learning a
story that is probably the way most stories are still reported: talking to
people–hopefully in a room that hasn't been bugged.
Just to add that while the above may apply to America that doesn't mean the web isn't a
much more sinister phenomenon in countries like China with its new social trust score. We
must make sure the US never goes there.
For your first sentence I think you are referencing:
The surveillance people are "the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being[s]
I've ever known in my life." (ref. Statement by Major Marco about Raymond Shaw from 1962 and
2004 movies "The Manchurian Candidate"). ?
Maybe you need some refresher re-education.
Expression of minority opinions and surpressed information is not a safe activity, thus we
self censor. However reality asserts itself and perhaps in those moments one can more safely
express alternate points of view. As far as writing online i worry about the future –
with everything recorded and searchable, will we at some point be facing round ups of
dissidents? What kind of supression will stressed governments and corporate hierarchies do in
the future?
I think the last blog post I wrote that was linked here at NC was called "TPP is
Treason."
I was writing and was published on the Internet from 2011-2016. I continue to write, but I
no longer publish anything online, I closed my Facebook account, and I rarely comment on
articles outside of NC, especially anywhere I have to give up a digital-ton of personal info
and contacts just to say a few words one time.
Goodness knows I do not worry a bit about fundamentalist Islamic militancy. Do I have any
anxiety about jackbooted "law enforcement" mercenaries in riot gear and automatic rifles
breaking down my door at the behest, basically, of the corporate/banking/billionaire,
neoliberal/neoconservative status quo, my big mouth excoriating these elite imperialists, at
the same time asset forfeiture laws are on the books and I can have EVERYTHING taken from me
for growing a single plant of cannabis, or even having any cannabis in my house, or not, all
they have to report to a complicit media and prosecutorial State is that I was growing
cannabis when there was none.
Of course there is little danger of that if I am not publishing, and hardly anyone knows I
ever have, and no one currently is paying any attention.
The fact in America at least is, as long as the status quo is secure, TPTB don't really
care what I write, as long as they do not perceive it as a threat, and the only way they
would is if a LOT of people are listening But still, there is nothing more terrifying on
earth than America's Law/Corporate/Bank/Privatized Military/Media imperialist State, chilling
to say the least, evidenced in the extreme by a distracted, highly manipulated and neutered
citizenry.
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."
"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search
may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain."
Most hackers have the personality of a supermodel who does discrete mathematics for fun.
Like mathematicians, hackers get off on solving very obscure and difficult to even explain
problems. Like models, hackers wear a lot of black, think they are more famous than they are,
and their career effectively ends at age 30. Either way, upon entering one's third decade, it
is time to put down the disassembler and consider a relaxing job in management.
Michał Zalewski
One of the Pwnie judges happens to think that lcamtuf's book, Silence on the Wire, is
one of the best examples of what it means to "hack". It is fitting that a lifetime
achievement award nomination goes to someone who embodies the technical spirit of a true
hacker.
But, it's not just a good book that puts Zalewski up for this award. Michal has been a
prolific contributor to the security community for decades. His tools and contributions
often approach problems from very different than the rest of the field. This results in
significant innovation and novelty.
p0f changed how we look at our network traffic and pcaps.
AFL alone may be worthy of a lifetime achievement award (it was the underlying engine
for several of the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge finalists).
Michal enjoyed his time at Google, and who wouldn't have using the largest corpus of
fuzzing input in the world and being a source of "very reasonably priced web client
exploits" (according to his prior boss). We've even heard that he was nice enough to send
some people USB Lava-lamps for anniversaries (we would think twice about plugging those in
).
"Just in time inventory. Not possible 50 years ago."
You are correct to say that the Just-In-Time logistics of 2016 require 2016 tech, not
1966 tech.
Minor sidebar: Henry Ford invented a lot of the concepts that are now cutting-edge
management science, and pushed them as far as he could with the tech that he had.
Major Point: plug-and-play 3D printing was also not possible 50 years ago.
Technological tools empower the people who actually put those tools to use. If the
majority of people have no interest in tools, those uninterested people can't empower
themselves.
" But contrary to the idea that these technologies would increase freedom, they appear,
on a daily basis, to have decreased freedom and privacy "
The InfoTech Revolution still has a chance to empower individuals, to decentralize
decision-making, and to transfer social momentum from transnational exploiters to
community-based cooperatives.
Freedom and privacy have been eroded by the malicious actions of psychopaths. The tech
itself is like a fence. The destruction of liberty is like English kleptocrats forcing
peasants off the commons and fencing the land into sheep pens. Don't blame fence
technology; don't blame the sheep; blame the kleptocrats.
Radical decentralization has a very small number of people who actively work with the
necessary technology. Radical decentralization has a lot of passive supporters who like the
idea but can't understand the tech and don't want to try to learn.
Radical decentralization is not guaranteed to succeed, but if you're sympathetic to the
goal, it might be more productive to write proactive, encouraging essays to motivate the
currently passive supporters so that they will put forth the effort to become active
technologists.
I am remembering the movie "Other Peoples' Lives", about the Stasi in East Germany
before 1989; a terrific and even more terrifying today (than when I first saw it) about
surveillance of every one by corporations and governments. the wall has come down, we've
had the Middle East "Spring" but nothing is changed.
Let us examine what all this infotech really has changed.
Control. Massive control. Surveillance.
Just in time inventory. Not possible 50 years ago.
Second to second tracking of workers without having to have a supervisor physically watching
them. Amazon warehouse workers carry devices which allow their workflow to be tracked to the
second. And if they aren't making their seconds, the supervisor is right on them. This wasn't
possible 30 years ago. If you wanted to have that sort of control, you had to have a supervisor
physically watching them, and the cost was prohibitive.
This sort of tracking is used for clerical workers as well.
Outsourcing work that had to be kept domestic before. The massive call centers in Delhi and
Ireland were not possible even 30 years ago. The cost was simply prohibitive.
Offshoring work, like manufacturing, was difficult to offshore before. Without real-time,
high-density communications, cutting edge manufacturing overseas was very difficult in the
past. You could offshore some things, certainly, but those industries tended to be mature
industries: shipbuilding, textiles, and so on. Cutting edge industries, no, they had to be
located close to the boffins or they were offshored to another, essentially First World
country–as when Britain offshored much of their production to the United States in the
late 19th century.
Commercial surveillance. Everything you buy is cross referenced. When you buy something at a
major retailers, the store takes a picture of you and matches it with your information. All
online purchase information is stored and centralized in databases. This information is shared.
This includes, but goes far beyond, internet surveillance; witness Google or Facebook serving
you ads based on what you've read or searched. Add this data to credit reports, bank accounts,
and so on, and it provides a remarkably complete picture of your life, because everything you
buy with anything but cash (and even some of that) is tracked. Where you are when you buy it is
also tracked.
Government surveillance. Millions of cameras in London and most other First World cities.
Millions of cameras in Chinese cities. Some transit systems now have audio surveillance.
Because the government can seize any private surveillance as well, you can assume you're being
tracked all day in most First World cities. Add this to the commercial surveillance system
described above and the picture of your life is startlingly accurate.
As biometric recognition system comes online (face, gait, infrared, and more) this work will
be done automatically.
What the telecom and infotech revolution has done is enable wide scale CONTROL and
SURVEILLANCE.
These are two sides of the same coin, you can't control people if you don't what they're
doing.
This control is most dictatorial, amusingly, in the private sector. The worse a job is, the
more this sort of control has been used for super-Taylorization, making humans into little more
than remotely controlled flesh robots.
It has made control of international conglomerates far easier; control from the top to the
periphery far easier. This is true in the government and the military as well, where central
commanders often control details like when bombs drop, rather than leaving it to a plane's
crew.
This is a world where only a few people have practical power. It is a world, not of radical
decentralization, but of radical centralization.
This is a vast experiment. In the past, there have been surveillance and control societies.
But the math on them has always been suspect. Sometimes they work, and work
brilliantly–like in Tokugawa Japan, certain periods of Confucian Chinese bureaucratic
control, or ancient Egypt.
But often they have been defeated, and fairly easily, by societies which allowed more
freedom; less control, less spying, and supervision. Societies which assumed people knew what
to do on their own; or just societies that understood that the cost of close supervision and
surveillance was too high to support.
The old East German Stasi model, with one-third of the population spying on the other
two-thirds was the ludicrous extension of this.
What the telecom and infotech revolutions have actually enabled is a vast experiment in
de-skilling, surveillance, and control–beyond the dreams even of the late 19th century
Taylorist movement, with their stopwatches and assembly lines. Nothing people do, from what
they eat, to what entertainment they consume, to when and how well they sleep; let alone
everything they do during their working day, is beyond reach.
This is not to say there are no good results from infotech and computers -- there are
plenty. But contrary to the idea that these technologies would increase freedom, they appear,
on a daily basis, to have decreased freedom and privacy and promise to radically reduce them
even more.
The second set of questions about any technology are how it can be used for violence, how it
can be used for control, and how it can be used for ideological production.
(The first question, of course, is what is required to use it. More on that another
time.)
Infotech may enable totalitarian societies which make those of the past look like
kindergarten. We are already far past the technology used in the novel 1984 (Big Brother could
not record, for example). That much of this surveillance is done by private actors as opposed
to the government, does not reduce the loss of freedom, autonomy, and privacy.
Combined with making humans obsolete, infotech and the telecom revolution are as vastly
important as their boosters say.
But, so far, not in a beneficial way. Yes, they could be used to make human lives
better, it seems the real traction of the telecom and infotech revolutions remarkably
began/coincided with neo-liberal policies which have hurt vast numbers of people in both the
First and Third Worlds–precisely because they helped make those neo-liberal policies
work.
Technologies are never neutral and there is no guarantee that "progress" will actually
improve people's lives. Even if a technology has the potential to improve people's lives,
potential is theoretical; i.e., not the same as practice.
Infotech and telecom tech are primarily control technologies, the same as writing was. They
vastly increase the ability to centralize and to control a population's behaviour.
Over the last few years, the potentially damaging impact of the internet, and particularly
social media, on democracy has increasingly come to dominate the news. The recently disclosed
internal Facebook emails, which revealed that employees
discussed allowing developers to harvest user data for a fee, are but the latest in a long
line of scandals surrounding social media platforms. Facebook has also been accused, alongside
Twitter, of fuelling the spread of false information. In October, the Brazilian newspaper
Folha exposed how Jair Bolsonaro's candidacy benefited from a coordinated disinformation
campaign conducted via Whatsapp, which is owned by Facebook. And there are growing concerns
that this tactic could be used to skew the Indian general elections in April.
"... Just to say, many people in tech understand the issues go way beyond building smart bombs. Worker surveillance and gamification of work are inhuman disasters, I agree. The anti-military actions have simply been the most visible, and they are good catalysts for organizing because they are so obviously evil. Lots of people feel uncomfortable about building things that kill people. ..."
Top U.S. general urges Google to work with military Reuters. EM: "Wow, this guy is clueless even by top-brass standards. For
example: Google Is Helping the Pentagon Build AI for Drones." Moi: I assume this is intended for the great unwashed masses, to give
them the impression that Google and the surveillance state are not joined at the hip.
Re: Top U.S. general urges Google to work with military
I will be more interested when the employees of a tech company revolt over the development of technology used to monitor workers
or put them out of work. It is easier to oppose military projects because they smack of something out of The Terminator films
while developments like Neo-Taylorism are not as obviously evil but are perhaps just as inhuman and socially destructive.
I'm involved with the Tech Workers Coalition, although I only speak for myself as a member. Some of my fellow members were
involved in the Google organizing against project Maven, and also Dragonfly. In the last few months there have also been organized
actions at Amazon and Salesforce in opposition to working with ICE. Various TWC members are also involved in partnering with food
service and janitorial staff around worker organizing and improving working conditions. One of the efforts I'm starting to get
involved with is a more organized network for mutual aid and disaster relief in the Bay Area, in the wake of this year's fire
season.
Just to say, many people in tech understand the issues go way beyond building smart bombs. Worker surveillance and gamification
of work are inhuman disasters, I agree. The anti-military actions have simply been the most visible, and they are good catalysts
for organizing because they are so obviously evil. Lots of people feel uncomfortable about building things that kill people.
Tech culture, especially in Silicon Valley, teaches workers to identify with the company completely. At Google you are a Googler.
At Pivotal you are a Pivot. We refer to each other this way, inside and outside of work. We are working against that conditioning
when we organize, so starting with "Let's not build things that blow humans into burning bits" is helpful.
Yet, reality could be bleeker. A handful of private companies control the information that
is needed to understand how the online ecosystem works. They manage the key infrastructure, and
most experts in the field are running this infrastructure after having signed non-disclosure
agreements. Thus, Plato's Allegory of the Cave might be a more fitting metaphor. Control over
key data allows these companies to play the role of shadow-masters. They get the chance to
reveal only the portions of reality they find convenient, defining how the general public
perceives the online space. Information scarcity is therefore not just the natural consequence
of the internet's novelty; it is created artificially and for strategic purposes: To shape
public opinion.
Should we break up these big companies? Should we allow them to continue growing, but under
strict, utility-type rules? Should we do nothing? Whatever we do should be the result of a
robust public debate. One that is based on the best available evidence regarding the effects
the internet is having on power relations, and is therefore capable of defining the set of
actions that would best serve the public interest. In short, at this point, we need key
information to be disclosed and available for public scrutiny. But information is power –
and it is unlikely to be disclosed voluntarily. It might require regulation.
When food production became industrialized, the US Government created the Food and Drug
Administration, which was tasked with monitoring and disclosing information regarding
compliance with quality standards. When government became too complex for the average citizen
to navigate, ombuds offices sprouted across the globe. As an independent institution of
government, ombuds were given the duty and power to investigate how government units work, and
report on matters concerning people's rights. The current situation requires exploring a
similarly bold institutional reform. One focused on ensuring the data needed to inform public
debate is made available by the tech industry.
Most people scoffed at the limited understanding of our digital world members of the US
Congress revealed when they grilled Mark Zuckerberg . And yet its likely
Facebook is not the only company behaving recklessly, nor the US Senators the only public
representatives that are "ignorant".
What we have is a growing gap between where power lies and where the institutions that seek
to hold it accountable to the people operate. Such institutions are incapable of allowing
democratically elected leaders to deliver their campaign promises. This is what is ultimately
triggering social tensions and undermining trust in our democracies. We need our institutions
to interpret these tensions as red flags and a call for a new social contract. And we need
institutions to react now. This situation goes far beyond the debate around digitalization. Yet
the online space is our future, and is therefore where this gap is most visible and urgent.
If our current institutions of government fail to ensure the ongoing technological
revolution puts people first, these institutions will sooner or later be rendered
irrelevant.
A previous version of this article was published at Chatham
House .
Facebook is a dictatorship of one. Alphabet is a dictatorship of two. As long as corporate
governance is anti-democratic that will have an unfortunately negative impact on civil
society. I hope shareholders in these and other companies will vote in favor of proposals by
NorthStar and others to phase out multi-class share structures, require that directors get at
least a majority vote to take office, do away with supermajority voting requirements,
etc.
The Internet was "born in sin," developed as it was to maintain communications during a
nuclear holocaust against a fundamentally fake threat.
Let's remember that the Soviet Union, however repressive it may have been toward its own
people and those in satellite countries, never posed the existential threat to the US that
was claimed. Rather, as Senator Arthur Brandenburg of Michigan infamously told Harry Truman
at the dawn of the Cold War, it would be necessary "to scare the hell out of the American
people" to get them to turn against their former Soviet allies, which the State and compliant
media spent the next forty years doing, often/largely producing weapons that don't work
against enemies that don't exist.
How has the Internet ever not been a tool of the national security state, and why should
we have ever expected otherwise?
While the discussion of of the need for new paradigms for regulation and accountability --
lest democratic or civil institutions become irrelevant -- is very much needed, I am
bewildered by the framing of the discussion to only the internet. The internet is just one,
interactive and immediately visible use of technology that has the potential to undermine a
fair society.
Some of the most insidious and destructive uses of data technology is not on the internet;
it's tools and processes used by previously trusted corporations, governments, and
institutions that is not regulated, not transparent and not accountable. So framing the
discussion with the 'internet' seems disengenuous.
"... They go into business to wheel & deal and to rip people off. There are no depths that they won't sink to just to enrich themselves with wealth and power. They quickly learn how to sidestep and evade every law on the statute books. They have no integrity, no ethical standards and no moral compass. They are conscienceless and shameless. ..."
"... Surely by now people realize that FB is a data-gathering organ for a Deep State geointelligence database? Why all the indignation? Every key stroke you have ever made has been recorded. Just stop using all the Deep State social media (ie, all of them). ..."
"... Reject all the "divide-and-conquer" BS. We are many, they are few. United we stand. Divided, we fall. ..."
"... Never used FaceBook nor any other social media platform. All they exist to do is aggregate personal data which is then either sold or handed to governments to build profiles and keep tabs on what people are doing. The hell with that. ..."
Update: As the giant cache of newly released internal emails has also revealed, Karissa Bell
of
Mashable notes that Facebook used a VPN app to spy on its competitors .
The
internal documents , made public as part of a cache of documents released
by UK lawmakers, show just how close an eye the social network was keeping on competitors
like WhatsApp and Snapchat , both of which became acquisition targets.
Facebook tried to acquire Snapchat that year for $3 billion -- an offer Snap CEO Evan
Spiegel rejected . (Facebook then spent years attempting, unsuccessfully, to copy
Snapchat before finally kneecapping the app
by cloning Stories.)
...
Facebook's presentation relied on data from Onavo, the virtual private network (VPN)
service which Facebook also acquired several months later
. Facebook's use of Onavo, which has been likened to "corporate
spyware," has itself been controversial.
The company was forced to remove Onavo from Apple's App Store earlier this year after
Apple changed its
developer guidelines to prohibit apps from collecting data about which other services are
installed on its users' phones. Though Apple never said the new rules were aimed at Facebook,
the policy change came after repeated criticism of the social network by Apple CEO Tim Cook.
-
Mashable
A top UK lawmaker said on Wednesday that Facebook maintained secretive "whitelisting
agreements" with select companies that would give them preferential access to vast amounts of
user data, after the parliamentary committee released documents which had been sealed by a
California court, reports
Bloomberg .
The documents - obtained in a sealed California lawsuit and leaked to the UK lawmaker during
a London business trip, include internal emails involving CEO Mark Zuckerberg - and led
committee chair Damian Collins to conclude that Facebook gave select companies preferential
access to valuable user data for their apps, while shutting off access to data used by
competing apps. Facebook also allegedly conducted global surveys of mobile app usage by
customers - likely without their knowledge , and that "a change to Facebook's Android app
policy resulted in call and message data being recorded was deliberately made difficult for
users to know about," according to Bloomberg.
In one email, dated Feb. 4, 2015, a Facebook engineer said a feature of the Android
Facebook app that would "continually upload" a user's call and SMS history would be a
"high-risk thing to do from a PR perspective." A subsequent email suggests users wouldn't
need to be prompted to give permission for this feature to be activated. -
Bloomberg
The emails also reveal that Zuckerberg personally approved limiting hobbling Twitter's Vine
video-sharing tool by preventing users from finding their friends on Facebook.
In one email, dated Jan. 23 2013, a Facebook engineer contacted Zuckerberg to say that
rival Twitter Inc. had launched its Vine video-sharing tool, which users could connect to
Facebook to find their friends there. The engineer suggested shutting down Vine's access to
the friends feature, to which Zuckerberg replied, " Yup, go for it ."
"We don't feel we have had straight answers from Facebook on these important issues, which
is why we are releasing the documents," said Collins in a Twitter post accompanying the
published emails. -
Bloomberg
We don't feel we have had straight answers from Facebook on these important issues, which
is why we are releasing the documents.
Thousands of digital documents were passed to Collins on a London business trip by Ted
Kramer, founder of app developer Six4Three, who obtained them during legal discovery in a
lawsuit against Facebook. Kramer developed Pikinis, an app which allowed people to find photos
of Facebook users wearing Bikinis. The app used Facebook's data which was accessed through a
feed known as an application programming interface (API) - allowing Six4Three to freely search
for bikini photos of Facebook friends of Pikini's users.
Facebook denied the charges, telling Bloomberg in an emailed statement: "Like any business,
we had many of internal conversations about the various ways we could build a sustainable
business model for our platform," adding "We've never sold people's data."
A small number of documents already
became public last week, including descriptions of emails suggesting that Facebook
executives had discussed giving access to their valuable user data to some companies that
bought advertising when it was struggling to launch its mobile-ad business. The alleged
practice started around seven years ago but has become more relevant this year because the
practices in question -- allowing outside developers to gather data on not only app users but
their friends -- are at the heart of Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Facebook said last week that the picture offered by those documents was misleadingly
crafted by Six4Three's attorneys. -
WaPo
"The documents Six4Three gathered for this baseless case are only part of the story and are
presented in a way that is very misleading without additional context," said Facebook's
director of developer platforms and programs, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, who added: "We stand
by the platform changes we made in 2015 to stop a person from sharing their friends' data with
developers. Any short-term extensions granted during this platform transition were to prevent
the changes from breaking user experience."
Kramer was ordered by a California state court judge
on Friday to surrender his laptop to a forensic expert after he admitted giving the UK
committee the documents. The order stopped just short of holding the company in contempt as
Facebook had requested, however after a hearing, California Superior Court Judge V. Raymond
Swope told Kramer that he may issue sanctions and a contempt order at a later date.
"What has happened here is unconscionable," said Swope. "Your conduct is not well-taken by
this court. It's one thing to serve other needs that are outside the scope of this lawsuit. But
you don't serve those needs, or satisfy those curiosities, when there's a court order
preventing you to do so ."
Trouble in paradise?
As Facebook is now faced with yet another data harvesting related scandal, Buzzfeed
reports that internal tensions within the company are boiling over - claiming that "after more
than a year of bad press, internal tensions are reaching a boiling point and are now spilling
out into public view."
Throughout the crises, Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who maintains majority shareholder
control, has proven remarkably immune to outside pressure and criticism -- from politicians,
investors, and the press -- leaving his employees as perhaps his most important stakeholders.
Now, as its stock price declines and the company's mission of connecting the world is
challenged, the voices inside are growing louder and public comments, as well as private
conversations shared with BuzzFeed News, suggest newfound uncertainty about Facebook's future
direction.
Internally, the conflict seems to have divided Facebook into three camps: those loyal to
Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg; those who see the current scandals as
proof of a larger corporate meltdown ; and a group who see the entire narrative -- including
the portrayal of the company's hiring of
communications consulting firm Definers Public Affairs -- as examples of biased media
attacks. - Buzzfeed
"It's otherwise rational, sane people who're in Mark's orbit spouting full-blown anti-media
rhetoric, saying that the press is ganging up on Facebook," said a former senior employee.
"It's the bunker mentality. These people have been under siege for 600 days now. They're
getting tired, getting cranky -- the only survival strategy is to quit or fully buy in."
A Facebook spokesperson admitted to BuzzFeed that this is "a challenging time."
When exactly did [neo]Liberal Dems become enthusiastic cheerleaders for rapacious profit-maximizing
corporations acting illegally against the public interest?
Why would "progressives" want to shield Facebook from anti-trust legislation? Compared to
the 1950s / 60s / 70s ... it seems like "liberals" and "conservatives" have switched
roles.
Why is it that Zucker.slime.berg and so many other people of his ilk are basically crooks.
They go into business to wheel & deal and to rip people off. There are no depths that
they won't sink to just to enrich themselves with wealth and power. They quickly learn how to
sidestep and evade every law on the statute books. They have no integrity, no ethical
standards and no moral compass. They are conscienceless and shameless.
The world would be better off without them. Who would miss Phacephuq?
Surely by now people realize that FB is a data-gathering organ for a Deep State
geointelligence database? Why all the indignation? Every key stroke you have ever made has
been recorded. Just stop using all the Deep State social media (ie, all of them).
Get your
faces out of your phones and look around you and see what's happening. Humanity is becoming
digital. This is a control mechanism. To regain its sovereignty, humanity needs to unite
spiritually and head in a new direction. Reject all the "divide-and-conquer" BS. We are many,
they are few. United we stand. Divided, we fall.
Never used FaceBook nor any other social media platform. All they exist to do is aggregate
personal data which is then either sold or handed to governments to build profiles and keep
tabs on what people are doing. The hell with that.
In the USA we have always had will always have corruption to the fullest extent possible.
I know rich and powerful people who are very well connected and if the average person knew
what they truly think they would be freakin pissed!!
I'm familiar with information retrieval tech and worked for a small non-U.S. search engine
that was acquired by a major American search engine (not Google) in the late 20th century.
I've kept up with things as much as one can do from the outside since then.
I do not buy the conspiracy angle here. I believe Google when they say that they are
relying on automated algorithms.
You cannot really compare Google with any other search engine. DDG is a guy in his pajamas
coding it all by himself (and I respect that). Bing on the other hand has a good team of
talented information retrieval engineers, but they are nowhere near as well staffed as
Google
In addition, a lot of Google's quirks derive from the fact that they are the big guys.
Hackers and spammers and black hat SEOs target Google, looking for exploitable patterns.
Nobody cares how they rank in Bing and DDG, so nobody targets them. Google thus has to plug
the dike in all kinds of ways that the other search engines don't have to worry about.
Google is very evil, with its advertising price controls, automated stealing of data,
preferences for its own services in search results over more popular competitors, and in many
other ways. But I don't think that the Google Suggestions are deliberately skewed in the way
you're suggesting.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that some higher level component in their search
software that is intended to combat black hat SEO is inadvertently skewing results in a way
that seems to favor the left, in the same way that AI software tends to come to the
conclusion that blacks commit a lot of crime and are not the best employees, although nobody
programmed it to do that. And it is possible that when the skew is anti
Google Suggest was throwing out "Islamists are terrorists," "blacks are not oppressed,"
"hitler is my hero," "white supremacy is good," and so on.
Google is micro-gaslighting again, by Steve Sailer - The Unz Review
It is an explanation that makes more sense to me than that Google is trying to hide it
while Vox is trying to bring attention to it.
You are being remarkably obtuse.
Google is for the masses; what they do or don't do actually matters in terms of public
perception.
Vox is for the policy elite and will make no impact on the public consciousness; it isn't
meant for the masses.
Note that elite or specialist media have been talking about the opioid crisis for years,
and yet the topic has never made it out to the public consciousness or public discourse at
large, nor has it had any reception in the political sphere beyond mere platitudes, which
anyone who was not been paying attention to the topic would even understand.
Amusingly, though, if you do a Ctrl F on article you link to, the name "Sackler" nowhere
appears.
The point is how the elites control the public discourse, by keeping certain topics
obscure to the public at large, while the elites and their hired professionals and Mandarins
talk amongst themselves; a discourse not meant for the larger public.
But anyway, no one ever said that no one at all in the mass media was talking about the
opioid crisis; this is just your implied strawman.
The topic was Google; you are simply using a diversion, i.e., moving the goalposts to the
media at large.
"... "We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by external developers," ..."
"... "to refrain from reviewing them" ..."
"... "return them to counsel or to Facebook." ..."
It is alleged that the data was harvested to target the users in political campaigns,
including in former UKIP leader Nigel Farage's Leave.EU campaign.
The UK parliamentary investigators used the former Six4Three top executive's brief stay in
London to force him to hand over documents his firm had obtained from a US court in Six4Three's
own lawsuit against Facebook.
The Guardian reported that the tech entrepreneur was warned he might go to jail or face a
hefty fine if he refuses to comply with the British authorities' request.
The documents, which are now to be reviewed by the British MPs, are said to include a
confidential correspondence between Facebook's senior officials, including Mark Zuckerberg, who
has so far snubbed requests to testify before parliament.
The lawsuit Six4Three, an app-developing startup, brought against Facebook back in 2015,
alleges that Zuckerberg was personally involved in a "malicious and fraudulent scheme"
and deliberately left loopholes for data-harvesting companies to fend off competition.
The documents are expected to reveal the scope of the Facebook CEO's involvement in the
alleged scheme.
"We have followed this court case in America and we believed these documents contained
answers to some of the questions we have been seeking about the use of data, especially by
external developers," Collins said.
Six4Three is in a long-running litigation with Facebook over the demise of its app Pikinis,
that allowed users to scan through friends' photos in an automatic search for bikini pics.
After Facebook disabled the function that allowed apps to access users' friend lists, Six4Three
filed a complaint against Facebook, arguing that it hurt its business model by no longer
permitting customers to share the data. Facebook argues that the allegations of its improper
handling of personal data have nothing to do with the lawsuit and had unsuccessfully fought the
release of its internal documents to Six4Three. The documents were provided to the startup by
the San Mateo Superior Court in California and are subject to a non-disclosure order, meaning
that are unlikely to be revealed to the public.
In response to the seizure of the documents by British MPs, Facebook has urged lawmakers
"to refrain from reviewing them" while calling to "return them to counsel or to
Facebook."
Zuckerberg has previously denied that he
knew of illegal harvesting of user data by Cambridge Analytica before the breach was reported
in the media.
It is alleged that Facebook's off-hand approach to personal data might have helped to alter
the outcome of the Brexit vote. In March, former director of research at Cambridge Analytica,
Chris Wylie, testified before MPs that the research carried out by a Canadian company with ties
to Cambridge Analytica before 2016 Brexit referendum might have swayed the vote.
Over the past year, U.S. prosecutors have discussed several types of charges they could potentially bring against the WikiLeaks
founder
The Justice Department is preparing to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and is increasingly optimistic it will be able
to get him into a U.S. courtroom, according to people in Washington familiar with the matter. Over the past year, U.S. prosecutors
have discussed several types of charges they could potentially bring against Mr. Assange, the people said. Mr. Assange has lived
in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since receiving political asylum from the South American country in 2012...
The exact charges Justice Department might pursue remain unclear, but they may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the
disclosure of national defense-related information.
Retail: "This time, Amazon has gone too far: Jeff Bezos's company is profiting and taxpayers
are paying the price" [Matt Stoller,
New York Daily News ]. The conclusion: "Fundamentally, Amazon is simply too powerful. It
isn't just about subsidies. It isn't that merchants, or local businesses, or warehouse workers,
or communities are being mistreated or misled. It's that Amazon has so much power over our
political economy that it can acquire government-like functions itself. It controls elected
officials, acquired the power to tax, and works with government to avoid sunshine laws. It's
time to recognize the truth about this company. Two-day shipping might be really convenient,
but at least in its current form, Amazon and democracy are incompatible." • Very good to
see Stoller in the New York Daily News!
Retail: "Amazon's Last Mile" [ Gizmodo ]. "Near the very bottom of
Amazon's complicated machinery is a nearly invisible workforce over two years in the making
tasked with getting those orders to your doorstep. It's a network of supposedly self-employed,
utterly expendable couriers enrolled in an app-based program which some believe may violate
labor laws. That program is called Amazon Flex, and it accomplishes Amazon's "last-mile"
deliveries -- the final journey from a local facility to the customer . Flex is indicative of
two alarming trends: the unwillingness of legislators to curb harmful practices of tech
behemoths run amok, and a shift towards less protected, more precarious opportunities in a
stagnant job market.' • Read for the detail. It sounds as hellish as Amazon's
warehouses.
Retail: "Desperately Seeking Cities" [ n+1 ]. "It is
beyond question that, in whatever city it chose to grace, Amazon would bring neither the jobs
that that city needed, nor the public works that it needed. In his latest variation on the
urbanist delusion, written for the Financial Times, the much-pilloried Richard Florida
plaintively appealed to Amazon not to "accept any tax or financial incentives," but rather to
pledge to "invest alongside cities to create better jobs, build more affordable housing, and
develop better schools, transit, and other badly needed public goods, along with paying its
fair share of taxes." The depths of Florida's naiveté cannot be overstated. Not only is
Amazon categorically unlikely to pledge what he wants (or, even if it did, make even the
slightest effort to deliver on such a pledge), but Florida openly expresses his desire to cede
all urban political power and every human demand to the whims of the company. In this respect,
too, the Amazon HQ2 contest has been clarifying."
"... There's no doubt about Google tracking. At least DuckDuckGo has a stated policy of not tracking, and is an alternative to the Google Goliath. ..."
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A study from the Norwegian Consumer
Council dug into the underhanded
tactics used by Microsoft, Facebook, and Google to collect user data . "The findings
include privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of
control, hiding away privacy-friendly choices, take-it-or-leave-it choices, and choice
architectures where choosing the privacy friendly option requires more effort for the users,"
states the report , which includes images and examples of confusing design choices and
strangely worded statements involving the collection and use of personal data.
Google makes opting out of personalized ads more of a chore than it needs to be and uses
multiple pages of text, unclear design language, and, as described by the report, "hidden
defaults" to push users toward the company's desired action. "If the user tried to turn the
setting off, a popup window appeared explaining what happens if Ads Personalization is turned
off, and asked users to reaffirm their choice," the report explained. "There was no explanation
about the possible benefits of turning off Ads Personalization, or negative sides of leaving it
turned on." Those who wish to completely avoid personalized ads must traverse multiple menus,
making that "I agree" option seem like the lesser of two evils. In Windows 10, if a user
wants to opt out of "tailored experiences with diagnostic data," they have to click a dimmed
lightbulb, while the symbol for opting in is a brightly shining bulb, says the report.
Another example has to do with Facebook. The social media site makes the "Agree and
continue" option much more appealing and less intimidating than the grey "Manage Data Settings"
option. The report says the company-suggested option is the easiest to use. "This 'easy road'
consisted of four clicks to get through the process, which entailed accepting personalized ads
from third parties and the use of face recognition. In contrast, users who wanted to limit data
collection and use had to go through 13 clicks."
You seem to be keeping your gaze too low. You are not just a target for buying stuff; you
are also a target for modifying your opinion and behaviour in politics and other
questions.
You can be targeted through other vectors than traditional ads, e.g. notification flows,
news flows, ads-or-propaganda-disguised-as-news, product placement, insurance company
policies, employability, police knocking on your door, ...
As an extreme, think China. The view we outsiders get is that if they collect the wrong
data about you, they will *target* you in a way that no ad-blocker will stop.
This info has been out there for years yet no one is listening and/or cares. The mantra of
people seems to be "it's free" so why not. I have long ago seen this coming. Use Fedora Linux
or Debian. Use an iPhone over Android despite Apple having some issues. Use P2P apps in lieu
of things like Skype. Own your own domain and use that for email. It's cheap and you have
control of your user name and domain name. Tie that domain name to a privacy-respecting
service like Fastmail.
Don't use spy devices like Alexa or Google Home. These exist not to help you but to
harvest your data 24/7. Roll your own solutions, especially if you're technical or in IT. Use
your own skills. Run a Pi-hole, block and defund the ad companies and tracking companies.
Like drugs, just say no...
This info has been out there for years yet no one is listening and/or cares. The mantra of
people seems to be "it's free" so why not. I have long ago seen this coming. Use Fedora Linux
or Debian. Use an iPhone over Android despite Apple having some issues. Use P2P apps in lieu
of things like Skype. Own your own domain and use that for email. It's cheap and you have
control of your user name and domain name. Tie that domain name to a privacy-respecting
service like Fastmail.
Don't use spy devices like Alexa or Google Home. These exist not to help you but to
harvest your data 24/7. Roll your own solutions, especially if you're technical or in IT. Use
your own skills. Run a Pi-hole, block and defund the ad companies and tracking companies.
Like drugs, just say no...
what can be attributed to three companies who are some of the worst offenders of screwing
up general UI design.
Who the hell cares about my privacy settings when I can no longer safely use maps for
navigation due to its shitty settings of minimising into a useless picture in picture
everytime there's a hiccup on my phone and has removed the option to force audio output
throught the speaker meaning I can't hear it with bluetooth on either.
Who the hell cares about privacy settings on a website that makes it borderline impossible
to easily scroll through past messages, or whose mobile app doesn't let you post pictures
because it ends up in a select picture loop.
And as for Microsoft, one word... err two words: Start Menu *raises middle finger*
While Facebook is avoidable good luck avoiding Microsoft and Google if you're not a member
of the zombie Steve Jobs fan club...that said, whatever they extract is far less damaging
than the Equifax breach, after that I'd say cell phone carriers and all of the historical gps
data they share with third parties without your consent. Just like the instigators of the
2008 global financial meltdown the penalties = zero dollars.
You sound like a Google employee. There's no doubt about Google tracking. At least DuckDuckGo has a stated policy of not tracking, and is an alternative to the Google
Goliath.
Modern technology makes many things possible, but it does not make them cheap... The camera
needs to work in pretty adverse conditions (think about the temperature inside the light on a hot
summer day, and temperature at winter) and transmit signal somewhere via WiFi (which has range
less then 100m) , or special cable that needs to be installed for this particular pole. With wifi
there should be many collection units which also cost money. So it make sense only for
streetlights adjacent to building with Internet networking. And there are already cameras of the
highway, so highways are basically covered. Which basically limits this technology to cities.
Just recoding without transmission would be much cheaper (transmission on demand). Excessive
paranoia here is not warranted.
According to new government procurement data, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have purchased an undisclosed number of secret
surveillance cameras that are being hidden in streetlights across the country.
Quartz
first reported this dystopian development of federal authorities stocking up on "covert
systems" last week. The report showed how the DEA paid a Houston, Texas company called Cowboy
Streetlight Concealments LLC. approximately $22,000 since June for "video recording and
reproducing equipment." ICE paid out about $28,000 to Cowboy Streetlight Concealments during
the same period.
"It's unclear where the DEA and ICE streetlight cameras have been installed, or where the
next deployments will take place. ICE offices in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio have
provided funding for recent acquisitions from Cowboy Streetlight Concealments; the DEA's most
recent purchases were funded by the agency's Office of Investigative Technology, which is
located in Lorton, Virginia," said Quartz.
Christie Crawford, who co-owns Cowboy Streetlight Concealments with her husband, said she
was not allowed to talk about the government contracts in detail.
"We do streetlight concealments and camera enclosures," Crawford told Quartz. "Basically,
there's businesses out there that will build concealments for the government and that's what
we do. They specify what's best for them, and we make it. And that's about all I can probably
say."
However, she added: "I can tell you this -- things are always being watched. It doesn't
matter if you're driving down the street or visiting a friend, if government or law enforcement
has a reason to set up surveillance, there's great technology out there to do it."
Quartz notes that the DEA issued a solicitation for "concealments made to house network PTZ
[Pan-Tilt-Zoom] camera, cellular modem, cellular compression device," last Monday. According to
solicitation number D-19-ST-0037, the sole source award will go to Obsidian Integration
LLC.
On November 07, the Jersey City Police Department awarded Obsidian Integration with "the
purchase and delivery of a covert pole camera." Quartz said the filing did not provide much
detail about the design.
It is not just streetlights the federal government wants to mount covert surveillance
cameras on, it seems cameras inside traffic barrels could be heading onto America's highways in
the not too distant future.
And as Quartz reported in October, the DEA operates a complex network of digital
speed-display road signs that covertly scan license plates. On top of all this,
Amazon has been aggressively rolling out its
Rekognition facial-recognition software to law enforcement agencies and ICE, according to
emails uncovered by the Project for Government Oversight.
Chad Marlow, a senior advocacy and policy counsel for the ACLU, told Quartz that cameras in
street lights have been proposed before by local governments, typically under a program called
"smart" LED street light system.
"It basically has the ability to turn every streetlight into a surveillance device, which
is very Orwellian to say the least," Marlow told Quartz. "In most jurisdictions, the local
police or department of public works are authorized to make these decisions unilaterally and
in secret. There's no public debate or oversight."
And so, as the US continues to be distracted, torn amid record political, social and
economic polarization, big brother has no intention of letting the current crisis go to waste,
and quietly continues on its path of transforming the US into a full-blown police and
surveillance state.
I previously worked for one of these types of federal agencies and to be fair, $50,000
doesn't buy a lot of video surveillance equipment at government procurement costs. The
contractor doesn't just drill a hole and install a camera, they provide an entirely new
streetlight head with the camera installed.
It would be nice if they put some of this technology to work for a good cause. Maybe
warning you of traffic congestion ahead. Or advising you that one of your tires will soon go
flat.
Obviously that won't happen, so in the meantime, I can't wait to read next how the hackers
will find a way to make this government effort go completely haywire. As if the government
can't do it without any help. At least when the hackers do it, it will be funny and
thorough.
Besides the creepy surveillance part, some of the street light tech is interesting .
lights that dim like the frozen food section - when no one is in front of the case --- RGB
lighting that shows the approximate location for EMS to a 911 call ( lights that EMS can
follow by color)
basic neighborhood street lights are being replaced by LED -- lights in this article.
Hey, I have street lights AND cameras on the same poles at the shop/mad scientist lab/
play house.
but- surveillance -- the wall better have these lights -- light up the border !
This is yesteryears news. Shot Spotter has microphones that can pick up whispered
conversations for 300 feet for a long time now, while triangulating any gunshot in a
city...
So the USA Congress operates under CIA surveillance... Due to CIA access to Saudi money the situation is probably much
worse then described as CIA tried to protect both its level of influence and shadow revenue streams.
Notable quotes:
"... The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing. ..."
"... I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014 ..."
"... The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement. ..."
"... According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper." ..."
"... Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications ..."
"... CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director ..."
"... During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016. ..."
CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures
are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept
secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during
"routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and
the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to
whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might
have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch,
is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence
agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats
and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss
(R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type
of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive
Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community
Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The
fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers
raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly,"
wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with
"bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence
officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community
Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abuses
Back in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the
possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's
response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be
saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring
user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported
to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually
shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy
Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency
(NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance,"
said
Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S.
citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured
in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only
allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed
that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of
President Trump.
Can you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against
our Constitution would be in full swing!
When intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter.
Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged
and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance
and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a
horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Forget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties
before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump
won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas
as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
From its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's
US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy"
closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
I agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And
the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified
material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing
incriminating evidence.
Everyone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew
the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since
our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when
(((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
The FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive
order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
A determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an
increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the
master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
What the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would
they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
Hacking operations by anyone, can and will be used by US propagandists to provoke Russia
or whoever stands in the way of the US war machine, take this Pompeo rant against Iran and
the Iranian response......
Asking of Pompeo "have you no shame?", Zarif mocked Pompeo's praise for the Saudis for
"providing millions and millions of dollars of humanitarian relief" to Yemen, saying
America's "butcher clients" were spending billions of dollars bombing school buses. Iranian
Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issued a statement lashing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for
his recent comments on the Yemen War. Discussing the US-backed Saudi invasion of Yemen,
Pompeo declared Iran to be to blame for the death and destruction in the country. https://news.antiwar.com/2018/11/09/iran-fm-slams-pompeo-for-blaming-yemen-war-on-iran/
The US way of looking at things supposes that up is down, and white is black, it makes no
sense, unless the US hopes these provocations will lead to a war or at the very least Russia
or Iran capitulating to US aggression, which will not happen. Sanctions by the US on all and
sundry must be opposed, if not the US will claim justifiably to be the worlds policeman and
the arbiter of who will trade with who, a ludicrous proposition but one that most governments
are afraid is now taking place, witness the new US ambassador to Germany in his first tweet
telling the Germans to cease all trade with Iran immediately.
US whistle-blower Edward Snowden yesterday claimed that Saudi Arabia used Israeli spyware to
target murdered Saudi journalist
Jamal Khashoggi .
Addressing a conference in Tel Aviv via a video link, Snowden claimed that software made by
an Israeli cyber intelligence firm was used by Saudi Arabia to track and target Khashoggi in
the lead up to his
murder on 2 October inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Snowden told his audience:
"How do they [Saudi Arabia] know what his [Khashoggi's] plans were and that they needed to
act against him? That knowledge came from the technology developed by NSO," Israeli business
daily Globes
reported.
Snowden accused NSO of "selling a digital burglary tool," adding it "is not just being
used for catching criminals and stopping terrorist attacks, not just for saving lives, but
for making money [ ] such a level of recklessness [ ] actually starts costing lives,"
according to the
Jerusalem Post .
Snowden – made famous in 2013 for leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA)
files and exposing the extent of US surveillance – added that "Israel is routinely at the
top of the US' classified threat list of hackers along with Russia and China [ ] even though it
is an ally".
Snowden is wanted in the US for espionage, so could not travel to Tel Aviv to address the
conference in person for fear of being handed over to the authorities.
The Israeli firm to which Snowden referred – NSO Group Technologies – is known
for developing the "Pegasus" software which can be used to remotely infect a target's mobile
phone and then relay back data accessed by the device. Although NSO
claims that its products "are licensed only to legitimate government agencies for the sole
purpose of investigating and preventing crime and terror," this is not the first time its
Pegasus software has been used by Saudi Arabia to track critics.
In October it was
revealed that Saudi Arabia used Pegasus software to eavesdrop on 27-year-old Saudi
dissident Omar Abdulaziz, a prominent critic of the Saudi government on social media.
The revelation was made by Canadian research group
Citizen Lab , which found that the software had been used to hack Abdulaziz' iPhone between
June and August of this year. Citizen Lab's Director Ron Deibert explained that such actions by
Saudi Arabia "would constitute illegal wiretapping".
A separate
report by Citizen Lab in September found a "significant expansion of Pegasus usage in the
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in the Middle East," in particular the United Arab
Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Citizen Lab added that in August 2016, Emirati human
rights activist Ahmed Mansoor was
targeted with the Pegasus spyware.
Snowden's comments come less than a week after it
emerged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States to stand by
Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman (MBS) in the wake of the Khashoggi case. The revelation
was made by the
Washington Post , which cited information from US officials familiar with a series of
telephone conversations made to Jared Kushner – senior advisor to President Donald Trump
and Trump's son-in-law – and National Security Adviser John Bolton regarding the
Khashoggi case. The officials told the Post that:
In recent days, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu have reached out to the Trump administration to express support for the crown
prince, arguing that he is an important strategic partner in the region, said people familiar
with the calls.
Bin Salman has come under intense scrutiny in the month since Khashoggi first
disappeared , with many
suspecting his involvement in ordering the brutal murder. Yet while several world leaders
have
shunned the crown prince, it is thought
that Israel would suffer from any decline in Saudi influence in the region in light of its
purportedly central role in the upcoming "
Deal of the Century ".
(techcrunch.com)
36BeauHD on Monday November 05,
2018 @07:30PM from the he-said-she-said dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from
TechCrunch: An unexpected declaration by whistleblower Edward Snowden filed in court [last]
week adds a new twist in a long-running lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance programs. The
case, filed by the EFF a decade
ago , seeks to challenge the government's alleged illegal and unconstitutional surveillance
of Americans, who are largely covered under the Fourth Amendment's protections against
warrantless searches and seizures. It's a big step forward for the case, which had stalled
largely because the government refused to confirm that a leaked document was authentic or
accurate. News of the surveillance broke in 2006 when an AT&T technician Mark Klein
revealed that the NSA was tapping into AT&T's network backbone. He alleged that a secret,
locked room -- dubbed Room 641A -- in an AT&T facility in San Francisco where he worked was
one of many around the U.S. used by the government to monitor communications -- domestic and
overseas. President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans'
communications shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a
former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast
scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation
from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's
signed declaration, filed on October 31 ,
confirms that one of the
documents he leaked , which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an
authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009 , which exposed
concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind --
particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents
carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong
recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been
conducting illegal surveillance."
The actions that are taken are a three-pronged attack in order to foster in global
governance, and they are as such:
Create ubiquitous electronic surveillance with unlimited police power
Throw the entire earth into an economic tailspin
Destroy all nationalism, national borders, and create chaos among all nations prior to an
"incendiary event" or series of actions that leads to a world war.
The world war is the most important part of it all, in the eyes of the globalists. The Great
Depression culminated in a world war, and periods of economic upheaval are always followed by
wars.
... ... ...
Every word here is recorded by XKeyscore mine and yours and stored in the NSA database in
Utah, under a file for "dissenters," "agitators," and every other descriptive label that can be
thought of for those who champion critical thought and independent thinking. Every
conservative-minded journalist or writer who dares to espouse these views and theories is being
recorded and kept under some kind of watch. You can be certain of it . Many are either shutting
down or "knuckling under" and complying.
The globalists are getting what they wish: consolidating the resources while they "tank" the
fiat economies and currencies of the nations. They are destroying cultures who just a mere two
centuries ago would have armed their entire male populaces with swords and sent invaders either
packing or in pieces.
They are destroying cultures by making them question themselves ! The greatest tactic
imaginable!
I submit this last for your perusal. Do you know who you are? The question is not just as
simple as it seems. Let's delve deeply. Do you really know who you are, where your family
originates? Your heritage, and its strengths and weaknesses? Is that heritage yours, along with
your heritage as an American citizen? It is not important that I, or others should know of
these strengths not at this moment in time. The world war is yet to come. As Shakespeare said,
"To thine own self be true." This is important for you to know it and hold fast to it. We are
in the decline of the American nation-now-empire.
When the dust settles, you'll know who will run with the ball even with three blockers
against them and will manage to slip the tackles or forearm shiver them in the face, outside of
the ref's eye, to run that ball in. The Marquis of Queensbury is dead, and those rules will go
out the window. When the dust settles, those who had the foresight and acted on it will be the
ones who will be given a gift: a chance to participate in what is to come. Stay in that good
fight, and fight it to win each day.
If memory serves, there is a no-schrapnel waxed-cardboard version of an RPG available for
non-armored targets. When I saw the Hastings crime scene, I saw the rear of the burning car
blown out by that RPG, and *then* Hastings crashed into the tree at an impossible angle,
instinctively power-sliding from what he must have assumed was a truck had just slammed into
his right rear quarter-panel. Don't be Michael Hastings. Don't be Robert Bowers, for that
matter, lol. The US-UK-IL-KSA mugwumps!
And that's why we will never have autonomous private vehicles. They are just using
taxpaying citizens as beta-testers for an autonomous Deep-Purple Mil.Gov UniParty global
police state.
By pure coincidence at a business-club dinner last night, I sat next to a military
subcontractor with Chinese connectiins, an import license and a Made-in-USA final assembly
warehouse. He is developing a low-altitude persistent-loitering traffic-monitoring drone. He
was in Bellevue to meet with the coders. It would be used with the HOV lane high resolution
cameras and real-time facial-recognition software, to identify speeders' names, vehicles and
addresses for first-deployment ... but can just as easily operate in reverse to find a target
and confirm-identify the front-seat passengers, then paint a laser target on the vehicle as
it wings down the freeway, waiting for an open area Hastings-esque hellfire denouement.
Prolly for MENA. Prolly A-OK, Joe. Nothing to see here, citizen. E pluribus now get back
to work. Pence's latest $1/4-TRILLION nuclear ICBM upgrade program awards soon, and we're
gonna need those tithe-tributes!
"... Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark Curtis. ..."
"... Middle East Eye ..."
"... A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had "put measures in place to protect your interests". ..."
"... The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've extensively come across in my own research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on civilians and not to overthrow him. ..."
"... However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing. ..."
"... (U.S. Air Force photo) ..."
"... Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S. officials were briefing the office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on " the state of his marriage. " ..."
"... In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009, Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and foreign spies. ..."
WikiLeaks' Legacy of Exposing US-UK Complicity October 27, 2018 •
7 Comments
Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its
exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of
deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark
Curtis.
By Mark Curtis Middle East Eye
Twelve years ago this month, WikiLeaks began
publishing government secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known. What it
has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and corruption goes beyond anything
published in the world's "mainstream" media.
After over six months of being cut off from outside world, on 14 October 14 Ecuador has
partly restored Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's communications with the outside world from
its London embassy where the founder has been living for over six years. (Assange, however,
later
rejected Ecuador's restrictions imposed on him.)
The treatment – real and threatened – meted out to Assange by the U.S. and UK
governments contrasts sharply with the service Wikileaks has done their publics in revealing
the nature of elite power, as shown in the following snapshot of Wikileaks' revelations about
British foreign policy in the Middle East.
Conniving with the Saudis
Whitehall's special relationship with Riyadh is exposed in an extraordinary
cable from 2013 highlighting how Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi
Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council. Britain initiated the
secret negotiations by asking Saudi Arabia for its support.
Hague: 'World needs pro-American regime' in Britain. (Chatham House)
The Wikileaks releases also shed details on Whitehall's fawning relationship with
Washington. A 2008 cable , for example, shows then
shadow foreign secretary William Hague telling the U.S. embassy that the British "want a
pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it."
A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special
relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning
in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had
"put measures in place to protect your interests".
American Influence
It is not known what this protection amounted to, but no U.S. officials were called to give
evidence to Chilcot in public. The inquiry was also refused
permission to publish letters between former U.S. President George W. Bush and former UK
Prime Minister Tony Blair written in the run-up to the war.
Also in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of reducing the number of
British nuclear-armed Trident submarines from four to three, a policy opposed in Washington.
However, Julian Miller, an official in the UK's Cabinet Office, privately assured U.S. officials that
his government "would consult with the U.S. regarding future developments concerning the
Trident deterrent to assure there would be 'no daylight' between the U.S. and UK." The idea
that British decision-making on Trident is truly independent of the U.S. is undermined by this
cable.
The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've
extensively come across in my own
research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya
in March 2011, for example, the British
government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on
civilians and not to overthrow him.
However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show
William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign
Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more
than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow
Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing.
Another case of British duplicity concerns Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos
archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is now a major U.S. base for intervention in the Middle
East. The
UK has long fought to prevent Chagos islanders from returning to their homeland after
forcibly removing them in the 1960s.
A secret 2009 cable shows that a particular ruse concocted by Whitehall to promote this was
the establishment of a " marine reserve " around the
islands. A senior Foreign Office official told the US that the "former inhabitants would find
it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the
entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."
A B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and inertial navigation
equipment enabling aircrews to operate without the need for ground-based navigation aids.
(U.S. Air Force photo)
A week before the "marine reserve" proposal was made to the U.S. in May 2009, then UK
Foreign Secretary David Miliband was also conniving with the U.S., apparently to deceive the
public. A cable reveals Miliband helping the
U.S. to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at U.S. bases on UK soil, despite
Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.
Miliband
approved a loophole created by diplomats to allow U.S. cluster bombs to remain on UK soil
and was part of discussions on how the loophole would help avert a debate in Parliament that
could have "complicated or muddied" the issue. Critically, the same cable also revealed that the
U.S. was storing cluster munitions on ships based at Diego Garcia.
Spying on the UK
Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British
ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S.
officials were briefing the office of U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a
bully, and on " the state of his marriage. "
Washington was also shown to have
been spying on the UK mission to the UN, along with other members of the Security Council and
the UN Secretary General.
In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered
legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009,
Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the
Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the
security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and
foreign spies.
Millions worldwide are demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Assange after six years of
what the UN calls "arbitrary detention." (New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)
The document refers to investigative journalists as "threats" alongside subversive and
terrorist organizations, noting that "the 'enemy' is unwelcome publicity of any kind, and
through any medium."
Britain's GCHQ is also revealed to have spied on Wikileaks itself – and its readers.
One classified GCHQ
document from 2012 shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly collect the IP
addresses of visitors to the Wikileaks site in real time, as well as the search terms that
visitors used to reach the site from search engines such as Google.
Championing Free Nedua
The British government is punishing Assange for the service that Wikileaks has performed. It
is ignoring a UN ruling that he is being held in " arbitrary
detention " at the Ecuadorian embassy, while failing, illegally, to ensure his health needs
are met. Whitehall is also refusing to offer diplomatic assurances that Assange will not be
extradited to the US – the only reason he remains in the embassy.
Smear campaigns have portrayed Assange as a sexual predator or a Russian agent, often in the
same media that have benefitted from covering Wikileaks' releases.
Many journalists and activists who are perfectly aware of the fake news in some Western
media outlets, and of
the smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn , are ignoring or even colluding in
the more vicious smearing of Assange.
More journalists need to champion the service Wikileaks performs and argue for what is at
stake for a free media in the right to expose state secrets.
This
article originally appeared on Middle East Eye.
Mark Curtis is an historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development
and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain's
Collusion with Radical Islam.
I very much want to stop using Amazon, but where's the alternative? Does anybody
here know of a good work-around? I already avoid Google by using DuckDuckGo, and I am in the
process of shifting my Fakebook stuff to VK. But what alternative to Amazon exists?
there are alternatives, brick/mortars, ebay, jet.com, a brand's own website, etc. you
could even go to alibaba and import all the stuff you need by the pallet.
The issue is alternatives that don't cost more. Acting on one's principles has a
price.
Amazon's $25 free shipping (for non-Prime customers, free 2-day for Prime) on everything
it sells/fulfills is really tough to be beat. Impossible on heavy and/or bulky items.
> I very much want to stop using Amazon, . . . But what alternative to
Amazon exists?
So helpless in the face of a totalitarian nightmare? Go to a store and use cash that you
have never used a credit card at.
I see a facial recognition arms race in the making, where it starts off with the peasants
wearing funny hats with dangly frills hanging down from the brim, with the end point being
total face masks with sun glasses and putting a pebble into alternate shoes when in
public.
Unless Bezos and the police decide doing that is illegal.
You have to go cold turkey. It will force you to find better retailers, but they exist and
can be found. I dropped AMZ cold a couple years ago – I think its the only way. The way
I think about it is that post-Amazon, I buy less, and I buy better . Most of the
items I purchased on Amazon previously are gone now. The stuff I buy from other retailers
directly is higher quality and lasts.
I live in a urban environment, so easier for me than someone in a rural area.
You are right about that, that it is easier to not be using Amazon in an urban place. In
the small town I live in places have been disappearing. Well I particularly miss Radio
Shack.
Then I'm a hypocrite in that I self published using Amazon's KDP & Createspace.
Createspace people on the phone were simply awesome. It is just gone now. I knew it was too
good to last. My stuff is apparently still for sale, but I can't find in the system where
everything was "migrated" the list of what I did and what may or may not have sold. I can't
buy my own books in fact.
Amazon has become such a monopoly that they really can be lazy.
At various times in my life I have fit every damned profile, the "Shed Man" profile, yeah, I
fit that one. But you know that laziness doesn't mean you are protected from them. Some
political group becomes outraged at your group and BlamO, you and everyone else is rounded up
and shot at the lip of a ditch. They know enough.
It is books from which the ideas come and collect evidence of your being so it is less the
wonder that Amazon became so powerful. Sure you may know how to make arrows and be a great
hunter for the tribe, but you are the ideas from being raised on the stories of the tribe
more than just an arrow maker. If you read all the books in my reading list you'd think about
things from the same viewpoint aye?
Old hippie? Well the thing is you discover who you are and want to declare it, for some
reason, probably so you won't feel alone. I was truly shocked to discover I was a Beat, for
instance.
We go to actual stores – remember them? Like people did for a couple of hundred plus
years. Not chains or big box either. Many deliver even if they do not advertise it. An
aquaintance is wheelchair bound and she asked our local natural foods store if they deliver
and they said not rountinely but for people who cannot get out we certainly will. You must
ask. If I cannot get it at a local store we generally do without. It's not that hard. If you
are too busy you need to eliminate something you are doing. No one is forcing you online.
If you do a search for any item you want to buy you will get many hits on other sellers,
not just amazon. In many cases the prices at other sites are cheaper than amazon, Yes, there
are so many alternatives but you just have to look for them.
One more thing, Amazon hangs on to your credit card details!
All online retailers do if you let them. Always check out as a guest, NEVER let them (or
your browser, which will ask in a pop up) keep your payment info. I think you can't prevent
them from knowing your unique device identifier but don't let them retain anything else.
Like not using Amazon, it's a little more inconvenient to have to enter your data every
time, but remember, it's YOUR data and that's the only way to hang onto it.
Since Amazon dominates search results even on DDG, I may look at products on their site
but then I go to the actual manufacturer or any other store but Walmart–also on my do
not touch list for probably over a decade.
I don't have a lot of money and I do tend to buy "quality", but as someone above said, I
just get less stuff!
We are not yet COMPLETELY helpless in the face of the surveillance state and once they
freeze our accounts and declare cash worthless, we are all Handmaids, but until then the
choice to value freedom or convenience lies entirely within our control.
If you are actually serious with this question, and it's kind of hard to believe that you
are, then I will reiterate what others have said – they have these things called stores
now.
It's more work, but you can find the same items from different vendors, in most cases at
the same price. That's not counting the value to you of making the predictive data base on
your future behavior a bit less accurate.
I've stopped using a kindle and never would take notes with one.
I never use Amazon. When buying items online I google the item or description and perform
comparison shopping. Over the years I have found that Amazon does NOT offer the best price
AND many times the competitor also offers free shipping.
Well, there are those weird old things, you know, stores. Sometimes not so convenient to
be sure. Sometimes items are difficult to source, but Internet can be useful there! Also,
second hand stores. And,libraries! I guess I'm lucky to live near a good one. In the broader
picture, one can just stop buying it. Literally. I often look around my home and ask myself,
how did I end up with all this stuff?
I have found a work-around for Google Play for downloading apps to my device. It is called
the Yalp Store. It works by tricking Google that you are "signed in" and so it lets you
download apps that are free on the Google store through a generic account through a backdoor
without handing Google any information whatsoever. You can get it on the F-Droid app
repository for android devices.
I have tried to minimize my contact with Google, Amazon, and Facebook as possible. I have
never had a Facebook account, and I buy several-year-old smartphones for cheap on eBay and
then instal LineageOS on them to get rid of Google and its bloatware.
The trouble is, many apps that are useful are only available through Google play or
Amazon. There is also the fact that buying things that are rare or foreign are not always
easy to find in local brick and mortar stores, so you often have no choice. There is eBay,
but I would rather buy the them outright rather than be forced to bid on it and wait for days
only to be beaten by "snipers" who sneak in and place bids at the last minute.
One question: Where does the app send the data it gathers from you once it is on your
device? You can use a generic login but still don't they recognize your unique device
identifier?
I remember during the Obama era, wailing to my liberal friends about his facilitation of a
total surveillance state, to the inevitable yawn or justification by way of His Elegance, he
would never do anything to hurt us. Of course, my conservative friends were all assured Obama
was going to enter their homes and take away their guns.
Then Trump was elected, and I stopped asking my liberal friends how they feel about such a
total surveillance state now, they would get so worked up about .Russia? My conservative
friends seemingly happy to have a total surveillance state to keep a check on the liberal
mob.
Sometimes I think most Americans are totalitarian, insofar as we have forgotten the
meaning of "Republic" and "Democracy", conflating capitalism and freedom, following the
powerful unquestioning, excusing atrocity, as long as it appears partisan.
Well, i have maybe a million words online .but for awhile now, my only online footprint of
opinion is here among the Naked Capitalism commentariat. But I don't worry about it too much,
because the powerful don't care what I say unless a lot of people are listening.
Suppose government surveillance is more ubiquitous than your most paranoid imaginings --
in other words you're not being paranoid at all and you're simply not paranoid enough. It
might be wise to avoid having no presence or limited presence in the surveillance data. The
lack of data could also be detected and used as a measure for pre-crime inclinations. Perhaps
it were better to maintain a carefully manicured and tended web and media persona. Maybe run
a spider built to create that presence. Enough chaff in a false presence might confound even
the best surveillance algorithms.
There is an add-on you can download for Firefox and a few other web browsers called
Adnauseum. It is based on uBlock. What it does is opens any ads it finds on web pages while
blocking them at the same time to simulate a "click" on the ad. This way, it can potentially
give headaches to data collectors because of all of the intentional data pollution it causes.
Adnauseum angered Google so much that they blocked it from their Chrome store.
Then there is another idea I had for the tech companies intent on pushing spying devices
like Echo and Alexa into people's homes. What if you got a bunch of them together or had a
group of people buy them. Put said devices next to a radio on "scan" or some other broadcast
to play random media. If enough people did this, I wonder if that would generate enough
gobbledygook to throw off Amazon and Google from all of the worthless data it would
generate.
It is just a thought. However, I would not put it past Silicone Valley to develop and
start promoting GPS tracking microchips that companies could implant into their employees. I
know that some places are trying to push RFID chips for people, so I fear that GPS tracking
implants are not that far off.
RFID chips can function as tracking devices. Like cell phones 'shaking hands' with nearby
cell towers. The unspoken eventuality is how these RFID chips will be activated; when, where
and by who.
The Ur tracking chip reference. "The President's Analyst."
The 'Future' is Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUa3np4CKC4
Yeah, Robert Scheer. His book
is a must-read . Add digital exhaust analytics to the "ordinary" forensics that swiftly
collared that hapless Cesar Sayoc "#MAGAbomber" dude, well
The first stage is social media censorship. The next stage is the total blocking of
websites offering alternative news to the MSM. This is by far the most dangerous threat to
individual freedom.
The intenet addressing system is controlled at the top by the US military (and always
was). The ultimate arbiter for any internet address lookup is in the US InterNIC system
(owned and controlled by the US military), to which all the national domain name registries
defer. By manipulating or falsifying lookup data they can block international access to any
website in the world (including covertly). US/UK censorship is going to rapidly expand over
the very near future, as the West moves to ever more suppressionist policies. We urgently
need a new internet addressing infrastructure with a capability to bypass the US structures
and allow any internet access that might be blocked by the US, before alternative media
outlets are totally silenced.
There are vague references in the alternate media from time to time of Russian/Chinese
initiatives to develop an alternative infrastructure, but I have not seen anything specific.
I don't know how advanced these projects are, or whether they are intended for use from
anywhere in the world or only internally in the officially participating countries.
Under the current internet system, the local user uses configurable numerical addresses as
local address lookup under TCP/IP (Name Server) - ISPs normally try to set this to their own
servers through their installation software, but you can also set it manually to some other
name server that you find more reliable. For example, many ISPs illegally block certain
websites by sabotaging the address lookup on their own name server (i.e. it does not match
the data held by the official registry for the domain name) with false data (I have seen this
done many times to my own website, both my own ISP and other people's ISP; it blocks email
based on the blocked domain name at the same time, or the block can be specific to sub-domain
such as www). When you try to access the site you then get an error message from the browser.
If you challenge the ISP they will be forced to correct the data, but then they may silently
sabotage it again later. Instead of using your ISPs own name server, you can use any other
name server that is publicly accessible (some name servers might not be accessible from a
different ISP, but many are accessible to anyone). A good solution is often a name server
belonging to a local (or non-local!) university. Sometimes you might find you then get more
reliable access to non-mainstream websites, and fewer browser errors (address not found).
What I would like to see Russia/China/BRICS/SCO/etc offer ASAP is some nameserver
infrastructure that can be accessed through the standard nameserver settings under TCP/IP on
any computer, and which offer configurable access to the internet address lookup registries
around the world without critical dependence on the US controlled InterNIC database.
Numerical internet addresses (IP addresses) change from time to time. This is in itself
normal. For example if MoA changes its service provider (web server), the MoA numerical IP
address will be changed. The change in IP address is registered in the database stored in the
registry for the .org upper level domain name in the US, and other name servers around the
world regularly update their own data from that. If the US substitutes false values, any
attempt to access the website can be diverted to an alternative address (sometimes a fake
website!) managed by the US. Sometimes they do this even now, and then if challenged they
pretend it was a "mistake". Russia/China need to provide name server infrastructure combined
with user software (browser inferface) that is capable of selecting archived IP address
lookup data when the most recently available data in the registry is false, selectable by
date (the registry contains information on when the data was last changed). By selecting an
IP address from archived data before the block, it can re-enable access to the site (as long
as the website is still on the servers - if on US servers that is still under US control, but
if it is on Russian servers it is not under US control).
Some websites legitimately need to be blocked - eg ISIS propaganda sites etc - the system
would need to be able to block access to archived IP addresses for such legitimately blocked
sites.
As I suggested some weeks ago, B really needs to prepare for possible blocking in advance
- I am quite sure it will come eventually - by registering a non-US website such as
moonofalabama.org.ru etc, and announcing that alternate address. When the internet is cut, it
is already too late to announce the backup site! That can still be blocked by the US, but
there are more ways to get around it.
Roughly one hundred years ago, the people who "ran things," – the drivers behind
governments, big business and banking – formulated a concept which became known by a
number of names, but, predominantly, as the "New World Order."
The concept was to put an end to unnecessary competition and warfare and have a central,
unelected group of people run the entire world. It was not considered necessary to completely
eliminate individual countries; the idea was to control them all centrally. It also didn't
necessarily mean that wars would end. Warfare can be quite useful for rulers, as they provide
an excellent distraction from resentment toward the leaders who impose control over a
people.
Ever since that time, this same rough group of people has continued generationally.
Sometimes, but not always, the family names change. Useful people are added on and less useful
ones removed. But the concept itself has continued, evolved and, in fact, gained strength.
But, as yet, the process remains incomplete. Several facets to a New World Order are not yet
in place. It's proven difficult to "fool all of the people all of the time," so the effort to
subjugate an entire world has taken more time than originally anticipated.
An essential component of this control is the elimination of the personal holding of wealth.
Whilst the leaders intend to expand their own wealth in an unlimited fashion, they seek to
suppress the ability of the average person to increase his own wealth. Wealth leads to
independence and independence from a New World Order is unacceptable. Wealth gives people
options. They must be taught to accept being herded like cattle and being compliant, or they
will become troublesome.
Surveillance Capitalism is nice term for STASI=line regime which became the "new normal". When we say Google we mean CIA.
Notable quotes:
"... Being touted as "the world's first neighborhood built from the internet up," the Google designed smart city is set to deploy an array of cameras and sensors that detect pedestrians at traffic lights or alert cleanup crews when garbage bins overflow, reports The Globe and Mail . Robotic vehicles will whisk away garbage in underground tunnels, heated bike lanes will melt snow and a street layout will accommodate a fleet of self-driving cars. ..."
"... Such an account could potentially work with facial recognition "and allow for example a repairman to get into a home to perform his duties and firefighters to have access a building when a fire alarm is triggered." ..."
"... The project's critics included former BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie who referred to the development as "a colonizing experiment in surveillance capitalism attempting to bulldoze important urban, civic and political issues." ..."
"... Ann Cavoukia's decision to walk away from the project was made just weeks after Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory Panel member, Saadia Muzaffar, resigned over concerns about how Google will collect and handle data collected from people within the smart city. ..."
"... "We are at a point where a secretive, unelected, publicly funded corporation with no expertise in IP, data or even basic digital rights is in charge of navigating forces of urban privatization, algorithmic control and rule by corporate contract." ..."
A privacy expert tasked with protecting personal data within a Google-backed smart city project has resigned as her pro-privacy
guidelines would largely be ignored by participants.
"I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance," Ann Cavoukian, the former privacy
commissioner of Ontario, wrote
in a resignation letter to Google sister company Sidewalk Labs.
"I felt I had no choice because I had been told by Sidewalk Labs that all of the data collected will be de-identified at source,"
she added.
Cavoukian was an acting consultant involved in the plan by Canada's Waterfront Toronto to develop a smart city neighborhood in
the city's Quayside development. She had created an initiative called Privacy by Design that aimed to ensure citizens' personal data
would be protected.
Once it became apparent that citizen privacy could not be guaranteed, Cavoukian decided it was time to leave the project:
But then, at a Thursday meeting, Cavoukian reportedly realized such anonymization protocols could not be guaranteed. She told
the Candian news outlet that Sidewalk Labs revealed at that meeting that their organization could commit to her guidelines, but
other involved groups would not be required to abide by them.
Cavoukian realized third parties could possibly have access to identifiable data gathered through the project. "When I heard
that, I said, 'I'm sorry. I can't support this. I have to resign because you committed to embedding privacy by design into every
aspect of your operation,'" she told Global News. –
Gizmodo
Being touted as "the world's first neighborhood built from the internet up," the Google designed smart city is set to deploy
an array of cameras and sensors that detect pedestrians at traffic lights or alert cleanup crews when garbage bins overflow,
reports The Globe
and Mail . Robotic vehicles will whisk away garbage in underground tunnels, heated bike lanes will melt snow and a street layout
will accommodate a fleet of self-driving cars.
The city will also
provide each
citizen a "user account" which will allow access to "the various online services of the neighborhood and improve participatory
democracy."
Such an account could potentially work with facial recognition "and allow for example a repairman to get into a home to perform
his duties and firefighters to have access a building when a fire alarm is triggered."
The project's critics included former BlackBerry CEO Jim Balsillie who referred to the development as "a colonizing experiment
in surveillance capitalism attempting to bulldoze important urban, civic and political issues."
In an October op-ed, Balsillie describes smart cities as the new battlefront for big tech and warned that the commercialization
of IP and data within the city would mean that personal information would just be another target of corporate digital-gold mining.
The 21st-century knowledge-based and data-driven economy is all about IP and data. "Smart cities" are the new battlefront for
big tech because they serve as the most promising hotbed for additional intangible assets that hold the next trillion dollars
to add to their market capitalizations. "Smart cities" rely on IP and data to make the vast array of city sensors more functionally
valuable, and when under the control of private interests, an enormous new profit pool. As Sidewalk Labs' chief executive Dan
Doctoroff
said
: "We're in this business to make money." Sidewalk also wants
full autonomy from
city regulations so it can build without constraint.
You can only commercialize IP or data when you own or control them. That's why Sidewalk, as a recent Globe and Mail investigation
revealed , is taking control to own all IP on this project. All smart companies know that controlling the IP controls access
to the data, even when it's shared data. Stunningly, when Waterfront Toronto released its "updated" agreement, they left the ownership
of IP and data unresolved, even though IP experts publicly asserted that ownership of IP must be clarified up front or it
defaults to Sidewalk. Securing new monopoly IP rights coupled with the best new data sets creates a systemic market advantage
from which companies can inexorably expand.
A privately controlled "smart city" infrastructure upends traditional models of citizenship because you cannot opt out of a
city or a society that practises mass surveillance. Foreign corporate interests tout new technocratic efficiencies while shrewdly
occluding their unprecedented power grab. As the renowned technologist Evgeny Morozov
said : "That the city is also the primary target of big tech is no accident: If these firms succeed in controlling its infrastructure,
they need not to worry about much else."
Ann Cavoukia's decision to walk away from the project was made just weeks after Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory
Panel member, Saadia Muzaffar,
resigned over concerns about how Google will collect and handle data collected from people within the smart city.
Saadia Muzaffar specifically pointed to "Waterfront Toronto's astounding apathy and utter lack of leadership regarding shaky public
trust and social licence."
Local residents remain concerned over the lack of transparency in regards to the project as many believe the deal has been shrouded
in secrecy. As Jim Balsillie described it:
"We are at a point where a secretive, unelected, publicly funded corporation with no expertise in IP, data or even basic
digital rights is in charge of navigating forces of urban privatization, algorithmic control and rule by corporate contract."
Barry McBear, 2 hours ago
Getting rid of facebook was easy, but de-googling my life is going to be a real pain in the ***. One that clearly must be
done though.
smart traffic they say? Wowsers. I always wanted those lights to turn green immediately (when Im around).
And 24/7 tracking, so they can give you personal ads on LCD billboards while you walk past.
And better yet: access to lock or unlock your front door for a 'repairman'. Yeah that will work out great. I always wanted to
hand the keys to my home to outsiders for safe keeping, but now its automatic!
Amazing. What a different life we would all lead in this Smart City. /s
All this proves that the spy-craft of the Saudi assassination team was abysmal. All
cellphone networks store records of each call. Any foreign official's phone in Turkey is
under surveillance of the country's intelligence service.
Only some throw-away phone
with an anonymous prepaid card could have given some protection.
Perhaps some, but not much. Even anonymous cellphone connections can be geo-located with a
maximum error of a few meters, so calls to Saudi Arabia from within the consulate could be
noted. What more, the dim-witted Saudis probably would not have bothered with tack-on
encryption devices.
Facebook's New Troll-Crushing "War Room" Confirms Surveillance By Corporation Is The New
America
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 10/21/2018 - 22:30 270 SHARES
Facebook on Wednesday briefed journalists on its latest attempt to stop fake news during the
election season , offering an exclusive tour of a windowless conference room at its California
headquarters, packed with millennials monitoring Facebook user behavior trends around the
clock, said
The Verge .
This is Facebook's first ever "war room," designed to bring leaders from 20 teams,
representing 20,000 global employees working on safety and security, in one room to lead a
crusade against conservatives misinformation on the platform as political
campaigning shifts into hyperdrive in the final weeks leading up to November's US midterm
elections. The team includes threat intelligence, data science engineering, research, legal,
operations, policy, communications, and representatives from Facebook and Facebook-owned
WhatsApp and Instagram.
"We know when it comes to an election, every moment counts," said Samidh Chakrabarti, head
of civic engagement at Facebook, who oversees operations in the war room.
"So if there are late-breaking issues we see on the platform, we need to be able to detect
and respond to them in real time, as quickly as possible."
This public demonstration of Facebook's internal efforts comes after a series of security
breaches and user hacks, dating back to the 2016 presidential elections. Since the announcement
of the Cambridge Analytics privacy scandal in March, Facebook shares have plunged -14.5% It
seems the war room is nothing more than a public relations stunt, which the company is
desperately trying to regain control of the narrative and avoid more negative headlines.
The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct. 22,
social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders from
20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial
intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls,
fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference.
Nathan Gleicher, Facebook's head of cybersecurity, told CNBC the company wants fair
elections, and that "debate around the election be authentic. ... The biggest concern is any
type of effort to manipulate that."
In the first round of presidential elections in Brazil, Facebook's war room identified an
effort to suppress voter turnout:
"Content that was telling people that due to protest, that the election would be delayed a
day," said Chakrabarti. "This was not true, completely false. So we were able to detect that
using AI and machine learning. The war room was alerted to it. Our data scientist looked into
what was behind it and then they passed it to our engineers and operations specialist to be
able to remove this at scale from our platform before it could go viral."
The war room has been focused on the US and Brazilian elections because it says
misinformation in elections is a global problem that never ends. Gleicher warns that Facebook
is observing an increased effort to manipulate the public debate ahead of US midterms.
"Part of the reason we have this war room up and running, is so that as these threats
develop, not only do we respond to them quickly, but we continue to speed up our response, and
make our response more effective and efficient." Gleicher adds that it is not just foreign
interference but also domestic "bad actors" who are hiding their identity, using fake accounts
to spread misinformation.
"This is always going to be an arms race, so the adversaries that we're facing who seek to
meddle in elections, they are sophisticated and well-funded," said Chakrabarti.
"That is the reason we've made huge investments both in people and technology to stay
ahead and secure our platforms."
Big Brother is watching you: surveillance by corporations is the new America.
One of the privileges granted to corporations under State laws is the limitation of
liabilities as to shareholders. If you operate a business as a sole proprietor or as one of
the partners in a general partnership, then you can personally be sued for the unpaid debts
or other liabilities arising from the operation of the business. But if you are an owner of a
corporation, which is what shareholders are, then you have no personal liability and can't be
held accountable for the unpaid debts or other liabilities arising from the operation of the
corporation.
This limited liability privilege is what is wrong with corporations. The most you stand to
lose as a shareholder is what you paid for your shares. As a result, corporations can amass a
large amount of capital and when they become very large they not only damage free market
competition, but they power associated with their size and importance gives them control over
the political process. They can lobby and bribe politicians for laws that are favourable to
themselves, and unfavourable to the rest of us. And shareholders lose control over the
operation, just like your vote for politicians is relatively meaningless as a percentage of
the total vote. Management takes over, just like the elite take over governments, and ethics
disappear.
If shareholders of corporations did not have limited liability, the incentive to buy
shares would disappear, and most businesses would be carried out by small entities; we would
have a competitive "mom and pop" economy instead of a monopoly or oligopoly type economy. And
with a competitive economy if one of the competitors pulled the **** that the big internet
corporations pull, they would soon suffer the wrath of their customers who would have
alternative places to go.
Corporate laws are just another example of government interference in the economy that
produces the bad results we see today from corporatism. Corporatism is just another mechanism
to create rule by the elite and slavery for the majority. The solution is to prohibit States
from franchising corporations, and to use existing anti-trust laws to bust up all the big
corporations.
It is sad that so many people think that corporatism is capitalism and then reach the
conclusion that socialism or communism is the solution to the bad results they see today. It
is not. Capitalism is a free market with no government granted privilege to any of the
competitors. The only role of government in the economy is to protect rights, instead of
destroying rights as they do today.
I just had to uninstall my ESET anti-virus software. It was intentionally erasing utorrent
from my computer. To get to Pirate Bay, now blocked in the USA, I set my VPN to Belgium.
Almost immediately, I started getting messages from my e-mail provider, MSN, asking if I was
signing in from Belgium. When I make any payments via Internet banking, I have to turn off my
VPN or the transaction will not be recognized. When Trump and his NWO puppeteers decide to
take their gloves off, I am pretty sure my Internet connection will be on the Kill List. Just
like yours, you ZH posters.
That is why my description on Facebook states that if you post political information you
will be unfollowed. I only allow photos of kittens and well a lot of nebulous stuff,
education, and health and fitness. If they knew my ideas I would be followed by all the
worlds security agencies. I am resolved to help people become Normal within the infosphere. I
allow no politics because politics is Fake News and the sooner people forget about the
concept the sooner they will be inclined to decentralize existing concentrations of
wealth.
" The war room is staffed with millennials from 4 am until midnight, and starting on Oct.
22, social media workers will be monitoring trends 24/7 leading up to the elections. Leaders
from 20 teams will be present in the room. Workers will use machine learning and artificial
intelligence programs to monitor the platform for trends, hate speech, sophisticated trolls,
fake news, and of course, Russian, Chinese, and Iranian interference."
With all this fascist (and highly provocative) techno-insanity at their disposal
before the midterms...
...what, pray tell, will these pointy-headed leftist brats say about a red
asshamering in November?
Their silly "war room" wasn't expansive or invasive enough...?
Even the dullest people should be able to figure out that the easiest way to divulge the
truth about anything is to allow ALL information to flow like a stream. Whoever's telling the
lies will be discovered apace. Of course, FaceBook, Google, Twitter and all of the other
corporate entities know this. And they also know who the (((great masters of the lie))) are.
It is themselves. They are in panic mode, folks. We must kill this latest effort of
(((theirs))) by simply avoiding their platforms. Use their own weapons against them...
BOYCOTT. Seek alternative sites and search engines. Most importantly, spread far and wide
what you know to be their ulterior motives.
"... More than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases – even if they have not submitted their own DNA, researchers reported Thursday. ..."
"... Enough people have done some kind of DNA test to make it possible to match much of the population, the researchers said. So even if you don't submit your own DNA, if a cousin does, it could lead people to you. ..."
"... The point here is the stupid, faddish public is dumb enough to submit the material the very DNA being used by the "trusted" authorities either out in the open or by back-door methods to round up all of the DNA for the surveillance state. ..."
"... I invite anyone to comment who has experience with a "transfer station," or other garbage collection facility, and anyone in the healthcare/hospital industry with some inside info as to their nefarious methods. You can easily see from these examples how they are hard on the trail relentless bloodhounds that have the scent of their quarry and they will not stop until everyone is categorized and monitored. Then the real fun begins. ..."
"... The same group (ELITE/DEEPSTATE) that wants this Tyranny outcome is also supporting the infighting, LGBTQ rtstuv, BLM, CODE PINK, ME TOO etc etc... They know that as long as we (the working class tax paying stiffs) think this is actually a left/right- Dem/Rep issue and keep bickering over the BS, we will never unite against the takeover of our country and begin to unite to defend our rights. ..."
Walmart is interested in what's going on in your body while you shop.
The company wants to collect this data in a particularly creepy way: through the handles of their shopping carts. Walmart recently
submitted a patent to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called "
System and Method for a Biometric Feedback Cart Handle ," CBInsights reports.
These innovative shopping cart handles would collect your biometric data, meaning your stress level, your body temperature,
and heart rate -- all while you're strolling through the aisles of your local store, filling your cart with Walmart's everyday
low-priced items.
The article proceeds to explain Walmart's "spin" on it is to provide a way to "check on a customer with a physical problem."
Since when has Walmart ever been concerned about anyone's physical well-being? Isn't this the company that settled out of court
for millions to pay for stolen labor time and breaks from employees? Isn't this the same Walmart that twenty years ago put small
stores in to break local competitors (Mom and Pop stores) in small towns and when they went belly up, closed their small Walmarts
and "plopped" a Super-Walmart down in the center of where five small ones used to be? Then all the little serfs could come from miles
around to service the monolith with their play money, as the local economies of the small towns died, right? Worse. Being a "too
big to fail" type of business, they're deep in bed with the governments, federal and state. Simple data collection "for your own
safety and well-being," right?
No. They're going to tie this data in with all of the other micro-data and metadata they are already gathering filming you with
their little cameras filming Johnny Jones Junior and Daddy Jones as they pick up a box of shells for the shotgun amount and type
recorded and filed next to the photos and film with their names and biometrics.
They want every piece of information on you and your family, and they're not going to stop until they have it all of it.
More than 60 percent of Americans who have some European ancestry can be identified using DNA databases – even if they have
not submitted their own DNA, researchers reported Thursday.
Enough people have done some kind of DNA test to make it possible to match much of the population, the researchers said. So
even if you don't submit your own DNA, if a cousin does, it could lead people to you.
They said their findings, published in the journal Science, raise concerns about privacy. Not only could police use this information,
but so could other people seeking personal information about someone.
The article goes on to talk about Joseph DeAngelo, a former cop in California suspected of murder, and how they nabbed him by
using DNA submitted by a "distant cousin" that narrowed down the list for cops on his trail. Read the article for more specifics
and demographics on these DNA "commercial" test kits.
The point here is the stupid, faddish public is dumb enough to submit the material the very DNA being used by the "trusted"
authorities either out in the open or by back-door methods to round up all of the DNA for the surveillance state.
I invite anyone to comment who has experience with a "transfer station," or other garbage collection facility, and anyone
in the healthcare/hospital industry with some inside info as to their nefarious methods. You can easily see from these examples how
they are hard on the trail relentless bloodhounds that have the scent of their quarry and they will not stop until everyone is categorized
and monitored. Then the real fun begins.
To digress: this is why we must all be of one accord, and disseminate this information and take steps while there is still
time. As the weeks, months, and years roll by; the hellish apparatus of what was once termed "government" becomes a machine for rule
by enslavement. That machine is perfecting itself. When control is finally obtained total, unchallenged control? That's when the
liquidations the killings will begin, for the ownership of the resources and for the control and enslavement of all humanity.
The same group (ELITE/DEEPSTATE) that wants this Tyranny outcome is also supporting the infighting, LGBTQ rtstuv, BLM,
CODE PINK, ME TOO etc etc... They know that as long as we (the working class tax paying stiffs) think this is actually a left/right-
Dem/Rep issue and keep bickering over the BS, we will never unite against the takeover of our country and begin to unite to defend
our rights.
They the ruling ELITE have funded and played us against one another using our phobias as ammunition (gay/trans rights, racism,religious
beliefs, even our political views ) used to exploit us and keep us infighting to avoid the true threat Deep State/ELITE ruling
class!
What are you getting out of all this? Seriously - are you having fun? Does your career of choice provide you with enough fulfillment
to justify the extravagant costs and loss of your time? Being single, (and I assume young), you can go anywhere in the world,
do any job, be any person you wish to be. Joint the French foreign legion, watch whales from a tourist charter boat, become a
fish and vegitables farmer in Vietnam - if you can think of it, you can do it.
So again - your current lifestyle - what's in it for YOU? Are you having fun yet?
My personal recommendation would be to move out of the city, buy a plot of land and hand build your own house, slowly, using
the raw materials from your land. Work when you have to, learn mad skills that become tradeable, grow your own food. Anyone can
do it, and back in the day EVERYONE used to do it. But do some travelling first, to wrap your head around how big the world is,
and how irrelevant governments and rules are.
Oh, and never take unsolicited advice from strangers on the internet. That's first on the list.
OverTheHedge... I appreciate your advise. I have been thinking of moving out of the country all together. This thought might
get a serious taking once I do some traveling like you said. I have no job satisfaction. I have no philosophy side feeding my
brain here.
I feel like I am just a machine. I am thinking of traveling Asia may be next year. I will sure do it. Thanks for the advise
again. I do believe there are other ways to live life. There are other ways to be satisfied and die with out a guilty feeling.
Thanks alot my friend.
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went
out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or
if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had
not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase,
but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people
with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?...
The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's
thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no
awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.
Credit:
reddees/Shutterstock
Should each and every intersection you stop at or drive through be a potential federal
surveillance site? The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) certainly seems to think so. The
DEA is currently
expanding its use of license plate readers (LPRs) in digital road signs, which is sure to
have an impact on drivers' basic expectation of privacy.
The agency sees this program as a
collaboration between "federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement license plate readers"
to curb the actions of drug traffickers, money launderers, and other criminals. The agency
installs these cameras in digital street signs on roads that it believes are popular with
lawbreakers.
Such actions are not unique to the DEA. Police agencies share the data they obtain from LPRs
with hundreds of different local, state, and federal agencies. These agencies range from police
departments to Customs and Border Patrol to the U.S. Park Service to the U.S. Postal Service.
For example, the San Diego Police Department is
reportedly sharing its license plate data with around 900 different federal, state, and
local agencies.
Before these agencies can use their LPRs, though, the roads they select must have use for
the signs in which they are installed. Daniel Herriges, an urban planner and content manager at
Strong Towns, observes that "road design is, in fact, often the biggest underlying cause
of unsafe speed in cities." Because traffic engineers design roads to be forgiving, it creates
the perception that they are less risky. Motorists then respond "by driving faster or less
attentively," Herriges says.
In response to such unsafe driving, communities
like Albuquerque, New Mexico, have been requesting traffic calming and enforcement measures
through safe street initiatives, including signs that warn drivers. This unwittingly provides
an outlet for data collection.
Herriges suggests that rather than increase enforcement, roads should be rethought entirely.
"Addressing speed through design rather than through enforcement carries numerous advantages,"
he says. "For one, it's more effective -- studies consistently show that most drivers disregard
posted speed limits." That means traffic engineering could be the best defense of Fourth
Amendment rights in terms of license plate data collection -- except, of course, for a
constitutional challenge in court.
No federal or state courts have made any rulings on the constitutionality of an LPR program
as vast as the DEA's. Instead, the judiciary has ruled
that "single-instance database checks of license plate numbers" do not constitute searches
under the Fourth Amendment. The courts have argued this is the case because license plates are
in "plain view." However, the DEA's massive database, and the sharing they engage in with other
agencies, clearly exceed the "single-instance" that courts have ruled constitutional.
"Law enforcement likes to claim that because license plates are in public view that creating
massive ALPR networks aren't very different than stationing cops at certain locations and
having them write down the information by hand," said Dave Maass, senior investigative
researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). "So far, there haven't been many
challenges to this in the courts, except on the state level. That said, policymakers have been
pursuing (and passing) new restrictions on both sides of the aisle."
Similar to the National Security Agency's vast metadata collection program, the sharing of
license plate information can paint a very holistic picture of who a person is and what their
day-to-day life looks like. It can be as mundane as a person visiting his parents or it can be
more intrusive -- local police could share the data of everyone who visits a certain
immigration lawyer with Customs and Border Patrol, for example.
"I am definitely concerned that agencies may target people by searching ALPR data for
visitors to immigration lawyers, medical clinics serving undocumented people, churches
specializing in foreign-language services, or locations where day laborers gather," Maass said.
He added that DHS routinely uses "questionable tactics" when detaining undocumented
immigrants.
The DEA expanding its LPR program would further erode Americans' basic expectation of
privacy, and do nothing to make America's streets any safer. It's time to stop throwing more
money and resources at the failed war on drugs.
Dan King is a Young Voices contributor, journalist, and digital communications
professional based in Arlington, Virginia. His work has appeared at Reason ,, The Week and the Washington Examiner .
Ethan A. Greene is a Young Voices alumnus and master's student of City and Regional
Planning at Clemson University. His writing has appeared in Strong Towns, Planetizen, Spiked!,
and the Washington Times .
Don't underestimate the gravity of yet another ominous sign of times. Ever since the first
street cameras appeared the specter of totalitarian control has loomed large.
That moment brought into sharp focus concern that the technology that enables unlimited
storage and instant access to data could quickly become the tool of total control, too tempting
to any form of government and transform it into a totalitarian monster.
I was shocked by how virtually no resistance emerged, no serious, principled objections were
raised. Now, we are rapidly progressing into the next stage. If conservatism stands for
anything, this is the hill to die on. Comrades frogs, water's getting warmer, high time to jump
out!
"... Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has happened to every censorship advocate in history." ..."
"... "a wider war on dissident narratives in online media." ..."
Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of
political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke
its spam rules, they say it's censorship. Some 800 pages spanning the
political spectrum, from left-leaning organizations like The Anti Media, to flag-waving opinion
sites like Right Wing News and Nation in Distress, were shut down. Other pages banned include
those belonging to police brutality watchdog groups Filming Cops and Policing the Police.
Even
RT America's Rachel Blevins found her own page banned for posts that were allegedly
"misleading users."
Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of
right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political
content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has
happened to every censorship advocate in history."
In America, Conservatives were the first to complain about unfair treatment by left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants.
However, leftist sites have increasingly become targets in what Blumenthal calls "a wider war on dissident narratives in
online media." In identifying enemies in this "war," Facebook has partnered up with the Digital Forensics Lab, an
offshoot of NATO-sponsored think tank the Atlantic Council. The DFL has promised to be Facebook's "eyes and ears" in
the fight against disinformation (read: alternative viewpoints).
"the GRU's disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe".
Like the values and rules that led the NSA to eavesdrop on Chancellor Merkel's phone calls
for years, and to use American Embassies as listening posts. Mutti Merkel was very
understanding, considering they were only doing it to keep us all safe.
Amazon.com Inc. is eliminating monthly bonuses and stock awards for warehouse workers and
other hourly employees after the company pledged this week to raise pay to at least $15 an
hour.
Warehouse workers for the e-commerce giant in the U.S. were eligible in the past for
monthly bonuses that could total hundreds of dollars per month as well as stock awards, said
two people familiar with Amazon's pay policies. The company informed those employees
Wednesday that it's eliminating both of those compensation categories to help pay for the
raises, the people said.
Amazon received plaudits when it announced Monday that the company would raise its minimum
pay. The pay increase warded off criticism from politicians and activists, and put the
company in a good position to recruit temporary workers for the important holiday shopping
season.
Even after the elimination of bonuses and stock awards, hourly operations and
customer-service workers will see their total compensation increase, the company said in a
statement.
Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world, worth $160 billion. The second-richest man, Bill
Gates, has $63 billion less.
UPDATE: Reader ADL comments:
I work at a Amazon fulfillment center. A couple of things:
1) Amazon didn't just decide to end the bonuses/"stock options" compensation. They surveyed
warehouse workers and we voted for money up front. Bonuses only got paid if A) warehouses
meet certain production numbers (a lot of people don't like having our compensation based on
the work habits of OTHERS), and B) it was based on employee attendance record (if you were
out or late a lot, you didn't get bonus). The stock we got awarded didn't "vest" for a year.
Those who quit or got fired before their year was up never got to cash in their stock
option.
2) Those of us who've worked in warehousing can tell you that working at Amazon is WAY
better than other places. The benefits are excellent (we qualify for health care insurance
the first month of employment; this insurance is good and cheap compared to other companies),
plus other great benefits. The $15/hr is the icing on the cake.
Plus it's freakin' Amazon– there are opportunities to move up (one of the operations
managers at my fulfillment center began as a temp at Amazon 4 years ago), or into other areas
of logistics (if this is your professional field).
So don't knock Amazon. It's an amazing company– certainly compared to the
competition.
Let me be a little contrarian. And this from a person who is not particularly fond of the
leftist propaganda coming from the Bezos/Amazon Washington Post
Why should Amazon pay any of their 300K plus employees significantly higher than the
market wage for that particular job? Amazon is NOT a charity.
Now, Amazon might decide to pay a bit higher than the market in certain jobs due to the value
of retaining employees. Avoiding employee turnover.
Also, NO PERSON is forced to work for Amazon. If an adult does NOT like the
conditions/pay/benefits/hours at Amazon, they are free to leave.
Before you and other commenters slam Bezos as a skinflint or any other nasty name you want
to throw out there from your mighty high-horse, why don't you go out and start a business and
pay your workers greater than market.
I encourage people not to buy from Amazon and patronize brick and mortar businesses instead.
Bezos is seeking to monopolize all retail transactions and the loss of local stores puts
everyone at risk of eventually having to pay whatever price he decides to set. It is the
WalMart model on uber steroids. Don't give this man your money.
"Consumer welfare is maximized when a business keeps its costs, including labor costs, as low
as possible. If a business pays its employees more than the lowest price the market will bear
for the type of workers they want to attract, it will be (i) paying them more than their
marginal product, (ii) screwing its customers, (iii) making itself vulnerable to competitors,
and (iv) acting as a charity rather than as a business."
This is the "Economics 101" version. No serious economist would take it as a fair
representation of the real economy. The idea that employees will be paid their marginal
product only applies, even in theory, to perfectly competitive markets. The trouble is that
labour markets are, on average, even further from the perfect competition model than other
markets. Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition
model won't apply. Unless you're talking about the sale of oranges or toilet paper, any
economic model derived from the perfect competition assumption has to be taken with a gallon
of salt.
I've been working at Whole Foods for year, so I'm in the lucky bunch of people who will see a
big impact from this raise.
The notion that Amazon is just giving money away is hogwash. When the Prime discount
program started this summer, my cashier job got MUCH more complicated and continues to
be.
We're tasked with educating customers about the program, educating the Prime members in
how to access it, and serving as tech support for those who can't figure out the app, all
without making the transaction take too long.
We've been open to abuse from customers who have Amazon and take it out on us. Of course
they are all liberals (as am I) but somehow these folks don't have the decency to avoid
beating up on working class people because they hate the company we now work for.
We deserve this raise for the work we're doing to bring the Prime members into Whole
Foods, which was the point of the Amazon-Whole Foods deal. I know that's not why we're
getting a raise, but we're a "charitable cause" for Amazon.
The corporations people work for, including and especially Amazon, are not charities. They
can afford to pay us what we're worth.
I've worked at Amazon a few times during the Christmas rush, but then they just up and left
their Coffeeville Kansas location. They abandoned their employees, so I don't do business
with them.
"Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition model
won't apply."
Nope. No one has anything close to market power for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. It's
entirely fungible, and therefore it's very likely that wages are (or would be absent
government interference) a close approximation of marginal product.
"What galls me is that by paying for food stamps for people who are actually working for
WalMart, Amazon etc., we are effectively subsidizing the employers, not the employees."
This is false. Market wages are not equal to the minimum amount that will prevent the
employee from starving. They're set by supply and demand. Government benefits make their
recipients *less* desperate for work, ceteris paribus, and therefore tend to *increase*, not
decrease, the market wage for low-skilled workers (less supply = higher equilibrium
price).
" followed by typical Rand/Rothbard rhetoric. This attitude illustrates why the 'market
uber alles' ethos is irreconcilable with Christian anthropology."
"Rand/Rothbard"? Try Sowell/Econ 101.
Business is business, charity is charity, and government welfare is government welfare.
We've known at least since Adam Smith that *everyone* will be wealthier when charity is kept
separate from business. Let businesses maximize profits, and then let individuals be generous
with their use of those profits. There's nothing in Christian anthropology that says we all
have to be poorer than necessary because we're too dumb or twisted to understand
economics.
what Bezos and Amazon are doing is similar to what Henry Ford did early in the 20th when he
raised his workers wages to $5 a day
"Workers who had taken pride in their labor were quickly bored by the more mundane
assembly process. Some took to lateness and absenteeism. Many simply quit, and Ford found
itself with a crippling labor turnover rate of 370 percent. The assembly line depended on a
steady crew of employees to staff it, and training replacements was expensive. Ford reasoned
that a bigger paycheck might make the factory's tedium more tolerable."
the warehouse business is competitive. retailers are ramping hiring for the Christmas
season and Amazon increasing the starting wage to $15/hr is a direct challenge to Target,
WalMart and others. also his call for increasing the minimum wage to 7.25/hr is designed to
hurt his competitors. one of his warehouses (I think) in China operates with only 4 employees
a highly automated warehouse.
RH wrote "The corporations people work for, including and especially Amazon, are not
charities. They can afford to pay us what we're worth."
poor RH is a classic liberal who doesn't understand how wages are determined. you paid not
what you are worth, but rather what you add to the company. if you're only producing $12/hr
for the company then your salary should be less than $12/hr not $15/hr otherwise the company
will lose money. Now if you are paid $15/hr and are producing $16/hr of value for the company
they are worth $15/hr
I would suggest that you read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman
Re: I encourage people not to buy from Amazon and patronize brick and mortar businesses
instead.
This has actually gotten very hard to do (at least if you replace "Amazon" with "online
vendors" in general). We've gotten to the point where brick and mortar businesses all too
often carry only items of mass appeal. If you need something that is not a mass taste item
you'll probably have to get it online.
Suburbanp wrote: "Our children should be writing reports about Bezos, just as they should
about Ford and Gates and other visionary entrepreneurs."
Sure, they can write about how Bezos has dozens of communities around the country falling
all over themselves to give billions in tax breaks to the company in exchange for being the
location for Amazon's "second headquarters." Maryland, for example, wants to pony up $8.5
billion and is promising to repair and build custom infrastructure specifically for
Amazon.
So yeah, have kids write those school essays about crony capitalism. And make sure they
include the stories of people who run donut shops and gas stations and thousands of other
small business owners in those communities who get shafted by taxes and regulations even as
their state and county governments roll out the red carpet for a popular, narcissistic
billionaire.
"For the love of money is the root of all evil " 1 Tim. 6:10. Methinks someone worth $161
billion – that's a billion with a "b" – might just love money a leetle too much.
Hey Bezos, if you're reading this, I challenge you to live on $15/hr for 1 year and see how
you manage. For the love of all that is good and holy, Jeff Bezos could DOUBLE the salary of
all those who make $15/hr and still have $127 billion leftover to spare – which is
still an insane sum of money in the hands of one person! This is nothing short of corporate
serfdom! And I'm not advocating for socialism here, I'm just saying that capitalism, in the
absence of a strong Judeo-Christian ethic, usually leads to unbridled avarice!
This is the "Economics 101" version. No serious economist would take it as a fair
representation of the real economy. The idea that employees will be paid their marginal
product only applies, even in theory, to perfectly competitive markets. The trouble is that
labour markets are, on average, even further from the perfect competition model than other
markets. Any time there's market power, which Amazon has in spades, the perfect competition
model won't apply. Unless you're talking about the sale of oranges or toilet paper, any
economic model derived from the perfect competition assumption has to be taken with a
gallon of salt.
Gee, if only someone had written about that recently
To start off with, RobG is wrong when he makes this claim: "Bezos and his ilk have street
cred with social liberals, so they get a pass." I see Bezos and Amazon get trashed on liberal
blogs on a pretty regular basis.
Now, wading through the comments, a variety of observations:
1. $15/hour without the stock options and stuff is probably better for most of the workers
than much lower pay with those options. When you're not making a lot of money, a stable base
pay matters, as does getting the money now, not much later when the stock options vest.
2. Bezos obviously does expect to ultimately benefit from doing this. Possible benefits
include being able to hire better employees, lower turnover, and customer good will. He's not
running a charity, nor would I expect him to do so in today's business environment and
culture.
3. That said, the overall culture when it comes to wealth is pretty badly fouled up. It is
obscene that one person can accumulate a net worth of $160 billion, and it certainly is not
conducive to a stable and healthy society.
4. That said, I don't particularly blame Bezos for being obscenely wealthy -- he's playing
the game with the rules that actually exist. If we don't like that (and we shouldn't), then
we as a society should change those rules.
I was once told that a former boss of mine, in describing me to a recent hire, called me "our
favorite communist." I think Matt in VA has become my favorite conservative.
~~To start off with, RobG is wrong when he makes this claim: "Bezos and his ilk have street
cred with social liberals, so they get a pass." I see Bezos and Amazon get trashed on liberal
blogs on a pretty regular basis.~~
If that's true I'm happy to hear it (depending on what they're being trashed for, of
course).
"We've gotten to the point where brick and mortar businesses all too often carry only
items of mass appeal. If you need something that is not a mass taste item you'll probably
have to get it online."
Very true, unless you have a local retailer near you that will do special orders. Not
everyone does.
"I would suggest that you read some Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman"
Fiscal libertarianism is part of the problem, not the solution. I would in turn suggest
that you read some John Medaille and Albino Barrera.
Jeff Bezos owns 17% of Amazon; the remainder is owned by people like, well, me, a
schoolteacher married to a schoolteacher. Years ago, I was impressed with the service Amazon
provided its customers and invested money in the company. Because Bezos recognized he had
fiduciary duties–that is to say, moral duties–to those who had entrusted their
money with him, I have seen that stock price appreciate. Consequently, I am in a position to
send my children to college and help my mother as she ages. Had Bezos operated Amazon as a
charity–contrary to the duties he had assumed to shareholders–I would be out of
luck.
Rod, I am awed and grateful for your energy on so many issues, but please try to avoid the
nonsensical, attention-grabbing ledes and articles that betray a deep ignorance of some
elementary concepts of economics and the profound morality of the free market.
Clearly Google should acquire the status of a public utility -- like the Ma Bell telephone
system was regulated in the 1950's. Google is too powerful -- it should not have the cultural
monopoly power it has over our society.
"The people" and their mass interests are preeminent in the hierarchy things. Like it or
not -- Google is a product of our culture -- therefor our culture has a valid claim on its
actions.
It comes down too private ownership vs. public interest. As a pure libertarian I do not
like it -- but as a realist, the mass interests of the people counts.
The "golden mean" must win out. A compromise must be reached.
Clearly Google should acquire the status of a public utility -- like the Ma Bell telephone
system was regulated in the 1950's. Google is too powerful -- it should not have the cultural
monopoly power it has over our society.
"The people" and their mass interests are preeminent in the hierarchy things. Like it or
not -- Google is a product of our culture -- therefor our culture has a valid claim on its
actions.
It comes down too private ownership vs. public interest. As a pure libertarian I do not
like it -- but as a realist, the mass interests of the people counts.
The "golden mean" must win out. A compromise must be reached.
"... "so long as they are transparent with the users about how they are using the data." ..."
"... In practice, this means that any app that shares your private data with advertisers must disclose this fact in their privacy policy. This is seen first in a pop-up box that includes a note that the app wants permission to "read, send, delete and manage your email." However, information about the marketers this data is shared with can often be more difficult to find. ..."
"... In their letter to the company, the senators claim that one marketing company, Return Path Inc, read the private contents of 8,000 emails to train its AI algorithms. ..."
"... "not limited to your name, email address, username and password." ..."
"... At least 379 apps available on the Apple and Android marketplaces can access users' email data. In Google's letter to Congress, the firm declined to say when, if ever, it has suspended an app for not complying with its rules. ..."
"... Google itself has mined users' emails since Gmail was launched in 2004, but announced last year that it would stop the practice, amid privacy concerns and a federal wiretapping lawsuit. ..."
"... "discuss possible approaches to safeguarding privacy more effectively." ..."
"... Everything you've ever searched for on any of your devices is recorded & stored by Google https://t.co/8KGgO0xT92 ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Omnipresent tech giant Google told US senators that it lets third-party
apps read data from Gmail accounts and share this information with marketers, even though
Google itself allegedly stopped this practice last year. In a letter sent to the lawmakers in
July and made public on Thursday, Google said that developers may share your data with third
parties for the purposes of ad-targeting, "so long as they are transparent with the users
about how they are using the data."
In practice, this means that any app that shares your private data with advertisers must
disclose this fact in their privacy policy. This is seen first in a pop-up box that includes a
note that the app wants permission to "read, send, delete and manage your email."
However, information about the marketers this data is shared with can often be more difficult
to find.
Google's letter came in response to a request by Republican senators for information about
the scope of the email content accessible to these third parties. In their
letter to the company, the senators claim that one marketing company, Return Path Inc, read
the private contents of 8,000 emails to train its AI algorithms.
Return Path told the Wall Street Journal at the time that, while it did not explicitly ask
users whether it could read their emails, permission is given in their user agreements, which
state that the company collects personal information including but "not limited to your
name, email address, username and password."
At least 379 apps available on the Apple and Android marketplaces can access users' email
data. In Google's letter to Congress, the firm declined to say when, if ever, it has suspended
an app for not complying with its rules.
Google itself has mined users' emails since Gmail was launched in 2004, but announced last
year that it would stop the practice, amid privacy concerns and a federal wiretapping
lawsuit.
Now, privacy officials from Google, Apple and Amazon are preparing to travel to Capitol Hill
next week, for a Commerce Committee
hearing . There, the tech companies will be asked to "discuss possible approaches to
safeguarding privacy more effectively."
Everything you've ever searched for on any of your devices is recorded & stored by
Google https://t.co/8KGgO0xT92
The hearing is another in a series of grillings faced by the tech industry since the
Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal revealed in March that Facebook allowed a third party to
collect personal information on millions of users. Google CEO Larry Page was invited to a
Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on political bias, foreign interference and privacy on
tech platforms earlier this month, but declined to show up, sending a written testimony
instead.
A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services
hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on
Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was
submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP,
confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which
includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister
Geens refused to comment .
####
NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
So your information and private data can be traded for some small amount of money to God knows whom
Notable quotes:
"... Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ' s theory holds water. ..."
Amazon has launched an investigation to track down a sophisticated network of employees
running a "black market" of confidential information and favors, illegally sold through
intermediaries to site merchants in order to give them a competitive advantage over other
sellers, reports the
Wall Street Journal .
In addition to providing sales metrics, search keywords and reviewers' email addresses,
bribed Amazon employees would delete negative feedback for around $300 per review, with
middleman brokers typically demanding a five-review minimum from merchants looking to game the
system.
Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries , are offering internal data
and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling
their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the
data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.
...
In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000 , brokers for Amazon
employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers' email addresses, as
well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts , the people
said.
...
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S.,
suspected of accepting these bribes , according to people familiar with the matter.
-WSJ
The data brokers primarily operate ion China, as the number of new Amazon sellers in the
country has been skyrocketing. The Journal speculates that " Amazon employees in China have
relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks. "
Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in
tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own
employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ' s theory holds water.
The internal probe was launched after a tip over the practice in China was sent to Eric
Broussard, an Amazon VP in charge of overseeing global marketplaces. The company has since
moved key executives into different positions in China to try and "root out the bribery,"
reports the Journal .
"We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces
discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties," an Amazon
spokeswoman said of the situation, confirming that the company is investigating the claims. The
same applies to sellers: "We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad
actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them ," she
said.
Merchant network
A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants, where
the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now offer an
estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units sold on
the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross merchandise volume
last year, according to estimates by FactSet.
As such, "Sellers must aggressively compete to
get their products noticed on the first page of search results, where customers typically make
most of their purchase decisions," notes the Journal .
Evolving manipulations
Merchants have long sought competitive advantages over each other - first gaming Amazon's
automated ranking system, by paying people to leave fake reviews and drive traffic to
products.
After some time, the black market for internal information emerged, as bribed employees
began providing data and access to various benefits, according to a person who has facilitated
by brokers.
Brokers are the middlemen between Amazon employees and sellers who want negative reviews
deleted or access to internal sales information. Brokers search for Amazon employees on
Chinese messaging platform WeChat
and send messages asking them if they would like to provide these services in exchange for
cash , according to brokers and sellers who say they have been approached by brokers.
The going rate for having an Amazon employee delete negative reviews is about $300 per
review , according to people familiar with the practice. Brokers usually demand a five-review
minimum, meaning that sellers typically must pay at least $1,500 for the service, the people
said.
-WSJ
For a lower fee, merchants can pay Amazon employees for the email addresses of verified
reviewers, giving them the opportunity to reach out to those who have left negative reviews for
the opportunity to persuade them to adjust or delete their comment - sometimes bribing the
reviewer with a free or discounted product.
Also offered for sale is proprietary sales information, "such as the keywords customers
typically use to search for items on Amazon's site, sales volume and other statistics about
buyers' habits, according to the people," enabling Amazon sellers to better craft product
descriptions in a manner which will boost their search result rankings.
At a recent conference hosted for sellers -- which wasn't run by Amazon -- a broker pulled
up internal keyword results on his laptop. The broker said $80 can buy information on sales
data, the number of times users searched for a certain product and clicked on a product page,
which sellers are bidding for advertisements and how much those cost, according to the person
who viewed the results.
-WSJ
One seller in China told the Journal that competition on the website had become so intense
that he needs to cheat in order to gain a competitive advantage. " If I don't do bad things I
will die ," he said.
If all else fails in rooting out the black market, perhaps Bezos will simply release the
hounds:
surf@jm , 9 minutes ago
China's motto......
Who needs Christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
surf@jm , 9 minutes ago
China's motto......
Who needs christian morality, when lying, cheating and stealing is our religion.....
Suicyco , 44 minutes ago
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
Last of the Middle Class , 44 minutes ago
Just like Wal Mart charging by the inch for shelf space. Same game different monkeys.
Normal , 44 minutes ago
Prime example of how the US is a fascist state: the corporation gets government to enforce
law on poor people.
DoctorFix , 1 hour ago
When Amazon opened the flood gates of corruption and scams by allowing Chinese sellers to
compete with Americans on the US site... well, the locals were fucked! Lying, scamming
Chinese fuckers don't care who or how they screw you. And Amazon doesn't give a shit so long
as it makes money. Fuck Amazon! That's why I cancelled any prime membership and haven't
bought a damn thing from them in ages.
803Mastiff , 1 hour ago
And the Pentagon farmed out their servers to AWS.....What are Amazon employees getting
paid for military intel?
richsob , 1 hour ago
If local retailers have a crappy inventory and the stores are staffed with surly
Millennials, then why shouldn't I buy stuff on Amazon at a better price? I support local
businesses that deserve being supported. The rest of them sound like a bunch of whiny
liberals who feel "entitled" to my money.
cornflakesdisease , 2 minutes ago
Everything on Amazon can be found online somewhere else cheaper. You check out the item on
Amazon and then buy it elsewhere. Any seller has to mark up on Amazon to pay Amazon.
Logically, then, from his direct website, he would be slightly cheaper.
I'm sorry, did I miss the part where Disgruntled Amazon employees sell access to the CIAs
web farms?
Being Free , 1 hour ago
I have a letter from a woman who used to work with Bezos at a McDonalds restaurant when
they were both in high school in Miami. She says Bezos walked her home from McDonalds one day
after work and sexually attacked her in her home. He tried to rip her clothes off her but she
managed to escape his evil clutches. She was and is so distraught over this incident that she
is still afraid especially now that he is such a wealthy and powerful man.
just the tip , 44 minutes ago
well played.
JoeTurner , 1 hour ago
Oligarchs bitchez ! it's their country....you just pay the taxes...
ZD1 , 1 hour ago
"A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants,
where the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now
offer an estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units
sold on the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross
merchandise volume last year, according to estimates by FactSet."
Mostly Chicom sweatshop shit.
abgary1 , 1 hour ago
Giving away our privacy for convenience sake is inane and insane.
Have we become that lazy and ignorant?
Without privacy and thus freedom we have nothing.
Midas , 37 minutes ago
Give me convenience or give me death!
--Jello Biafra
pitz , 1 hour ago
That's nothing. Amazon has access to the business data of a large number of businesses
that use AWS. The possibilities of abuse there are nearly endless.
bluebird100 , 1 hour ago
Get fucked Amazon, that's what you get for doing business in China.
Fuckin' sick of people moaning about Amazon, Google, Facebook, etc, yet spending half
their life on there and buying shit from them.
Personally I can't stand what Amazon has become and would never spend £1 with
them.
Facebook is evil shit designed to re-wire the brain to make you a self conscious
narcissist which will ultimately end in misery.
Google are a million miles away from 'do no evil' but TBH they have a very good product
however they are evil scumbags.
These companies literally believe they are gods, that they control the world.... just like
the big banks did before 2008.
I hope the crash comes soon.
-WetWipe
mrtoad , 1 hour ago
Banks do control the world
MARDUKTA , 1 hour ago
President will destroy them soon/CIA.
MedicalQuack , 1 hour ago
Heck, this is not just China being solicited, a couple weeks ago I had 4 voicemails, all
the same recording stating "making $17.00 to $35.00 an hour posting reviews to Amazon. I
didn't answer the calls and saw that they were junk and didn't run upon them until I checked
my voicemail for a real message I had missed and there they were.
They all had a different number to call and a different company name, but it was the same
recorded message on all 4 of them and this happened in a couple days, 2 on one day, and
another 2 the next day. I guess they figured I was not going to respond and took me off
attempt #5:)
Why wouldn't folks in the inside go after a scam like this, look at their CEO, a big fat
quant from Wall Street..and of course we have all heard and read the stories about how Amazon
pays...
This being said, I don't think this scam was just limited to China..if I remember
correctly, this was promoted as part time work with posting reviews to Amazon and work as
many hours as you like. I deleted all of them so I can't go back and listen again as they
were just nuisance calls like others that I just get rid of.
MARDUKTA , 1 hour ago
Bezos partnered with some tribal chieftain in Nigeria who is CEO of Scams-R-Us.
To be banned by Amazon is not equivalent to being banned by any other private business.
Most publishers will admit that Amazon has replaced Bowker Books in Print as the industry's
authoritative guide to what books in English have been printed in the past and what is in
print now. Amazon is currently the reference source. For a book to be forbidden by Amazon
renders it largely invisible. It is equivalent to burning the book. So this is not a matter
of Amazon exercising the prerogative of private enterprise. Amazon is a monopoly. It has no
rival. If your book doesn't exist on Amazon, then for most people who are not research
specialists, your book doesn't exist. The consequences for the pursuit of knowledge are
ominous.
Exactly. And this kind of global monopoly power can't be diminished in time with naive,
"free market – just go somewhere else", Libertarian sound-bites. People who believe in
that fairytale are beyond naive. Amazon, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter are untouchable in an
environment where their competitors can barely offer a fraction of a fraction of the Worldwide
audience to their "content creators" and very few content creators to the audience. This
built-in inertia is self-reinforcing and tremendously inert. It's also the reason why the
Globalists have spared no expense to own those platforms.
Free speech will have to be enforced and saved politically. Waiting for Zuckenberg to
un-fuck it is a fool's errand.
To be banned by Amazon is not equivalent to being banned by any other private business.
Most publishers will admit that Amazon has replaced Bowker Books in Print as the industry's
authoritative guide to what books in English have been printed in the past and what is in
print now. Amazon is currently the reference source. For a book to be forbidden by Amazon
renders it largely invisible. It is equivalent to burning the book. So this is not a matter
of Amazon exercising the prerogative of private enterprise. Amazon is a monopoly. It has no
rival. If your book doesn't exist on Amazon, then for most people who are not research
specialists, your book doesn't exist. The consequences for the pursuit of knowledge are
ominous.
Exactly. And this kind of global monopoly power can't be diminished in time with
naive, "free market - just go somewhere else", Libertarian sound-bites. People who believe in
that fairytale are beyond naive. Amazon, YouTube, Reddit and Twitter are untouchable in an
environment where their competitors can barely offer a fraction of a fraction of the
Worldwide audience to their "content creators" and very few content creators to the audience.
This built-in inertia is self-reinforcing and tremendously inert. It's also the reason why
the Globalists have spared no expense to own those platforms.
Free speech will have to be enforced and saved politically. Waiting for Zuckenberg
to un-fuck it is a fool's errand. Great post! YouTube is another monopoly. I've tried many of
the alternatives like Vimeo, Daily Motion, etc but they simply don't have the depth of
content to compete. Google has fucked up Youtube with the same censorship as Amazon.
"... "It seems like the censorship power many people on the left want Silicon Valley executives to unilaterally exercise might end up being wielded against the left. One good way to know that would happen is that is already is happening." ..."
"... teleSUR English's page has been removed from Facebook for the second time this year without any specific reason being provided. It should be noted that the first time this occurred back in January 2018, Facebook did NOT provide any explanation in spite of our best efforts to understand their rationale. This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting down of pages that don't fit a mainstream narrative. ..."
"... Your Page "teleSUR English" has been removed for violating our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result in the permanent loss of your account. ..."
"... Max Blumenthal tweet shows the role of the Atlantic counsel had in removing the site from Facebook. Click the link to show who is on the counsel. This group has had a hand in a lot of shit that has been happening since Trump was elected. ..."
"... It is Deeply Concerning when one of the biggest social media platform censors whomever the hell they want and people say that "what's the big deal? It's a private company that should be able to monitor the content if they want." ..."
"... private company ..."
"... Here's a Reuters article on the role of the Atlantic Council. And yes, their board is a rogue's gallery of warmongers and imperialists. Reuters ..."
"... They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get. ..."
"... They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about you from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places. This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site for that reason. ..."
"... I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss someone. But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life. ..."
"... Ceterem censeo, Facebook delendum est! ..."
"... @thanatokephaloides ..."
"... inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban. ..."
"It seems like the censorship power many people on the left want Silicon Valley executives to unilaterally exercise might
end up being wielded against the left. One good way to know that would happen is that is already is happening."
For the second time this year, Facebook has suspended teleSUR English's page, claiming the left-leaning Latin American news
network violated the social media platform's terms of service without any further explanation -- a move that provoked outrage
and concern among journalists, free speech advocates, and Big Tech critics.
In a short article posted on teleSUR's website on Monday, the regional news network -- which is based in Venezuela but also
has received funding from Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, and Nicaragua -- explained:
teleSUR English's page has been removed from Facebook for the second time this year without any specific reason being
provided. It should be noted that the first time this occurred back in January 2018, Facebook did NOT provide any explanation
in spite of our best efforts to understand their rationale. This is an alarming development in light of the recent shutting
down of pages that don't fit a mainstream narrative.
According to the outlet, "the only communication" teleSUR has received from Facebook is the following message:
Your Page "teleSUR English" has been removed for violating our Terms of Use. A Facebook Page is a distinct presence
used solely for business or promotional purposes. Among other things, Pages that are hateful, threatening or obscene are not
allowed. We also take down Pages that attack an individual or group, or that are set up by an unauthorized individual. If your
Page was removed for any of the above reasons, it will not be reinstated. Continued misuse of Facebook's features could result
in the permanent loss of your account.
Max Blumenthal tweet shows the role of the
Atlantic counsel had in removing the site from
Facebook. Click the link to show who is on the counsel. This group has had a hand in a lot of shit that has been happening since
Trump was elected.
Facebook has just deleted the page of @telesurenglish
. A network source tells me FB justified eliminating the page on the vague basis of "violation of terms." The NATO-backed
@DFRLab is currently assisting FB's purge. This is
deeply disturbing. pic.twitter.com/MQe3Brdn15
It is Deeply Concerning when one of the biggest social media platform censors whomever the hell they want and people say that
"what's the big deal? It's a private company that should be able to monitor the content if they want."
Well it seems that its a Big Fucking Deal when that private company is working hand in hand with the government. Facebook
has already been removing left leaning website's post for some time now and it looks like they are upping their game.
Directors. There's some real stinkers on that list. 'Honor' has nothing to fo with it.
Honorary Directors
David C. Acheson
James A. Baker, III
Harold Brown
Frank C. Carlucci, III
Ashton B. Carter
Robert M. Gates
Michael G. Mullen
Leon E. Panetta
William J. Perry
Colin L. Powell
Condoleezza Rice
Edward L. Rowny
George P. Shultz
Dr. Horst Teltschik
John W. Warner
William H. Webster
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about
you from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places.
This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site
for that reason.
Many lefties were happy when FB deleted Jones and were mad at the Twitter guy who didn't. The site that they censored today
isn't an American one, but I'm sure those lefties would be sh*tting bricks if FB did that to Rachel's show and website.
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
They track your web movement any time you read a page that has their "like us" button. They can learn everything about you
from your family and friends who are on it because they get access to their contacts in their phones and tons of other places.
This is a huge invasion of privacy, but no one should be surprised. The CIA gave Zucchini his start up money to build his site
for that reason.
Many lefties were happy when FB deleted Jones and were mad at the Twitter guy who didn't. The site that they censored today
isn't an American one, but I'm sure those lefties would be sh*tting bricks if FB did that to Rachel's show and website.
I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss someone.
But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life.
Anyway, it's disheartening how we are giving away our freedoms so easily.
and not enough people care about it because it. This I don't get. They are the ones who say that our military is fighting to
defend our freedoms and yet they say that it's okay if the government spies on them because they have nothing to hide.
I realize not participating in social media does not exempt me from the surveillance state. Heaven forbid they miss
someone. But it's one or three less things I am giving absolute permission to my life.
Anyway, it's disheartening how we are giving away our freedoms so easily.
I am more grateful each day that I never signed up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Ceterem censeo, Facebook delendum est!
(Further, I opine, Facebook must be abolished!)
edit: Adjusted translation to less violent (but still accurate) terminology.
If you don't think that, then good luck. They are tightening the screws. I am more grateful each day that I never signed
up for any of this horrific social media. This is as social as I get.
Good luck to us all. Let's hope a supervolcano blows before we are all actually further imprisoned in this open air prison.
inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite
them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban.
Silicon Valley's coordinated purge of all things Infowars from social media has had an unexpected result; website traffic
to Infowars.com has soared in the past week, according to Amazon's website ranking service Alexa.
That said, Google and Apple are still allowing people to access Infowars content via apps, which have seen their downloads
spike as well.
Consumers still can access InfoWars through the same tech companies that just banned it. Google still offers the Infowars
app for Android users, and Apple customers can download it through the App Store.
As of Friday, the show's phone app remained near the top of the charts in both the Apple App and Google Play stores.
Infowars Official, an app that lets viewers stream Jones' shows and read news of the day, was ranked fourth among trending
apps in the Google Play store Friday. In the news category on Apple's App Store, Infowars earned the fourth slot under the
top free apps, behind Twitter and News Break, a local and breaking news service, revealing a sudden boost of user downloads.
–American Statesman
I like your idea. I'm going to hit both sites daily just to spite them.
inspired me to seek it out and add it to my home page. I'm going to paste Infowars (Alex Jones) on here too, just to spite
them. Also, it's good to know what the crazies are up to. Jones got a big spike from the ban.
"... People with original content and distingushable personalities were purged from Twitter for reasons that are hard to discern ..."
"... Probably 99% of posters at Twitter (the only "social media" that I read) are amateurs who never had time, talent or inclination to post anything original. ..."
"... If we count re-tweets or copies of pictures of cute cats and puppies, the percentage of "inauthenticity" is huge. But when one posts about atrocities in Yemen rather than puppies or adorable Israeli settlers in West Bank then he/she can be identified as a "threat". To USA? to humanity? to puppies? to the adorable settlers?. Who knows and who cares. ..."
"... what you see going on nowadays reminds you of George Orwells "2 minutes of hate" in his book 1984. ..."
"... Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time. It should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are... ..."
"... I don't see much serious debate on FB. Most people are communicating with friends, or people they call friends. And they are not anonymous which makes people cautious about expressing their true feelings. ..."
"... Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Well only partially, a secondary line. Their main business is harvesting the psychometric data all its users so carelessly hand them, and then selling said data on to nefarious third parties. ..."
"... In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted--what's happening with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression. ..."
"... Amazon (and others) banning books is the updated version of book burning. ..."
"... Young Millennials were drawn to Facebook like 1950's teenyboppers were drawn to smoking. All the kids were doing it. Decades later, those smokers paid a terrible price: lung cancer, COPD, etc. And they had even (unknowingly) poisoned their own kids (via secondhand smoke). ..."
"... People simply have no "sense" for systemic risk. We only seem to learn via disaster. Whether it is social media, MIC, financial markets, propaganda, climate change, etc. ..."
"... "Free Syrian Army sentences Syrian doctor to 6 months in prison for criticizing Erdogan on Facebook" ..."
I followed FireEye link a bit and I have several conclusions.
1. The diagram they made about several "inauthentic sites" is totally bogus. People have various reasons to create anonymous
accounts, for example if they have Saudi citizenship and they post something "pro-Iranian" because of authentic views they may
be kidnapped, whipped and perhaps even executed. An American citizens may want to be anonymous if his/her views are unpopular
among H management where they work. Besides several black lines of "shared e-mail addresses" that are already inconclusive they
have "red arrows" of "promotional activity", presumably links, re-Tweets etc. of which there are billions.
2. I checked a "persona" and black-linked "fake journal". Persona has almost zero activity, 3 Twitter followers. Journal seems
to be somewhat fake because it has several articles with low originality, nicely looking frontpage and some pages that are totally
empty (e.g. Central Asia). It seems that this is one person effort to collate themes and views to his/her liking and practice
web design, and due to sparse posting and mediocre originality, probably zero effective influence.
3. Eliminating 543 such accounts changes next to nothing given their sparse traffic. But FireEye identifies them as "threats".
WFT?
4. By the way of contrast, when I followed tweets about fighting in Syria I witness huge concerted waves of masked re-tweets,
identical tweets presented not as re-tweets that clearly had the purpose of swamping the traffic sympathetic to their opponents.
The numbers were not surprising given the number of jihadi volunteers that actually served as cannon fodder rather than twitter
warriors.
5. People with original content and distingushable personalities were purged from Twitter for reasons that are hard to
discern (posting bloody pictures from battlefields? non-purged accounts show them too).
Probably 99% of posters at Twitter (the only "social media" that I read) are amateurs who never had time, talent or inclination
to post anything original. For example they may find several posts of their liking and re-post them, expressing their views
without inventing new content. If they create more than one account and are noticed by others, they could fall into FireEye criteria.
If we count re-tweets or copies of pictures of cute cats and puppies, the percentage of "inauthenticity" is huge. But when
one posts about atrocities in Yemen rather than puppies or adorable Israeli settlers in West Bank then he/she can be identified
as a "threat". To USA? to humanity? to puppies? to the adorable settlers?. Who knows and who cares.
That's quite an intelligent and observant post Piotr Berman. The evolution of the social media phenomena has me, for one, astounded.
Not to mention confounded. How to go viral?
That's the question to answer. Even the mightiest sea wall can not resist the big
tide.
@25 pB, respectfully, you must not know a lot of people... Many, many people still use Facebook and even use it as their main
source of information; instead of ridiculing and thinking oneself superior to these people, we should engage them where they are
at and tell them that it is not the best place to rely on for news.
The social media censorship has certainly escalated lately but it is of course following a long trend - we've known for several
months for example that Facebook was shutting down pro-Palestine pages at the behest of the Israeli, American, and German governments,
and of course there was the PropOrNot fiasco and the tweaking of Google's algorithms to supress alternative, mainly (real, not
liberal-capitalist) left-wing websites. I am hopeful however that in a sense the cat is out of the bag, there is a critical mass
of people who simply do not trust enough in the official channels anymore, and eventually all this censorship will backfire. That
is an optimistic view anyway...
there's a long and even honourable history behind the use of such professional actors going back to Ancient Egypt and the use
of wailers at high-class peoples funerals, and one could see the point to all of that. But that was all done for the best of intentions.
unfortunately the modern incarnation of such ancient traditions is now being done for all the worst of intentions. (originally
it was all done to generate positive emotions and feelings) nowadays its the complete opposite.
what you see going on nowadays reminds you of George Orwells "2 minutes of hate" in his book 1984.
if you are going to say anything, at please do try to be positive or constructive. Otherwise probably best not to do or say
anything at all.
Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a
decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time. It
should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are...
there's a long and even honourable history behind the use of such professional actors going back to Ancient Egypt and
the use of wailers at high-class peoples funerals, and one could see the point to all of that. but that was all done for the
best of intentions.
Best of intentions, maybe not. The proletariat struggled greatly against their rulers. Slavery and serfdom were cultural norms.
Not that these were attendees of upper class funerals, but in service to the elite to be sure. The illusion that oppressors are
benevolent must be upheld. The reports would be spread throughout the town. Perhaps we were wrong in our assessment that ol' Joe
was a cruel and miserable oppressor.
This trick has endured through the ages. See Facebook. By the looks of it, everyone now suffers from Stockholm Syndrome.
@36 I don't see much serious debate on FB. Most people are communicating with friends, or people they call friends. And they
are not anonymous which makes people cautious about expressing their true feelings.
I work in a library part-time. Most of my regular patrons who do nothing but use the computers use Facebook for their entire two
hours for messaging friends or lovers, or they divide up their time between that and YouTube videos. I try to help them from time
to time figure out the latest changes to their Facebook accounts, even though I haven't used it in years.
They're ordinary sorts of people whose lifestyles require them to get their Internet through our public space rather than at
home, or they don't want to use their phones for it. There are also folks who have various social or physical disabilities who
enjoy watching videos of trains and steam engines. There are also kids who don't use Facebook but watch endless reiterations of
AI-generated YouTube videos or play roblox or agar.io.
So, I guess I'm saying people use social media shit to pass the time. Much like those of us who are passing the time using
this site. While we might believe we are getting deeper to the truth of our realities through MoA, we're also sitting in front
of a screen just as much.
Selling advertisements is Facebook's business. Well only partially, a secondary line. Their main business is harvesting
the psychometric data all its users so carelessly hand them, and then selling said data on to nefarious third parties.
@karlof1 | Aug 22, 2018 3:31:39 PM | 14
In the battles over ideas, printing presses were often targeted for destruction so ideas could be restricted--what's happening
with Twitter and Facebook is merely an updated version of such repression.
While Amazon (and others) banning books is the updated version of book burning.
Why (for what reason) is anybody on this social media shit? Not a rhetorical question; I dumped all of it well more than a
decade ago. I'm not claiming some kind of superiority here; just questioning where critical thinking skills failed big time.
It should have been obvious (it was to me) where this would end. And here we are...
I was active on a few web-places in the years 2002-2008 or so. The opportunity for "platonic dialog" was suited to my temperament
I guess and the results were interesting.
I turned more than one big site on it's head with my questioning. Some of my posts went insanely viral. Those were the early
days. I noticed professional trolls from the outset who seemed to be part of the web-site forum itself. They were my adversaries,
and over time began to mimic my posts since no one could beat me at Socratic dialoging.
The topics were many different: for examples: global warming and the environmental ethos, the old Leibnitz-Newton argument,
and regarding the justifications for the Iraq War...
It was fun! A Socratic dialog site with member-referees would actually be a great thing.
This is based on my experience: it is a great learning experience to have to defend a thesis. I did independent research at
that time to avoid getting caught in an argument with my pants down. In every thread it was just about EVERYBODY in there against
me.
(I knew the non-poster listeners were fascinated by what was going on. One site employed a software called Motet which
is excellent for making repeated references to one´s own posts or to the posts of another or to documentary evidence, so the discussions
don't get bogged down explaining the debate to new-comers). I came to realize that my posts were being studied when i drew some
conclusions from the responses they were provoking.
Ten years ago, I totally dropped out of these kinds of internet forums where ideas might so usefully be examined in light of
the opinions and knowledge of a diversity of persons.
Young Millennials were drawn to Facebook like 1950's teenyboppers were drawn to smoking. All the kids were doing it. Decades
later, those smokers paid a terrible price: lung cancer, COPD, etc. And they had even (unknowingly) poisoned their own kids (via
secondhand smoke).
People simply have no "sense" for systemic risk. We only seem to learn via disaster. Whether it is social media, MIC, financial
markets, propaganda, climate change, etc.
Hey all the cool kids are on THIS side of the boat!!
Rivera told officials he exited his vehicle and started "running behind her and alongside her," according to the criminal
complaint. Tibbetts then grabbed her phone and told him she was going to call the police , according to the criminal
complaint.
@46 "But the naivete of Millennials is now legendary. From SJW "snowflakes" to attractive joggers that think their cellphone protects
them in sparsely populated areas:..."
And that is precisely what I dislike about FB. If I was to post something like that there I would be called a fascist or dragged
into unwinnable arguments. Or, horror of horrors, publicly unfriended.
Days after Google was exposed trying to
help Hillary Clinton
win the 2016
election, a leaked "internal only"
video published by
Breitbart
Senior
Tech correspondent Allum Bokhari
reveals a panel of Google executives
who are absolutely beside themselves
following Hillary Clinton's historic
loss.
The video is a full recording of
Google's first all-hands
meeting following the 2016 election
(these weekly meetings are known
inside the company as "TGIF" or
"Thank God It's Friday" meetings).
Sent to Breitbart News by an
anonymous source, it features
co-founders Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, VPs Kent Walker and
Eileen Naughton, CFO Ruth Porat, and
CEO Sundar Pichai
. -
Breitbart
In the video, Brin can be heard
comparing Trump supporters to fascists
and extremists - arguing that like
other extremists, Trump voters suffered
from "boredom" which has, he
claims, historically led to fascism and
communism.
He then asks his company what they
can do to ensure a "better quality of
governance and decision-making."
And according to Kent Walker, VP for
Global Affairs, those who support
populist causes like the MAGA movement
are motivated by "fear, xenophobia,
hatred and a desire for answers that
may or may not be there."
He later says that
Google
needs to fight to ensure that populist
movements around the world are merely a
"blip" and a "hiccup" in the arc of
history that "bends towards progress."
The video can be seen below, however
scroll down for a list of timestamped
segments to note, courtesy of
Breitbart
.
(00:00:00 – 00:01:12) Google
co-founder Sergey Brin states that
the weekly meeting is
"probably not the most joyous we've
had"
and that
"most
people here are pretty upset and
pretty sad."
(00:00:24) Brin contrasts the
disappointment of Trump's election
with his excitement at the
legalization of cannabis in
California, triggering laughs and
applause from the audience of Google
employees.
(00:01:12) Returning to
seriousness, Brin says he is
"deeply offen[ded]"
by the
election of Trump, and that the
election
"conflicts with
many of [Google's] values."
(00:09:10) Trying to explain the
motivations of Trump supporters,
Senior VP for Global Affairs, Kent
Walker
concludes: "fear, not
just in the United States, but
around the world is fueling
concerns, xenophobia, hatred, and a
desire for answers that may or may
not be there."
(00:09:35) Walker goes on to
describe the Trump phenomenon as a
sign of "tribalism that's
self-destructive [in] the
long-term."
(00:09:55) Striking an
optimistic tone, Walker assures
Google employees that despite the
election,
"history is on our
side"
and that the
"moral arc of history bends towards
progress."
(00:10:45) Walker approvingly
quotes former Italian Prime Minister
Matteo Renzi's comparison between
"the world of the wall" with its
"isolation and defensiveness" and
the "world of the square, the
piazza, the marketplace, where
people come together into a
community and enrich each other's
lives."
(00:13:10) CFO Ruth Porat
appears to break down in tears when
discussing the election result.
(00:15:20) Porat promises that
Google will "use the great strength
and resources and reach we have to
continue to advance really important
values."
(00:16:50) Stating
"we
all need a hug,"
she then
instructs the audience of Google
employees to hug the person closest
to them.
(00:20:24) Eileen Noughton, VP
of People Operations, promises that
Google's policy team in DC is "all
over" the immigration issue and that
the company will "keep a close watch
on it."
(00:21:26) Noughton jokes about
Google employees asking, '
Can
I move to Canada?
' after
the election. She goes on to
seriously discuss the options
available to Google employees who
wish to leave the country.
(00:23:12) Noughton does
acknowledge "diversity of opinion
and political persuasion" and notes
that s
he has heard from
conservative Google employees who
say they "haven't felt entirely
comfortable revealing who [they]
are."
and urged
"tolerance." (Several months later,
the company would fire James Damore
allegedly for disagreeing with
progressive narratives.)
(00:27:00) Responding to a
question about "filter bubbles,"
Sundar Pichai promises to work
towards "correcting" Google's role
in them
(00:27:30)
Sergey Brin
praises an audience member's
suggestion of increasing matched
Google employee donations to
progressive groups.
(00:34:40)
Brin compares
Trump voters to "extremists,"
arguing for a correlation between
the economic background of Trump
supporters and the kinds of voters
who back extremist movements. Brin
says that "voting is not a rational
act" and that not all of Trump's
support can be attributed to "income
disparity." He suggests that Trump
voters might have been motivated by
boredom rather than legitimate
concerns.
(00:49:10) An employee asks if
Google is willing to "invest in
grassroots, hyper-local efforts to
bring tools and services and
understanding of Google products and
knowledge" so that people can "make
informed decisions that are best for
themselves." Pichai's response:
Google will ensure its "educational
products" reach "segments of the
population [they] are not
[currently] fully reaching."
(00:54:33) An employee asks what
Google is going to do about
"misinformation" and "fake news"
shared by "low-information
voters." Pichai responds by stating
that
"investments in machine
learning and AI" are a "big
opportunity" to fix the problem.
(00:56:12) Responding to an
audience member, Walker says Google
must ensure the rise of populism
doesn't turn into "a world war or
something catastrophic and instead
is a blip, a hiccup."
(00:58:22) Brin compares Trump
voters to supporters of fascism and
communism, linking the former
movement to "boredom," which Brin
previously linked to Trump voters.
"It sort of sneaks up sometimes,
really bad things" says Brin.
(01:01:15) A Google employee
states:
"speaking to white
men, there's an opportunity for you
right now to understand your
privilege"
and urges
employees to "go through the
bias-busting training, read about
privilege, read about the real
history of oppression in our
country." He urges employees to
"discuss the issues you are
passionate about during Thanksgiving
dinner and don't back down and laugh
it off when you hear the voice of
oppression speak through metaphors."
Every executive on stage – the CEO,
CFO, two VPs and the two Co-founders
– applaud the employee.
(01:01:57) An audience member
asks if the executives see "anything
positive from this election result."
The audience of Google employees,
and the executives on stage, burst
into laughter. "Boy, that's a really
tough one right now" says Brin.
Google and it's execs seem to be a collective of Dr.
Frankenstein's whose creation unknowingly or knowingly practices evil
against innocence.
Little Girl Scene from 1931
Frankenstein
and 1974
Young
Frankenstein
We saw the scene in 1931
Frankenstein
where the creature
meets a young girl. Although a little afraid, she accepts him and
plays games with him. After they throw all the petals from a flower
into the lake, he looks around for something else to throw. He picks
her up and throws her in. Until recently, the actual toss was cut
from presentations of the film, because it is just too painful.
DeadFred
,
I have a friend who was there that night with the election coverage
crew. He's a secret conservative trying not to lose his good paying
job so I won't give details. But he described a scene to me that
would be comical if it wasn't so pathetic. It was pretty much how it
is described here and he had to just grit his teeth and try to keep
from laughing or crying. "Just keep repeating, $190,000 per year"
uhland62
,
When the Emperor (google) doesn't like his people he must go and find
himself another people.
Thebighouse
,
SOMEHOW GOOGLE FACEBOOK TWITTER NEED TO PAY US FOR USING OUR PERSONAL
AND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION WITHOUT
"REAL" CONSENT.
Ever gone googling? They need to pay you for selling you
information. It is blatant theft. You are ENTITLED TO YOUR MONEY.
I got that word entitled from Warren and obummers micky and barry.
Oh and sharpton too.
bobdog54
,
First, they may have a reasonably good, not high, IQ but it's clear
the stark reality of the real world and its people are completely
unknown to them or they have little to no integrity.
Second,
maybe they are completely brain dead to support a clear criminal over
4 decades or they themselves are essentially of the criminal mind.
"... Citing CIA documents, Bernstein wrote that during the previous 25 years "more than 400 American journalists have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency." He added: "The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception." ..."
"... Amazon has always been and will always remain a front for the deep state shenanigans. This company makes no money, and yet has one of the biggest market caps in the world. As to this that the Washington compost, traditional CIA media, has been purchased by no other than bezos himself, and that leaving any doubt aside, the same CIA just awarded him $600Mio per year to give them some disposable computing power. And then suddenly you hear all these stories about government agencies willing to make the same move... ..."
"... It looks like Bezos is a CIA asset. ..."
"... That it's about modern slavery, in a runup to the 4th industrial revolution. (in which these workers will be fired) ..."
"... I'm particularly troubled by Jeff Bezos and his connections with the CIA and deep state. The CEO of Amazon did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers to make a lucrative resurgence. He purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it would ensure him in Washington and because it could be wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion. ..."
"... And because the CIA and Bezos are partners I wouldn't hold your breath for any changes. We now have a form of government subsidized neo-slavery. ..."
"... Well, Amazon is not a business, it's a surveillance agency masquerading as a business. ..."
They are against certain government contracts Amazon fulfills.
The employees raised concerns over the facial recognition software called Rekognition,
developed by Amazon. Amazon sells the software to law enforcement and federal policing
agencies.
But facial recognition software is basically an unwarranted unreasonable search. You
shouldn't have to reveal your identity to the government without being suspected of a crime.
And with this software, just going out into public means the government will defacto search
you, and be able to track your whereabouts.
In the letter, employees also spoke out against Amazon providing services to Peter Thiel's
company Palantir .
Palantir offers predictive policing tools. It analyzes vast amounts of data in order to map
complex social connections and behavior patterns.
Palantir is almost like Minority Report the police might know you are going to commit a
crime before you do
The technology is named after the crystal balls used by the dark lord Sauron and evil wizard
Saruman to spy on middle earth in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings .
The letter reads:
Dear Jeff,
We are troubled by
the recent report from the ACLU exposing our company's practice of selling AWS
Rekognition, a powerful facial recognition technology, to police departments and government
agencies. We don't have to wait to find out how these technologies will be used. We already
know that in the midst of historic
militarization of police , renewed
targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human
rights abuses -- this will be another powerful tool for the surveillance state, and
ultimately serve to harm the most marginalized
We call on you to:
Stop selling facial recognition services to law enforcement
Stop providing infrastructure to Palantir and any other Amazon partners who enable
ICE.
Implement strong transparency and accountability measures, that include enumerating
which law enforcement agencies and companies supporting law enforcement agencies are using
Amazon services, and how.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.
Amazon also contracts
with the CIA, bringing in at least $600 million per year . They provide web services for
high-security state secrets to the CIA and other U.S. spy agencies. Plus, Jeff Bezos owns the
Washington Post. So the CIA pays Amazon $600 million per year. Jeff Bezos is the founder and
CEO of Amazon. And Jeff Bezos is the sole owner of the Washington Post. Does that sound like a
conflict of interest to you?
It is also interesting to note that the
Washington Post has long been associated with the CIA . Project Mockingbird was a CIA
operation which paid American journalists to publish certain information and bury other facts,
depending on the interests of the CIA.
After creation of the CIA in 1947, it enjoyed direct collaboration with many U.S. news
organizations. But the agency faced a major challenge in October 1977, when -- soon after
leaving the Washington Post -- famed Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein provided an extensive expose
in Rolling Stone.
Citing CIA documents, Bernstein wrote that during the previous 25 years "more than 400
American journalists have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence
Agency." He added: "The history of the CIA's involvement with the American press continues to
be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception."
Amazon and Jeff Bezos should be held accountable for providing oppressive tools to the
government.
But they should not be criticized and punished for success, as Bernie Sanders' Stop BEZOS
Act would do.
Then again if Bezos wants to make money from government contracts, maybe taking care of his
employees from cradle to grave just comes with the territory. That money came from taxes. And
taxes are are markedly different than free market revenue.
"Customers" do not have direct control over how their tax dollars are spent. But apart from
the government contracts, I could otherwise entirely remove my funding of Amazon in an instant
by refusing to do business with it.
With government sources of funding, Amazon gift cards resembling a currency, and
delivery "patrols" in your area , Amazon is looking more and more like a government
But that is a subject we will tackle next week. You don't have to play by the rules of the
corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.
... ... ...
Adolfsteinbergovitch ,
Amazon has always been and will always remain a front for the deep state shenanigans. This
company makes no money, and yet has one of the biggest market caps in the world. As to this
that the Washington compost, traditional CIA media, has been purchased by no other than bezos
himself, and that leaving any doubt aside, the same CIA just awarded him $600Mio per year to
give them some disposable computing power. And then suddenly you hear all these stories about
government agencies willing to make the same move...
It looks like Bezos is a CIA asset.
Reptil ,
No, calling out Bernie Sanders, that's a straw man tactic. And it's not accurate.
Bernie attacked Jeff Bezos (and people like him) for NOT PAYING PROPER WAGES TO
EMPLOYEES.
And then that the taxpayers have to pay the extra to keep the employees from starving or
becoming homeless.
Which is something that can be prevented by..... proper wages.
How is that even possible? Well... it's a monopoly. Not a free market. So don't pretend it is
(capitalism). It is not !!!!!!!!!!
And then it's not about something STUPID like "it's the poor attacking the rich." That's
childish scaremongering, to hide the truth.
That it's about modern slavery, in a runup to the 4th industrial revolution. (in which these
workers will be fired)
Yes, it's about the oligarchy trying to enslave the american people, with the PISSPOOR EXCUSE
that for some reason, it's capitalism to not pay proper wages.
Ah yes and Jeff Bezos of course made a deal with the treacherous CIA, that part is true.
That's fascism and high treason. But who's going to enforce that? Other oligarchs? Trump? The
FBI? hahaha
William Binney had a great idea. To have the states secede from the Federation. Then form
inter-state relationships. This way Washington DC will be bypassed.
But expect a fight. A tough one.
Let it Go ,
I'm particularly troubled by Jeff Bezos and his connections with the CIA and deep state.
The CEO of Amazon did not purchase the Washington Post in 2013 because he expected newspapers
to make a lucrative resurgence. He purchased the long-trusted U.S. newspaper for the power it
would ensure him in Washington and because it could be wielded as a propaganda mouthpiece to
extend his ability to both shape and control public opinion.
The article below supports the opinion that since buying the Post Bezos has used it to
gain wealth and power and that Amazon is a job killing exploiter monster that needs to be
stopped. http://Trump
And Bezos Face Off Clash Of The Titans.html
Let it Go ,
It must be noted that retailers are closing stores all across America and the impact will
be huge. Online retailer Amazon is by far the chief offender causing such grief. Over the
last few years, stores such as Target and Macy's have even had to face a slew of dishonest
shoppers trying to sneak defectives products purchased online back as exchanges and trading
them for a fresh unbroken product. I have seen this costly abuse recommended by several
online shoppers that see this as an "easy fix" while simply brushing aside the ethical issues
it creates.
As stores close much of this space located in the large shopping malls that once
flourished in commercial zones of suburbia will grow empty and abandoned. The article below
is the second of a part-two series about the retail closings that are occurring across the
country and contains a suggestion as to how we can blunt the damage it will create.
The American taxpayer should not have to pay for Amazon's or WalMarts shitty wages and
refusal to provide more full time jobs with benefits. This has nothing to do with punishing
success. And because the CIA and Bezos are partners I wouldn't hold your breath for any
changes. We now have a form of government subsidized neo-slavery.
Scipio Africanuz ,
Now, before responding to this article, I find some folks who make asinine comments are
preventing responses to their comments from being seen. That's fine, they can hide but they
can't evade. I'll find out soon whether zerohedge is shadow banning comments, I'll call out
asinine comments directly, I'll not respond to anyone anymore, until I understand what's
really going on..
Back to the article, TDB makes a robust defense of capitalist "success" and that's fine.
Bezos achieved his "success" on the back of the American tax payer. The rules of the game as
structured, requires that he, and his oligarch buddies pay tax, just like mom and pop, no
more, no less!
I believe in free exchange, and regulated markets. This means trade should be voluntary,
and markets should run on honest weights and measures. I don't believe for a nanosecond, that
markets should be unregulated, that breeds fraud, theft, and manipulation.
There can be no "free unregulated market", it's the utopia of the right, just as
government dominated commerce, is the utopia of the left.
Now, Bezos is an ungrateful cronyist, and I say that without apology. He ought to learn a
thing or two, from Henry Ford, and the Japanese thus - take care of your profit generators
(employees), and your enabling environment (society), because they're your customers!
Exceptionalist economics have given capitalism a terrible reputation.
Folks often forget that man, by inherent nature, is a communist employing capitalism to
create a compassionate society (socialism). The misunderstanding has cost millions of lives
in the attempt to destroy capitalism, the very principle they ought to protect. The attempts
are akin to closing the nasal and oral passage ways, and yet, hope to consume oxygen.
It'd be hilarious were it not so tragic...
pitz ,
Where's Amazon's profit though? Outside of AWS, they don't make any. Usually robber baron
sort of companies are outrageously profitable. Amazon actually delivers their service at a
loss, and subsidizes it through their only highly successful business, AWS, which is
basically a glorified bank/subprime lender.
The Amazon P/E ratio is extremely irrational, but can the government be blamed for
that?
Scipio Africanuz ,
Well, Amazon is not a business, it's a surveillance agency masquerading as a business. It
doesn't have to make money as it's directly subsidised by the government, and boosted by the
propaganda wing of the establishment, the MSM. Once you understand this, everything becomes
clear, cheers...
Remember a few editions ago when I wrote in celebration of the cross-aisle cooperation
between Senator Elizabeth Warren and President Donald Trump with respect to the re-engineering
of the equity complex? After all, it was only a month ago. However, for those who fail this
recall test, the gist of it was as follows. Senator Warren introduced a bill to regulate large
corporations in a manner that de-emphasizes profits as a corporate objective, and the President
sought to soften the blow by suggesting a reduction in the frequency at which company
chieftains would be required to announce the certain-to-be bad news to the investing
public.
At the time, I was deeply touched by the prospect of narrowing the gap between two schools
of economic thought -- so deeply at odds with one another, to such deep annoyance and detriment
to the well-being of the masses. However, I feared it was a "one-off".
So it brings me great pleasure to report upon the happy news that the divide continues to
close. As my readers are probably aware, everyone's favorite Socialist Senior Citizen Senator:
Bernie Sanders, took to the airwaves this past week to denounce the evils of what by many
accounts is everyone's favorite publicly traded corporation. In live television interviews,
and, of course, on Twitter, Bro Bernie entered into a full-throated denouncement of Amazon,
going so far as to include a series of ad-hominem attacks on its fabulously infallible
founder: one Jeff Bezos.
In doing so, Sen. Sanders joins a critical chorus led by the President, who for months has
been throwing shade at the erstwhile bookseller that would take over the world. Bernie is
passionately (if questionably) upset about the unfair treatment of Amazon workers. Trump is
presumably most peeved at the temerity of Bezos at having taken ownership/control over the
Washington Post. But both agree on one thing: the great unwashed are getting a raw deal with
respect to the business arrangement between the Company and the U.S. Postal Service.
I've looked into these matters, and objectively as I can determine, this is not an open and
shut case against Amazon. Yes, they're getting a government (and therefore a taxpayer) subsidy,
but they are arguably performing services that would be difficult and more expensive for the
post office to undertake without them – rain, sleet, snow and gloom of night
notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, to their everlasting credit, both Amazon and its shareholders reacted to the
rhetorical pummeling with characteristic equanimity:
It's not as though they didn't feel the sting a bit, and here, the sentimental can be
forgiven if they lament the timing. Sharp-eyed observers will note a slight down-tick in the
price at the more immediate, right end portion of the graph. This reversal is all the more
unfortunate because on Tuesday, the day after our traditional holiday celebrating the working
class, the Company's valuation joined that of Apple's as the only business enterprise ever to
surpass the lofty and heretofore unimaginable $1T threshold.
But that was then; as of Friday's close, Amazon's market capitalization fell to the
beggarly-by- comparison level of $952B.
It says here that Amzonians of every stripe should keep that stiff upper lip demeanor at the
ready, as I suspect they may face a string of challenges before the inevitable happens, and the
Company achieves full global hegemony.
Because, while the following edict did not make the cut on my "10 Commandments of Risk
Management", it probably should have: any enterprise that has found itself in the
cross-hairs of both Trump and Bernie has reason to worry.
And if Amazon is staring into the face of a political spit storm, so, too, perhaps, are
those other lovable Tech Titans whose stock performance have so deeply enriched us in the
post-crash era. Consider, if you will, the recent pricing action of a couple of other tech
darlings: Facebook and Twitter, linked not only by the social media stranglehold they
collectively command, but also by the fact that each company sent one of their gods down from
their heavenly Silicon Valley Olympus, to earthly Washington, where each faced full-on Capitol
Hill roasting:
Facebook Defacing:
Twitter De-Tweeting:
Now, this is a Dickensian Tale of Two Stocks if ever there was one. With Zuck presumably
hiding under his desk, Sheryl Sandberg taking the Congressional heat this round. In the wake of
all that, Facebook managed to breach the lows registered after its historic July tanking of
earnings, and is knocking on the door of breaking the bottoms recorded when Zuck had to explain
away to hostile legislatures the pimping out of user data to sketchy organizations like
Cambridge Analytica. By contrast, the long-besieged Twitter, which had been on an improbable
profit upswing of late, managed to give back all and then-some in the wake of Jack Dorsey's
Capitol Hill Star Chamber Inquisition.
Anybody notice a pattern here? Well, for me, what we're witnessing is the early innings of
what I expect to be a slowly unfolding, populist/political undermining of the flower of the
American Tech industry. Now, I don't expect anything overly nasty to transpire in the short
term; more likely than not, the garroting of Silicon Valley high-flyers will be a multi-year
proposition. Rather, I suspect that the TMT/big dogs of the NDX will more than likely reach new
highs – perhaps material ones – before they face the prospect of careening,
Icarus-like, to terra firma.
But if the prevailing tone – taking place as it is under a presumably
business-friendly political paradigm -- is any indication, I shudder to think about what
happens when the progressive elements re-assert their mojo and take hold of the control
panel. And trust me, they will: if not immediately then eventually.
Of course, one cannot help but admire the way that West Coast Tech monsters – from San
Diego to Seattle – have anticipated this, and attempted, and with some success, to brand
themselves as torch carriers for the progressive mindset. I believe is that this will work for
a while, but not into perpetuity. Eventually, they will be unmasked and vilified as the filthy,
profit-seeking capitalists that they are.
And here, perhaps, is the main (if most obvious) point: as Tech goes, so goes the stock
market. I don't have the exact figures handy, but I can assure you that if you review index
gains over the last, say, five years, and remove the contribution of Apple, Amazon, Facebook,
Microsoft and Google from the equation, you're looking at a chart that, best case, is
flat as a pancake. As such, I don't think that the unfolding Madam Defarge (villainess of Tale
of Two Cities, known most prominently for knitting at the guillotine) dynamic that I fear may
be emerging in Tech-land is much cause for celebration.
The shortened week brought a small taste of the look and feel of the new-age vibe that
awaits us. Equity indices retreated, but only modestly, and in manner that failed to capture
the carnage that lies beneath. I may be connecting dots too far flung to merit they're linkage,
but it is not lost on me that all of the above transpired against the backdrop of a
deteriorating geopolitical sneaker fire (Nike?). I won't waste much space here, but between the
editorial stylings of Anonymous, the absolute (if unsuccessful) effort to turn the Kavanaugh
hearings into a pig circus, the breathless anticipation of another Bob Woodward political
workover, and the unfortunate ramping up of trade skirmishes, it's hard not to look at the
world with a glaze in one's eyes and a growing pit in one's stomach.
But of course and as always the news by no means all bad. The Jobs Report pretty much checks
every bling box, so much so that slumbering holders of longer-term U.S. debt, and sold down
some of their holdings. Factset is projecting another boffo quarter at about ~+20%.
Equities, though, remain a quandary nonetheless (as do Commodities), but my hunch is that
the indices will gather themselves a bit over the next few sessions, before breaking everyone's
heart – yet again -- later in the month. Moreover, if the months-long pattern holds
(Trump offsetting domestic political bludgeons with accretive policy actions), I would expect
some happy noise from the front of the trade wars over the next several days. There'd better
be, because the long knives are out against the current administration, and the only defensive
weapon at their disposal is one that involves playing offense on the economy.
I'm more than willing to do my share, so, as I sign off, know that I'm logging into my
Amazon Prime account to purchase a holy document called "The Art of the Deal", along with "Our
Revolution: A Future to Believe In", written by one Bernie Sanders, and released on November
15, 2016, exactly one week after the author of the former book, against all odds, won the
presidential election.
Who knows? Maybe Donnie and Bernie have more common ground than they realize, and if I find
anything of this sort, I'll be sure to pass it along – to them, and, of course, to
you.
TIMSHEL
This post is brought to you by General Risk Advisors, a full service risk solutions group.
For more information, visit genriskadvisors.com .
(betanews.com)
45Mimecast examined more than 142 million emails that had passed through organizations'
email security vendors. The latest results reveal 203,000 malicious links within 10,072,682
emails were deemed safe by other security systems -- a ratio of one
unstopped malicious link for every 50 emails inspected . The report also finds an 80
percent increase impersonation attacks in comparison to last quarters' figures. Additionally,
19,086,877 pieces of spam, 13,176 emails containing dangerous file types, and 15,656 malware
attachments were all missed by these incumbent security providers and delivered to users'
inboxes.
(wsj.com)
88
Yahoo still sees the practice as a potential gold mine . From a report: Yahoo's owner,
the Oath unit of Verizon Communications has been pitching a service to advertisers that
analyzes more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes and the rich user data they contain,
searching for clues about what products those users might buy, said people who have attended
Oath's presentations as well as current and former employees of the company. Oath said the
practice extends to AOL Mail, which it also owns. Together, they constitute the only major U.S.
email provider that scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
(engadget.com)
125Google
introduced its Titan Key -- a physical security key used for two-factor authentication --
and now it's
widely available for purchase in the US through company's Google Store . Almost any modern
browser and mobile device, as well as services such as Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, Salesforce,
Stripe support the Titan Key. It's Google's take on a Fast Identity Online key, a physical
device used to authenticate logins over Bluetooth. From a report: For $50, you'll get a USB
security key and a Bluetooth security key as well as a USB-C to USB-A adapter and a USB-C to
USB-A connecting cable.What happens if you
lose them? From a report: A downside of physical keys is that if lose them, you're
toast. That's why you have two keys -- one is meant to be a backup. Google says it can help you
gain access to your account again but the recovery process can take days.
VentureBeat adds : It's not meant to compete with other FIDO keys on the market,
stressed Sam Srinivas, product management director for information security at Google, during a
press pre-briefing. Rather, it's "for customers who want security keys and trust Google," he
said. Further reading:
None of Google's 85,000 Employees Have Been Phished in More Than a Year After Company Required
Them to Use Physical Security Keys For 2FA .
As soon as some idiot declare intention to prevail in cyberwarefare, the chances for
Microsoft to survive in Rusia drop. the same is true about level of usage of Google, Facebook and
other social sites controlled by the USA.
In 1953, the United States stood at a precipice. After the death that year of Soviet
strongman Joseph Stalin, senior U.S. cabinet officials could not agree on how to contain and
confront Soviet expansion and aggression. So President Eisenhower devised an exercise to "
analyze competing national strategies " to check the Soviets where possible and roll back
their advances where feasible. The White House convened three
teams of leading scholars and practitioners to analyze and craft distinct strategies so
that the president could review the strongest arguments, reach consensus among his advisors,
and determine the direction of U.S. policy. The exercise, Project
Solarium , influenced U.S. national security policy for decades.
Sixty-five years later, this project is serving as the template for addressing a new
challenge. The President this month signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization
Act for Fiscal Year 2019 which created the Cyberspace Solarium Commission to forge consensus
in the face of new and diverse threats in the cyber domain.
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.
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.
* * *
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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.
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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.
"Yes, the Aspen Institute is the CIA and the CIA is the Aspen Institute"
Notable quotes:
"... CIA manages transnational organized crime to top up their budget for unauthorized clandestine operations, like killing JFK. CIA protects its criminal protégés with their chartered impunity. ..."
"... RFK knew how it works. RFK junior explained the reason for RFK's focus on organized-crime until CIA whacked him. That's why his book was made to sink without a ripple. ..."
"... Evenfurthermore, CIA is the government and the government is CIA. Decades ago Fletcher Prouty showed that CIA's deepest-cover illegal moles are embedded in our own government. Every agency with repressive capacity is infiltrated with focal points, who report to CIA handlers without the other agency's knowledge. ..."
"... Of course Israel is trying to infiltrate it -- they understand the levers of power. ..."
"... Assange has got some mighty stinkers in his insurance file. All we can do is hope they're enough to destabilize the CIA Reich that has ruled America since 1949. ..."
Yes, the Aspen Institute is the CIA and the CIA is the Aspen Institute. Or, to be more precise, the CIA is the armed wing of Washington's
permanently governing technocratic party, in the same way the KGB was the armed wing of the Soviet Communist Party.
Poor Julian Assange is likely going to be in their hands not too long from now. The citizen of one Five Eyes country will be arrested
by another and then sent off to the imperial metropole, to be kicked around like a political football. The rest of us Anglosphericals
are expected to cheer or remain silent. Either is acceptable.
Yup. Furthermore, CIA is organized crime and organized crime is CIA. CIA recruits and runs agents in favored criminal syndicates
in every illicit trade: drugs, child sexual trafficking, arms, fraud, bustouts, extortion, money laundering. Their purpose is
not to interdict the trade but to control it.
CIA manages transnational organized crime to top up their budget for unauthorized clandestine operations, like killing
JFK. CIA protects its criminal protégés with their chartered impunity.
They call off law enforcement with the magic words national security or 'sources and methods.' If the plan gets exposed, CIA's
criminal cutouts insulate the agency from exposure.
RFK knew how it works. RFK junior explained the reason for RFK's focus on organized-crime until CIA whacked him. That's
why his book was made to sink without a ripple.
Evenfurthermore, CIA is the government and the government is CIA. Decades ago Fletcher Prouty showed that CIA's deepest-cover
illegal moles are embedded in our own government. Every agency with repressive capacity is infiltrated with focal points, who
report to CIA handlers without the other agency's knowledge.
Of course Israel is trying to infiltrate it -- they understand the levers of power.
Assange has got some mighty stinkers in his insurance file. All we can do is hope they're enough to destabilize the CIA
Reich that has ruled America since 1949.
"... 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.
As a reminder, Project
Maven was to use machine learning to identify vehicles and other objects from drone footage -
with the ultimate goal of enabling the automated detection and identification of objects in up
to 38 categories - including the ability to track individuals as they come and go from
different locations.
Project Maven's objective, according to Air Force Lt. Gen. John N.T. "Jack" Shanahan,
director for Defense Intelligence for Warfighter Support in the Office of the Undersecretary
of Defense for Intelligence, " is to turn the enormous volume of data available to DoD into
actionable intelligence and insights. " -
DoD
Well, good for those employees. An computer program figuring out targets to kill? No
thanks, I've seen that movie before, several of them.
This does make sense from the pentagon's point of view, though. Drone pilots constantly
burning out and having substance abuse problems because of the things they do from the air is
bad for business. Just put a computer program in charge, solves that problem. Plus, you don't
have to worry about the computer program talking to the media or giving remorseful interviews
about the kids they've killed, etc.
Did they throw their custom coffee drinks on the floor, talked in squeaky voices to each
other, raised their hands in anger, made some incoherent threats toward management in their
private conversations, scotched a few more Dilbert cartoons on the outer walls of their
cubicles? This kind of revolt?
Google employees rock.
I doubt the management will risk it by doing it secretly. But the military might find ways to
reverse engineer whatever Google produces. If they get caught and have to pay damages...hey,
it's taxpayers' money anyway they use against the people/humanity. They don't care.
Powerful is the man who, with a short series of tweets, can single-handedly send the bluest
of the blue-chip stocks into a headlong tumble. For better or for worse, the current occupant
of the Oval Office is one such man, tapping into his power with the following missive that
crossed the Twitter transom on the morning of March 29:
I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay
little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery
Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of
business!
Over the next few trading days, with four subsequent tweets peppered in, Amazon's stock
dropped by more than $75 a share, losing a market value of nearly $40 billion. Card
carrying-members of the Resistance and Never Trump brigade quickly portrayed the president's
scorn as the latest evidence of his "soft totalitarianism" and general disdain for the First
Amendment and the free press. They noted that Amazon's CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, owns the
Washington Post -- a leading "perpetrator" of what Trump has called the "opposition
party" and "fake news."
Concerns of politically motivated impropriety are not without merit. Trump has repeatedly
proven himself unworthy of the benefit of the doubt. As presidential candidate and commander in
chief, he has demonstrated an eagerness to use his Twitter account as a bully pulpit in his
petty brawls with lawmakers, media personalities, and anyone else who might draw his ire.
And yet, ulterior motives though there may be, knee-jerk dismissals of the president's
attack are short-sighted. The president's bluster in this instance is rooted in reality.
Indeed, contra the libertarian ethos that Amazon and its leader purport to embody, the
company has not emerged as one of history's preeminent corporate juggernauts through thrift and
elbow grease alone. Although the company's harshest critics must concede that Amazon is the
world's most consistently competent corporation -- replete with innovation and ingenuity -- the
company's unprecedented growth would not be possible without two key ingredients: corporate
welfare and tax avoidance.
Amazon has long benefitted from the procurement of taxpayer-funded subsidies, emerging in
recent years as the leading recipient of corporate welfare. According to Good Jobs First, a
Washington, D.C., organization dedicated to corporate and government accountability, Amazon
has, since 2000, received more than $1.39 billion in state and local tax breaks and subsidies
for construction of its vast network of warehouses and data centers.
These private-public "partnership" deals are perhaps best illustrated by the sweepstakes for
Amazon's second headquarters. Touted as the economic development opportunity of the century,
the chosen destination will reap the benefits of 50,000 "high-paying" jobs and $5 billion in
construction spending. The possibility of securing an economic development package of this
magnitude elicited proposals from 238 North American cities and regions, fomenting what some
have called a "bidding war" between mayors, governors, and county executives desperate for
economic invigoration.
After a first round deadline of October 19, the pool of applicants was, in mid-January,
whittled down to a list of 20. As expected, each finalist offered incentive packages worth more
than a billion dollars, with Montgomery County, Maryland, ($8.5 billion) and Newark, New
Jersey, ($7 billion) offering the most eye-popping bundles. Proposals utilized a wide array of
state and local economic development programs: property tax discounts, infrastructure
subsidies, and, in the case of Chicago's proposal, an incentive known as a "personal income-tax
diversion." Worth up to $1.32 billion, Amazon employees would still pay their income taxes in
full -- but instead of Illinois receiving the money, the tax payments would be funneled
directly into the pockets of Amazon itself.
While critics condemn the ostentatious bids of Maryland and New Jersey and decry the
"creative" gimmicks of cities such as Chicago, they are equally worried about the details -- or
lack thereof -- of the proposals from the other finalists. Despite demands for transparency
from local community leaders and journalists, only a handful of cities have released the
details of their bids in full, while six finalists -- Indianapolis, Dallas, Northern Virginia,
Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh, North Carolina -- have refused to release any of
the details from their first-round bids. Viewing themselves as players in a zero-sum game of
high-stakes poker, they claim that there is little to gain, but a lot to lose, in making their
proposals public.
Such secrecy has, in the second round of bidding, become the rule more than the exception.
Although he owns a newspaper with the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness," Bezos has required
state and local officials involved in negotiations to sign non-disclosure agreements. With the
opportunity to revisit and revise their bids (i.e., increase their dollar value), the
transition from public spectacle to backroom dealing introduces yet another cause for concern.
If the finalists don't apprise citizens of their bids' details, the citizens can't weigh the
costs and benefits and determine whether inviting the company into their midst will be a net
positive or net negative.
Amazon's pursuit of public tithes and offerings is matched by its relentless obsession with
avoiding taxes. Employing a legion of accountants and lawyers, the company has become a master
at navigating the tax code and exploiting every loophole. Illegality is not the issue here but
rather a tax system that allows mammoth corporations to operate with huge tax advantages not
available to mom-and-pop shops on Main Street.
Of course Amazon isn't unique in its desire to avoid the taxman. It is, however, unrivaled
in its ability to do so. Last fall's debate concerning the merits of lowering the corporate tax
rate from 35 percent to 20 percent was, for Amazon, a moot point. In the five years from 2012
to 2016, Amazon paid an effective federal income tax rate of only 11.4 percent.
The company fared even better in 2017. Despite posting a $5.6 billion profit, Amazon didn't
pay a single cent in federal taxes, according to a recent report from the Institute on Taxation
and Economic Policy. What's more, Amazon projects it will receive an additional $789 million in
kickbacks from last year's tax reform bill.
Even by the standards of mammoth corporations, this is impressive. By way of comparison,
Walmart -- no stranger to corporate welfare and tax avoidance -- has paid $64 billion in
corporate income tax since 2008. Amazon? Just $1.4 billion.
Amazon's tax-avoidance success can be attributed to two things: avoiding the collection of
sales taxes and stashing profits in overseas tax havens. The IRS estimates that Amazon has
dodged more than $1.5 billion in taxes by funneling the patents of its intellectual property
behind the walls of its European headquarters city, Luxembourg -- a widely used corporate tax
haven. Again, nothing illegal here, but there's something wrong with a tax system that allows
it.
From day one, Amazon's business model involved legally avoiding any obligation to collect
sales taxes, and then using the subsequent pricing advantage to gain market share. It did this
by first locating its warehouses in very few states, most of which did not have a sales tax. It
then shipped its goods to customers that resided in other states that did have sales tax. This
game plan allowed Amazon to avoid what is known as "nexus" in sales-tax states, meaning that
those states could not compel it to collect the tax -- a two to 10 percent competitive
advantage over its brick-and-mortar counterparts.
Amazon exploited this tax advantage for years until state legislatures -- realizing how much
revenue they were losing -- gradually began passing legislation requiring Internet retailers to
collect sales taxes for items purchased by their citizens. In 2012, having already benefited
from this competitive advantage for more than a decade and a half, Bezos -- under the pretense
of a "level playing field" -- began advocating for federal legislation that would require
Internet retailers to collect sales tax. No such legislation has been passed.
And despite Bezos's carefully calculated public relations posturing, Amazon's advantage over
brick-and-mortar retailers persists: not only does Amazon not collect city and county sales
taxes (where applicable) but it also doesn't, with few exceptions, collect sales tax on items
sold by third-party distributors on Amazon Marketplace -- sales that account for more than half
of Amazon's sales.
It is difficult to overstate how instrumental tax breaks and tax avoidance have been in
Amazon's unprecedented growth. As Bezos made clear in his first letter to shareholders in 1997,
Amazon's business plan is predicated on amassing long-term market share in lieu of short-term
profits. As a result, the company operates on razor-thin margins in some retail categories,
while actually taking losses in others.
Amazon has not squandered these competitive advantages. Half of online retail purchases are
made through Amazon, and more than half of American households are enrolled in the Amazon Prime
program -- a subscription service that engenders platform loyalty and leads to increases in
consumer spending.
In fact, Amazon's ascent and tactics have led an increasing number of public policy experts
to call for a renewed enforcement of America's antitrust laws. The concern is that Amazon has
used its market power to crush smaller competitors with a swath of anti-competitive practices,
including predatory pricing and market power advantages stemming from Amazon Marketplace --
Amazon's vast sales platform for third-party retailers.
Such practices may be a boon for consumers and Amazon stockholders, the reasoning goes, but
they are only possible because Amazon uses economic power to squeeze its retail partners on
pricing at various points in the production line, which harms the health of many other
businesses. In fact, some suggest this bullying tendency calls to mind the actions of John D.
Rockefeller in his dealings with railroad companies at the turn of the last century.
These monopolistic practices have squeezed local, state, and federal revenue streams in two
ways. Not only do these governments forego the collection of needed tax revenue but Amazon's
rise has also knocked out many brick-and-mortar competitors that previously had provided
streams of tax revenue. By wooing Amazon with taxpayer-funded subsidies and other giveaways,
government leaders are, in a very real sense, funding the destruction of their own tax base.
There is little evidence that such taxpayer-funded inducements have resulted in a net positive
to the states and localities doling out the subsidies.
By forsaking the tenets of free market orthodoxy, forgoing the collection of much-needed tax
revenue, and giving big businesses major competitive advantages, state and local governments
have generated increasing controversy and political enmity from both ends of the political
spectrum. And yet, though bipartisan accusations of crony capitalism and corporate welfare
abound, such opposition does little to dissuade state and local governments from loosening the
public purse strings in their efforts to woo big corporations such as Amazon.
Daniel Kishi is associate editor of The American Conservative. Follow him on
Twitter:@DanielMKishi .
Facebook is hoping that a new alliance with the Atlantic Council -- a leading geopolitical
strategy think-tank seen as a de facto PR agency for the U.S. government and NATO military
alliance – will not only solve its "fake news" and "disinformation" controversy, but will
also help the social media monolith play "a positive role" in ensuring democracy on a global
level.
The new partnership will effectively ensure that Atlantic Council will serve as Facebook's
"eyes and ears," according to a company press statement. With its leadership comprised of
retired military officers, former policymakers, and top figures from the U.S. National Security
State and Western business elites, the Atlantic Council's role policing the social network
should be viewed as a virtual takeover of Facebook by the imperialist state and the council's
extensive list of ultra-wealthy and corporate donors.
The partnership is only the latest in a steady stream of announced plans by the Menlo Park,
California-based company to address controversy surrounding its role in the 2016 U.S.
presidential election. The company has been mired in scandal stemming from the allegations of
"election interference" carried out through the social network – usually pinned on the
Russian government and ranging from the use of independent media to the theft of Facebook user
data by political consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica.
The announcement should sound alarm bells when one considers the Atlantic Council's list of
sponsors – including, but not limited to, war-profiteering defense contractors; agencies
aligned with Washington and the Pentagon; Gulf Arab tyrants; major transnational corporations;
and such well-loved Western philanthropic brands as Carnegie, Koch, Rockefeller, and Soros.
Even the name of the group itself is meant to evoke the North Atlantic Council, the highest
political decision-making body of North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Full report: https://www.mintpressnews.com/facebook-partners-hawkish-atlantic-council-nato-lobby-group-protect-democracy/242289/
The obvious question came up: Should I buy a smartphone to replace my trusted Ericsson?
I tested several of the current top-of-the-line smartphones - Motorola, Samsung, Apple. They
were in the same relative price range as my old Ericsson was at its time. But they lack in
usability. They either have a too small screen for their multitude of functions or they are
bricks that require an extra pocket.
I do not want to give all my data into the hands of
some unaccountable billionaires and unknown third parties. I do not want my privacy destroyed.
So no - I decided not to buy a smartphone as replacement for my trusted Ericsson
companion.
It is a Chinese product sold in Germany under the Olympia
brand. It is a GSM quad-band 'dumb' phone with FM radio and a flashlight. The standby time is
140 hours and talk-time is 3+ hours. The battery is a standardized model and future
replacements will be easy to find.
Size and weight are nearly the same as the old Ericsson. The keys are much bigger,
illuminated and easier to handle, especially in the dark. It is a robust construction and the
sound quality is good.
It cost me €22.00 ($26.40).
Posted by b on April 2, 2018 at 03:28 PM | Permalink
I'm not convinced the new generation of retro dumb phones aka feature phones do not also have
all the same surveillance capabilities as their smart brethren - even though they don't
expose those capabilities as features to the end user.
b - I only scanned your post, but my answer is: NO!
Don't buy a "smart" phone (or anything else labeled "smart"). They are nothing more than
data collectors, part of the Internet of Things that, IMNSHO, is an existential threat to our
civilization.
I just decided to look back at the end of the post. and I see that you took my advice.
;-)
Well you have to ask yourself, Do i want to participate in a mass surveillance system for
one, Then you have to ask Is their any reason i would accept constant audio recordings being
made of my environment, then you have the camera angle to contend... Then your GPS location
is a major issue, add the ultrasonic beacon thing and the cell tower triangulation aspect to
consider.... the phone you have from 2001 is not anywhere near as proficient at many of these
tasks being built well before the 2006 legislation regarding this series of systems... If it
were me and i knew all about this stuff, i would pay a hell of a lot more than a new phone is
worth to keep the old unit in service for as long as you could... Any new phone is going to
do all the above to your privacy and then some the old one is very limited, so how concerned
are you with being an open book to who ever has access to your phone from the hidden parts
and functions you never get to use? Me? I have seen a ton of serious problems with the uses
of the tech being built into the modern smartphones, some models give you lots of functions
to use, some give you a basic lite experience, But ALL new devices give the state running the
system a HEFTY pack of features you will never know about until it's damage has been done.
Take my advice Keep the 2000 model going for as long as you can if you must have a mobile
phone. If you WANT to be the target of every nasty thing the state does with this new tech
investigator/spy then by all means get one of the smart type, Any new one is just as bad as
any other after 2006 legislation changes went into effect. 2001 was a very bad event for this
topic... I will not have one after the events that befell me. A high performance radio
computer with many types of real world sensors, using a wide spread and near unavoidable
network of up link stations is the states most useful weapon. Everyone chooses to have what
they have, You can also choose to NOT have, but few choose NOT, many choose the worst option
on old values of this sort of choice and never think about the loss they incur to have the
NEW gadget for whatever reason they rationalize it.
Smart phones are destroyers of information sovereignty. With a PC one can save a copy of
every page you visit whereas with the smart phone all you can practically do is view things.
It pisses me off.
Has anyone noticed how shallow the so called world wide web has gotten these days.,?
Search terms which would in the psst throw up hundreds if not thousands of webpages on the
subject matter now result in sometimes no more than 3 or 4 entries. Google has stolen the
internet of us all. The web is dead. Cunts like zuckerberg should be drop kicked into the
long grass.
The main espionage equipment in a smartphone or dumbphone is not the application processor
and the programs that run on it. It's the GSM/3G/UMTS/LTE/5G chipset which every single one
of them obviously has. "We kill with metadata" is the most important aphorism about phones,
no matter which kind, ever.
However, a smartphone gives you lots of convenience which your 22$ chinaphone doesn't give
you. A browser when on the road, a book reader, a map device.
You have to take a few precautions, e.g. use LineageOS, install AFWall and XPrivacy. Nothing
different from using a PC basically. And you certainly shouldn't shell out 500$ for one.
Every dollar/euro above ca. 100 has to be very well justified.
Sure, you can live in the 80s, nothing wrong with that. We lived fine back in those days
too, but why not take advantage of some of the improvements since then?
psychohistorian | Apr 2, 2018 4:23:43 PM | 15
Nice post b. Expresses my sentiments exactly.
I had to take my Nokia X2 out of the plastic bag I keep it in so it doesn't get wet to see what model it was....I keep the
battery out and pay T Mobile $10/year to have emergency minutes when I need them....I maintain and use a land line for all my
calls.
It is not like these devices couldn't be useful but like the desktop OS world, bloatware is a standard now. I have programmed
handheld devices since 1985 and my latest was a MS Windoze10/C# inventory management application with barcodes and such.
Prior to the Nokia I have now I was nursing along a Palm 720p until I couldn't get a carrier to support it anymore. So since
the Palm I have consciously gone back to a Weekly Minder type of pocket calendar which I had to use before the online
capability came along.
If our world were to change like I want it to by making the tools finance a public utility I might learn to trust more of my
life to be held by technology than the 5 eyes already know......Everyone has seen the movie SNOWDEN , correct?.....my Mac
laptop had tape over the camera as soon as I brought it home.....I have a nice Nikon Coolpix camera with the GPS turned off
and the battery out......grin
I understand your choice, but you should have looked for a basic phone not just with GSM
(2G), but also at least with UMTS (3G).
GSM is being wound down, and the frequencies reallocated to LTE (4G).
Many operators in several countries have already switched off their GSM networks
(Australia, USA...) This means that in about 3-4 years, you will have real difficulties using
your new mobile phone, at least in developed countries; in the Third World, GSM will probably
last a bit longer.
I have a cheapo Nokia 100 for calls and a YotaPhone 2 as a tablet. The Yota is Russian but I
don't mind the FSB 😃 Aldo it has two screens, one being a passive black and white for
use in full bright sun light.
I think b made a wise decision. Up till now I've also not needed a smart phone and the
continious "connection" or being hooked to the "matrix" would not only eat my valuable time
away but would also make me feel more bound.
"Another disadvantage of smartphones is enormous amount of personal data they
inevitably steal for uncontrolled use by third parties. The technical consultant Dylan Curran
studied this:
As soon as an Android smartphone is switched on Google will collect ALL data on every
location change and on anything done on the phone. Apple does likewise with its
iPhones."
That's the basic privacy nullification. There is also what can be described as the
invasive potential. Certain companies, next to intelligence agencies, have made it their
business to switch a victims own smart phone into a full blown active spy device. Obviously
the victims are particular persons of interests like Dilma Roussef. Whenever a person is
having a conversation, talks to himself out loud, has a meeting or is intimate, all sounds
and conversations can be recorded next to video when the phone is positioned well. As we
know, most people will not or can't part from their beloved smart phone.
I can not tell what to do. In fact, when buying a "smartphone", you have to get used that the
phone will be discharged during 1 or 1.5 days, you will become dependent to next USB source,
or a battery pack (which is somewhat heavy, 1 pound ca. but not too bulky.
Personally, I am using such a device since 5 yrs ca., first a 4.7" HTC one of my daughters
gave me. I soon installed Cyanogenmod (now LineageOS) and threw away all the bloat and
especially the Google and Facebook dirt and spyware. I do not have an email account on the
brick, rather a browser over which I may access the Web representation of my email account,
which is NOT gmail or similar. I do not use Google playstore.
The "killer apps" for me are mainly FBReader, a free ebook reader, VLC for audio and
video, and OSMand, an OpenStreetMap client. Some simple calendar, picture etc. apps are on as
well. My recent phone is a Samsung S4 mini, bought used for 50€.
This is a minimalistic setup, but makes tracking and spying other than by government
agencies difficult. LineageOS is updated nearly every week, so fairly safe against Android
malware.
With a "regular" smartphone, you will lack updates after a few years, have a lot of bloat
on board you cannot get rid of, be forced to have a Google account for access of the software
repository Google playstore, which is deeply integrated into Android. If one does not care to
be spied and sniffed not only by the FBI and NSA, but by Brin and Zuckerberg in addition,
ok.
Provided one has access to good public WiFi: It seems to me that Wifi and a tablet, or laptop
(with a good battery) + the use of a virtual proxy network, VPN, which are almost always
encrypted, is better than a smartphone. (Of course if the tablet is Android don't use the
Chrome web browser.)
Then just buy a 25 euro Samsung or LG flip phone for the talking part of phone use. It
won't last 17 years, but one can still get batteries for them.
Of course this approach doesn't work if you don't have solid public WiFi where you'd
normally use a smartphone in public.
@mh505 #27 Even with a SIM card not linked to your personal ID card it's fairly easy to
automatically tie your smartphone to your person whereby you end up in the drag net you try
to escape. Not in the least thanks to your close ones whom probably have you listed with your
full name + phone number (thus SIM) in their smartphone. And that's even besides you
connecting to all kinds of services offered by Google and the likes that know where you
personally hang out because of WIFI access points, GPS location (if enabled), connected IP
address where someone else connected to who has GPS enabled etc.
Unfortunately your list of EU countries that don't require personal ID to purchase a SIM
card is incorrect.
In USA it pays to be stupid. The choice I have is to use a smart phone with a monthly
charge ca. 100 dollars or a stupid phone with a monthly charge of 8 dollars (or is it 15? and
the phone for 8). And if you are old enough you can bear with hardships like memorizing the
map of the area were you live, having to check stuff on your own desktop computer before you
leave home etc. And the difference in costs can be spent on cigarettes, beer, donations to
OxPham, it is your pick.
Concerning surveilance, a stupid phone is used sparingly, so it definitely provides less
tracking info.
I'm a 53 year old dog and try to keep things simple for myself. Being paranoid about being
tracked and watched isn't my thing. I use my smart phone as a phone when I need to talk to an
asswipe at work or my only friend to schedule a meetup or the wife unit when she calls. I
have limited data so I usually wait until I'm home to view porn and news websites on the pc.
I don't do any financial tasks on the phone, rarely text anyone, rarely use the camera, have
only a few apps for things like weather and writing myself a note to remember to pick up milk
or dog food on the way home from work. My life is so boring and my bank account so empty I'm
not worth a bother to "them".
Lambert here: Readers will notice that Auerback seems to assume that Cambridge
Analytica's shenanigans with Facebook data shifted votes in 2016 (as do the links to which he
cites)*. His post summarizes the political and analytical state of play, but may be usefully
read in conjunction with
this 2017 post at NC by Marina Bart, who cautioned :
There is no question that modern social media facilitates highly segmented marketing.
There is no question that political campaigns can benefit from this. Figuring out who might
be receptive to your candidate and their policies, where they vote, and motivating them to go
to the polls is fundamental campaign work. But that is not at all the same thing as
manipulating people into voting against their interests, which is presumably what is feared
(and possibly secretly hoped for) by the fretful Democrats. There is no evidence Cambridge
Analytica did any psychological manipulations for Trump.
I'm not saying it's impossible for Big Data highly segmented psychological manipulation to
ever work. But it isn't happening now; there's no evidence it will work in the near future;
there are many, many obstacles to overcome; and there are two very basic reasons why it
cannot be the secret weapon I suspect the Democrats long for.
The most basic one is that voting is not the same as buying stuff . There is no
direct connection between casting a vote and getting anything in return, not even the
momentary pleasure of buying a candy bar.
(In other words, the current Cambridge Analytical scare is based on a category error.) Of
course, from a Wall Street "beauty contest" perspective, what Facebook can actually do may
matter less than what people think it can do. From my own perspective, I don't want Facebook's
filthy data-gathering proboscis nuzzling my personal affairs at all , regardless of
any effect it may have, and that goes for Google, too. Whether I'm an outlier in my revulsion
remains to be seen.
NOTE * Indeed, were evidence for this assumption to exist, one would assume it would already
have been produced. If it has been, I've missed it, and I do try to keep track.
Cambridge Analytica's systematic harvesting of Facebook user preferences to create detailed
models of voter emotions appears to have played a significant role in the election of Donald
Trump and the victory of the "Brexiters" on the referendum on whether the United Kingdom should
leave the European Union or not. There is shock and anxiety
at the revelations about how a few right-wing ideologues were able to exploit Facebook's
database and then use it to justify populist campaigns fronted by publicity hounds of dubious
moral and financial principles (Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage immediately spring
to mind).
Whether the Facebook fiasco conclusively proves either Russian involvement in the 2016
election (or the UK's Brexit referendum), or simply highlights the violation of campaign
finance laws, is yet to be determined. But what is certainly beyond dispute from the apparently
unauthorized use of Facebook's database
of some 50 million users is that longstanding Madison Avenue advertising techniques worked
equally well when applied to majority voting instead of employee practices or consumer
spending. One possible outcome is that centralized repositories like Facebook -- or Google, or
Amazon -- could become a ripe target for regulation and/or anti-trust action. Another
possibility is that the voluntary participation on which Facebook is built will collapse
spontaneously via consumer rejection.
In one sense, there is nothing new in what Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have done. Way
back in 1957, author Vance Packard's The
Hidden Persuaders described
how :
"Large-scale efforts are being made, often with impressive success, to channel our
unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights
gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath
our level of awareness, so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense,
'hidden.'"
But in a world in which we have all become reliant on the internet for our information, our
searches and declared preferences are constantly recorded. Therefore an uncanny amount about us
can be learned in a manner that is far more centralized and prone to manipulation than
traditional forms of advertising. A wave of shrinkage in traditional advertising firms has
correspondingly occurred as the robotic, targeted advertising has become the new norm, largely
because it is both cheaper and more effective.
Facebook in particular is a social media way of harnessing interpersonal linkages through
the net. Its model must be using those links and the information they generate to create value
for advertisers. Any user of Facebook (or Amazon) can easily see how fast browsers insert ads
related to one's most recent searches. So it becomes manifestly clear that these companies are
tracking us for common advertising purposes.
Politics has always looked into the underlying motivations of voters to manage them. But
using the data as documented
by the Guardian , this went to a new level of political detail in 2016 that fueled the
faster cycle of hard-hitting Trump campaigning. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc., have
all become huge aggregators of this information. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent
apologies notwithstanding , the companies are either being naïve in proclaiming shock
that their data can be misused or, more likely, have been so obsessed with building market
share and watching their company market caps explode into the hundreds of billions of dollars
that they willfully ignored the scope for abuse. Either way, the information seems to have
reached a threshold of importance where governments will step in and disrupt the existing mode,
especially now that the full power of this database has been recognized and exploited by a
successful political candidate, whether via regulation or antitrust measures. Otherwise, the
demands will rise for Facebook to give the data to all, because it cannot guarantee that it has
been erased everywhere, which has disturbing implications for our privacy (as well as
threatening to destroy Facebook's business model, the success of which is predicated on the
exclusive use of the data aggregated from the user base).
However much someone like Brian Acton, who was made a billionaire courtesy of Facebook's
purchase of his company, might like others to embrace his #DeleteFacebook campaign, that
appears problematic, given how successfully the use of Facebook's model operated in the
political context. But there is growing international political momentum to strip the "
social network " and its
targeted advertising model of much of its abilities to record and use customer data. Former
President Barack Obama hinted at
this at a recent speech at MIT :
"I do think the large platforms -- Google and Facebook being the most obvious, Twitter and
others as well, are part of that ecosystem -- have to have a conversation about their
business model that recognizes they are a public good as well as a commercial enterprise.
They're not just an invisible platform, they're shaping our culture in powerful ways."
Obama did not explicitly state what he had in mind for these companies, but he did
suggest
that at a minimum, "the government should have 'rules of the road' to create a level playing
field." Even if users find they can't do without their daily Facebook fix, Google search, or
Amazon shopping spree, the former president is right. A price will be paid as these companies'
activities are increasingly scrutinized.
There are defenses that have been mounted in favor of an unregulated market for Big Data,
notably by People Analytics, an organization run by Alex Pentland and his colleagues at MIT's
Media Lab.
Pentland feels the very centralized nature of the aggregated data is what makes these
companies such excellent research targets:
"With the advent of big data and machine learning, researchers actually have enough data
and sufficient mathematical tools to build predictive mathematical models. If you talk to
other people and see what they are doing, you can improve your own performance, and as you
talk to more and more people, you continue to do better and better."
What is not to like? Better decision-making, higher productivity, more efficient
communication networks: It looks like a win-win all around. Of course, it was under the guise
of research that Cambridge Analytica allegedly got the Facebook data in the first place. It can
be used as cover for less benign purposes.
Going further, Pentland cleverly invokes a "New Deal on
Data" that allows for the "rebalancing of the ownership of data in favor of the individual
whose data is collected. People would have the same rights they now have over their physical
bodies and their money."
In theory, this allows the individual discretion as to how much he/she will share with
corporations and government regulators. Pentland goes on to suggest that, "the economy will be
healthier if the relationship between companies and consumers is more respectful, more
balanced. I think that's much more sustainable and will prevent disasters."
Pentland's optimism sounds somewhat naïve in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations,
as well as the current Facebook controversy. Of course, anything that further legitimizes this
intrusion on our privacy will be welcomed by these entities. How much do we, the owners of our
own personal data, actually control it? As far as the government goes, not much, Snowden's revelations (or
those of WikiLeaks) illustrated. And surely the current Facebook and Cambridge Analytica
imbroglio undercuts this benign picture that Pentland describes of a happy, informed consumer
who autonomously shares his data with various companies, with a view toward building a more
"balanced" relationship.
On the contrary, the Facebook fiasco highlights that there exists a thoroughly unequal
partnership between the aggregators of information and the information owners, making abuse
almost inevitable. Indeed, it is highly doubtful that most consumers and users are even aware
of the extent to which their habits, thoughts, and overall private space are monitored by these
companies (to say nothing of the more obvious government and law enforcement agencies, even if
we're not terrorists).
In general, the notion of a level playing field of information or data that the market can
freely and efficiently price has been debunked successfully by Nobel Laureates George Akerlof
and Joseph Stiglitz. Both have challenged the " efficient market hypothesis ,"
which holds that market prices or odds reflect all known information, mitigating the need for
intrusive government intervention/regulation. If information asymmetry exists, the obvious
implication is that there is a need for some form of overriding regulation to rectify this
imbalance. This would also seem to apply to Pentland's New Deal on Data.
Edward Snowden has made us question whether the data and corresponding privacy can be
adequately safeguarded from more scrutiny by governments. The more relevant question from the
point of view of, say, Silicon Valley and its high tech moguls is whether governments will move
more aggressively to control the aggregators themselves, and whether the revelations of their
abuses will provoke a backlash, which will impact their companies' growth and
profitability.
Already, as Reuters reported, "
Nordea, the Nordic region's biggest bank, will not let its sustainable funds buy more Facebook
shares for the time being." The European Union
has fined Facebook €110m "for 'incorrect or misleading' information regarding data
sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp" (even though Facebook acquired the latter). And the EU
has also proposed that "companies with significant digital revenues in Europe will pay a 3
percent tax on their turnover on various online services in the European Union," legislation
that will cover Facebook (as well as Amazon and Google). Although the tax doesn't actually
address the issue of the database abuse itself, the Cambridge Analytica scandal has dissipated
valuable political capital for these companies, which will make it harder for them to stop
these attacks on their business model and underlying profitability.
Indeed, the focus on taxing turnover, as opposed to profits, is telling, because sales
records are far more difficult to doctor and conceal via accounting subterfuge than profits. In
effect, this is tantamount to the EU stating to these tech giants, "Don't even think about
making a transfer payment to Ireland and leaving yourself with an operating loss in our
jurisdiction so you can pay no tax."
As the Brexit referendum illustrates, the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal itself
goes well beyond the U.S. Consequently, we can expect an attack on all fronts -- the U.S., the
EU, and likely Asia as well. At this point it is too early to judge if this will have any
impact on the ongoing Mueller investigation, but the economic implications already seem
evident. The U.S. equity boom has been partly in reaction to deregulation in banking and
elsewhere. The tech industry has largely escaped any kind of regulatory or antitrust scrutiny
and has benefited accordingly. As Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns
has observed :
"Some of the best performing stocks in the US are the large Internet-centric technology
stocks like Facebook. There is even an acronym, FANG, to describe Facebook, Amazon, Netflix
and Google. Add Apple and, together, these five stocks account for one quarter of the
Nasdaq's total market capitalization. They are huge. And Facebook's data breach represents a
threat to them."
Could it be that public indignation at the Facebook profile harvesting scandal will lead to
new regulation that could impede the value of some tech-based advertising models? Will it lead
to a consumer backlash that slows the growth of the companies themselves? Certainly, it is
easier to attack a wealthy and powerful company, if and when it becomes Public Enemy #1, even
though many of these politicos will find themselves attacking the instruments of their own
political success (or fundraising sources). Facebook or Google would no doubt argue that their
platforms are just a facilitation of the communities inherent in the internet and that they
have benefited by exploiting first mover advantage . But a
centralized, monopolistic exploitation of these interpersonal links is inviting public
intervention, especially as the technology can also survive on a distributed, competitive
basis. In the eyes of many, these companies are unlikely to escape the opprobrium of helping to
allow the Trump disaster to descend upon us. Overseas, they could well be scapegoated if the
British economy falters as a result of leaving the European Union. On a broader scale, this
scandal may well destroy any last vestiges of "techno-optimism," seeing how it has highlighted
the misuses of technology and the human damage it can continue to inflict on us far more
profoundly than ever before.
Facebook's problems are just getting worse, and now investors can add worker morale to the (bucket)
list of problems as the
New York Times
reports that employees furious over a
leaked 2016 memo
from a top executive seeking to justify the company's relentless growth and
"questionable" data harvesting - even if it led to terrorists attacks organized on the platform.
VP Andrew "Boz" Bosworth - one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's most trusted executives, wrote that
connecting people is the greater good even if it "
costs someone a life
by exposing
someone to bullies.
"Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools."
On Friday, the fallout from Bosworth's leaked memo - following several weeks of outrage over the
company's data harvesting practices,
has Facebook employees in an uproar
, according to
The
Times
.
According to two Facebook employees,
workers have been calling on internal message boards
for a hunt to find those who leak to the media
. Some have questioned whether Facebook has
been transparent enough with its users and with journalists, said the employees, who asked not to be
identified for fear of retaliation.
Many are also concerned over what might leak next and are
deleting old comments or messages that might come across as controversial or newsworthy
, they
said. -
NYT
One former Facebook employee, Alex Muffett, wrote on Twitter that Bosworth's memo was a "significant"
part of his decision to leave the company.
"Between overwork and leadership direction evidenced thusly, I could never stay,"
wrote Muffett.
"There are some amazing engineers working at Facebook, folks who care deeply about user privacy,
security, and how people will use the code that they write," Mr. Muffett said later in a message. "Alas
this episode may not help" to achieve more transparent internal product discussion, he said.
Buzzfeed article suppressed?
Following Buzzfeed's Thursday's publication of the "growth at any cost" leak, BuzzFeed reporter Ryan
Mac suggested Facebook was censoring the article - tweeting "Interesting that only about 14k views (about
2% of total) for our story have come through Facebook referrals. Facebook's users should be aware of
this, so feel free to share it on Facebook."
When
Vox
's Matthew Yglesias chimed in to corroborate Mac's observation, Facebook head of news
feed Adam Mosseri chimed in to say that the social media giant "
100% do not take any action on
stories for being critical of us.
"
Mark Zuckerberg responded to Bosworth's letter in a statement essentially disavowing the Boz, while
also noting that Facebook
changed their entire corporate focus
to connect people
and
"bring
them together"...
Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at
Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly.
We've never believed the ends justify the
means
.
We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people
closer together.
We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year
.
Meanwhile, Facebook is rapidly becoming radioactive, inside and out.
The question is when will investors - and especially hedge funds, for whom FB was the second most
popular stock as of Dec. 31 - agree, and do what Mark Zuckerberg has
been aggressively doing in recent weeks
: dump it.
This is not a coordinated and concerted effort by Facebook execs to 'grow' the
company at any and all costs because stock options must be vested 'in the
money' and obscene amounts of 'compensation' are their god given right.
Nope, this is the work of a lone wolf exec VP who was drunk on power and out
of control.
<Well, it works for the CIA to explain away their latest domestic
terrorism operation or Presidential assassination attempt.>
Today Mark Zuckerberg announced the official name change of
FaceBook to GoëbbelsBook.
"Today marks the official change of our corporate name from
FaceBook to GoëbbelsBook in honor of the German NSDAP (Nationalsozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) Reich Minister of Propaganda
(1933-1945) Dr. Joseph Goëbbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945).
Dr. Goëbbels revolutionary and visionary dream was that of the
total surveillance state. We have successfully implemented his
concept of the total surveillance state."
"When a client downloads the GoëbbelsBook application it
vacuums up everything from their computer and mobile devices.
It gobbles up everything they write, all their contacts, their
"likes"; in short every action they perform. The application
also digitizes all telephone conversations for upload. The
application then uploads everything to our corporate servers.
We then upload all user data to the "Five Eyes" Gestapo (Geheime
Staatspolizei) agencies that are our true original investors
and beneficial owners."
"It is truly a proud day for me and all of my servants here
at GoëbbelsBook that we have implemented the revolutionary
total surveillance state vision of Dr. Joseph Goëbbels. I'm
sure that he would be justifiably proud of our accomplishment."
It's a little more complex than just Gramma giving
up some data that she volunteers via a form. It's
sucking in everything that a user does or says and
selling that...everything. Same as Google.
In
many cases you will find people who weren't aware
that FB was selling user data, it's not really
clear, unless you read the TOS fine print it's not
clear. Even in the fine print what they do is
obscured by the way they write it.
If the announcement of what they do with the
data was in big bold letters at the top of FB every
time you logged in the participation would be
different.
This is one reason that although I've got a FB
account I've never provided anything more than the
de minimus information to have that account, and I
don't spend much if any time on it. It's been weeks
since I've logged in to FB.
You may be enjoying the mockery of FB users, but
your line of argument ignores reality.
FB users
indeed knew that the company was "selling
something": advertising. Advertising in the form
of "sponsored posts," newsfeed videos,
solicitations to "like" an advertiser's page,
notifications that someone in your network had
liked an advertiser's page, and on and on and on.
Every user viewed such advertising while using the
service.
And indeed, selling targeted advertising is the
dominant business model for providers of free
content, messaging, email, webhosting, and a host
of other internet services. It is exactly what a
reasonable person would expect FB to be doing,
based on its public disclosures and statements to
the business community, and consistent with privacy
laws. Even educated users would not expect the
company to be selling its user data to third
parties, let alone to government three-letter
agencies. No one would expect the phone app to
illegally log or record phone and message data for
communications outside the app.
Jumanji, I live in heart of silicon valley and the goobook
employees are so self important and associate working for the
goobook surveillance tracking digtal advertising monopolies as
a virtuous thing.
Let's call goobook what they are a
surveillance tracking company that doesn't share any of the
profits from your data with the owner: you.
My solution to these corporate pricks is to cut off their
oxygen: digtal advertising and refuse to let them monetize me
and others promoting using adblocking on mobile.
My solution is for everybody to immediately download brave
browser or equivalent adblocker solution (depending on your
tech knowledge).
Brave blocks advertising malware and tracking by DEFAULT on
any device and operating system rendering digital advertising
model useless.
Whoever controls the browser controls the money.
I use YouTube daily but run it out of brave browser. Zero
ads and you can listen with screen off or while browsing other
content.
We can destroy the value of digtal advertising by mass
adoption of brave browser.
What is digtal advertising worth if ads can't be sent,
viewed or tracked?
Let's take down the goobook surveillance tracking censorship
monopolies. Install brave or equivalent mobile adblocker
immediately.
I created a fake FB account, then 'deleted' it when FB demanded
I prove who I wasn't.
LOL
Does anyone wonder why FB only wants 'real' accounts? Data
mining is so much more profitable when you can assure the
purchaser the 'data' are grade A number one bleeders/spenders.
Which ties in nicely with the US demanding social media account details
with visa applications. You haven't said whether your work is us government
based, but it would be pleasingly ironic if it were.
I'm still confused
by that, actually: allegedly the NSA has all data, from everywhere, so why
ask for the visa applicant's data? Is it too hard to connect physical and
digital people, or are they just seeing if you will admit to your online
indiscretions?
14 day waiting period on facebook account deletes.
Some years ago I created a
facebook account and then deleted it. Deleting it was not easy. When I did the
final delete, it stated that all my data would be deleted, and would not be
recoverable ever. I was also told I would have to **not** log into my account for
14 days after which everything would be gone. If I did log in during that period
the account delete would not occur.
It has been some years and I still live in fear that if I was to "check" if my
account still exists by attempting to log into it I will get a "Welcome back"
message.
I suppose there are worse things. The account could be active and "owned" by
someone else.
The CIA put way too much time, money and effort into Facebook to just
let it fade away. Hell no, they will double down and figure out a way
to keep the concern going, if under a different guise.
But but but...they are listening! They even reformatted so their victims can moar
easily delete private information themselves instead of having to dig
down through twenty two screens to find it!
And Fuckerberg has a mansion. In
Hawaii. With a wall. Because he cares!
They even reformatted so their victims can moar easily delete
private information themselves.....
The funniest part of your comment is the fact people will actually believe
their information was 'deleted' because they push a button that said doing so
would delete the information.
Riiiiiight. And I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale that you can get for a
steal.
"people will actually believe their information was 'deleted' "
Well,
aside from birth and school records, most data will become 'stale' and
worthless to advertisers and agencies. I suspect that your 'old' data will
eventually become 'archived' in a storage array somewhere, essentially,
statistically more worthless as time goes by. Perhaps, adding to a
historical perspective on some future Documentary, about the collapse of
Facebook.
Info on your birth, school, medical, jobs, driving record ... the
authorities already have all that. Facebook is essentially worthless, other
than as a phone book with pictures.
It's amazing that FB employees were THIS NAIVE about what was going on in that
company, thinking it was just about "connecting people." Anyone on the street
with half a brain could see what was going on. Grow up and see the world for
what it is, people.
I think it is more "being ignorant". To me, being naive implies being "an
innocent". These people are hard core coders, computer scientists, network
engineers, etc. What they do is figure out how to do outrageously complex
technical things, and they are very successful at it. Like most scientists
and engineers however, they never stop to ask "should we be doing these
things". They stand on the shoulders of the scientist and engineers who
came before them and continue to progress the state of their art, but never
consider the ethics. I see it all the time at work. Can we develop this
new thing? Sure. Should we develop this new thing? That's not my problem
- management wants this new thing. They are no different than the guards
at a concentration camp herding people to the ovens. I was only following
orders.
Alphabet (the parent company of Google) spent the most as a company on
Lobbying. Facebook's spend on lobbying increased 5500% since 2009. They spent
most lobbying on changes to data privacy.
Have Zuckerberg and the rest of the asseclowns over there realized how
fuccked they really are? It is only a matter of time before class action and
individual lawsuits are filed not only against Facebook (fuck that) but them
personally, for intentionally and willfully creating a data mining operation
disguised as a social network. They will get sued for every penny they have
and will be lucky if they don't end up doing time.
The people who use this tripe are addicts, and like all addicts need rehab.
They couldn't say how many articles are in the US Constitution yet practically
know what Oprah eats for breakfast - and it ain't a Weight Watchers diet!
I got into the dotcom world in 97 got out in '11. Worked for a bunch of big
and small dotcoms. They are all so badly run its hard to describe. rampant
greed zero morality.. The VCs just want their 100:1 return. VCs are idiots.
some are just stupid many are just illegal accounting fraud capitalizing
expenses accelerating revenue recognition over stating audience. People
forget that Fb has already had a bunch of exposed numbers "mistakes". Hope it
goes to zero.
From an evolutionary standpoint, humans are extemely adapted to hiding
feelings, thoughts, plans, motivations, and intentions. This has enabled our
survival for millenia. Our ears don't move toward what or who we're listening
to, and we don't have tails or bristling fur or feathers that would display
our emotions. Facebook causes us to post all this stuff, then takes ownership
and uses it to make a profit any way they can. Social media is not something
that we are adapted to, and we're getting stomped on by the companies that
engineer it.
To me, what is really sad about this whole story is that there is nobody at
Facebook - now or previously - who doesn't know that their company makes its
money by harvesting data and selling it to anyone with a few bucks in their
hand. I believe these employees are all lying when they deny this plain fact.
I believe the same to be true of Google, but of course, Google at least has
never denied it, like Facebook is trying to do now that someone in the MSM has
bothered to report about it.
Anyone here ever work with chickens...the henhouse/chicken analogy is often
used with the facebook...when you walk into the henhouse sometimes the hens
they aren't expecting visitors and they get all fussy and show their agitation
through clucking and squawking and fussing about...but then after a few
moments they go back to what they were doing as if nothing ever happened. That
about what is going on here. Facebook users and employees will go back to work
for their owners in a few more days and it will have been all forgotten.
Since most users of Facebook are gossiping women and deeply closeted
homosexuals, I don't see this having a material impact on user growth. It may
even suck more of them in.
According to Thomas Paine, all the Facebook, Amazon, Google and Tesla are
products of the DOD and are losing their hidden government support. That is
the real reason that people like Zuckerberg and Soros are divesting.
People will forget about any Facebook scandal after another scandal surfaces
elsewhere in 3, 2, 1 and....... There goes the school of ADHD zombie fish-head
people onto another hook, the scandal of the next week. The next scandal will
hit the top of the pond and sink, and the fish-head school of people-fish will
swim over to it and stare at the scandal to see if it moves. People are
grotesquely simple minded.
fb will not recover from massive spying vs people will once again log on to
say something snarky, see another picture of their neighbor's cat and above
all else get a "like". OMG I'm important!
Soros has billions to funnel
through the resistance that is fb for the furtherance of his global agenda.
They may be down, but certainly not out.
So now the FB employees finally see what the bloodsucking Vampire
Zuckerberg and Frankenstein Bosworth really are: the enemy of the people.
Time for a mass revolt, pitchforks and torches to burn down the platform.
The Facebook Wall photograph is Photoshoped. While everyone else has
written in freehand in chalk, the "Maybe someone dies!?". "Why We Spy So
Much?" and "WTF?" posts are set in perfect computer type.
Facebook is a
monster of deceit. Why does this article need to lie with Photoshopped
photographs? If Facebook thinks we're rubes and yokels, so does this
article.
"We've never believed the ends justify the means
." ~
Zuckerfucker
Bull-EFFIN-Shit.
The Liberal Credo is
"THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS"
I can't tell you how many Liberals I've asked this very question and they
will flat out tell you that if you have to throw babies into a branch
chipper to get what you want,
YOU DO IT
. Lefties/Communists have
always believed in mass murder to get what they want - so - spying on a few
million people certainly doesn't give the pause.
"... Like Google, Facebook is ambiguous in its privacy policies as to how it will share information with third parties. A former CIA officer, speaking anonymously, confirmed the CIA's interest in Facebook as an intelligence and communications tool, noting that the agency's use of Facebook for operations is "classified." ..."
"... Christopher Ketcham is a freelance writer. You can write him at [email protected] or see more of his work at christopherketcham.com . ..."
Users with at least half a brain have long known that Facebook exploits their privacy and was probably from the start a vehicle
for full-blown surveillance by our spy agencies. I certainly suspected the latter. In 2009, I wrote up a pitch for an investigative
piece about Google, Facebook and their connections to the CIA. I published a piece in Counterpunch about the Google angle, but was
never able to report out fully what I suspected about Facebook. In the pitch, I wrote:
If personal data could be collected in more concentrated, focused form, with the additional advantage of efficiently collating
social networks, complete with personal photos, habits, activities and itineraries freely provided in a centralized system by
the users themselves well, that would be Facebook. The intelligence services' hand in Facebook is not direct, but publicly available
records suggest that venture capital was pumped into Facebook from investment firms whose board members cross-pollinate with a
company called In-Q-Tel.
Founded in 1999 to research and invest in new digital technologies focused on intelligence gathering, In-Q-Tel was part of
the push for the privatization of national security operations that would become endemic under the Bush Administration. Some $25
million in seed money during Google's start-up in 1999 arrived in part from the equity firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers,
which works with In-Q-Tel to develop spy technology. In-Q-Tel-funded companies produced the eye-in-the-sky image database that
would become Google Earth. In mid-2005, In-Q-Tel's former director of technology assessment, Rob Painter, joined Google as "senior
federal manager," further cementing Google's bond with the intelligence community.
Like Google, Facebook is ambiguous in its privacy policies as to how it will share information with third parties. A former
CIA officer, speaking anonymously, confirmed the CIA's interest in Facebook as an intelligence and communications tool, noting
that the agency's use of Facebook for operations is "classified." The former CIA officer only went so far as to suggest the
CIA may be using the site for communications. "It's a perfect place to hide communications," says the former CIA officer. "You
don't need secret, expensive satellite systems anymore when you can hide in plain sight with millions of idiots sending photos
and inane messages to each other." When pressed on the subject, the source reiterated: "How it's employed by [the CIA] is classified,
and you shouldn't write about it." The Facebook angle for the proposed piece will require further reporting. What's widely known
is that the CIA has been using Facebook since 2006 as a recruiting tool for the clandestine services, which marks the first time
the CIA has employed online social networking for the hiring of personnel.
Ah, but denial is a powerful drug, one that produces amnesia, and I soon forgot my own reporting and marched as a guinea pig into
the Facebook surveillance system. We now know exactly how Facebook shares information with third parties.
Deleting my account, I join an exodus that requires no explanation given the Cambridge Analytica disclosures. Hopefully this is
the start of a movement that will drive the company's stock price down where we'll find greasy Mark Zuckerberg begging for a quarter
on the corner. Perhaps sooner, someone skilled with demolitions and with access inside the company can blow up the Facebook servers,
and we can be done with this menace altogether. More articles by:
Christopher Ketcham
Those companies are way too connected with intelligence agencies (some of then are
essentially an extension of intelligence agencies) and as such they will be saved in any case.
That means that chances that it will be dot com bubble burst No.2 exist. but how high they are is
unclear.
Trump is after Amazon, Congress is after Facebook, and Apple and Google have their problems
too. Should the world's top tech firms be worried?
rump is going after Amazon; Congress is after Facebook; Google is too big, and Apple is
short of new products. Is it any surprise that sentiment toward the tech industry giants is
turning sour? The consequences of such a readjustment, however, may be dire.
Trump lashes out at Amazon and sends stocks tumbling
Read more
The past two weeks have been difficult for the tech sector by every measure. Tech stocks
have largely driven the year's stock market decline, the largest quarterly drop since 2015.
Facebook saw more than $50bn shaved off its value after the Observer revealed that Cambridge
Analytica had harvested millions of people's user data for political profiling. Now users are
deleting accounts, and regulators may seek to limit how the company monetizes data, threatening
Facebook's business model.
On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission confirmed it was investigating the company's data
practices. Additionally, Facebook said it would send a top executive to London to appear in
front of UK lawmakers, but it would not send the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, who is
increasingly seen as isolated and aloof.
Shares of Facebook have declined more than 17% from the close on Friday 16 March to the
close on Thursday before the Easter break.
Amazon, meanwhile, long the target of President Trump's ire, saw more than $30bn, or 5%,
shaved off its $693bn market capitalization after it was reported that the president was
"obsessed" with the company and that he "wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after
Amazon with antitrust or competition law".
Shares of Apple, and Google's parent company Alphabet, are also down, dropping on concerns
that tech firms now face tighter regulation across the board.
For Apple, there's an additional concern that following poor sales of its $1,000 iPhone X.
For Google, there's the prospect not only of tighter regulation on how it sells user date to
advertisers, but also the fear of losing an important Android software patent case with the
Oracle.
Big tech's critics may be forgiven a moment of schadenfreude. But for shareholders and
pension plans, the tarnishing of tech could have serious consequences.
Apple, Amazon and Alphabet make up 10% of the S&P 500 with a combined market
capitalization market cap of $2.3tn. Add Microsoft and Facebook, with a combined market value
of $1.1tn, and the big five make up 15% of the index.
Overall, technology makes up 25% of the S&P. If tech pops, the thinking goes, so pops
the market.
"We're one week into a sell-off after a multi-year run-up," says Eric Kuby of North Star
Investment Management. "The big picture is that over the past five years a group of mega cap
tech stocks like Nvidia, Netflix, Facebook have gone up anywhere from 260% to 1,800%."
The post office is a service for citizens. It operates at a loss. Being able to send a letter
across the country in two days for fifty cents is a service our government provides. Amazon
is abusing that service. It's whole business model requires government support.
Amazon's spending power is garnered simply from its massively overalued stock price. If that
falls, down goes Amazon. Facebook is entirely dependent on the postive opinion of active
users. If users stop using, down goes Facebook's stock price, and so goes the company. It's
extremely fragile. Apple has a short product cycle. If people lose interest in its newest
versions, its stock price can tank in one year or so. Google and Microsoft seem quite solid,
but are likely overvalued. (Tesla will most likwly go bankrupt, along with many others.) If
these stocks continue to lose value, rwtirement funds will get scary, and we could enter
recession again almost immediately. Since companies such as Amazon have already degraded the
eatablished infrastructure of the economy, there may be no actual recovery. We will need to
change drastically in some way. It seems that thw wheels are already turning, and this is
where we are going now - with Trump as our leader.
'Deutsche Bank analyst Lloyd Walmsley said: "We do not think attacking Amazon will be
popular."'
Lloyd Walmsley hasn't spent much time in Seattle, apparently. The activities of Amazon and
Google (but especially Amazon) have all contributed to traffic problems, rising rents and
property prices, and gentrification (among other things) that are all making Seattle a less
affordable, less attractive place to live. That's why Amazon is looking to establish a
'second headquarters' in another city: they've upset too many people here to be able to
expand further in this area without at least encountering significant resistance. People here
used to refer to Microsoft as 'the evil empire'; now we use it to refer to Amazon. And when
it comes to their original business, books, I and most people I know actively avoid buying
from Amazon, choosing instead to shop at the area's many independent book stores.
Dear Guardian,
why do you still sport the FB, Twitter, Google+, Instagramm, Pinterest etc. buttons below
every single article? Why do you have to do their dirty work? I don't do that on my webpages,
you don't need to do neither. Please stop it.
Not being a Trump supporter, however there is a lot of sense in some of the comments coming
from Trump,. Whether he carries through with them , is another subject.
His comment on Amazon:- " Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state or local
governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US)
and putting many thousands of retailers out of business."
Who can argue against that? Furthermore, the retailers would have paid some
tax!
Talk about elephants in the room. What about the elephants who were let out of the room
to run amuck ? Should it not have been the case of being wise before the event , rather than
after the event?
A quasi-battle of the billionaires. With Bezos, there's the immediate political element in
Bezos' ownership of the clearly anti-Trump Washington Post, which has gone so far as to
become lax in editorial oversight (eg, misspelling and even occasional incomplete articles
published in an obvious rush to be first to trash POTUS), but there are other issues.
Amazon's impact on physical retail is well-documented, and not so long ago (ie, before Trump
"attacked" Amazon"), it was sometimes lamented by those on the American left, and Trump is
correct in that critique, provided one believes it is valid in the first place. Amazon does
have a lot of data on its customers, including immense expenditure information on huge
numbers of people. What kinds of constraints are there in place to protect this data, aside
from lawyer-enriching class action suits? Beyond that, there's also online defense
procurement, worth hundreds of billions in revenue to Amazon in the years to come, that was
included in the modified NDAA last year. Maybe that is on Trump's mind, maybe not, but it
should probably be on everyone's mind. Maybe the Sherman Antitrust Act needs to be
reinvigorated. It would seem that even Trump's foes should be willing to admit that he gets
some things right, but that now seems unacceptable. I mean, look at the almost knee-jerk
defense of NAFTA, which way back when used to be criticized by Democrats and unions, but now
must be lionized.
If Amazon can get cheaper shipping than anyone else and enable manufactuers to sell direct,
they can sell more than anyone else as long as consumers only buy according to total price.
This means two things. One, all retailers as well as distributors may be put out of business.
Two, the success of Amazon may rely almost entirely on shipping costs. American consumers
also will need to forego the shopping experience, but if they may do so if they're sarisfied
with remaining in their residences, workplaces, and cars most of the time. This is the case
in many places. People visit Starbucks drive thrus and eat and drink in their cars. If Amazon
owns the food stores such as Whole Foods and Starbucks, it's a done deal. Except for one
thing. If this happens, the economy will collapse. That may have already happened. Bezos is
no rocket scientist.
Maybe it did expand my audience. I have no idea. About the only proven use I found was being
able to get on Tinder to get laid, as you cannot have a Tinder account without a Facebook
account. Thereafter I called it Fuckbook.
When a friend invited me to join Googlemail over a decade ago, I accepted and used it as an
address for any organisation who might store or misuse my data.
Little was I to know that Android would rely on a Gmail address...
Having said that, my AdSense adverts still show me ads that are no way based on my online
activity so I wonder if the same people are behind the algorithms here as were predicting the
world economy in 2007.
Usage of Facebook is of cause a big mistake. It is simply stupid in most cases. But usage of
Wikipedia is not. Althouth probably NSA also gets information about pages you visited directly or indirectly.
Notable quotes:
"... consider the "internet of things" (IdiOT) directly intrusive ..."
"... how long will it remain technically feasible to opt out of the idiot stuff? ..."
While I love Wikipedia as a wonderful, creative application of social media, I've always been
spooked by Facebook and the like, and consider the "internet of things" (IdiOT) directly
intrusive ...
Does my resistance to the big-bro-data invasion classify me as a Luddite? And how long
will it remain technically feasible to opt out of the idiot stuff?
I recall a time some 20 or so years ago when many of us thought about and wondered how in the
world the Internet could survive if info and interactions were without monetary cost. It
seemed like a space within which we could freely move and think and engage. I recall driving
down the NJ Turnpike in 1993 Listening intently to a radio news report about the wonders of
the upcoming information super highway that was about to bring us all together and overcome
violence and racism and sexism and without any tolls. Al Gore himself was encouraging this
wondrous new world. We were about to be a part of World Wide Web love fest reminiscent of a
1967 Summer of Love Be-In.
Now we know how the Internet survived. Call it innovation. I call it a police state,
engineered by right-wing jerks at Stanford with a little help from their friends at Cal Tech,
MIT, and Harvard, and based in Silicon Valley. If that's the way you want it, well that's the
way you'll get it.
Neoliberalism and spying are connected at birth. anybody who think that Google or Facebook shenanigans are anomaly needs to
think again... Survellance Valley is the product of neoliberalism. As simple as that.
Notable quotes:
"... We need to take ownership of our information and data back again and regulate the internet as a utility. ..."
"... It may not have much affect on who knows what about those of us who have already given away our privacy, but it could protect future generations ..."
Actually, it's wonderful (though it's also full of lies, propaganda and bs).
But like all too many wonderful things, the greedy and the power hungry despoil it,
manipulate it to their own advantage, and use it to exploit others - often under the guise of
"security."
A new technology is developed, people start using it, and before they know it, they can't
live, work, or perform many daily tasks without it.
Oh, sure, all of us here could stop commenting online. We could abandon social networks.
But what about everything else that involves giving up our personal information to a
corporation and/or the government that has become part of how things get done in our
world?
That's a heck of a lot harder.
Add to that our collective intention since 1980 to weaken government regulation of
business' ability to do whatever it wants with our personal information, while increasing
government's ability to surveil us and invade our privacy, as well, and you have an internet
that is getting less and less wonderful by the day.
Oh, and don't forget those in business and government trying to destroy net neutrality, so
some (those who can pay for it) will be more equal than others in their ability to use the
internet.
We need to take ownership of our information and data back again and regulate the
internet as a utility.
It may not have much affect on who knows what about those of us who have already given
away our privacy, but it could protect future generations .
... Remember to look at the back of the your envelopes containing your personal mail - when
it's being scanned by your State it will have it's rear various pencilled initials. At one
time the departments in sorting offices were only allowed to deviate mail for twenty minutes
but now given that standards have dropped not such constraints exist. That's progress.
I recommend the new 'Brave' browser - it's primary focus is on privacy. It was created by
the former CEO of Mozilla (Firefox) and employs at least one engineer involved in the
development of the Tor browser (the one used for super-secure browsing on the dark web).
Its snappy performance is also a pleasant surprise.
19. One way to limit the amount of data that you are providing is to stop using Google
Chrome. It is a browser created by an advertising company specifically to harvest your
personal information. If you are logged in to gmail, using google for your searches, watching
Youtube and browsing on chrome, then you're making it easy for them. Try Firefox or one of
the other browsers out there, use a different search engine, and don't leave your account
logged in to google all day.
With every financial transaction, banks know the location, value and can estimate the goods I
buy. They could run AI algorithms to determine everything about my habits and preferences to
spend and sell this insight to shops and websites who could use this it to get me to part
with my money easier...but they don't.
Mobile operators poll my mobile phone constantly so always know my location, they know the
numbers I call and text so know my social network. They could run AI algorithms to determine
where I'll be when, and who I'll likely be with...but they don't.
Make their day, write something outlandish.
Decades ago, long before mobile phones were invented, we used to get crossed lines on our
landline regularly. We could hear other people in the background, and one day a nosy woman
listening to our conversation was relaying what we were talking about to her husband,
oblivious to the fact we could hear her, so we spiced up the conversation.
I started it by saying, "OK, but down to business, lets talk about next week". We made it
sound as if we were planning a heist. She was totally taken in, to the point of asking her
husband if she should tell the police! After a few minutes of leading her on, I said," Do you
think the nosy bitch listening in on the crossed line got all that? ".
She slammed her phone down.
"... If you wipe your phone every year, you learn which apps you need and which are just sitting in the background hoovering up data ..."
"... 14. Have as many social-media-free days in the week as you have alcohol-free days ..."
"... 16. Don't let the algorithms pick what you do ..."
"... 18. Finally, remember your privacy is worth protecting ..."
"... Increasingly, our inner lives are being reduced to a series of data points; every little thing we do is for sale. As we're starting to see, this nonstop surveillance changes us. It influences the things we buy and the ideas we buy into ..."
"... Being more mindful of our online behaviour, then, isn't just important when it comes to protecting our information, it's essential to protecting our individuality. ..."
"... It seems sensible to take steps to 'protect' ourselves from the data hoover that is google or Facebook. ..."
"... Our data is ours, and not theirs to sell onto or allow political freak shows to 'target' us for the suckers benefit, and not the suckees welfare. Who knows how many abusers have been able to hit on vulnerable family's with children! ..."
"... The internet is a colourful addictive place that most users have only a limited grasp of its potential, as nicely illustrated by our politicians being dumb to these recent events impact. Capitalist thinking, we know, is incapable of self regulation. ..."
You may well have downloaded your Facebook data already; it has become something of a trend
in recent days. Now take a look at what Google has on you. Go to Google's "Takeout" tool and
download your data from the multiple Google products you probably use, such as Gmail, Maps,
Search and Drive. You'll get sent a few enormous files that contain information about
everything from the YouTube videos you have watched, your search history, your location history
and so on. Once you've seen just how much information about you is in the cloud, you may want
to go about deleting it. I highly recommend deleting your Google Maps history, for a start,
unless you are particularly eager to have a detailed online record of everywhere you have ever
been. You may also want to stop Google from tracking your location history. Sign in to Google,
open Maps, then click on "timeline" in the menu. At the bottom, there's an option to manage
your location history.
... ... ...
10. Never put your kids on the public internet
Maybe it's fine to upload pics to a shared (private) photo album, or mention their day in a
group DM. But if it's public, Google can find it. And if Google can find it, it's never going
away. How are you going to tell your child in 16 years' time that they can't get a drivers'
licence because Daddy put a high-res photo of their iris online when they were two and now they
trip alarms from here to Mars?
12. Sometimes it's worth just wiping everything and starting over
Your phone, your tweets, your Facebook account: all of these things are temporary. They will
pass. Free yourself from an obsession with digital hoarding.
If you wipe your phone every year, you learn which apps you need and which are just
sitting in the background hoovering up data .
If you wipe your Facebook account every year, you learn which friends you actually like and
which are just hanging on to your social life like a barnacle.
14. Have as many social-media-free days in the week as you have alcohol-free
days
This can be zero if you want, but know that we're judging you.
15. Retrain your brain to focus
Save up your longreads using Instapaper or Pocket and read them without distraction. Don't
dip in and out of that 4,000-word article on turtles: read it in one go. Or maybe even try a
book!
16. Don't let the algorithms pick what you do
You are not a robot, you are a human being, and exercising your own free will is the
greatest strength you have. When that YouTube video ends, don't watch the next one that
autoplays. When you pick up your phone in the morning, don't just click on the stories at the
top of Apple News or Google Now. Exercise choice! Exercise freedom! Exercise humanity!
17. Do what you want with your data, but guard your friends' info with your life
Yes, you should think twice before granting that fun app you downloaded access to your
location or your photo library. Do you trust it not to do weird things with your pictures? Do
you know it won't track your every movement? But ultimately, those are your decisions, and they
are for you to make. But your friends' data isn't yours, it's theirs, and you are a trusted
custodian. Don't think twice before authorising access to your address book, or your friends'
profiles: think five or six times, and then don't do it.
18. Finally, remember your privacy is worth protecting
You might not have anything to hide (except your embarrassing Netflix history) but that
doesn't mean you should be blase about your privacy.
Increasingly, our inner lives are being reduced to a series of data points; every little
thing we do is for sale. As we're starting to see, this nonstop surveillance changes us. It
influences the things we buy and the ideas we buy into .
Being more mindful of our online behaviour, then, isn't just important when it comes to
protecting our information, it's essential to protecting our individuality.
Frenske 28 Mar 2018 23:58
I always use the wrong birthday when registering for accounts unless it is for financial
services and utility which may do credit check or are used in credit checks. If my real name
is not required I use a variation on my last name.
Jack Harrison 28 Mar 2018 22:33
Astounding that people are surprised about all this data hoarding and selling.
There's a reason Facebook, Google etc are worth BILLIONS. It ain't because of the ads you
ignore or are blocked.
FooBar21 -> cachito11 28 Mar 2018 21:31
"There billions of species on our own very planet that show us daily how life is not
about money."
In their case daily life is a constant struggle to evade an endless supply of predators
who are always looking to tear them limb to limb or swallow them whole, find whatever scraps
of food they can find to avoid starving to death, and compete with conspecifics for the right
to procreate. On a good day.
wascallywabbit -> Davinci Woohoo 28 Mar 2018 19:34
Thanks Davinci for the reasoned and balanced response.
I appreciate that it's not necessarily your view, but that there is a lot of history
behind it. However, to a European living in a modern democracy, it just seems to be a strange
and counter-productive attitude. For example, rather than paying taxes for pooled and
equitable public services, many of those services are run as profit-making businesses, thus
removing money from the system. It also reinforces class divisions, as the rich can pay, but
the poor cannot. As a result, many people cannot pay for medical care, cannot send their
children to university, and are forced to buy a car to move around.
Again, I'm not criticising you personally, just the mindset that you mentioned.
fatkevin 28 Mar 2018 19:25
It seems sensible to take steps to 'protect' ourselves from the data hoover that is
google or Facebook.
But should it be that way round? These cyborg organisations should frame their technology
and services that automatically displays social responsibilities towards those they are
currently sucking dry of personal information.
Our data is ours, and not theirs to sell onto or allow political freak shows to
'target' us for the suckers benefit, and not the suckees welfare. Who knows how many abusers
have been able to hit on vulnerable family's with children!
The internet is a colourful addictive place that most users have only a limited grasp
of its potential, as nicely illustrated by our politicians being dumb to these recent events
impact. Capitalist thinking, we know, is incapable of self regulation. Internet orgs
therefore need steep guidelines that imposes tight operating practices that ensures the
vulnerable (that's you and me) don't have to encounter the likes of these recent
catastrophes.
Putting lead into food a century ago was deadly until food standards were criminalised;
the same applies to the cyborgian world of the internet.
Facebook's dirty tricks have been exposed, they will never completely regain the trust of
users.
Alternatives are set to cannibalize the social media model, pioneered by Facebook.
Costs of security features, auditing information, and loss of ad revenue will make
Facebook less profitable.
Finally, Facebook ( FB )
has been exposed for the fraud that it is. There has never been such an inflated market cap
based on nothingness, just hype. Steve Jobs successfully hyped up Apple ( AAPL ) but unlike Fakebook, Apple actually
makes products, and they have a huge following. Here we will elaborate on several key points
that we've been saying for years, but now maybe the market is listening:
Facebook ( FB ) has a
weak underlying business model. Users do not like to see advertisements therefore management
will be driven to measures such as grey hat (or even black hat) methods to obtain data and
use data in ways in conflict with users.
Facebook ( FB ) is
ultimately and primarily a tool of the intelligence agencies (primarily but not exclusively
the CIA) and furthers a larger agenda as part of the DOD's "Information Awareness" program,
more than it is a hot business model.
There are thousands of social media networks , in fact Ning offers users a platform to create their own social network.
The only thing unique about Facebook ( FB ) is that it is the most used and trusted
network, but that all is hanging on the thin thread of users trust, which has now completely
evaporated.
Mark Zuckerberg is an unethical tricky leader that cannot change , he is detached from
reality, has no vision, no understanding of what his customers want, and perhaps most
importantly; stole Facebook ( FB ) from Winkelvoss .
Facebook became spammy in 2010 , the amount of bot manipulation is highly under-reported.
Fake accounts are bought and sold in a black market, software is sold that can create fake
accounts by the hundreds, thousands.
Based on the above, we believe the real value of Facebook ( FB ) is about $10 - $20 per share. Let's use the
'toplist' format as promoted by Facebook ( FB ) itself:
So if this trend continues - what should investors do? Sell , that's for starters. Contact
an attorney who knows Securities if you are a shareholder. That's the good news. Finally,
unless you like being tracked in your every move, delete your Facebook ( FB ) account. Because that's the only real
remedy. You can't block Zuck:
Remember one thing, Facebook ( FB ) users - you use FB with your consent. This author
deleted FB years ago, as have millions of others. If you really like the idea of social network
there are hundreds of others. Or set one up yourself for sharing family photos with Grandma.
JomSocial can turn any Joomla site into a
social media site.
The point here is investors that this is the beginning of a crap storm that has been brewing
for years but it didn't metastasize until now.
Facebook is going to zero. If you're long get out now before it drops further. There's
nothing supporting the stock except hopers and hot air.
One last thing, Fake News started on Facebook ( FB ) see articles here ,
here , and
here
. Since the Trump election there has been a backlash on 'Fake News' sites, which Facebook is #1
. It's a platform for Fake News!
News existed before Fakebook and will continue to exist. Facebook is to the internet was the
Laser Disc was to the home movie industry. It's outdated, it's bloated, it's hype - there's
nothing there. Move on, drones. Nothing to see here.
CIA-Facebook sucks. But this is not news. FB is service. The web has changed a great deal since it started. It was always
overpriced and overhyped but this is not at all unique. It reflects more on how pathetic, misguided and sick most the average neoliberal
"consumer" is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYFz1am9OO4
As long as there are attention whores, there will be some type of facebook
As long as there are attention whores, there will be some type of facebook. I tried it for a while until my page was hijacked
and someone put a picture of some black girl naked with a big booty under a waterfall as my profile photo. No shit, this really
happened. I went from 13 friends to hundreds of friend requests overnight.
People were emailing my wife and asking her if we split up or something. Now I am glad I quit that shit. To some people it
is like crack. My neighbor used to post pictures of himself pulling worms out of his garden or when he was in yoga class. I wanted
to tell him that no one really gives a fuck.
In response to the Facebook data harvesting scandal, Mozilla has launched an
extension for its Firefox Browser
which
helps you segregate your web activity from Facebook's prying eyes by isolating your identity into a separate "container." This makes
it far more difficult for Facebook to track your activity on other websites using third-party cookies.
Upon installation, the extension deletes your Facebook cookies and logs you out of Facebook. The next time you visit the social
media giant, it will open in a special blue browser "container" tab - which you can use to safely log in to Facebook and use it like
you normally would. If you then click on a link that takes you outside of Facebook, it will load outside of the container.
Should you click on any Facebook Share buttons on other browser tabs it will load them within the Facebook container. You should
know that when you're using these buttons information will be sent to Facebook about the website that you shared from .
If you use your Facebook credentials to create an account or log in using your Facebook credentials, it may not work properly
and you may not be able to login. Also, because you're logged into Facebook in the container tab, embedded Facebook comments and
Like buttons in tabs outside the Facebook container tab will not work. This prevents Facebook from associating information about
your activity on websites outside of Facebook to your Facebook identity. So it may look different than what you are used to seeing.
-
Mozilla.org
Think of it as a condom for Facebook.
Mozilla notes that it "does not collect data from your use of the Facebook Container extension," adding "We only know the
number of times the extension is installed or removed."
One Reddit user asks "why not just make every tab an isolated container? "There should be NO REASON for one tab to know or read
what another tab (aka cookies) are doing from another domain," states
/u/Pro2U
Lo and behold, the Mozilla programmer who created the extension popped into the thread and answered the question:
So there you have it - if you don't want Facebook harvesting most of your data and tracking you around the web, strap on the
Firefox extension and go to town.
In Firefox Options - Privacy section you can setup to
delete cookies and clear history at every browser exit.
Same with Internet explorer. Not sure about Chrome.
You can also accept or deny third party cookies.
Ghostery is a must, especially for ZH
C Cleaner is a nice utility for getting rid of excess crap.
"... As Curran points out, people would be outraged if they discovered the government was monitoring them to this extent. But when Google does it? People hardly bat an eye. ..."
"... Need to ditch Microsoft operating system soon also. Something about giving away Windows 10 felt like Microsoft's in bed with government spying. The automatic updates blow. ..."
"... I've done a lot of hardening, and extensive work on the registry, services and task manager for windows 10. I also use "Windows Firewall Control". Nice program. Catches all connection attempts to internet and a log file so you can see what is connecting and what address and port. The program is an interface for the system firewall. Cortana, explorer, all microsoft office applications, error reporting, back ground task host are the busiest trying to connect. Some exe files that I've deleted, show up again, so now I just block the connection for the. ..."
"... Windows 7 has telemetry and also patches that install telemetry during updates. ..."
"... The real problem is with the smartphone. Unless you are going to go flip phone, you are freaking screwed. Those things suck up your whole life, and if you have an android phone, google play services is basically big brothering all your apps. I'd be highly surprised if our phones aren't logging EVERYTHING that is typed into the virtual keyboard. ..."
The Cambridge Analytica scandal was never really about Cambridge Analytica.
As we've pointed out, neither Facebook nor Cambridge Analytica have been accused of doing anything
explicitly illegal (though one could be forgiven for believing they had, based on the number of
lawsuits and official investigations that have been announced).
Instead, the backlash to these revelations - which has been justifiably focused on Facebook - is so
severe because
the public has been forced to confront for the first time something that
many had previously written off as an immutable certainty
:
That Facebook, Google
and the rest of the tech behemoths store reams of personal data, essentially logging everything we do.
In response to demands for more transparency surrounding user data, Facebook and Google are
offering users the option to view all of the metadata that Google and Facebook collect.
And as Twitter user Dylan Curran pointed out in a comprehensive twitter thread examining his own
data cache,
the extent and bulk of the data collected and sorted by both companies is
staggering.
Google, Curran said, collected 5.5 gigabytes of data on him - equivalent to some 3 million
Microsoft Word documents. Facebook, meanwhile, collected only 600 megabytes - equivalent to roughly
400,000 documents.
Another shocking revelation made by Curran: Even after deleting data like search history and
revoking permissions for Google and Facebook applications, Curran still found a comprehensive log of
his documents and other files stored on Google drive, his search history, chat logs and other
sensitive data about his movements that he had expressly deleted.
What's worse, everything shown is the data cache of one individual. Just imagine how much data
these companies hold in total.
... ... ...
Google even saves a log of every log a user has ever viewed or clicked on, every app they've every
opened and every image they've every searched for - and every news article they've ever read.
... ... ...
Curran, who joked that he's "probably on an FBI watchlist" following his twitter thread, explained
that the data he highlighted - while some of it might seem obscure - could have thousands of
potentially compromising applications, including blackmailing a rival or spying on a spouse.
... ... ...
The question now is: Will this transparency actually change user's behavior? Or will Facebook's
hollow promises to change be enough to lull its legions of users back into a passive ignorance. As
Curran points out, people would be outraged if they discovered the government was monitoring them to
this extent. But when Google does it? People hardly bat an eye.
Honestly though, aside from a well deserved arresting of Zuck and dragging him
through the streets for treason, you people using FB have only yourselves to blame
if this privacy-attack thing of Facebook's is a surprise to you. It's like suing a
cigarette company for the holes in your cheeks and throat.
OK, final edit: I should not have said "you people", I should have said "those
people", since most of you ZHers are probably way too smart to have ever been on
FB.
I ain't freaked out because I don't use these voyeuristic platforms. Boycotts
work, folks. Starve the beasts. It's the only effective weapon we have at this
time. Other weapons will come into our hands as our power increases.
Dude discovered the moon.
I would advocate NOT deleting anything from
now on. Just put
fake information
on your accounts.
Just
poison the well
.
Destroy their data
quality
.
Isn't selling advertising their business model?
Don't they collect personal data so they can target market
advertising?
Don't they bury "opt-in consent" deep inside their user agreements
that nobody reads?
Haven't they published their methods which have been known for years?
Why is all this such a surprise?
Oh! I get it now.
All that was perfectly fine until Trump became POTUS.
It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the
formation of public opinion.
- Joseph Goebbels
All right - I'm gonna fess up....I use facebook. I
know we all bash on it, and everybody here claims to
have never used it, but probably half of you are
lying. I have never loaded the facebook ap on my
android, and don't play games. (I also don't post
pictures of my breakfast....I use it for a few very
good groups that share information about hiking and
such, and I post a lot of photos of my hikes, sort of
like in the old days when you'd invite friends over to
show slides).
I downloaded the info zipfile. Yes, it was huge,
yes it had every photo and every comment I've ever
made on facebook, and yes, they even stored all the
messages I send and receive through facebook. But
so what, I wasn't surprised by that.... No, they did
not have records of my phone calls or
phone-text-messages, or any other information that I
hadn't given them. So - if you are judicious in what
you share, and expect that everything you put on line
is fully public (in spite of promises), you are likely
ok.
Edit:
Wow - even split on up/down votes. I didn't think
I actually said anything controversial, not sure what
the downvotes are for....
I'll add a bit more. In my opinion, facebook is
like a fairly boring 24/7 cocktail party. Everybody
is jabbering and only half-aware, and it goes on far
too long. The best thing to do in a cocktail party
is to find somebody who i've been wanting to talk to
anyhow, and sit and talk with them. Facebook can
serve the same purpose. ALSO - I avoid all the
political ranting on facebook....I find it to be
inappropriate...leave that for...er...zerohedge. My
daddy taught me long ago that you don't discuss
religion or politics at a cocktail party, and he was
right, so I don't discuss either on facebook.
You forgot to mention Apple. Pretty sure they
are doing the same. FB has info on everyone
unless you have never communicated with a FB
user. Same with Google.
Why the fuck
anybody
is on
Facebook is beyond me.
I value my
privacy, which is why I use an avatar and
phony name for my relatively small online
footprint. Most people don't do that.
They seem to want to spill their guts to any
and all, as if that gives their life meaning.
Idiotic.
All this such a surprise? NO.
Shouldn't be. It's part of their
business model and has been since
inception. It's been staring
everyone in the face all along.
Most of the sheeple have played
right into it. I can remember when a
typical American's attitude toward
attempts to get even the most benign
personal info was "none of your damn
business." Now everyone shares all
of their private lives in massive
public view, hoping for a "hit" of
attention to satisfy cravings
brought on by their Social
Validation Addiction.
zactly - same goes for the rest of
the social media top dogs which are
really just shadow guv front
companies. That is how they got to
be top dogs - playin ball with da
man.
Da Man: "You job is to be
our front man and we'll fund you
until we bust our all the legit
competition. Then we'll tell our 98%
owned media to endlessly tout you as
a genius. "
Da bitches : "Der...Ok"
Proof? All those "titans" of
industry that magically survived
years of burning cash somehow
managed to avoid "the hidden hand of
the market." Now the fuckers stand
atop the "capitalist" system and
lecture us about how to run a
company. Yeah right. Fuckem.
It can help people though. For example,
when my friends go through the passing of
a loved one, human or pet, the feedback
can help ease the pain, and I have seen
that numerous times in the last 8 years.
Since 2010 I have had 6 pets pass away,
and "spilling my guts" and getting
feedback did help ease the pain. So there
are positive aspects to it also. And like
with most things in life, moderate usage
is best.
Used the wife"s account a couple of times for the
marketplace part of it. As for anything else, NO I
don't have an account, nor plan on every making
one.
Google, that's a different story. Used it
quite extensively, although I'm starting to move
away from it slowly.
As far as search engines, google is king.
DuckDuckGo.com is my alternative with Firefox as
the browser.
Need to ditch Microsoft operating system soon
also. Something about giving away Windows 10 felt
like Microsoft's in bed with government spying. The
automatic updates blow.
I've done a lot of hardening, and extensive work
on the registry, services and task manager for
windows 10. I also use "Windows Firewall
Control". Nice program. Catches all connection
attempts to internet and a log file so you can
see what is connecting and what address and
port. The program is an interface for the system
firewall. Cortana, explorer, all microsoft
office applications, error reporting, back
ground task host are the busiest trying to
connect. Some exe files that I've deleted, show
up again, so now I just block the connection for
the.
Windows 7 has telemetry and also patches
that install telemetry during updates.
Got Google Chrome? Get rid of it. FireFox is
better and Tor Browser even better.
I second your comments. I've never used
Facebook, but Google has invaded everything. I'm
working on getting de-googled, particularly
after their recent youtube BS, but that is a
tough.
In some cases the alternatives are good. Protonmail is excellent and affordable. Signal
is a great messenger app.
Opera with scriptsafe
and ghostery works well. On a home PC you can
use install a good linux distro in a virtual PC
and browse through a VPN (Torguard takes crypto
as does Primary Internet Access). But I'm still
using gdrive (gestapo drive as I like to call
all google stuff) because alternatives aren't as
good and probably have the same privacy issues.
The real problem is with the smartphone.
Unless you are going to go flip phone, you are
freaking screwed. Those things suck up your
whole life, and if you have an android phone,
google play services is basically big brothering
all your apps. I'd be highly surprised if our
phones aren't logging EVERYTHING that is typed
into the virtual keyboard.
A co-worker went on vacation and I showed him
a site where he could see his trail in DC,
places he went. He acknowledged that is
exactly the places he visited. Red lines on a
map with his travels.Too funny.
Take my advice and delete ghostery. It is
compromised. And Adblock Plus is too memory
intensive. Get uBlock instead and adguard and
customize the filters. Much more lightweight
and gets the job done.
pretty much.
i used it, and I'm OK with the risk
of this. it's a free website that needs to make
money.
use it at your own risk. (e.g. have never used
my real name associated with any of those accounts;
I never use them to instant message; I have a rule
that I never ever use an 'app within an app' if an
app interests me I'll download the direct .exe for
a different laptop or device (that doesn't have any
Google or FB account on it). other small things,
that -- sure i'm sure they probably suspect my name
and track some info -- but it's mostly pointless
shit. especially no app or chat histories tho.
the real idiots are the people mad about this.
not Zuck. of course Zuck is gonna Zuck or Google is
gonna Google.
p.s. the fact that Twitter thread is 'news'
(despite being known for years) shows just how
blind and stupid people are.
p.s.s. and to be fair there are some benefits to
some of those features. the geo-location stuff can
be nefarious, but it also makes searching for local
businesses a lot easier, and provides security
(e.g. it's helpful that Google knows you always
log-in from a certain State cuz then it can block a
log-in attempt from Nigeria). again. not saying
it's WORTH IT (Don't like it, don't use it) but
there is a practical reason for it too.
You are ignoring the venality of the sorts of
people who will attempt to exploit this information
(governments, insurers, real estate agents, HR
fucktards - the whole shebang of parasites and
ticket-clippers... who are almost entirely made up
of C-students).
And you're ignoring Richelieu's
maxim:
Give me six lines written by the most honest
man: in them, I will find something with which
to hang him
I still have my flip phone so I can't received
texts, can't google to find anything & have to call
411 to get a number.
I too have Facebook but its
on an old windows 7 computer that I also go to just
for a group, similar to you but I've never posted a
personal picture. Even my kittykat that I had at
one time as my icon is one that I've got from
bing.com images. Its close enough.
As for Google? They're a search engine. They
have your IP address. Of course they're going to
keep track of everything you do from that IP
address/phone number if you use it. And before
bing.com outsourced their search to Google they
were a Microsoft search engine. Guess they got
lazy. When they did so I went to DuckDuckGo and
Yahoo. I know you can't do that on the android
phone because its almost hardwired in for Google so
the only advice I can give is go back to the flip
phone if you want any privacy because sadly....
Google will go out of business selling your
information before it never sells your information
& then the government will come in and declare
Google too big to fail with all that info & sweep
it into the NSA late one Friday night while
everyone is watching a version of Stormy & her 2
sisters
Some of you don't get it. If you communicated with a
Facebook or Google user, they got all your
communications as well.
And they probably have
Hillary's deleted emails.
And if you have a Smart TV, they can watch and
listen to you and your kids.
No.
If you communicate with a Facebook user, then FB
has your
email address or your phone number
.
That's not "all your communications". Not your
contacts, not your other email addresses, not your
other phone numbers.
Don't get me wrong: that's more than I want them
to have, but it ain't much in the grand scheme of
things.
You forgot to mention that they have the text of
your communications. I never said they had
everything if you did not have an account. I
don't have Facebook, but family members and
family do. They have posted photos and I have
communicated via text, email and phone. They
have those text messages and emails, and any
photos I texted and emailed, even though I never
clicked a little box to consent to their
terms.
just did some digging here myself. What I found:
minimally 8 Gb of data of all sorts. As a footnote:
I don't have/use: android phone, smart tv,
whatsapp/other messenger, almost always use
hooktube instead of youtube, VPN, mostly protonmail
(especially for personal info), no 'social' media
hardly ever login via 'social/google account (hand
full of exceptions).
I was a bit surprised they had this much (and
kept that much (even though have been a long time
skeptic of them)).
tmosley - I'm gonna guess "deletion" doesn't really get rid
of the data. Should have asked for it to be wiped with a
cloth. Posting all the stuff facebook collected about
one's self on twitter - did he do that just to be sure
everyone everywhere had seen his laundry.
In 1994, Wired magazine ran a short story entitled "Hack the spew" . This was back when Wired was
actually cutting edge and not the insufferable Silicon
Valley stroke job it became after Conde Naste acquired it. In it our antihero "Stark" finds
himself inexplicably recruited as a kind of data scout, looking for viable consumer trends
emerging from the fully immersive, all encompassing data field known as "The Spew".
"When a schmo buys something on the I-way it goes into his Profile, and if it happens to
be something that he recently saw advertised there, we call that interesting, and when he
uses the I-way to phone his friends and family, we Profile Auditors can navigate his social
web out to a gazillion fractal iterations, the friends of his friends of his friends of his
friends, what they buy and what they watch and if there's a correlation."
The Spew of course, was the near future analogy of where the internet was headed, and when I
went looking to link to it for this post, the piece turned out to be written by none other than
Neal Stephenson. That means I read "Hack The Spew" and it made an impression on me before I
even knew who Stephenson was or perhaps was on his way to becoming. Few would argue that
Stephenson has a gift for seeing the general ambience of our oncoming future. Cryptonomicon uncannily anticipated the impetus
toward crypto-currencies; the current systemic dysfunction of national sovereignty worldwide
was foretold in Snow Crash; so it follows
that all this will likely culminate in something that resembles The Diamond Age .
Today, "The Spew" is not equivalent to the Internet itself, but it is more accurately
analogous to say the social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, especially when combined
with the twin monopolies of Google and Amazon, collectively are: The Spew.
It is like a global garbage pile of digital flotsam and jetsam, over which peasants scurry
around and scour, looking for some morsel here, a crumb there, which can be monetized. If a
trend or a trait is detected, even better. Those can be aggregated, syndicated, federated, even
rehypothecated and at scale that can yield staggering financial payoffs and perhaps, even steer
the course the history.
At least that's the narrative since the Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up in Facebook's
face. After a long string of successive privacy fails (a.k.a a pattern of abuse?) this time
feels different, as if the chickens are finally coming home to roost for
Facebook.
Cambridge Analytica is not uniqueEver heard of Kareem Serageldin?
Probably not.
To date, he is the only banker to
have been sent to prison in connection with the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis for
his role in issuing fraudulent mortgage-backed securities (at least outside of
Iceland ). To be sure, he was a fall guy, a token sacrifice to demonstrate contrition for
what was a systemic, institutionalized effort to inflate a bubble whose implosion nearly
crashed the entire global financial system.
In this case while Facebook attempted to throw water on this crisis by ceremonially
banishing Cambridge Analytica from its system, the longstanding pattern of abuse remains, and
is perhaps now, finally, awareness of that is reaching critical mass with the public:
And while there were
key differences in the way data was used , (not to mention more informed consent) the
2012 Obama re-election campaign used the same data mining features and accessed the same data
as the Cambridge Analytica app
In fact it may be veritably baked into their ecosystem to such a degree that it is almost
impossible to develop and create an app on Facebook
that doesn't harvest your data
"At this point, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's pattern on privacy is clear. Launch new
stuff that pushes the boundaries of what people consider comfortable. Apologize and assure
users that they control their information, but rarely pull back entirely, and usually
reintroduce similar features at a later date when people seem more ready for it."
It becomes clear, as Futurist (and easyDNS member) Jesse Hirsh made this point on
Steve Pakin's "The Agenda" over the weekend: "Facebook ships with all privacy enhanced
settings disabled" -- further, my personal findings are that they use obfuscation
to make it harder to disable data sharing settings. You have to jump through hoops to do
it.
WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who became a billionaire when Facebook bought his company
hasn't let that dissuade him from telling the world what he thinks of all this:
Should you? Should easyDNS? Here's my take on it:
If you are a business: keep your
page but don't be reliant on it
There is a difference between a business who uses Facebook as an antennae to provide
additional ways to stay in touch with customers and those whose business model is completely
dependent on Facebook. We started our Facebook page when we were pulled into the
Wikileaks Crisis as a way to stay in touch with our customers while that entire fiasco
played out. We maintain it today for the same reason, and people do frequently contact us
through that page looking for support.
You have to credit the guy with dominating his niche but I couldn't help wondering what
would happen to his business if something substantial changed at Facebook, or if some of his
readers would feel "used" if they understood some of the myriad tactics some of these sites
routinely use, via Facebook, to drive their own affiliate revenues.
It brings to mind 2 things:
My late friend and one of the original easyDNS customers Atul Chitnis who was among the first to
observe "if you're not paying for the product, you are the product"
My own maxim, which I introduced in the
Guerrilla Capitalism Overview that there are two kinds of companies, those that feed on
customer ignorance compared to those who prosper via customer savvy . I think it is obvious
to all, at least now, that Facebook needs customer ignorance to survive.
(Or as Zuck eloquently observed it back in his dormroom days)
YMMV on your personal
pages
I read a long time ago "don't put anything on the internet that you wouldn't want to read in
the newspapers the next day", and that has served me well as a guide over the years.
My basic assumption is that everything I post to Facebook, including "private" messages are
wide open, being harvested, data mined, aggregated, used to target and retarget ads to me,
build a profile and otherwise compile a comprehensive dossier, even stuff I've "deleted". (If
you've ever watched "Terms and Conditions May
Apply" you'll know that Facebook actually keeps the stuff you "delete").
So I never say anything on Facebook or put anything on there that is remotely confidential
or proprietary. It's strictly a water cooler. I like it because it enabled me to reconnect with
various groups of my friends and peers over the years, from the kids I grew up and went to high
school with in Galt, Ontario to the misfits from the London underground music scene in college,
to the tech entrepreneurs from the mid-90's on.
Would I use it to send anything to anybody that I found myself hoping that it's never going
to leak or be used against me? Uh, no. That would be terribly naive.
So to that end, I'll probably keep my personal Facebook page, even though I sometimes catch
myself spending too much time arguing stupid pointless crap (like politics) with people I'd
otherwise never associate with. But that's a self-discipline issue, not a data soveriengty
issue (although it is
now also common knowledg e that Facebook deliberately codes the platform itself to be as
addictive as possible)
All that said
At least #deleteFacebook from your mobile devices
Facebook harvests your contact lists from your mobile devices (don't believe me, go here )
There are people in that list that I do not know. There are phone numbers from people who work
for my competitors in there. My daughter's (age 11) cell phone number is in there.
You can "delete" all this here : (but as you know Facebook never
actually deletes anything).
Then when you go to "delete" all your contacts you get a message
"We won't be able to tell you when your friends start using Messenger if you delete all
your uploaded contact info."
They say that like it's a bad thing. But there is also this curious sentence:
"If you have Continuous Uploading turned on in the Messenger app, your contact info will
be uploaded again the next time the app syncs with Facebook servers."
I had deleted the Facebook mobile app from my phone a long time ago. I kept messenger
installed because sometimes customers would contact easyDNS or Zoneedit via our Facebook pages
for support.
But Writing this I wanted to turn off "continuous uploading" in the app. Despite this Facebook help article
not explaining how to do it, while this third party
article from 2016 did.
It turned out I had already disabled continuous uploading but I was surprised to find that
the messenger app had defaulted permission to access my phone's microphone.
After this exercise I simply deleted the Messenger app from my phone as well.
Personal
Data Sovereignty is an idea who's time has come
I think it would be safe to assume, that barring some widespread public pushback (such as
the one happening right now), this is The New Normal.
People who may have been complacently oblivious to the fact that their social network was
pimping them as mere data points are realizing that they don't like it as they have their faces
rubbed in one data breach and privacy violation after another.
Given the outrages of Equifax, Facebook et al, we may have arrived at the crossroads and we
may only get this choice once.
Do we push back and say "NO", I own my own data, I control who gets it and what happens with
it. ?
Or, do we calm down after a few days, or weeks and then it's business as usual. Next year
Zuck will apologize for some other new breach of trust ahead of his 2020 presidential bid,
while us "shmoes" go ahead and vote for him.
Doesn't the entity we fear most already have access to all our data? Who is it that we
think we are hiding anything from? Just don't be stupid and put any new sensitive info out
there, anywhere, if you don't have to... but worrying about the info the the govt already has
on you? What would be the point?
"... Much of what Cambridge Analytica claimed to be able to do for its clients has an exaggerated ring to it. As with the Steele dossier, several of the Cambridge Analytica documents are unintentionally funny, such as a letter from Aleksandr Kogan, the Russian-American academic researcher, suggesting that finding out if people used crossbows or believed in paganism would be useful traits on which to focus. ..."
"... What is lacking in these scandals is much real evidence that Russian "meddling" or Cambridge Analytica "harvesting" – supposing all these tales are true – really did much to determine the outcome of the US election. Keep in mind that many very astute and experienced American politicians, backed by billions of dollars, regularly try and fail to decide who will hold political office in the US. ..."
Many people who hate and fear Donald Trump feel that only political
black magic or some form of trickery can explain his election as US President. They convince
themselves that we are the victims of a dark conspiracy rather than that the world we live in
is changing, and changing for the worse.
Cambridge
Analytica has now joined Russia at the top of a list of conspirators who may have helped
Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. This is satisfactory for Democrats as it shows that they
ought to have won, and delegitimises Trump's mandate.
In the Russian and Cambridge Analytica scandals, dodgy characters abound who claim to have a
direct line to Putin or Trump, or to have secret information about political opponents or a
unique method of swaying the voting intentions of millions of Americans. The most doubtful
evidence is treated as credible.
The dossier by the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, about Trump's
romps in Moscow, struck me when I first read it as hilarious but entirely unbelievable. The US
media thought the same when this document was first being hawked around Washington before the
election, and refused to publish it. It was only after Trump was elected that that they and the
US security agencies claimed to find it in any way credible.
Much of what Cambridge Analytica claimed to be able to do for its clients has an exaggerated
ring to it. As with the Steele dossier, several of the Cambridge Analytica documents are
unintentionally funny, such as a letter from Aleksandr Kogan, the Russian-American academic
researcher, suggesting that finding out if people used crossbows or believed in paganism would
be useful traits on which to focus.
We are told that Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users have been "harvested" (a
good menacing word in this context, suggesting that the poor old users are being chopped off at
the ankles), and that information so garnered could be fed into the Trump campaign to put him
over the top on election day. In reality, information gathered from such a large number of
people is too generalised or too obvious to be of much use.
What is lacking in these scandals is much real evidence that Russian "meddling" or Cambridge
Analytica "harvesting" – supposing all these tales are true – really did much to
determine the outcome of the US election. Keep in mind that many very astute and experienced
American politicians, backed by billions of dollars, regularly try and fail to decide who will
hold political office in the US.
It simply is not very likely that the Kremlin – having shown extraordinary foresight
in seeing that Trump stood a chance when nobody else did – was able to exercise
significant influence on the US polls. Likewise, for all its bombastic sales pitch, Cambridge
Analytica was really a very small player in the e-campaign.
The Russian "meddling" story (again, note the careful choice of words, because "meddling"
avoids any claim that the Russian actions had any impact) and the Cambridge Analytica saga are
essentially conspiracy theories. They may damage those targeted such as Trump, but they also do
harm to his opponents because it means that they do not look deeply enough into the real
reasons for their defeat in 2016, or do enough to prevent it happening again.
Since Clinton lost the election by less than 1 per cent of the vote in the crucial swing
states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, almost anything that happened in the campaign
can be portrayed as decisive. But there are plenty of common-sense reasons for her defeat which
are now being submerged and forgotten, as the Democrats and a largely sympathetic media look to
Russian plots and such like to show that Trump won the election unfairly.
It is worth looking again at Hillary Clinton's run-for-office in 2016 to take a more
rational view of why she unexpectedly lost. A good place to start is Shattered: Inside
Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign , by the journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes,
which was published a year ago and is based on interviews with senior campaign staffers.
Ironically, the Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook based his approach on a similar sort of
analysis of vast quantities of data about voters that Cambridge Analytica claimed it could use
to great effect.
Mook's conviction that this data was a sure guide to where to invest the Democrats' best
efforts had disastrous consequences, even though Clinton outspent Trump by 2 to 1. For
instance, she did not campaign in Wisconsin after winning the nomination, because her election
team thought she was bound to win there. She put too little effort into campaigning in
Michigan, though her weakness there was underlined there in March when she lost the primary to
Bernie Sanders.
Traditional tools of electioneering such as polls and door-to-door canvassing were
discounted by Mook, who was absorbed by his own analytical model of how the election was going.
In major swing states, the book says that "he declined to use pollsters to track voter
preferences in the final three weeks of the campaign".
Clinton carried a lot of political baggage because she had been demonised by the Republicans
for 25 years. She had bad lluck, such the decision of the FBI director, James Comey, to send a
letter to Congress about her emails two weeks before the election – but Trump somehow
managed to survive even worse disasters, such as boasting of how he groped women.
Opponents of Trump tend to underestimate him because they are convinced that his faults are
so evident that he will implode when the electorate find him out. Somehow they never do, or at
least not those parts of the electorate which votes for him.
The very scandals that Trump's critics believe will sink him have enabled him dominate the
news agenda in a way no American politician has ever done before. The New York Times
and CNN may detest him, but they devote an extraordinary proportion of their news
output to covering his every action.
The accusation that the Kremlin and companies like Cambridge Analytica put Trump in the
White House may do him damage. But I suspect that the damage will mostly be among people who
never liked him and would never vote for him.
Perhaps the one thing would have lost Trump the election is if his campaign had truly relied
on Cambridge Analytica's data about the political proclivities of pagan crossbow
enthusiasts.
To corporate giants like Facebook, leaks to rivals or the media are a cardinal sin.
That notion was clear in a new Wired
story about Facebook's rocky time over the last two years. The story talks about how
Facebook was able to find two leakers who told a Gizmodo reporter about its news operations.
But one source for the Wired story highlighted just how concerned employees are about how
their company goes after leakers. According to the story, the source, a current Facebook
employee, asked a Wired reporter to turn off his phone so Facebook
wouldn't be able to use location tracking and see that the two were close to each other for
the meeting .
The Wired's 11,000-word
wide-ranging piece , for which it spoke with more than 50 current and former Facebook
employees, gives us an inside look at how the company has been struggling to curb spread of
fake news; battling internal discrimination among employees; and becoming furious when anything
leaks to the media. Another excerpt from the story:
The day after Fearnow (a contractor who leaked information to a Gizmodo reporter) took
that second screenshot was a Friday. When he woke up after sleeping in, he noticed that he
had about 30 meeting notifications from Facebook on his phone. When he replied to say it was
his day off, he recalls, he was nonetheless asked to be available in 10 minutes. Soon he was
on a video-conference with three Facebook employees, including Sonya Ahuja, the company's
head of investigations. According to his recounting of the meeting, she asked him if he had
been in touch with Nunez (the Gizmodo reporter, who eventually published
this and
this ).
He denied that he had been. Then she told him that she had their messages on Gchat,
which Fearnow had assumed weren't accessible to Facebook. He was fired. "Please shut your
laptop and don't reopen it," she instructed him.
(reuters.com)
did not adequately secure the informed consent of its users . From a report: The
verdict, from a Berlin regional court, comes as Big Tech faces increasing scrutiny in Germany
over its handling of sensitive personal data that enables it to micro-target online
advertising. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzvb) said that Facebook's
default settings and some of its terms of service were in breach of consumer law, and that the
court had found parts of the consent to data usage to be invalid. "Facebook hides default
settings that are not privacy-friendly in its privacy center and does not provide sufficient
information about it when users register," said Heiko Duenkel, litigation policy officer at the
vzvb. "This does not meet the requirement for informed consent."
(recode.net)BeauHD on Monday
February 12, 2018 @09:20PM from the shifting-demographics dept. According to new estimates by
eMarketer,
Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old demographic declined by 9.9 percent in 2017 , or
about 1.4 million total users. That's almost three times more than the digital measurement firm
expected. There were roughly 12.1 million U.S. Facebook users in the 12- to 17-year-old
demographic by the end of the year. Recode reports:
There are likely multiple reasons for the decline. Facebook has been losing its "cool"
factor for years, and young people have more options than ever for staying in touch with
friends and family. Facebook also serves as a digital record keeper -- but many young people
don't seem to care about saving their life online, at least not publicly.
That explains why Snapchat and Instagram, which offer features for sharing photos and
videos that disappear, are growing in popularity among this demographic. Overall, eMarketer
found Facebook lost about 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 last year.
The research firm released Facebook usage estimates for 2018 on Monday, and expects
that Facebook will lose about 2.1 million users in the U.S. under the age of 25 this
year.
(techcrunch.com)Onavo Protect, the VPN client from the data-security app maker acquired
by Facebook back in 2013, has now popped up in the Facebook app itself,
under the banner "Protect" in the navigation menu . Clicking through on "Protect" will
redirect Facebook users to the "Onavo Protect -- VPN Security" app's listing on the App Store.
We're currently seeing this option on iOS only, which may indicate it's more of a test than a
full rollout here in the U.S. Marketing Onavo within Facebook itself could lead to a boost in
users for the VPN app, which promises to warn users of malicious websites and keep information
secure as you browse. But Facebook didn't buy Onavo for its security protections. Instead,
Onavo's VPN allow Facebook to monitor user activity across apps, giving Facebook a big
advantage in terms of spotting new trends across the larger mobile ecosystem. For example,
Facebook gets an early heads up about apps that are becoming breakout hits; it can tell which
are seeing slowing user growth; it sees which apps' new features appear to be resonating with
their users, and much more. Further reading: Do Not, I
Repeat, Do Not Download Onavo, Facebook's Vampiric VPN Service (Gizmodo).
(theverge.com)BeauHD on Friday
March 16, 2018 @11:30PM from the violation-of-terms dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report
from The Verge: Facebook said late Friday that it had suspended Strategic
Communication Laboratories (SCL), along with its political data analytics firm, Cambridge
Analytica, for violating its policies around data collection and retention. The companies,
which
ran data operations for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential election campaign , are widely
credited with helping Trump more effectively target voters on Facebook than his rival, Hillary
Clinton. While the exact nature of their role remains somewhat mysterious, Facebook's
disclosure suggests that the company
improperly obtained user data that could have given it an unfair advantage in reaching
voters . Facebook said it cannot determine whether or how the data in question could have
been used in conjunction with election ad campaigns.
In a blog post, Facebook deputy general counsel Paul Grewal laid out how SCL came into
possession of the user data. In 2015, Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology professor at the University
of Cambridge, created an app named "thisisyourdigitallife" that promised to predict aspects of
users' personalities. About 270,000 people downloaded it and logged in through Facebook, giving
Kogan access to information about their city of residence, Facebook content they had liked, and
information about their friends. Kogan passed the data to SCL and a man named Christopher Wylie
from a data harvesting firm known as Eunoia Technologies, in violation of Facebook rules that
prevent app developers from giving away or selling users' personal information. Facebook
learned of the violation that year and removed his app from Facebook. It also asked Kogan and
his associates to certify that they had destroyed the improperly collected data. Everyone said
that they did. The suspension is not permanent, a Facebook spokesman said. But the suspended
users would need to take unspecified steps to certify that they would comply with Facebook's
terms of service.
(theguardian.com)umafuckit
shared this article from The Guardian: The data analytics firm that worked with Donald
Trump's election team and the winning Brexit campaign
harvested millions of Facebook profiles of U.S. voters , in one of the tech giant's biggest
ever data breaches, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence
choices at the ballot box... Christopher Wylie, who worked with a Cambridge University academic
to obtain the data, told the Observer : "We exploited
Facebook to harvest millions of people's profiles . And built models to exploit what we
knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis the entire company was built
on."
Documents seen by the Observer , and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show
that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been
harvested on an unprecedented scale . However, at the time it failed to alert users and
took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million
individuals... On Friday, four days after the Observer sought comment for this story,
but more than two years after the data breach was first reported, Facebook
announced that it was suspending Cambridge Analytica and Kogan from the platform, pending
further information over misuse of data. Separately, Facebook's external lawyers warned the
Observer on Friday it was making "false and defamatory" allegations, and reserved
Facebook's legal position...
The evidence Wylie supplied to U.K. and U.S. authorities includes a letter from
Facebook's own lawyers sent to him in August 2016, asking him to destroy any data he held that
had been collected by GSR, the company set up by Kogan to harvest the profiles... Facebook did
not pursue a response when the letter initially went unanswered for weeks because Wylie was
travelling, nor did it follow up with forensic checks on his computers or storage, he said.
"That to me was the most astonishing thing. They waited two years and did absolutely nothing to
check that the data was deleted. All they asked me to do was tick a box on a form and post it
back."
Wylie worked with Aleksandr Kogan, the creator of the "thisisyourdigitallife" app, "who has
previously unreported links to a Russian university and took Russian grants for research,"
according to the article. Kogan "had a licence from Facebook to collect profile data, but it
was for research purposes only. So when he hoovered up information for the commercial venture,
he was violating the company's terms...
"At the time, more than 50 million profiles represented around a third of active North
American Facebook users, and nearly a quarter of potential U.S. voters."
(theguardian.com)They had records of a screenshot he'd taken, links he had clicked or
hovered over, and they strongly indicated they had accessed chats between him and the
journalist, dating back to before he joined the company. "It's horrifying how much they know,"
he told the Guardian, on the condition of anonymity... "You get on their bad side and
all of a sudden you are face to face with Mark Zuckerberg's secret police "... One European
Facebook content moderator signed a contract, seen by the Guardian, which granted the company
the right to monitor and record his social media activities, including his personal Facebook
account, as well as emails, phone calls and internet use. He also agreed to random personal
searches of his belongings including bags, briefcases and car while on company premises.
Refusal to allow such searches would be treated as gross misconduct...
Some employees switch their phones off or hide them out of fear that their location is
being tracked. One current Facebook employee who recently spoke to Wired asked the reporter to
turn off his phone so the company would have a harder time tracking if it had been near the
phones of anyone from Facebook. Two security researchers confirmed that this would be
technically simple for Facebook to do if both people had the Facebook app on their phone and
location services switched on. Even if location services aren't switched on, Facebook can infer
someone's location from wifi access points.
The article cites a 2012 report that Microsoft read a French
blogger's Hotmail account to identify a former employee who had
leaked trade secrets . And it also reports that tech companies hire external agencies to
surveil their employees. "One such firm, Pinkerton, counts Google and Facebook among its
clients." Though Facebook and Google both deny this, "Among other services, Pinkerton offers to
send investigators to coffee shops or restaurants near a company's campus to eavesdrop on
employees' conversations...
Al Gidari, consulting director of privacy at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society,
says that these tools "are common, widespread, intrusive and legal."
(sfgate.com)BeauHD on Friday
March 23, 2018 @08:50PM from the rough-week dept. Facebook has had a terrible week. Since it
was revealed that political data firm Cambridge Analytica
obtained information about 50 million Facebook users , the social media company has been in
damage control mode,
apologizing for its mistakes and
conducting forensic audits to determine exactly what happened. SFGate reports today that
Facebook "
has been hit with four lawsuits in federal court in San Francisco and San Jose thus far
this week." From the report: One lawsuit was filed by a Facebook user who claims the Menlo
Park company acted with "absolute disregard" for her personal information after allegedly
representing that it wouldn't disclose the data without permission or notice. That lawsuit,
filed by Lauren Price of Maryland in San Jose on Tuesday, seeks to be a class action on behalf
of up to 50 million people whose data was allegedly collected from Facebook by London-based
Cambridge Analytica. The lawsuit says that during the 2016 election, Price was "frequently
targeted with political ads while using Facebook." It seeks financial restitution for claims of
unfair business practices and negligence. Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica are named as
defendants. Cambridge Analytica also announced today that the company will
undergo an independent third-party audit to determine whether it still holds any data
covertly obtained from Facebook users. "We take the disturbing recent allegations of unethical
practices in our non-U.S. political business very seriously," CEO Alexander Tayler writes . "The Board
has launched a full and independent investigation into SCL Elections' past practices, and its
findings will be shared publicly."
(zdnet.com)BeauHD on Tuesday
March 06, 2018 @08:20PM from the plot-twist dept. According to newly released documents by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, federal agents
would pay Geek Squad employees to flag illegal materials on devices sent in by customers
for repairs. "The relationship goes back at least ten years, according to documents
released as a result of the lawsuit [
filed last year ]," reports ZDNet. "The agency's Louisville division aim was to maintain a
'close liaison' with Geek Squad management to 'glean case initiations and to support the
division's Computer Intrusion and Cyber Crime programs.'" From the report: According to the
EFF's analysis of the documents, FBI agents would "show up, review the images or video and
determine whether they believe they are illegal content" and seize the device so an additional
analysis could be carried out at a local FBI field office. That's when, in some cases, agents
would try to obtain a search warrant to justify the access. The EFF's lawsuit was filed in
response to a report that a Geek Squad employee was
used as an informant by the FBI in the prosecution of child pornography case. The documents
show that the FBI would regularly use Geek Squad employees as confidential human sources -- the
agency's term for informants -- by taking calls from employees when they found something
suspect.
(theintercept.com)
it could also help the cybersecurity community discover previously unknown threats . The
Intercept: When the mysterious entity known as the " Shadow Brokers " released a tranche of stolen NSA
hacking tools to the internet a year ago, most experts who studied the material honed in on the
most potent tools, so-called zero-day exploits that could be used to install malware and take
over machines. But a group of Hungarian security researchers spotted something else in the
data, a collection of scripts and scanning tools the National Security Agency uses to detect
other nation-state hackers on the machines it infects. It turns out those scripts and tools are
just as interesting as the exploits. They show that in 2013 -- the year the NSA tools were
believed to have been stolen by the Shadow Brokers -- the agency was tracking at least 45
different nation-state operations, known in the security community as Advanced Persistent
Threats, or APTs. Some of these appear to be operations known by the broader security community
-- but some may be threat actors and operations currently unknown to researchers.
The scripts and scanning tools dumped by Shadow Brokers and studied by the Hungarians
were created by an NSA team known as Territorial Dispute, or TeDi. Intelligence sources told
The Intercept the NSA established the team after hackers, believed to be from China, stole
designs for the military's Joint Strike Fighter plane, along with other sensitive data, from
U.S. defense contractors in 2007; the team was supposed to detect and counter sophisticated
nation-state attackers more quickly, when they first began to emerge online. "As opposed to the
U.S. only finding out in five years that everything was stolen, their goal was to try to figure
out when it was being stolen in real time," one intelligence source told The Intercept. But
their mission evolved to also provide situational awareness for NSA hackers to help them know
when other nation-state actors are in machines they're trying to hack.
(medium.com)
Onavo Protect , a newly released VPN service from Facebook : I found that Onavo Protect uses a Packet
Tunnel Provider app extension, which should consistently run for as long as the VPN is
connected, in order to
periodically send the following data to Facebook (graph.facebook.com) as the user goes
about their day:
When user's mobile device screen is turned on and turned off.
Total daily Wi-Fi data usage in bytes (Even when VPN is turned off).
Total daily cellular data usage in bytes (Even when VPN is turned off).
Periodic beacon containing an "uptime" to indicate how long the VPN has been connected.
(theguardian.com)
but behind the cartoonish facade is a ruthless code of secrecy . From a report: They
rely on a combination of Kool-Aid, digital and physical surveillance, legal threats and
restricted stock units to prevent and detect intellectual property theft and other criminal
activity. However, those same tools are also used to catch employees and contractors who talk
publicly, even if it's about their working conditions, misconduct or cultural challenges within
the company. While Apple's culture of secrecy, which includes making employees sign
project-specific NDAs and covering unlaunched products with black cloths, has been widely
reported, companies such as Google and Facebook have long put the emphasis on internal
transparency.
Zuckerberg hosts weekly meetings where he shares details of unreleased new products and
strategies in front of thousands of employees. Even junior staff members and contractors can
see what other teams are working on by looking at one of many of the groups on the company's
internal version of Facebook. "When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of
transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don't need access to," said Evans, adding
that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners' Facebook accounts.
(businessinsider.com)
reported this week , speaks volumes of Facebook's core beliefs. Sample
this except from Business Insider : Facebook executives waded into a firestorm of
criticism on Saturday, after news reports revealed that a data firm with ties to the Trump
campaign harvested private information from millions of Facebook users. Several executives took
to Twitter to insist that the data leak was not technically a "breach." But critics were
outraged by the response and accused the company of playing semantics and missing the
point. Washington Post reporter Hamza Shaban: Facebook insists that the Cambridge
Analytica debacle wasn't a data breach, but a "violation" by a third party app that abused user
data. This offloading of responsibility says a lot about Facebook's approach to our
privacy. Observer reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who broke the news about Cambridge Analytica:
Yesterday Facebook threatened to sue us. Today we publish this. Meet the whistleblower
blowing the lid off Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. [...] Facebook's chief strategy officer
wading in. So, tell us @alexstamos (who expressed his displeasure with the use of "breach" in
media reports) why didn't you inform users of this "non-breach" after The Guardian first
reported the story in December 2015? Zeynep Tufekci: If your business is building a
massive surveillance machinery, the data will eventually be used and misused. Hacked, breached,
leaked, pilfered, conned, "targeted", "engaged", "profiled", sold.. There is no informed
consent because it's not possible to reasonably inform or consent. [...] Facebook's defense
that Cambridge Analytica harvesting of FB user data from millions is not technically a "breach"
is a more profound and damning statement of what's wrong with Facebook's business model than a
"breach." MIT Professor Dean Eckles: Definitely fascinating that Joseph Chancellor, who
contributed to collection and contract-violating retention (?) of Facebook user data, now works
for Facebook. Amir Efrati, a reporter at the Information: May seem like a small thing to
non-reporters but Facebook loses credibility by issuing a Friday night press release to
"front-run" publications that were set to publish negative articles about its platform. If you
want us to become more suspicious, mission accomplished. Further reading: Facebook's
latest privacy debacle stirs up more regulatory interest from lawmakers (TechCrunch).
(arstechnica.com)BeauHD on Sunday
March 25, 2018 @10:34AM from the book-of-secrets dept. An anonymous reader quotes a report from
Ars Technica: This past week, a New Zealand man was looking through the data Facebook had
collected from him in an archive he had
pulled down from the social networking site. While scanning the information Facebook had stored
about his contacts, Dylan McKay discovered something distressing:
Facebook also had about two years worth of phone call metadata from his Android phone ,
including names, phone numbers, and the length of each call made or received. This experience
has been shared by a number of other Facebook users who spoke with Ars, as well as
independently by us -- my own Facebook data archive, I found, contained call-log data for a
certain Android device I used in 2015 and 2016, along with SMS and MMS message metadata. In
response to an email inquiry about this data gathering by Ars, a Facebook spokesperson replied,
"The most important part of apps and services that help you make connections is to make it easy
to find the people you want to connect with. So, the first time you sign in on your phone to a
messaging or social app, it's a widely used practice to begin by uploading your phone
contacts." The spokesperson pointed out that contact uploading is optional and installation of
the application explicitly requests permission to access contacts. And users can delete contact
data from their profiles using a tool accessible via Web browser.
If you granted permission to read contacts during Facebook's installation on Android a
few versions ago -- specifically before Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) -- that permission also
granted Facebook access to call and message logs by default. The permission structure was
changed in the Android API in version 16. But Android applications could bypass this change if
they were written to earlier versions of the API, so Facebook API could continue to gain access
to call and SMS data by specifying an earlier Android SDK version. Google deprecated version
4.0 of the Android API in October 2017 -- the point at which the latest call metadata in
Facebook user's data was found. Apple iOS has never allowed silent access to call data. You
are able to have Facebook delete the data it collects from you, "but it's not clear if this
deletes just contacts or if it also purges call and SMS metadata," reports Ars. Generally
speaking, if you're concerned about privacy, you shouldn't share your contacts and call-log
data with any mobile application.
"... Evidence of Israel's role in gas attacks in Syria was overwhelming even though Russia was blocked from presenting same to the United Nations time and time again. ..."
"... the Likudist extremists who run that nation are mostly former Russian gangsters and enemies of Russia's current leadership. ..."
"... As anger grew toward Cambridge Analytica on Monday after Britain's Channel 4 broadcast a report showing company executives boasting about their extreme propaganda strategies, including filming opponents in compromising situations with Ukrainian sex workers, authorities in the U.K. and the U.S. also questioned whether Facebook mishandled the alleged breach and it's now facing damaging investigations that will further tarnish its brand. ..."
"... Britain's information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, confirmed she was applying to the courts for a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices and said Tuesday morning that she has been left frustrated by the company's reluctance to cooperate with her investigation. ..."
Now
we know they not only kept files on 50 million Americans through Facebook, using the data there
to profile fears and emotions, targeting and manipulating millions but when Google added their
incredible mass of data, billions of illegally read emails and more, the American people became
little more than pawns.
Again we reiterate, Russia didn't do it. It was the tech companies, all working as is now
being made public, for Israeli intelligence and the mob. From the Daily Beast, March 20, 2018
by Jamie Ross:
"Facebook has been plunged into crisis over the allegations that Cambridge Analytica misused
data from more than 50 million people to help elect Donald Trump. Nearly $40 billion was wiped
off Facebook's market value Monday, an emergency meeting is due to be held Tuesday morning, and
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been criticized for remaining silent during what some analysts are
describing as a threat to the company's existence.
Zuckerberg has been summoned to the British parliament to give evidence about the how it
handles people's personal data. The head of a British inquiry into 'fake news,' Damian Collins,
has accused Facebook of previously 'misleading' a parliament committee, adding: 'It is now time
to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate
account of this catastrophic failure of process.'"
What is being left out is more telling, that Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, has
long openly worked for Israeli intelligence and that evidence now exists that Israel not only
ran the program to rig the American election, as many believe it did in both 2000 and 2004,
leading to the destruction of Iraq, but that it did so again in 2016.
Few note the real policies of former Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama, the even
handedness in the Middle East and their use of leverage against Israel. Obama never accepted
wild claims made against Syria as Trump has and never attacked Damscus.
Evidence of Israel's role in gas attacks in Syria was overwhelming even though Russia was
blocked from presenting same to the United Nations time and time again.
But then we hypothesize, what are we speaking of when we talk of Israel? This is where so
many back off as anyone who questions Israel is smeared as an "anti-Semite" though the Likudist
extremists who run that nation are mostly former Russian gangsters and enemies of Russia's
current leadership.
The reason for what appears to be Israeli animosity toward Russia in reality originated when
Putin cleaned out the oligarchs that looted Russia for two decades, plunging that nation into
poverty and then fleeing to Tel Aviv or New York with endless billions of ill gotten gains.
This is real history, not the history written down in books or reported in fake news.
More on happenings in London as reported by Jamie Ross:
"As anger grew toward Cambridge Analytica on Monday after Britain's Channel 4 broadcast a
report showing company executives boasting about their extreme propaganda strategies, including
filming opponents in compromising situations with Ukrainian sex workers, authorities in the
U.K. and the U.S. also questioned whether Facebook mishandled the alleged breach and it's now
facing damaging investigations that will further tarnish its brand.
Britain's information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, confirmed she was applying to the
courts for a warrant to search Cambridge Analytica's London offices and said Tuesday morning
that she has been left frustrated by the company's reluctance to cooperate with her
investigation.
[ Editor's Note : There appears to have been the classic "fix" in at the British Court by
delaying for days the seizure of Cambridge's computer files, giving the needed time to remove
any incriminating evidence Jim W. Dean ]
Fears have also been raised that the investigation may have been compromised by the presence
of cybersecurity consultants from Stroz Friedberg -- the company hired by Facebook to audit
Cambridge Analytica on its behalf -- who were in the London offices on Monday evening, until
they were asked to leave by the information commissioner.
Asked if there was a risk of Cambridge Analytica or Facebook destroying evidence, Denham
said on Sky News: "As this point we're not satisfied with the cooperation we're getting from
Cambridge Analytica, so the next step is for us to apply to the court and to do an audit to get
some answers as to whether data was misused and shared inappropriately."
British Parliament Culture Committee Chairman Damian Collins said:
'This is a matter for the authorities. Facebook sent in data analysts and lawyers who they
appointed. What they intended to do there, who knows? The concern would have been, were they
removing information or evidence which could have been vital to the investigation? It's right
they stood down but it's astonishing they were there in the first place.'"
The issue now is one of accepting what is happening for all to see rather than absorbing the
fake narrative sold the world. For those unaware, it isn't just millions of Americans but
government officials as well, who form their opinions and prejudices against nations, races of
people, religions and even ideas themselves.
The are imprinted via fictional television shows like Homeland , whose writers and
producers are in actuality as complicit in psychological warfare as those who run Cambridge
Analytical, Google or Facebook, the groups now under the public microscope.
As for Mueller and his investigation, it is pure theatre. As for Trump, more theatre as
well, a buffoon long shown to be a mob asset, now wielding nukes and threatening the world,
holding it hostage to his bad brain chemistry and his criminal handlers.
Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and
POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He's a
senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine
"New Eastern Outlook."
I would not exaggerate the voodoo science behind Cambridge Analitica activities -- all this
crap about the Big Five personality traits borrowed from social psychology: openness,
conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.
But it really can create "plausible lies" to targeted groups of voters in best "change we can
believe in" style. Essentially promoting "bat and switch" politics.
Notable quotes:
"... The Guardian ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
"... In July 2005, SCL underwent a dramatic transformation. It very publicly rebranded itself as a psychological warfare company by taking part in the UK's largest military trade show. ..."
"... The company's efforts paid off. Over the next ten years, SCL won contracts with the US Defense Department's Combatant Commands, NATO, and Sandia National Labs. ..."
"... Along the way it created Cambridge Analytica, a subsidiary firm which differs from SCL Group in that it focuses primarily on political campaigns. Its largest investors include billionaire Robert Mercer, co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who is best known for his advocacy of far-right political causes and his financial support of Breitbart News. Steve Bannon briefly sat on Cambridge Analytica's board of directors. ..."
"... Although Cruz ultimately failed, Cambridge Analytica's CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed that Cruz's popularity grew largely due to the company's skillful use of aggregated voter data and personality profiling methods. ..."
"... Cambridge Analytica relies upon "psychographic" techniques that measure the Big Five personality traits borrowed from social psychology: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. ..."
"... In the US, Cambridge Analytica developed psychological profiles of millions of Americans by hiring a company called Global Science Research (GSR) to plant free personality quizzes. Users were lured by the prospect of obtaining free personality scores, while Cambridge Analytica collected data–and access to users' Facebook profiles. Last week, The Guardian ..."
"... Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet ..."
"... Twitter And Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest ..."
"... Roberto J. González is chair of the anthropology department at San José State University. He has written several books including American Counterinsurgency: Human Science and the Human Terrain and Militarizing Culture: Essays on the Warfare State . He can be reached at [email protected] . ..."
In the days and weeks following the 2016 presidential elections,
reports surfaced about how a small British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica,
might have played a pivotal role in Donald Trump's surprise victory. The company claimed to
have formulated algorithms to influence American voters using individually targeted political
advertisements. It reportedly generated personality profiles of millions of individual citizens
by collecting up to
5000 data points on each person. Then Cambridge Analytica used these "psychographic" tools
to send voters carefully crafted online messages about candidates or hot-button political
issues.
Although political consultants have long used "microtargeting" techniques for zeroing in on
particular ethnic, religious, age, or income groups, Cambridge Analytica's approach is unusual:
The company relies upon individuals' personal data that is harvested from social media apps
like Facebook. In the US, such activities are entirely legal. Some described Cambridge
Analytica's tools as "
mind-reading software " and a " weaponized AI
[artificial intelligence] propaganda machine ." However, corporate media outlets such as
CNN and the
Wall Street Journal often portrayed the company in glowing terms.
Cambridge Analytica is once again in the headlines–but under somewhat different
circumstances. Late last week, whistleblower
Christopher Wylie went public , explaining how he played an instrumental role in collecting
millions of Facebook profiles for Cambridge Analytica. This revelation is significant because
until investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr published her exposé in The
Guardian , Cambridge Analytica's then-CEO Alexander Nix had adamantly denied using
Facebook data. And although Facebook officials knew that Cambridge Analytica had previously
gathered data on millions of users, they did not prohibit the company from advertising until
last Friday, as the scandal erupted. To make matters worse, the UK's Channel 4 released
undercover footage early this week in which Cambridge Analytica executives boast about
using dirty tricks–bribes, entrapment, and "beautiful girls" to mention a few.
The case of Cambridge Analytica brings into focus a brave new world of electoral politics in
an algorithmic age–an era in which social media companies like Facebook and Twitter make
money by selling ads, but also by selling users' data outright to third parties. Relatively few
countries have laws that prevent such practices–and it turns out that the US does not
have a comprehensive federal statute protecting individuals' data privacy. This story is
significant not only because it demonstrates what can happen when an unorthodox company takes
advantage of a lax regulatory environment, but also because it reveals how Internet companies
like Facebook have played fast and loose with the personal data of literally billions of
users.
From Public Relations to Psychological Warfare
In order to make sense of Cambridge Analytica it is helpful to understand its parent
company, SCL Group, which was originally created as the PR firm Strategic Communications
Laboratory.
It was founded in the early 1990s by Nigel Oakes , a flamboyant UK businessman. By the late
1990s, the company was engaged almost exclusively in political projects. For example, SCL was
hired to help burnish the image of Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid–but Oakes and
SCL employees had to shut down their operations center when SCL's cover was blown by the
Wall Street
Journal .
In July 2005, SCL underwent a dramatic transformation. It
very publicly rebranded itself as a psychological warfare company by taking part in the
UK's largest military trade show. SCL's exhibit included a mock operations center
featuring dramatic crisis scenarios–a smallpox outbreak in London, a bloody insurgency in
a fictitious South Asian country–which were then resolved with the help of the company's
psyops techniques. Oakes told a
reporter : "We used to be in the business of mindbending for political purposes, but now we
are in the business of saving lives." The company's efforts paid off. Over the next ten
years, SCL won contracts with the US Defense Department's Combatant Commands, NATO, and Sandia
National Labs.
Over the past few years SCL–now known as SCL Group –has transformed itself yet again. It no longer
defines itself as a psyops specialist, nor as a political consultancy–now, it calls
itself a data analytics company specializing in "behavioral change" programs.
Along the way it created Cambridge Analytica, a subsidiary firm which differs from SCL
Group in that it focuses primarily on political campaigns. Its largest investors include
billionaire Robert Mercer, co-CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who is best known for
his advocacy of far-right political causes and his financial support of Breitbart News. Steve
Bannon briefly sat on Cambridge Analytica's board of directors.
Cambridge Analytica first received
significant media attention in November 2015, shortly after the firm was hired by
Republican presidential nominee Ted Cruz's campaign. Although Cruz ultimately failed,
Cambridge Analytica's CEO, Alexander Nix, claimed that Cruz's popularity grew largely due to
the company's skillful use of aggregated voter data and personality profiling methods.
In August 2016, the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica as part of a desperate effort
to challenge Hillary Clinton's formidable campaign machine. Just a few months later,
reports revealed that Cambridge Analytica had also played a role in the UK's successful
pro-Brexit "Leave.EU" campaign.
Hacking the Citizenry
Cambridge Analytica relies upon "psychographic" techniques that measure the Big Five
personality traits borrowed from social psychology: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion,
agreeableness and neuroticism.
In the US, Cambridge Analytica developed psychological profiles of millions of Americans
by hiring a company called Global Science Research (GSR) to plant free personality quizzes.
Users were lured by the prospect of obtaining free personality scores, while Cambridge
Analytica collected data–and access to users' Facebook profiles. Last week, The Guardian reported that Cambridge Analytica collected data from more than
300,000 Facebook users in this way. By agreeing to the terms and conditions of the app, those
users also agreed to grant GSR (and by extension, Cambridge Analytica) access to the profiles
of their Facebook "friends"–totalling approximately 50 million people.
Psychographics uses algorithms to scour voters' Facebook "likes," retweets and other social
media data which are aggregated with commercially available information: land registries,
automotive data, shopping preferences, club memberships, magazine subscriptions, and religious
affiliation. When combined with public records, electoral rolls, and additional information
purchased from data brokers such as Acxiom and Experian, Cambridge Analytica has raw material
for shaping personality profiles. Digital footprints can be transformed into real people. This
is the essence of psychographics: Using software algorithms to scour individual voters'
Facebook "likes," retweets and other bits of data gleaned from social media and then combine
them with commercially available personal information. Data mining is relatively easy in the
US, since it has relatively weak privacy laws compared to South Korea, Singapore, and many EU
countries.
In a 2016
presentation , Nix described how such information might be used to influence voter opinions
on gun ownership and gun rights. Individual people can be addressed differently according to
their personality profiles: "For a highly neurotic and conscientious audinece, the threat of a
burglary–and the insurance policy of a gun. . .Conversely, for a closed and agreeable
audience: people who care about tradition, and habits, and family."
Despite the ominous sounding nature of psychographics, it is not at all clear that Cambridge
Analytica played a decisive role in the 2016 US presidential election. Some charge that the
company and its former CEO Alexander Nix, exaggerated Cambridge Analytica's effect on the
election's outcome. In February 2017, investigative journalist
Kendall Taggart wrote an exposé claiming that more than a dozen former employees of
Cambridge Analytica, Trump campaign staffers, and executives at Republican consulting firms
denied that psychographics was used at all by the Trump campaign. Taggart concluded: "Rather
than a sinister breakthrough in political technology, the Cambridge Analytica story appears to
be part of the traditional contest among consultants on a winning political campaign to get
their share of the credit–and win future clients." Not a single critic was willing to be
identified in the report, apparently fearing retaliation from Robert Mercer and his daughter
Rebekah, who is also an investor in the firm.
Not-So-Innocents Abroad
By no means has Cambridge Analytica limited its work to the US. In fact, it has conducted
"influence operations" in several countries around the world.
For example, Cambridge Analytica played a major role in
last year's presidential elections in Kenya, which pitted incumbent Uhuru Kenyatta of the
right-wing Jubilee Party against Raila Odinga of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement. The
Jubilee Party hired Cambridge Analytica in May 2017. Although the company claims to have
limited its activities to data collection, earlier this week Mark Turnbull, a managing director
for Cambridge Analytica,
told undercover reporters a different story . He admitted that the firm secretly managed
Kenyatta's entire campaign: "We have rebranded the party twice, written the manifesto, done
research, analysis, messaging. I think we wrote all the speeches and we staged the whole
thing–so just about every element of this candidate," said Turnbull.
Given the most recent revelations about Cambridge Analytica's planting of
fake news stories , it seems likely that the company created persuasive personalized ads
based on Kenyans' social media data. Fake Whatsapp and Twitter posts exploded days before the
Kenyan elections. It is worth remembering that SCL Group has employed disinformation campaigns
for military clients for 25 years, and it seems that Cambridge Analytica has continued this
pattern of deception.
The August elections were fraught with accusations of vote tampering, the inclusion of dead
people as registered voters, and the murder of
Chris Msando , the election commission's technology manager, days before the election. When
the dust settled, up to 67 people died in post-election violence–and Kenyatta ultimately
emerged victorious. Weeks later, the Kenyan Supreme Court annulled the elections, but when new
elections were scheduled for October, Odinga declared that he would boycott.
Given Kenya's recent history of electoral fraud, it is unlikely that Cambridge had much
impact on the results.
Anthropologist Paul Goldsmith , who has lived in Kenya for 40 years, notes that elections
still tend to follow the principle of "who counts the votes," not "who influences the
voters."
But the significance of Cambridge Analytica's efforts extends beyond their contribution to
electoral outcomes. Kenya is no technological backwater. The world's first mobile money service
was launched there in 2007, allowing users to transfer cash and make payments by phone.
Homegrown tech firms are creating a "Silicon Savannah" near Nairobi. Two-thirds of Kenya's 48
million people have Internet access. Ten million use Whatsapp; six million use Facebook; two
million use Twitter. As Kenyans spend more time in the virtual world, their personal data will
become even more widely available since Kenya has no data protection laws.
Cambridge Analytica doesn't need to deliver votes so much as to create the perception that
they can produce results. . .Kenya provides an ideal entry point into [Africa]. . .Embedding
themselves with ruling elites presents a pivot for exploiting emergent commercial
opportunities. . .with an eye on the region's resources and its growing numbers of
persuadable youth.
Recent reports reveal that Cambridge Analytica has ongoing operations in Mexico and
Brazil (which have general elections scheduled this July and October, respectively).
India (which has general elections in about a year) has also been courted by the company,
and it is easy to understand why: the country has 400 million smartphone users with more than
250 million on either Facebook or Whatsapp. India's elections are also a potential gold mine.
More than half a billion people vote in parliamentary elections, and the expenditures are
astonishing: Political parties spent $5 billion in 2014, compared to $6.5 billion in last
year's US elections. India also has a massive mandatory ID program based on biometric and
demographic data, the largest of its kind in the world.
Cambridge Analytica's global strategy appears focused on expanding its market share in
promising markets. Although many people might describe Kenya, Mexico, Brazil, and India as
developing countries, each in fact has a rapidly growing high-tech infrastructure, relatively
high levels of Internet penetration, and large numbers of social media users. They all have
weak or nonexistent Internet privacy laws. Though nominally democratic, each country is
politically volatile and has experienced episodic outbursts of extreme political, sectarian, or
criminal violence. Finally, these countries have relatively young populations, reflecting
perhaps a long-term strategy to normalize a form of political communication that will reap
long-term benefits in politically sensitive regions.
The capacity for saturating global voters with charged political messages is growing across
much of the world, since the cost of buying Facebook ads, Twitterbots and trolls, bots for
Whatsapp and other apps is cheap–and since more people than ever are spending time on
social media. Such systems can be managed efficiently by remote control. Unlike the CIA's
psyops efforts in the mid-20th century, which required extensive on-the-ground
efforts–dropping leaflets from airplanes, bribing local journalists, broadcasting
propaganda on megaphones mounted on cars–the new techniques can be deployed from a
distance, with minimal cost. Cambridge Analytica relies upon small ground teams to do business
with political parties, and partnerships with local business intelligence firms to scope out
the competition or provide marketing advice, but most of the work is done from London and New
York.
Weaponizing Big Data?
From its beginnings, Cambridge Analytica has declared itself to be a "data-driven" group of
analytics experts practicing an improved form of political microtargeting, but there are
indications that the firm has broader ambitions.
In March 2017,
reports emerged that top executives from SCL Group met with Pentagon officials, including
Hriar Cabayan, head of a branch which conducts DoD research and cultural analysis. A decade
ago,
Cabayan played an instrumental role in launching the precursor to the Human
Terrain System , a US Army counterinsurgency effort which embedded anthropologists and
other social scientists with US combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A few months later, in August 2017, the Associated Press reported that
retired US Army General Michael Flynn, who briefly served as National Security Director in the
Trump administration, had signed a work agreement with Cambridge Analytica in late 2016, though
it is unclear whether he actually did any work for the firm. Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to
the FBI about his contacts with Russian operatives in late 2017, when he was working with
Trump's transition team. Given his spot in the media limelight, it is easy to forget that he
once headed US intelligence operations in Afghanistan, advocating for a big data
approach to counterinsurgency that would, among other things, include data collected by
Human Terrain Teams.
The connections between Cambridge Analytica/SCL Group and the Pentagon's champions of
data-driven counterinsurgency and cyberwarfare may be entirely coincidental, but they do raise
several questions: As Cambridge Analytica embarks on its global ventures, is it undertaking
projects that are in fact more sinister than its benign-sounding mission of "behavioral
change"? And are the company's recent projects in Kenya, India, Mexico, and Brazil simply
examples of global market expansion, or are these countries serving as laboratories to test new
methods of propaganda dissemination and political polarization for eventual deployment here at
home?
Here the lines between military and civilian applications become blurred, not only because
ARPANET–the Internet's immediate precursor–was developed by the Pentagon's Advanced
Research Projects Agency, but also because the technology can be used for surveillance on a
scale that authoritarian regimes of the 20th century could only have dreamed about. As Yasha
Levine convincingly argues in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet , the Internet
was originally conceived as a counterinsurgency surveillance program.
Neutralizing Facebook's Surveillance Machine
It appears that many people are finally taking note of the digital elephant in the room:
Facebook's role in enabling Cambridge Analytica and other propagandists, publicists, and
mind-benders to carry out their work–legally and discreetly. As recently
noted by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai in the online journal Motherboard ,
Cambridge Analytica's data harvesting practices weren't security breaches, they were "par for
the course. . .It was a feature, not a bug. Facebook still collects -- and then sells --
massive amounts of data on its users." In other words, every Facebook post or tweet, every
g-mail message sent or received, renders citizens vulnerable to forms of digital data
collection that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder. The information can be used for
all kinds of purposes in an unregulated market: monitoring users' emotional states,
manipulating their attitiudes, or disseminating tailor-made propaganda designed to polarize
people.
"If your business is building a massive surveillance machinery, the data will eventually
be used and misused. Hacked, breached, leaked, pilfered, conned, targeted, engaged, profiled,
sold. There is no informed consent because it's not possible to reasonably inform or
consent."
Cambridge Analytica is significant to the extent that it illuminates new technological
controlling processes under construction. In a supercharged media environment in which
Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) have become the primary means by which
literally billions of people consume news, mass producing propaganda has never been easier.
With so many people posting so much information about the intimate details of their lives on
the Web, coordinated attempts at mass persuasion will almost certainly become more widespread
in the future.
In the meantime, there are concrete measures that we can take to rein in Facebook, Amazon,
Google, Twitter, and other technology giants. Some of the most lucid suggestions have been
articulated by Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and early Facebook investor.
He recommends a multi-pronged approach : demanding that the social media companies' CEOs
testify before congressional and parliamentary committees in open sessions; imposing strict
regulations on how Internet platforms are used and commercialized; requiring social media
companies to report who is sponsoring political and issues-based advertisements; mandating
transparency about algorithms ("users deserve to know why they see what they see in their news
feeds and search results," says McNamee); requiring social media apps to offer an "opt out" to
users; banning digital "bots" that impersonate humans; and creating rules that allow consumers
(not corporations) to own their own data.
In a world of diminishing privacy, our vulnerabilities are easily magnified. Experimental
psychologists specializing in what they euphemistically call "behavior design" have largely
ignored ethics and morality in order to help Silicon Valley companies create digital devices,
apps, and other technologies that are literally irresistible to their users. As the fallout
from Cambridge Analytica's activities descends upon the American political landscape, we should
take advantage of the opportunity to impose meaningful controls on Facebook, Google, Twitter,
and other firms that have run roughshod over democratic norms–and notions of individual
privacy–in the relentless pursuit of profit. Join the debate on
Facebook More articles by: Roberto J. González
Tonight at 7pm ET/PT,
60 Minutes
will air a controversial interview with Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels, the
adult-film star who says she had an affair with Donald Trump. Daniels will talk to Anderson Cooper
about the relationship she says she had with Trump in 2006 and 2007, unveiling details that bring her
story up to the present. It will be the first - and so far only - television interview in which she
speaks about the alleged relationship.
The 60 Minutes interview will include an examination of the
potential legal and political ramifications of the $130,000 payment that Trump's attorney Michael
Cohen says he made to Daniels using his own funds. Daniels accepted the money in return for signing a
confidentiality agreement, although she recently violated the CA, claiming Trump never signed it.
The president has denied having an affair with Daniels, while Trump's legal team - in this case led
by Charles Harder who won a $140MM verdict for Hulk Hogan against Gawker - is seeking to move the case
to federal court and claims that
Stormy is liable
for up to $20 million in damages. This in turn prompted Daniels to launch a
crowdfunding
campaign to fund her lawsuit
against Trump, which at last
check had raised over $290K
.
Cooper conducted the interview earlier this month, shortly after Cohen obtained a temporary
restraining order against Daniels. Meanwhile, Daniels is seeking a ruling that the confidentiality
agreement between her and the president is invalid, in part because Mr. Trump never signed it. The
president's attorneys are seeking to move the case to federal court and claim Daniels is liable for
more than $20 million in damages for violations of the agreement.
On Thursday, the lawyer representing Daniels fired off a tweet with a picture of what appeared to
be a compact disc in a safe - hinting that he has video or photographic evidence of Clifford's affair
with President Trump.
"If 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' how many words is this worth?????" tweeted lawyer
Michael Avenatti.
Avenatti has been a frequent guest on cable news as he promotes Stormy's upcoming 60 minutes
tell-all about her alleged affair with President Trump. When CBS Evening News' Julianna Goldman asked
Avenatti if he had photos, texts or videos of her alleged relationship with Trump, he replied "No
comment," adding that Clifford just "wants to set the record straight." (which you can read more about
in her upcoming book, we're sure).
Previewing today's 60 Minutes segment, Avenatti purposefully built up the suspense, tweeting that,
among other things,
"tonight is not the end – it's the beginning"
And while it is highly unlikely that the Stormy Daniels scandal will escalate into anything of
Clinton-Lewinsky proportions, not to mention that Trump has enough other headaches on his hands, here
according to The Hill
, are seven things to watch for in tonight's interview:
1. Will she give details about the nondisclosure agreement?
Daniels has never spoken publicly about the nondisclosure agreement that purportedly bars her from
speaking about her alleged affair with Trump. But a lawsuit filed by Daniels earlier this month
confirmed the existence of such a document, arguing that it is invalid because it was never co-signed
by Trump himself.
Whether Daniels will discuss the details of the agreement in the "60 Minutes" interview remains to
be seen. Her lawsuit seeking to void the contract is still pending, and NDAs often prohibit
signatories from speaking about the agreements.
Daniels has hinted that is true of her NDA. During an interview with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel
in January, Kimmel pointed out that Daniels would likely be barred from discussing the agreement if
it, in fact, existed. "You're so smart, Jimmy," was her cagey response.
2. Will she talk openly about the alleged affair?
Daniels has implied she was paid $130,000 by Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen weeks before
the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about the alleged affair.
Speaking openly about
her claims would certainly violate the terms of the disputed NDA, and could subject Daniels to legal
penalties.
In court papers filed earlier this month, Trump's lawyers said that Daniels could face up to $20
million in damages for violating the terms of the agreement. One question that remains is whether
Daniels could toss out the NDA completely in her "60 Minutes" interview, and provide details about her
alleged relationship with the president. The last time she spoke about it was 2011, when she gave an
interview to In Touch magazine that wasn't published until this year.
3. Will she mention possible video or photographic evidence?
Avenatti has repeatedly hinted that video or photographic evidence of Daniels's alleged affair with
Trump exists. The March 6 lawsuit filed by Daniels to void the nondisclosure agreement with Trump
refers to "certain still images and/or text messages which were authored by or relate to" the
president. While the NDA reportedly required her to turn over such material and get rid of her own
copies, Avenatti has suggested that Daniels may have retained it.
Avenatti hinted this week that he may be in possession of such material, tweeting a cryptic photo
of a compact disc inside of what appeared to be a safe. "If 'a picture is worth a thousand words,' how
many words is this worth?????" he wrote on Twitter.
4. Will she address whether she was physically threatened?
Avenatti prompted questions earlier this month when he said that Daniels had been threatened with
physical harm in connection with the alleged affair with Trump. Asked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" whether
Daniels had been physically threatened, Avenatti bluntly replied, "yes." Exactly who may have
threatened Daniels or what the nature of those threats may have been is unclear, and Avenatti has
declined to discuss the matter in greater detail. Daniels herself has not addressed any potential
physical threats that she may have gotten, leaving open whether she will discuss the topic in the "60
Minutes" interview.
5. Will she discuss whether Trump knew about the $130K payment?
Cohen himself has acknowledged making the payment to Daniels, but has insisted that the money came
from his personal funds and that Trump was never made aware of the transaction. White House press
secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders has said she does not believe Trump knew about the payment. But
Avenatti has argued otherwise, saying the fact that Cohen used a Trump Organization email address
backs up his claim that the real estate mogul was aware of the transaction. In an interview on
"Morning Joe" last week, Avenatti also suggested that he had more evidence that Trump knew about the
payment. Asked by Willie Geist if his "belief that the president directed this payment is based on
more than a hunch," Avenatti simply replied, "yes," but declined to provide any evidence.
6. Why does she want to talk about the affair now?
Daniels's lawsuit claims she expressed interest in discussing the alleged affair publicly in 2016
after The Washington Post published a 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump could be heard
boasting about groping and kissing women without their permission. It was at this point that Cohen and
Trump "aggressively sought to silence Ms. Clifford," according to the lawsuit, which claims that the
$130,000 payment and nondisclosure agreement soon followed. But for more than a year after that,
Daniels was silent about the alleged affair, and it was only in recent months that the accusations
resurfaced. One thing to watch for is whether Daniels addresses her motives in the "60 Minutes"
interview, or answers questions about what she hopes will happen next.
7. What happens next?
There may be hints of what Daniels's next steps are in the interview. A planned court hearing for
Daniels's lawsuit is still months away. However, whatever Daniels reveals in the interview may force
the hand of Trump's own legal team. After news broke that CBS intended to air the "60 Minutes" segment
with Daniels, speculation swirled that Trump's lawyers would take legal action seeking to block the
broadcast. Such legal action would have been unlikely to proceed, because courts rarely allow such
prior restraint of speech, particularly regarding the news media.
But Trump's legal team has already signaled they're willing to fight Daniels on her claims. They
reportedly asked for a temporary restraining order against her last month and have asked to transfer
the lawsuit from California state court to a federal court in Los Angeles. But how Trump and his
lawyers respond to the interview after it airs will be closely watched.
Tags
Law
Crime
News Agencies
Internet Service Providers
Glasses, Spectacles & Contact lenses
Initially, this ridiculous scandal was mildly amusing.
Now, it
has become a tedious circus sideshow that serves to distract the
masses from much more important issues.
The disgusting fact that Trump chose to throw his dick into
this cum-dumpster skank is bad enough, but now that her lawyer
apparently has a Trump dick-pic or some other pornographic
evidence, he intends to exploit and extort as much publicity and
money that he can in an effort to embarrass the POTUS.
Is it any wonder that the USA has become the laughing stock of
the world?
Creating a malware application which masks itself as some kind of pseudo scientific test and
serves as the backdoor to your personal data is a very dirty trick...
Especially dirty it it used by academic researchers, who in reality are academic scum... An
additional type of academic gangsters, in addition to Harvard Mafia
Notable quotes:
"... By Ivan Manokha, a departmental lecturer in the Oxford Department of International Development. He is currently working on power and obedience in the late-modern political economy, particularly in the context of the development of new technologies of surveillance. Originally published at openDemocracy ..."
"... The current social mobilization against Facebook resembles the actions of activists who, in opposition to neoliberal globalization, smash a McDonald's window during a demonstration. ..."
"... But as Christopher Wylie, a twenty-eight-year-old Canadian coder and data scientist and a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, stated in a video interview , the app could also collect all kinds of personal data from users, such as the content that they consulted, the information that they liked, and even the messages that they posted. ..."
"... All this is done in order to use data to create value in some way another (to monetize it by selling to advertisers or other firms, to increase sales, or to increase productivity). Data has become 'the new oil' of global economy, a new commodity to be bought and sold at a massive scale, and with this development, as a former Harvard Business School professor Shoshana Zuboff has argued , global capitalism has become 'surveillance capitalism'. ..."
"... What this means is that platform economy is a model of value creation which is completely dependant on continuous privacy invasions and, what is alarming is that we are gradually becoming used to this. ..."
"... In other instances, as in the case of Kogan's app, the extent of the data collected exceeds what was stated in the agreement. ..."
"... What we need is a total redefinition of the right to privacy (which was codified as a universal human right in 1948, long before the Internet), to guarantee its respect, both offline and online. ..."
"... I saw this video back in 2007. It was originally put together by a Sarah Lawrence student who was working on her paper on social media. The ties of all the original investors to IN-Q-Tel scared me off and I decided to stay away from Facebook. ..."
"... But it isn't just FB. Amazon, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Apple, Microsoft and many others do the same, and we are all caught up in it whether we agree to participate or not. ..."
"... Platform Capitalism is a mild description, it is manipulation based on Surveillance Capitalism, pure and simple. The Macro pattern of Corporate Power subsuming the State across every area is fascinating to watch, but a little scary. ..."
"... For his part, Aleksandr Kogan established a company, Global Science Research, that contracted with SCL, using Facebook data to map personality traits for its work in elections (Kosinski claims that Kogan essentially reverse-engineered the app that he and Stillwell had developed). Kogan's app harvested data on Facebook users who agreed to take a personality test for the purposes of academic research (though it was, in fact, to be used by SCL for non-academic ends). But according to Wylie, the app also collected data on their entire -- and nonconsenting -- network of friends. Once Cambridge Analytica and SCL had won contracts with the State Department and were pitching to the Pentagon, Wylie became alarmed that this illegally-obtained data had ended up at the heart of government, along with the contractors who might abuse it. ..."
"... This apparently bizarre intersection of research on topics like love and kindness with defense and intelligence interests is not, in fact, particularly unusual. It is typical of the kind of dual-use research that has shaped the field of social psychology in the US since World War II. ..."
"... Much of the classic, foundational research on personality, conformity, obedience, group polarization, and other such determinants of social dynamics -- while ostensibly civilian -- was funded during the cold war by the military and the CIA. ..."
"... The pioneering figures from this era -- for example, Gordon Allport on personality and Solomon Asch on belief conformity -- are still cited in NATO psy-ops literature to this day ..."
"... This is an issue which has frustrated me greatly. In spite of the fact that the country's leading psychologist (at the very least one of them -- ex-APA president Seligman) has been documented taking consulting fees from Guantanamo and Black Sites goon squads, my social science pals refuse to recognize any corruption at the core of their so-called replicated quantitative research. ..."
Yves
here. Not new to anyone who has been paying attention, but a useful recap with some good
observations at the end, despite deploying the cringe-making trope of businesses having DNA.
That legitimates the notion that corporations are people.
By Ivan Manokha, a departmental lecturer in the Oxford Department of International
Development. He is currently working on power and obedience in the late-modern political
economy, particularly in the context of the development of new technologies of surveillance.
Originally published at
openDemocracy
The current social mobilization against Facebook resembles the actions of activists who,
in opposition to neoliberal globalization, smash a McDonald's window during a
demonstration.
On March 17,
The Observer of London and The
New York Times announced that Cambridge Analytica, the London-based political and corporate
consulting group, had harvested private data from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million
users without their consent. The data was collected through a Facebook-based quiz app called
thisisyourdigitallife, created by Aleksandr Kogan, a University of Cambridge psychologist who
had requested and gained access to information from 270,000 Facebook members after they had
agreed to use the app to undergo a personality test, for which they were paid through Kogan's
company, Global Science Research.
But as Christopher Wylie, a twenty-eight-year-old Canadian coder and data scientist and
a former employee of Cambridge Analytica, stated in a video interview , the
app could also collect all kinds of personal data from users, such as the content that they
consulted, the information that they liked, and even the messages that they posted.
In addition, the app provided access to information on the profiles of the friends of each
of those users who agreed to take the test, which enabled the collection of data from more than
50 million.
All this data was then shared by Kogan with Cambridge Analytica, which was working with
Donald Trump's election team and which allegedly used this data to target US voters with
personalised political messages during the presidential campaign. As Wylie, told The Observer,
"we built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons."
'Unacceptable Violation'
Following these revelations the Internet has been engulfed in outrage and government
officials have been quick to react. On March 19, Antonio Tajani President of the European
Parliament Antonio Tajani, stated in a twitter message that misuse of
Facebook user data "is an unacceptable violation of our citizens' privacy rights" and promised
an EU investigation. On March 22, Wylie communicated in a tweet that he accepted
an invitation to testify before the US House Intelligence Committee, the US House Judiciary
Committee and UK Parliament Digital Committee. On the same day Israel's Justice Ministry
informed
Facebook that it was opening an investigation into possible violations of Israelis'
personal information by Facebook.
While such widespread condemnation of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica is totally justified,
what remains largely absent from the discussion are broader questions about the role of data
collection, processing and monetization that have become central in the current phase of
capitalism, which may be described as 'platform capitalism', as suggested by the Canadian
writer and academic Nick Srnicek in his recent book
.
Over the last decade the growth of platforms has been spectacular: today, the top 4
enterprises in Forbes's
list of most valuable brands are platforms, as are eleven of the top twenty. Most recent
IPOs and acquisitions have involved platforms, as have most of the major successful startups.
The list includes Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay, Instagram,
YouTube, Twitch, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Waze, Uber, Lyft, Handy, Airbnb, Pinterest, Square, Social
Finance, Kickstarter, etc. Although most platforms are US-based, they are a really global
phenomenon and in fact are now playing an even more important role in developing countries
which did not have developed commercial infrastructures at the time of the rise of the Internet
and seized the opportunity that it presented to structure their industries around it. Thus, in
China, for example, many of the most valuable enterprises are platforms such as Tencent (owner
of the WeChat and QQ messaging platforms) and Baidu (China's search engine); Alibaba controls
80 percent of China's e-commerce market through its Taobao and Tmall platforms, with its Alipay
platform being the largest payments platform in China.
The importance of platforms is also attested by the range of sectors in which they are now
dominant and the number of users (often numbered in millions and, in some cases, even billions)
regularly connecting to their various cloud-based services. Thus, to name the key industries,
platforms are now central in Internet search (Google, Yahoo, Bing); social networking
(Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat); Internet auctions and retail (eBay, Taobao, Amazon,
Alibaba); on-line financial and human resource functions (Workday, Upwork, Elance, TaskRabbit),
urban transportation (Uber, Lyft, Zipcar, BlaBlaCar), tourism (Kayak, Trivago, Airbnb), mobile
payment (Square Order, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet); and software development (Apple's App
Store, Google Play Store, Windows App store). Platform-based solutions are also currently being
adopted in more traditional sectors, such as industrial production (GE, Siemens), agriculture
(John Deere, Monsanto) and even clean energy (Sungevity, SolarCity, EnerNOC).
User Profiling -- Good-Bye to Privacy
These platforms differ significantly in terms of the services that they offer: some, like
eBay or Taobao simply allow exchange of products between buyers and sellers; others, like Uber
or TaskRabbit, allow independent service providers to find customers; yet others, like Apple or
Google allow developers to create and market apps.
However, what is common to all these platforms is the central role played by data, and not
just continuous data collection, but its ever more refined analysis in order to create detailed
user profiles and rankings in order to better match customers and suppliers or increase
efficiency.
All this is done in order to use data to create value in some way another (to monetize
it by selling to advertisers or other firms, to increase sales, or to increase productivity).
Data has become 'the new oil' of global economy, a new commodity to be bought and sold at a
massive scale, and with this development, as a former Harvard Business School professor
Shoshana Zuboff
has argued , global capitalism has become 'surveillance capitalism'.
What this means is that platform economy is a model of value creation which is
completely dependant on continuous privacy invasions and, what is alarming is that we are
gradually becoming used to this.
Most of the time platform providers keep track of our purchases, travels, interest, likes,
etc. and use this data for targeted advertising to which we have become accustomed. We are
equally not that surprised when we find out that, for example,
robotic vacuum cleaners collect data about types of furniture that we have and share it
with the likes of Amazon so that they can send us advertisements for pieces of furniture that
we do not yet possess.
There is little public outcry when we discover that Google's ads are racially biased as, for
instance, a Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney
found by accident performing a search. We are equally hardly astonished that companies such
as Lenddo buy access to
people's social media and browsing history in exchange for a credit score. And, at least in
the US, people are becoming accustomed to the use of algorithms, developed by private
contractors, by the justice system to take decisions on sentencing, which often result in
equally unfair and racially
biased decisions .
The outrage provoked by the Cambridge Analytica is targeting only the tip of the iceberg.
The problem is infinitely larger as there are countless equally significant instances of
privacy invasions and data collection performed by corporations, but they have become
normalized and do not lead to much public outcry.
DNA
Today surveillance is the DNA of the platform economy; its model is simply based on the
possibility of continuous privacy invasions using whatever means possible. In most cases users
agree, by signing the terms and conditions of service providers, so that their data may be
collected, analyzed and even shared with third parties (although it is hardly possible to see
this as express consent given the size and complexity of these agreements -- for instance, it
took 8 hours and 59 minutes for an actor hired by the consumer group Choice to read Amazon Kindle's terms and
conditions). In other instances, as in the case of Kogan's app, the extent of the data
collected exceeds what was stated in the agreement.
But what is important is to understand that to prevent such scandals in the future it is not
enough to force Facebook to better monitor the use of users' data in order to prevent such
leaks as in the case of Cambridge Analytica. The current social mobilization against Facebook
resembles the actions of activists who, in opposition to neoliberal globalization, smash a
McDonald's window during a demonstration.
What we need is a total redefinition of the right to privacy (which was codified as a
universal human right in 1948, long before the Internet), to guarantee its respect, both
offline and online.
What we need is a body of international law that will provide regulations and oversight for
the collection and use of data.
What is required is an explicit and concise formulation of terms and conditions which, in a
few sentences, will specify how users' data will be used.
It is important to seize the opportunity presented by the Cambridge Analytica scandal to
push for these more fundamental changes.
I am grateful for my spidey sense. Thanks, spidey sense, for ringing the alarm bells
whenever I saw one of those personality tests on Facebook. I never took one.
The most efficient strategy is to be
non-viable . They may come for you eventually, but someone else gets to be the canary,
and you haven't wasted energy in the meantime. TOR users didn't get that figured out.
Never took the personality test either, but now I now that all of my friends who did
unknowingly gave up my personal information too. I read an article somewhere about this over
a year ago so it's really old news. Sent the link to a few people who didn't care. But now
that they all know that Cambridge Analytical used FB data in support of the Trump campaign
it's all over the mainstream and people are upset.
You can disable that (i.e., prevent friends from sharing your info with third parties) in
the privacy options. But the controls are not easy to find and everything is enabled by
default.
I haven't FB'd in years and certainly never took any such test, but if any of my friends,
real or FB, did, and my info was shared, can I sue? If not, why not?
Everyone thought I was paranoid as I discouraged them from moving backups to the cloud,
using trackers, signing up for grocery store clubs, using real names and addresses for online
anything, etc. They thought I was overreacting when I said we need European-style privacy
laws in this country. People at work thought my questions about privacy for our new
location-based IoT plans were not team-based thinking.
And it turns out after all this that they still think I'm extreme. I guess it will have to
get worse.
In a first for me, there are surface-mount resistors in the advert at the top of today's
NC links page. That is way out of the ordinary; what I usually see are books or bicycle
parts; things I have recently purchased or searched.
But a couple of days ago I had a SKYPE conversation with a sibling about a PC I was
scavenging for parts, and surface mount resistors (unscavengable) came up. I suspect I have
been observed without my consent and am not too happy about it. As marketing, it's a bust; in
the conversation I explicitly expressed no interest in such components as I can't install
them. I suppose I should be glad for this indication of something I wasn't aware was
happening.
No keyboard search. I never so much as think about surface mount components; the inquiry
was raised by my sibling and I responded. Maybe its coincidental, but it seems quite odd.
I decided to click through to the site to generate a few pennies for NC and at least feel
like I was punishing someone for snooping on me.
Its been happening to me a lot recently on my Instagram, I don't like pictures or
anything, but whenever I have a conversation with someone on my phone, I start seeing ads of
what I spoke about
What we need is a total redefinition of the right to privacy (which was codified as a
universal human right in 1948, long before the Internet), to guarantee its respect, both
offline and online.
Are we, readers of this post, or citizens of the USA supposed to think there is anything
binding in declarations? Or anything from the UN if at all inconvenient for that matter?
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or
correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to
the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Platforms like facebook allow individuals to 'spy' on each other and people love it. When
I was a kid i always marveled at how some households would leave a police scanner on 24/7.
With the net we have this writ large with baby, puppy and tv dinner photos. Not to forget
it's a narcissist paradise. I have friends who I've tried to gently over time inject tidbits
of info like this article provides for many years and they still just refuse to try and get
it. If they looked over their shoulder and saw how many people/entities are literally
following them everywhere they go, they would become rabid gun owners (don't tread on me!)
overnight, but the invisible hand/eye registers not at all.
A side note: If Facebook and other social media were to assume ANY degree of
responsibility for content appearing on their platforms, they would be acknowledging their
legal liability for ALL content.
Hence they would be legally responsible just as newspapers are. And major newspapers have
on-staff lawyers and editors exquisitely attuned to the possibility of libelous content so
they can avoid ruinous lawsuits.
If the law were applied as it should be, Facebook and its brethren wouldn't last five
minutes before being sued into oblivion.
Non-liability is a product of the computer age. I remember having to agree with Microsofts
policy to absolve them of -any- liability when using their software. If they had their
druthers, -no- company would be liable for -anything-. It's called a 'perfect world'.
Companies that host 'social media' should not have to bear any responsibility for their
users content. Newspapers employ writers and fact checkers. They are set up to monitor their
staff for accuracy (Okay, in theory). So you can sue them and even their journalist
employees. Being liable (and not sued) allows them to brag about how truthful they are.
Reputations are a valuable commodity these days.
In the case of 'social media' providers, liability falls on the authors of their own
comments, which is only fair, in my view. However, I would argue that those 'providers'
should -not- be considered 'media' like newspapers, and their members should not be
considered 'journalists'.
Also, those providers are private companies, and are free to edit, censor, or delete
anything on their site. And of course it's automated. Some conservative Facebook members were
complaining about being banned. Apparently, there a certain things you can't say on
Facebook.
AFAIC, the bottom line is this: Many folks tend to believe everything they read online.
They need to learn the skill of critical thinking. And realize that the Internet can be a
vast wasteland; a digital garbage dump.
Why are our leaders so concerned with election meddling? Isn't our propaganda better than
the Russians? We certainly pay a lot for it.
. .. . .. -- .
Today, Musk also made fun of Sonos for not being as committed as he was to the
anti-Facebook cause after the connected-speaker maker said it would pull ads from the
platform -- but only for a week.
Musk, like Trump, knows he does not need to advertise because a fawning press will
dutifully report on everything he does and says, no matter how dumb.
A thoughtful post, thanks for that. May I recommend you take a look at "All You Can Pay"
(NationBooks 2015) for a more thorough treatment of the subject, together with a proposal on
how to re-balance the equation. Full disclosure, I am a co-author.
I saw this video back in 2007. It was originally put together by a Sarah Lawrence
student who was working on her paper on social media. The ties of all the original investors
to IN-Q-Tel scared me off and I decided to stay away from Facebook.
But it isn't just FB. Amazon, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Apple, Microsoft and many
others do the same, and we are all caught up in it whether we agree to participate or
not.
Anyone watch the NCAA Finals and see all the ads from Google about being "The Official
Cloud of the NCAA"? They were flat out bragging, more or less, about surveillance of players.
for the NCAA.
Platform Capitalism is a mild description, it is manipulation based on Surveillance
Capitalism, pure and simple. The Macro pattern of Corporate Power subsuming the State across
every area is fascinating to watch, but a little scary.
It was amusing that the top Google hit for the Brandeis article was JSTOR which requires
us to surrender personal detail to access their site. To hell with that.
The part I like about the Brandeis privacy story is the motivation was some Manhattan rich
dicks thought the gossip writers snooping around their wedding party should mind their own
business. (Apparently whether this is actually true or just some story made up by somebody
being catty at Brandeis has been the topic of gigabytes of internet flame wars but I can't
ever recall seeing any of those.)
" Two young psychologists are central to the Cambridge Analytica story. One is Michal
Kosinski, who devised an app with a Cambridge University colleague, David Stillwell, that
measures personality traits by analyzing Facebook "likes." It was then used in collaboration
with the World Well-Being Project, a group at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive
Psychology Center that specializes in the use of big data to measure health and happiness in
order to improve well-being. The other is Aleksandr Kogan, who also works in the field of
positive psychology and has written papers on happiness, kindness, and love (according to his
résumé, an early paper was called "Down the Rabbit Hole: A Unified Theory of
Love"). He ran the Prosociality and Well-being Laboratory, under the auspices of Cambridge
University's Well-Being Institute.
Despite its prominence in research on well-being, Kosinski's work, Cadwalladr points out,
drew a great deal of interest from British and American intelligence agencies and defense
contractors, including overtures from the private company running an intelligence project
nicknamed "Operation KitKat" because a correlation had been found between anti-Israeli
sentiments and liking Nikes and KitKats. Several of Kosinski's co-authored papers list the US
government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, as a funding source. His
résumé boasts of meetings with senior figures at two of the world's largest
defense contractors, Boeing and Microsoft, both companies that have sponsored his research.
He ran a workshop on digital footprints and psychological assessment for the Singaporean
Ministry of Defense.
For his part, Aleksandr Kogan established a company, Global Science Research, that
contracted with SCL, using Facebook data to map personality traits for its work in elections
(Kosinski claims that Kogan essentially reverse-engineered the app that he and Stillwell had
developed). Kogan's app harvested data on Facebook users who agreed to take a personality
test for the purposes of academic research (though it was, in fact, to be used by SCL for
non-academic ends). But according to Wylie, the app also collected data on their entire --
and nonconsenting -- network of friends. Once Cambridge Analytica and SCL had won contracts
with the State Department and were pitching to the Pentagon, Wylie became alarmed that this
illegally-obtained data had ended up at the heart of government, along with the contractors
who might abuse it.
This apparently bizarre intersection of research on topics like love and kindness with
defense and intelligence interests is not, in fact, particularly unusual. It is typical of
the kind of dual-use research that has shaped the field of social psychology in the US since
World War II.
Much of the classic, foundational research on personality, conformity, obedience,
group polarization, and other such determinants of social dynamics -- while ostensibly
civilian -- was funded during the cold war by the military and the CIA. The cold war was
an ideological battle, so, naturally, research on techniques for controlling belief was
considered a national security priority. This psychological research laid the groundwork for
propaganda wars and for experiments in individual "mind control."
The pioneering figures from this era -- for example, Gordon Allport on personality and
Solomon Asch on belief conformity -- are still cited in NATO psy-ops literature to this
day .."
This is an issue which has frustrated me greatly. In spite of the fact that the
country's leading psychologist (at the very least one of them -- ex-APA president Seligman)
has been documented taking consulting fees from Guantanamo and Black Sites goon squads, my
social science pals refuse to recognize any corruption at the core of their so-called
replicated quantitative research.
I have asked more than five people to point at the best critical work on the Big 5
Personality theory and they all have told me some variant of "it is the only way to get
consistent numbers". Not one has ever retreated one step or been receptive to the suggestion
that this might indicate some fallacy in trying to assign numbers to these properties.
They eat their own dog food all the way and they seem to be suffering from a terrible
malnutrition. At least the anthropologists have Price . (Most of
that book can be read for free in installments at Counterpunch.)
This is really deception as an art form: presenting a specially crafted false message to
group of voters bating them into voting for this candidate with explicit goal to deceive. This is
the same method pedophiles used to groom victims.
Notable quotes:
"... "CA was able to provide the campaign with predictive analytics based on more than 5,000 data points on every voter in the United States. From there, CA's team of political consultants and psychologists guided the campaign on what to say and how to say it to specific groups of voters." ..."
"CA was able to provide the campaign with predictive
analytics based on more than 5,000 data points on every voter in the United States. From there,
CA's team of political consultants and psychologists guided the campaign on what to say and how
to say it to specific groups of voters."
This is a vocal acknowledgement from Trump's data guru that he was able to change the
behaviour of American voters in favour of a Trump victory in the presidential election, but
unfortunately, the American deep state blamed Russia for hacking American democracy – a
claim which is totally baseless and untrue. In a total disingenuous move, American mainstream
media tried to link-up CA with WikiLeaks. While CA did contact Wikileaks, Julian Assange is on
the record as rebuffing CA's advances.
American warmongers within the deep state worked for a Hillary Clinton victory through their
control of American mainstream media, but they nevertheless failed to elect her. As a result,
Clinton's team blamed her loss on Russia, in order to accelerate hostility towards Moscow and
to apply pressure on President Trump so that he could not establish friendly relations with
Russia. They have succeeded in this regard as Trump surrendered to the war hungry deep state.
That being said, the fight within the deep state between FBI and CIA also helped Trump to use
the situation in his favour, as the FBI investigated Clinton after emails leaks scandal.
The CIA blamed Russia for hacking Hillary Clinton's DNC emails and allegedly passing them to
Wikileaks. The purpose of this blame was to influence the FBI investigation against her. To a
degree they succeeded. While she did not go to jail, she ended up losing the election. US
intelligence agencies propagated a myth that Wikileaks worked for Russia, but it is a fact that
Russia has no links with Wikileaks.
... ... ...
Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin held up a mirror to western global
manipulator elite and addressed their baseless 'blame campaign' against Russia. Speaking with
NBC news anchor Megyn Kelly, Putin said, "We're holding discussions with our American friends
and partners, people who represent the government, by the way, and when they claim that some
Russians interfered in the US elections, we tell them and we did so fairly recently at a very
level, 'But you are constantly interfering in our political life'. Can you imagine, they don't
even deny it, you know what they told us last time? They said, 'Yes, we do interfere but we are
entitled to do it because we are spreading democracy and you're not, and you can't do it'. Does
this seem like a civilized and modern approach to international affairs? At the level of the
Russian government and the level of Russian President, there has never been any interference in
the internal political process of the United States."
President Putin further explained, "Not long ago President Trump said something, he said
that if Russia goal was to sow chaos it has succeeded, but that's not the result, that's the
result of your political system; the internal struggle, the disorder, and division. Russia has
nothing to do with it. Whatsoever we have nothing to do with it all. Get your own affairs in
order first and the way the question's been framed as I mentioned –that you can interfere
anywhere you want because you bring democracy but we can't –that's what causes conflicts.
You have to show your partners respect and they will respect you."
President Putin's statement clearly indicates that it is the USA who is behind the effort to
hack democracy and bring about regime changes throughout the world with the aim to install
puppet regimes in targeted states. Cambridge Analytica and its mother company SCL are working
for the strategic interests of the USA and its western partner NATO in order to achieve these
regime change ambitions. Hence, this is the reason that Facebook after the publication of my
previous article, suspended the CA/SCL group from its social media network by saying,
"Protecting people's information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same
from people who operate apps on Facebook. In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at
the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform
Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica,
a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that
data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc."
Manipulating democracy -- brainwashing the public for a large fee
Cambridge Analytica, the data harvesting firm that worked for the Trump campaign, is in the
midst of a scandal that should make everyone who cares about a clean political process demand
major investigations of anyone who has procured the services of the company, major prosecutions
of those who have violated laws across multiple nations and a wholesale revitalisation of
electoral laws to prevent politicians from ever again procuring the services of unethical
companies like Cambridge Analytica.
Days ago, whistleblower Christopher Wylie went public about his time
working for Cambridge Analytica and specifically about how the firm illegally obtained the
public and private data, including the private messages of 50 million Facebook users. He also
exposed how Cambridge Analytica used this data to run highly scientific social manipulation
campaigns in order to effectively brainwash the public in various countries to support a
certain political candidate or faction.
Cambridge Analytica's dubious methods were used to meddle in the US election after the Trump
campaign paid Cambridge Analytica substantial sums of money for their services. The firm also
meddled in the last two Kenyan Presidential elections, elections in Nigeria, elections in Czech
Republic, elections in Argentina, elections in India, the Brexit campaign, UK Premier Theresa
May's recently election and now stands accused of working with the disgraced former
Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif in an attempt to reverse his judicial ban on holding public
office, while helping his PML-N party win the forthcoming general election.
Beyond the scandalous use of personal data from Facebook users and the illegal access to
people's private messages, Cambridge Analytica has now been exposed as a company that, by the
hidden-camera admission of its CEO Alexander Nix, engages in nefarious, illegal and outrageous
activities across the globe.
The UK Broadcaster Channel 4 just released a video of Cambridge Analytica's CEO and Managing
DIrector Mark Turnbull in a conversation with an undercover reporter posing as a Sri Lankan
businessman interested in meddling in domestic elections. During the conversation Nix boasted
of Cambridge Analytica's history of using entrapment, bribery and intimidation against the
political opponents of its wealthy clients. Furthermore, Nix boasted about his firm's ability
to procure Ukrainian prostitutes as a means to entrap adversaries while also procuring the
services of "Israeli spies" as part of dirty smear operations.
The activities that Nix boasted of using in the past and then offered to a prospective
client are illegal in virtually every country in the world. But for Nix and his world of
ultra-rich clients, acting as though one is above the law is the rule rather than the
exception. Thus far, Cambridge Analaytica has been able to escape justice throughout the world
both for its election meddling, data harvesting, data theft and attempts to slander politicians
through calculated bribery and entrapment schemes.
One person who refused to be tempted by Cambridge Analytica was Julian Assange. Alexander
Nix personally wrote to Julian Assange asking for direct access to information possessed by
Wikileaks and Assange refused. This is a clear example of journalistic ethics and personal
integrity on the part of Assange. Justice must be done
Cambridge Analytica stands accused of doing everything and more that the Russian
state was accused of doing in respect of meddling in the 2016 US Presidential election. While
meetings and conversations that Trump campaign officials, including Steve Bannon had with
Cambridge Analyatica big wigs were not recorded, any information as to what was said during
these exchanges should be thoroughly investigated by law enforcement and eventually made public
for the sake of restoring transparency to politics.
Just as the Hillary Clinton campaign openly conspired to deprive Bernie Sanders of the
Democratic Party's nomination, so too did Donald Trump's campaign pay Cambridge Analytica to
conspire against the American voters using a calculated psychological manipulation campaign
that was made possible through the use of unethically obtained and stolen data.
While Facebook claims it was itself misled and consequently victimised by Cambridge
Analytica and has subsequently banned the firm from its platform, many, including Edward
Snowden have alleged that Facebook knew full well what Cambridge Analytica was doing with the
data retrieved from its Facebook apps. Already, the markets have reacted to the news and the
verdict is not favourble in terms of the public perception of Facebook as an ethical company.
Facebook's share prices are down over 7% on the S&P 500. This represents the biggest tumble
in the price of Facebook share prices since 2014. Moreover, the plunge has knocked Facebook out
of the coveted big five companies atop the S&P 500. Furthermore, Alex Stamos, Facebook's
security director has announced that he will soon leave the company.
The Trump myth and Russia myth exposed
Donald Trump has frequently boasted of his expert campaigning skills as being the reason he
won an election that few thought he could have ever won. While Trump was a far more charismatic
and exciting platform speaker than his rival Hillary Clinton, it seems that for the Trump
campaign, Trump ultimately needed to rely on the expensive and nefarious services of Cambridge
Analytica in order to manipulate the minds of American voters and ultimately trick them into
voting for him. It is impossible to say whether Trump would have still won his election without
Cambridge Analaytica's services, but the fact they were used, should immediately raise the
issue of Trump's suitability for office.
Ultimately, the Trump campaign did conspire to meddle in the election, only it was
not with Russia or Russians with whom the campaign conspired, it was with the British firm
Cambridge Analytica. Thus one sees that both the narrative about Trump the electoral "genius"
and the narrative about Trump the Kremlin puppet are both false. The entire time, the issue of
Trump campaign election meddling was one between a group of American millionaires and
billionaires and a sleaze infested British firm.
Worse than Watergate
In 1972, US President Richard Nixon conspired to cover-up a beak-in at the offices of his
political opponents at the Watergate Complex. The scandal ultimately led to Nixon's resignation
in 1974. What the Trump campaign did with Cambridge Analytica is far more scandalous than the
Watergate break-in and cover-up. Where Nixon's cronies broke into offices to steal information
from the Democratic party, Trump's paid cyber-thugs at Cambridge Analytica broke in to the
private data of 50 million people, the vast majority of whom were US citizens.
Richard Nixon, like Donald Trump, was ultimately driven by a love of power throughout his
life. Just as Trump considered running for President for decades, so too did Nixon try to run
in 1960 and lost to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, while he also failed to become governor of
California in 1962 election. By 1968 he finally got into the White House at the height of the
Vietnam War. When time came for his re-election, Nixon's team weren't going to take any chances
and hence the Watergate break-in was orchestrated to dig up dirt on Nixon's opponent. As it
turned out Nixon won the 1972 by a comfortable margin, meaning that the Watergate break-in was
probably largely in vain.
Likewise, Trump may well have won in 2016 even without Cambridge Analytica, but in his quest
for power, Trump has resorted to dealing with a company whose practices have done far more
damage to the American people than the Watergate break-in.
New laws are needed
While existing laws will likely be sufficient to bring the fiends at Cambridge Analytica to
justice, while also determining the role that Trump campaign officials, up to and including
Trump played in the scandal, new laws must be enshrined across the globe in order to put the
likes of Cambridge Analytica out of business for good.
The following proposals must be debated widely and ideally implemented at the soonest
possible date:
-- A total ban on all forms of data mining/harvesting for political purposes.
-- A total ban on the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in any political
campaign or for any political purpose.
-- A mandatory seizing of the assets of any company involved in data mining/harvesting for
political purposes, after which point such a company would be forcibly shut down
permanently.
-- A mandatory seizing of the assets of any company involved in the use of artificial
intelligence or algorithms in the course of a public political campaign.
-- A total ban on the use of internet based platforms, including social media by political
candidates and their direct associates for anything that could reasonably be classified as a
misinformation and/or manipulation scheme.
-- A total ban on politicians using third party data firms or advertising firms during
elections. All such advertising and analysis must be devised by advisers employed directly by
or volunteering for an individual candidate or his or her party political organisation.
-- A total ban on any individual working for a political campaign, who derives at least half
of his or her income from employment, ownership and/or shares in a company whose primary
purpose is to deliver news and analysis.
-- A total ban on anyone paid by a political candidate to promote his or her election from
an ownership or major share holding role in any company whose primary purpose is to deliver
news and analysis until 2 years after the said election.
If all of these laws were implemented along with thorough campaign finance reform
initiatives, only then can anything remotely resembling fair elections take place.
The elites eat their own
While many of the media outlets who have helped to publish the revelations of whistleblower
Christopher Wylie continue to defame Russia without any evidence about Russian linkage to the
2016 US election (or any other western vote for that matter), these outlets are nevertheless
exposing the true meddling scandal surrounding the Trump campaign which has the effect of
destroying the Russia narrative.
In this sense, a divided elite are turning against themselves. While the billionaire
property tycoon Donald Trump can hardly be described as anything but a privileged figure who
moved in elite public circles for most of his life, his personal style, rhetoric and attitude
towards fellow elites has served to alienate Trump from many. Thus, there is a desire on the
part of the mainstream media to expose a scandal surrounding Trump in a manner that would be
unthinkable in respect of exposing a cause less popular among western elites, for example the
brutal treatment of Palestine by the Zionist regime.
In this sense, Trump's own unwillingness or lack of desire to endear himself to fellow
elites and instead present himself as a 'man of the people', might be his penultimate undoing.
His rich former friends are now his rich present day enemies and many ordinary voters will be
completely aghast at his involvement with Cambridge Analytica, just as many Republicans who
voted for Nixon, became converts to the anti-Nixon movement once the misdeeds and dishonesty of
Richard Nixon were made public. Many might well leave the 'Trump train' and get on board the
'political ethics express'.
Conclusion
This scandal ultimately has nothing to do with one's opinion on Trump or his policies, let
alone any of the other politicians who have hired Cambridge Analytica. The issue is that a
company engaged in the most nefarious, dangerous, sleazy and wicked behaviour in the world, is
profiting from their destruction of political institutions that ought to be based on open
policy debates rather than public manipulation, brainwashing and artificial intelligence.
The issue is also one of privacy. 50 million people have been exploited by an unethical
company and what's more is that the money from the Trump campaign helped to empower this
unethical company. This is therefore as unfair to non-voters as it is to voters. Cambridge
Analytica must be shut down and all companies like it must restrict the scope of their
operations or else face the same consequence.
Look at this great interview with Adam Garrie. This is a must watch video.
This scandal is HUUUGE
He discusses Cambridge Analytica involvement in basically all elections, involvement of
Facebook and its Sugar daddy, UK ,US gov. How they tried to co-opt Mr.Assange and he said
FO.
How UK tries to cover it up . There is a whistleblower and soon more ,it seems
I ran onto something about that when researching SCL/Cambridge Analytica
The Mercer/Cambridge Analytica US wing of SCL put a lot of funding into the leave campaign
which was undeclared. Like a political campaign, donations above a threshold have to be
declared.
Threshold for declaring donations I think was around 3 to 7000 and CA put in over 300
000.
I have been researching SCL the last few days now. It is starting to look as though,
rather than being political mercenary's working for whoever pays, they seem to back
nationalist leaning groups or individuals. They have a political or geo-political agenda but
not sure what at the moment. Always anti Russia. Involved in operations in most of the ex
soviet countries to create a hatred of ethnic Russians and I think will work with non
nationalist types who are very anti Russia.
by Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/25/2018 - 13:00 371 SHARES
Julian Assange fired off a tweet Friday afternoon reminding people of the time Mark
Zuckerberg called his users "Dumb fucks" because they trusted him with their private
information.
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks.
The exchange,
originally published by Business Insider 's editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson in 2010, was
an early instant messenger conversation then 19-year-old Zuckerberg had with a college friend
shortly after he launched "The Facebook" in his dorm room.
At the time Business Insider published the exchange, Facebook had "faced one privacy flap
after another, usually following changes to the privacy policy or new product releases."
But the company's attitude toward privacy, as reflected in Mark's early emails and IMs,
features like Beacon and Instant Personalization, and the frequent changes to the privacy
policy, has been consistently aggressive: Do something first, then see how people react.
And this does appear to reflect Mark's own views of privacy, which seem to be that people
shouldn't care about it as much as they do -- an attitude that very much reflects the
attitude of his generation.
After all, here's what early Facebook engineering boss, Harvard alum, and Zuckerberg
confidant Charlie Cheever said in David Kirkpatrick's brilliantly-reported upcoming book The
Facebook Effect.
"I feel Mark doesn't believe in privacy that much, or at least believes in privacy as a
stepping stone. Maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong."
Kirkpatrick had this to say about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in his book:
"Mark really does believe very much in transparency and the vision of an open society and
open world, and so he wants to push people that way . I think he also understands that the
way to get there is to give people granular control and comfort . He hopes you'll get more
open, and he's kind of happy to help you get there. So for him, it's more of a means to an
end . For me, I'm not as sure."
Zuckerberg reportedly hacked into people's email using their TheFacebook passwords...
At one point early on on Facebook history, Zuckerberg - nervous about an upcoming report in
the Harvard Crimson , used "TheFacebook" login data of Crimson staff to crack into their
Harvard email accounts to see if the paper was going to include a claim that he had stolen an
idea for a TheFacebook feature called "Visualize Your Buddy."
Tim and Elisabeth decided to drop John's claims from the story. But, this time, they
decided to go ahead and publish a story on ConnectU's claims against Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg was not content to wait until the morning to find out if the Crimson would
include John's accusations in its story.
Instead, he decided to access the email accounts of Crimson editors and review their
emails. How did he do this? Here's how Mark described his hack to a friend:
Mark used his site, TheFacebook.com, to look up members of the site who identified
themselves as members of the Crimson . Then he examined a log of failed logins to see if any
of the Crimson members had ever entered an incorrect password into TheFacebook.com. If the
cases in which they had entered failed logins, Mark tried to use them to access the Crimson
members' Harvard email accounts. He successfully accessed two of them.
In other words, Mark appears to have used private login data from TheFacebook to hack into
the separate email accounts of some TheFacebook users.
In one account he accessed, Mark saw an email from Crimson writer Tim McGinn to Cameron,
Tyler, and Divya. Another email Mark read was this one, from Crimson managing editor
Elisabeth Theodore to Tim McGinn:
From: Elisabeth Susan Theodore
To: Timothy John McGinn
Subject: Re: Follow-up
OK, he did seem very sleazy. And I thought that some of his answers to the questions were
not very direct or open. I also thought that his reaction to the website was very very weird
. But, even if it's true so what? It's an [redacted] thing to do but it's not illegal, right?
- Business
Insider
Lo and behold, Mark's cavalier attitude towards Facebook user data is costing him billions
at a time he's actively shedding shares as part of a $12 billion liquidation which started
last
September .
"... The US congress has carried out two probes into "Russiagate" without much to show for their laborious endeavors. A special counsel headed up by former FBI chief Robert Mueller has spent millions of taxpayer dollars to produce a flimsy indictment list of 19 Russian individuals who are said to have run influence campaigns out of a nondescript "troll farm" in St Petersburg. ..."
Now, at last, a real "election influence" scandal -- and, laughably, it's got nothing to do
with Russia. The protagonists are none other than the "all-American" US social media giant
Facebook and a British data consultancy firm with the academic-sounding name Cambridge
Analytica.
Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is being called upon by British and European
parliamentarians to explain his company's role in a data-mining
scandal in which up to 50 million users of the social media platform appear to have had
their private information exploited for electioneering purposes.
Exploited, that is, without their consent or knowledge. Facebook is being investigated by US
federal authorities for alleged breach of privacy and, possibly, electoral laws. Meanwhile,
Cambridge Analytica looks less an academic outfit and more like a cheap marketing scam.
Zuckerberg has professed "shock" that his company may have unwittingly been involved in
betraying the privacy of its users. Some two billion people worldwide are estimated to use the
social media networking site to share personal data, photos, family news and so on, with
"friends".
Now it transpires that at least one firm, London-based Cambridge Analytica, ran a profitable
business by harvesting the publicly available data on Facebook for electioneering purposes for
which it was contracted to do. The harvested information was then used to help target election
campaigning.
Cambridge Analytica was reportedly contracted by the Trump campaign for the 2016
presidential election. It was also used during the Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 when
Britons voted to leave the European Union.
This week the British news outlet Channel 4 broadcast
a stunning investigation in which chief executives at Cambridge Analytica were filmed secretly
boasting about how their firm helped win the US presidential election for Donald Trump.
More criminally, the data company boss, Alexander Nix, also revealed that they were prepared
to gather information which could be used for blackmailing and bribing politicians, including
with the use of online sex traps.
The repercussions from the scandal have been torrid. Following the Channel 4 broadcast,
Cambridge Analytica has suspended its chief executive pending further investigation. British
authorities have sought a warrant to search the company's computer servers.
Moreover, Zuckerberg's Facebook has seen $50 billion wiped of its stock value in a matter of
days. What is at issue is the loss of confidence among its ordinary citizen-users about how
their personal data is vulnerable to third party exploitation without their consent.
Cambridge Analytica is just the tip of an iceberg. The issue has raised concerns that other
third parties, including criminal identity-theft gangs, are also mining Facebook as a mammoth
marketing resource. A resource that is free to exploit because of the way that ordinary users
willingly publish their personal profiles.
The open, seemingly innocent nature of Facebook connecting millions of people -- a "place
where friends meet" as its advertising jingle goes -- could turn out to be an ethical nightmare
over privacy abuse.
Other social media companies like Amazon, Google, WhatsApp and Twitter are reportedly
apprehensive about the consequences of widespread loss of confidence among consumers in privacy
security. One of the biggest economic growth areas over the past decade -- social media --
could turn out to be another digital bubble that bursts spectacularly due to the latest
Facebook scandal.
But one other, perhaps more, significant fallout from the scandal is the realistic
perspective it provides on the so-called "Russiagate" debacle.
For well over a year now, the US and European corporate news media have been peddling claims
about how Russian state agents allegedly "interfered" in several national elections.
The Russian authorities have consistently rejected the alleged "influence campaigns" as
nothing but a fabrication to slander Russia. Moscow has repeatedly asked for evidence to verify
the relentless claims -- and none has been presented.
The US congress has carried out two probes into "Russiagate" without much to show for
their laborious endeavors. A special counsel headed up by former FBI chief Robert Mueller has
spent millions of taxpayer dollars to produce a flimsy indictment list of 19 Russian
individuals who are said to have run influence campaigns out of a nondescript "troll farm" in
St Petersburg.
It still remains unclear and unconvincing how, or if, the supposed Russian hackers were
linked to the Russian state, and how they had any impact on the voting intentions of millions
of Americans.
Alternatively, there is plausible reason to believe that the so-called Russian troll farm in
St Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency, may have been nothing other than a dingy marketing
vehicle, trying to use the internet like thousands of other firms around the world hustling for
advertising business. Firms like Cambridge Analytica.
The whole Russiagate affair has been a storm in a teacup, and Mueller seems to be desperate
to produce some, indeed any, result for his inquisitorial extravaganza.
The amazing thing to behold is how the alleged Russian "influence campaign" narrative has
become an accepted truth, propagated and repeated by Western governments and media without
question.
Pentagon defense strategy papers, European Union policy documents, NATO military planning,
among others, have all cited alleged "Russian interference" in American and European elections
as "evidence" of Moscow's "malign" geopolitical agenda.
The purported Russiagate allegations have led to a grave deepening of Cold War tensions
between Western states and Russia to the point where an all-out war is at risk of breaking
out.
Last week, the Trump administration slapped more sanctions on Russian individuals and state
security services for "election meddling".
No proof or plausible explanation has ever been provided to substantiate the allegations of
a Russian state "influence campaign'. The concept largely revolves around innuendo and a
deplorable prejudice against Russia based on irrational Cold War-style Russophobia.
However, one possible beneficial outcome from the latest revelations of an actual worldwide
Facebook election-influence campaign, driven by an ever-so British data consultancy, is that
the scandal puts the claims against Russia into stark, corrective perspective.
A perspective which shows that the heap of official Western claims against Russia of
"influencing elections" is in actual fact negligible if not wholly ridiculous.
It's a mountain versus a hill of beans. A tornado versus a storm in a teacup. Time to get
real on how Western citizens are being really manipulated by their own consumer-capitalist
cultures.
Levine's investigative reporting on the connection between the Silicon Valley tech giants and the military-intelligence community
has been
praised
by high-level
NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, and many others. [See my interviews of Drake here:
"Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing
drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google's involvement."
--
Gizmodo / March
6, 2018
Gizmodo's report on Google's work for the Pentagon has been making headlines all day. It's also thrown the normally placid halls
of Google's Mountain View HQ into chaos. Seems that Googlers can't believe that their awesome company would get involved in something
as heinous as helping the Pentagon increase its drone targeting capability.
But the fact that Google helps the military build more efficient systems of surveillance and death shouldn't be surprising, especially
not to Google employees. The truth is that Google has spent the last 15 years selling souped-up versions of its information technology
to military and intelligence agencies, local police departments, and military contractors of all size and specialization -- including
outfits that sell predictive policing tech deployed in cities across America today.
As I outline in my book
Surveillance Valley
, it started in 2003 with customized Google search solutions for data hosted by the CIA and NSA. The company's military contracting
work then began to expand in a major way after 2004, when Google cofounder Sergey Brin pushed for buying Keyhole, a mapping startup
backed by the CIA and the NGA, a sister agency to the NSA that handles spy satellite intelligence.
Spooks loved Keyhole because of the "video game-like" simplicity of its virtual maps. They also appreciated the ability to layer
visual information over other intelligence. The sky was the limit. Troop movements, weapons caches, real-time weather and ocean conditions,
intercepted emails and phone call intel, cell phone locations -- whatever intel you had with a physical location could be thrown
onto a map and visualized. Keyhole gave an intelligence analyst, a commander in the field, or an air force pilot up in the air the
kind of capability that we now take for granted: using digital mapping services on our computers and mobile phones to look up restaurants,
cafes, museums, traffic conditions, and subway routes. "We could do these mashups and expose existing legacy data sources in a matter
of hours, rather than weeks, months, or years," an NGA official gushed about Keyhole -- the company that we now know as Google Earth.
Military commanders weren't the only ones who liked Keyhole's ability to mash up data. So did Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
The purchase of Keyhole was a major milestone for Google, marking the moment the company stopped being a purely consumer-facing
Internet company and began integrating with the US government. While Google's public relations team did its best to keep the company
wrapped in a false aura of geeky altruism, company executives pursued an aggressive strategy to become the Lockheed Martin of the
Internet Age. "We're functionally more than tripling the team each year," a Google exec who ran Google Federal, the company's military
sales division, said in 2008.
It was true. With insiders plying their trade, Google's expansion into the world of military and intelligence contracting took
off.
"In 2007, it partnered with Lockheed Martin to design a visual intelligence system for the NGA that displayed US military
bases in Iraq and marked out Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad -- important information for a region that had experienced
a bloody sectarian insurgency and ethnic cleansing campaign between the two groups."
"In 2008, Google won a contract to run the servers and search technology that powered the CIA's Intellipedia, an intelligence
database modeled after Wikipedia that was collaboratively edited by the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other federal agencies."
"In 2010, as a sign of just how deeply Google had integrated with US intelligence agencies, it won a no-bid exclusive $27
million contract to provide the NGA with "geospatial visualization services," effectively making the Internet giant the "eyes"
of America's defense and intelligence apparatus."
"In 2008, Google entered into a three-way partnership with the NGA and a quasi-government company called GeoEye to launch
a spy satellite called GeoEye-1. The new satellite, which was funded in large part by the NGA, delivered extremely high-resolution
images for the exclusive use of NGA and Google."
A few years ago it started working with PredPol, a California-based predictive policing startup. "PredPol did more than simply
license Google's technology to render the mapping sys- tem embedded in its product but also worked with Google to develop customized
functionality, including 'building additional bells and whistles and even additional tools for law enforcement.'"
More from the book:
"Google has been tightlipped about the details and scope of its contracting business. It does not list this revenue in a separate
column in quarterly earnings reports to investors, nor does it provide the sum to reporters. But an analysis of the federal contracting
database maintained by the US government, combined with information gleaned from Freedom of Information Act requests and published
periodic reports on the company's military work, reveals that Google has been doing brisk business selling Google Search, Google
Earth, and Google Enterprise (now known as G Suite) products to just about every major military and intelligence agency: navy,
army, air force, Coast Guard, DARPA, NSA, FBI, DEA, CIA, NGA, and the State Department. Sometimes Google sells directly to the
government, but it also works with established contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and SAIC (Science
Applications International Corporation), a California-based intelligence mega-contractor that has so many former NSA employees
working for it that it is known in the business as 'NSA West.'"
The reason Hillary Clinton did not win despite the media and social media companies
doing everything they could to rig the election in her favor is because Facebook double
dipped and allowed Cambridge Analytica to use their surveying tools to collect user data on
tens of millions of users. This data was then used to target tens of millions of users with
political advertising using Facebook's ad platform based on psycholgoical profiles from
data they bought or acquired from Facebook.
Facebook is basically responsible for feeding the analytics system that enabled
Cambridge Analytica and the Trump campaign to be so targeted and effective with a minimal
budget.....
That's what happened, that's how Trump won. It wasn't the Russians, it was our own
social media companies who sold our data to the Trump campaign which they then likely used
to convince liberals not to vote in swing states.
It's both horrifying, and cleverly brilliant at the same time.
The funny thing is, Obama did something similar in 2012 and liberals celebrated. Not
so funny when the other team takes your trick and executes it more effectively now is
it?
There are way too many idiots. They will continue using it no matter what.
Notable quotes:
"... Readers report that Facebook keeps asking them to reactivate their accounts. Wolf confirms that and adds critically important point in his post: you can never escape Facebook. Facebook continues to sell your data even if you have "deleted" your account. ..."
"... By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf Street ..."
"... With credit bureaus, consumers have no choice. They're forced to be part of the credit-bureau data bases. Their data is collected, and there is nothing they can do about it. Consumer protection should be the number one priority. When companies get hacked and this consumer data gets stolen, there should be harsh punishments against these companies if they're found to have been negligent. Arthur Andersen comes to mind. ..."
"... But with Facebook and other social media platforms, there is no coercion. Consumers submit their most private data voluntarily -- nay, eagerly. They jump through hoops to share this stuff with the rest of the world. So maybe they only want to share it with x and not with y, but heck, they're uploading it to the Internet. What do they expect? ..."
"... And there is another difference between Equifax and Facebook: Equifax was hacked and the data was stolen ..."
"... But they do have a major trait in common: An aggrieved consumer cannot delete the data these outfits have collected on that consumer. While Facebook allows you to "delete" items and "delete" your account, the data stays behind on the server. It's available for all purposes; it's just not publicly viewable. ..."
"... With Facebook, consumers are in total control: They can just refuse to open an account. And if they have already opened an account, they can delete the app on their mobile devices, clean the cache on their computers, and swear to not ever again sign back in. If enough consumers do that, the whole construct would come down. ..."
"... Meanwhile, these dang trillions are flying by so fast, they're hard to see. Read US Gross National Debt Spikes $1.2 Trillion in 6 Months, Hits $21 Trillion ..."
Readers report that Facebook keeps asking them to reactivate their accounts. Wolf
confirms that and adds critically important point in his post: you can never escape Facebook.
Facebook continues to sell your data even if you have "deleted" your account.
I doubt enough people are aware of that issue. Having delete mean delete, as in Facebook
wipes your data entirely, should become a key demand in the row over Facebook's information
"sharing" policies.
By Wolf Richter, a San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and
author, with extensive international work experience. Originally published at Wolf
Street
Things at Facebook came to a head, following the disclosure that personal data from 50
million of its users had been given to a sordid outfit in the UK, Cambridge Analytica, whose
business model is to manipulate elections by hook or crook around the world, and which is now
getting vivisected by UK and US authorities.
The infamous "person familiar with the matter" told
Bloomberg that the Federal Trade Commission has opened an investigation into whether
Facebook violated a consent decree dating back to 2011, when Facebook settled similar
allegations -- giving user data to third parties without user's knowledge or consent.
Bloomberg:
Under the 2011 settlement, Facebook agreed to get user consent for certain changes to
privacy settings as part of a settlement of federal charges that it deceived consumers and
forced them to share more personal information than they intended. That complaint arose after
the company changed some user settings without notifying its customers, according to an FTC
statement at the time.
If Facebook is found to be in violation of the consent decree, the FTC can extract a fine of
$40,000 per day, per violation. Given the 50 million victims spread over so many days, this
could be some real money, so to speak.
Facebook said in a statement, cited by Bloomberg, that it rejected "any suggestion of
violation of the consent decree." It also said with tone-deaf Facebook hilarity, "Privacy and
data protections are fundamental to every decision we make."
That Facebook is collecting every little bit of personal data it can from its users and
their contacts and how they react to certain things, their preferences, their choices, physical
appearance -- photos, I mean come on -- clues about their personalities, and the like has been
known from day one. That's part of its business model. It's not a secret.
That third parties have access to this data has also been known at least since 2011.
Advertisers also have had access to certain types of data to target their ads.
And yet, Facebook's user base has grown. More than ever, people put their entire lives on
Facebook -- maybe not the kids, as they've become enamored with other platforms, but their
moms. Babies are on Facebook long before they have any idea what Facebook is. There's a
generation growing up that has been on Facebook since birth.
When the Equifax hack occurred last year -- which Equifax disclosed
graciously and partially months after the fact on September 7 -- the personal data of what
has now grown to 145.5 million consumers was stolen. This included names, birth dates, Social
Security numbers, addresses, and "in some instances," driver's license numbers, and other
data.
This shocked the world that pays attention to this because the data breach could unleash a
tsunami of identity theft. But most consumers who saw it in the media simply shrugged and went
on. They could have put a credit freeze on their accounts with the credit bureaus, thus making
it nearly impossible for someone else to get a loan or credit card in their name (identity
theft). But few consumers put a credit freeze on their accounts. Many consumers still don't
know what Equifax is or what it does, and when you discuss the situation, they think you're
spouting off conspiracy theories.
But there is a difference between credit bureaus such as Equifax and social media platforms
such as Facebook.
With credit bureaus, consumers have no choice. They're forced to be part of the
credit-bureau data bases. Their data is collected, and there is nothing they can do about it.
Consumer protection should be the number one priority. When companies get hacked and this
consumer data gets stolen, there should be harsh punishments against these companies if they're
found to have been negligent. Arthur Andersen comes to mind.
But with Facebook and other social media platforms, there is no coercion. Consumers
submit their most private data voluntarily -- nay, eagerly. They jump through hoops to share
this stuff with the rest of the world. So maybe they only want to share it with x and not with
y, but heck, they're uploading it to the Internet. What do they expect?
And there is another difference between Equifax and Facebook: Equifax was hacked and the
data was stolen . Facebook gave away the data as part of its business
model.
But they do have a major trait in common: An aggrieved consumer cannot delete the data
these outfits have collected on that consumer. While Facebook allows you to "delete" items and
"delete" your account, the data stays behind on the server. It's available for all purposes;
it's just not publicly viewable.
So now there's a hue and cry in the media about Facebook, put together by reporters who are
still active on Facebook and who have no intention of quitting Facebook. There has been no
panicked rush to "delete" accounts. There has been no massive movement to quit Facebook
forever. Facebook does what it does because it does it, and because it's so powerful that it
can do it. A whole ecosystem around it depends on the consumer data it collects.
Yes, there will be the usual ceremonies that Equifax also went through: CEO Zuckerberg may
get to address the Judiciary Committee in Congress. The questions thrown at him for public
consumption will be pointed. But behind the scenes, away from the cameras, there will be the
usual backslapping between lawmakers and corporations. Publicly, there will be some
wrist-slapping and some lawsuits, and all this will be settled and squared away in due time.
Life will go on. Facebook will continue to collect the data because consumers continue to
surrender their data to Facebook voluntarily. And third parties will continue to have access to
this data.
With Facebook, consumers are in total control: They can just refuse to open an account.
And if they have already opened an account, they can delete the app on their mobile devices,
clean the cache on their computers, and swear to not ever again sign back in. If enough
consumers do that, the whole construct would come down.
The only act that would change anything is if consumers massively and forever abandon
Facebook and platforms like it, and never-ever sign on again. That would bulldoze the whole
problem away. But that's not going to happen because consumers don't want it to happen.
So as far as I'm concerned, people who are still active on Facebook cannot be helped. They
should just enjoy the benefits of having their lives exposed to the world and serving as a
worthy tool and resource for corporate interests, political shenanigans, election manipulators,
jealous exes, and other facts of life.
As it turns out, Ulbricht's lawyers were on to something.
In a blockbuster report published Tuesday in
the Intercept, reporter Sam Biddle cited several documents included in the massive cache of
stolen NSA documents that showed that the agency has been tracking bitcoin users since 2013,
and has potentially been funneling some of this information to other federal agencies. Or, as
Biddle puts it, maybe the conspiracy theorists were right.
It turns out the conspiracy theorists were onto something. Classified documents provided
by whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the National Security Agency indeed worked urgently
to target Bitcoin users around the world - and wielded at least one mysterious source of
information to "help track down senders and receivers of Bitcoins," according to a top-secret
passage in an internal NSA report dating to March 2013. The data source appears to have
leveraged the NSA's ability to harvest and analyze raw, global internet traffic while also
exploiting an unnamed software program that purported to offer anonymity to users, according
to other documents.
Using its ability to siphon data directly from the fiber-optic cables, the NSA managed to
develop a system for tracing transactions that went well beyond simple blockchain analysis. The
agency relied on a program called MONKEYROCKET , a sham Internet-anonymizing service that,
according to the documents, was primarily deployed in Asia, Africa and South America with the
intention of thwarting terrorists.
The documents indicate that "tracking down" Bitcoin users went well beyond closely
examining Bitcoin's public transaction ledger, known as the Blockchain, where users are
typically referred to through anonymous identifiers; the tracking may also have involved
gathering intimate details of these users' computers.
The NSA collected some Bitcoin users' password information, internet activity, and a type
of unique device identification number known as a MAC address, a March 29, 2013 NSA memo
suggested. In the same document, analysts also discussed tracking internet users' internet
addresses, network ports, and timestamps to identify "BITCOIN Targets."
...
The NSA's budding Bitcoin spy operation looks to have been enabled by its unparalleled
ability to siphon traffic from the physical cable connections that form the internet and
ferry its traffic around the planet. As of 2013, the NSA's Bitcoin tracking was achieved
through program code-named OAKSTAR, a collection of covert corporate partnerships enabling
the agency to monitor communications, including by harvesting internet data as it traveled
along fiber optic cables that undergird the internet.
...
Specifically, the NSA targeted Bitcoin through MONKEYROCKET, a sub-program of OAKSTAR,
which tapped network equipment to gather data from the Middle East, Europe, South America,
and Asia, according to classified descriptions. As of spring 2013, MONKEYROCKET was "the sole
source of SIGDEV for the BITCOIN Targets," the March 29, 2013 NSA report stated, using the
term for signals intelligence development, "SIGDEV," to indicate the agency had no other way
to surveil Bitcoin users. The data obtained through MONKEYROCKET is described in the
documents as "full take" surveillance, meaning the entirety of data passing through a network
was examined and at least some entire data sessions were stored for later analysis.
Naturally, once the NSA got involved, the notion of anonymity - whether with bitcoin, or
even some of the privacy-oriented coins like Zcash - was completely crushed.
Emin Gun Sirer, associate professor and co-director of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies
and Contracts at Cornell University, told The Intercept that financial privacy "is something
that matters incredibly" to the Bitcoin community, and expects that "people who are privacy
conscious will switch to privacy-oriented coins" after learning of the NSA's work here.
Despite Bitcoin's reputation for privacy, Sirer added, "when the adversary model involves the
NSA, the pseudonymity disappears. You should really lower your expectations of privacy on
this network."
Green, who co-founded and currently advises a privacy-focused Bitcoin competitor named
Zcash, echoed those sentiments, saying that the NSA's techniques make privacy features in any
digital currencies like Ethereum or Ripple "totally worthless" for those targeted.
While bitcoin appeared to be the NSA's top target, it wasn't the agency's only priority. The
NSA also used its unparalleled surveillance powers to take down Liberty Reserve - a kind of
proto-ICO that was involved in money laundering. Though the company was based in Costa Rica,
the Department of Justice partnered with the IRS and Department of Homeland Security to arrest
its founder and hand him a 20-year prison sentence.
The March 15, 2013 NSA report detailed progress on MONKEYROCKET's Bitcoin surveillance and
noted that American spies were also working to crack Liberty Reserve, a far seedier
predecessor. Unlike Bitcoin, for which facilitating drug deals and money laundering was
incidental to bigger goals, Liberty Reserve was more or less designed with criminality in
mind. Despite being headquartered in Costa Rica, the site was charged with running a $6
billion "laundering scheme" and triple-teamed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland
Security, and the IRS, resulting in a 20-year conviction for its Ukrainian founder. As of
March 2013 -- just two months before the Liberty Reserve takedown and indictment -- the NSA
considered the currency exchange its No. 2 target, second only to Bitcoin. The indictment and
prosecution of Liberty Reserve and its staff made no mention of help from the NSA.
Of course, several of the agency's defenders argued that the notion that the NSA would use
these programs to spy on innocuous bitcoin users is "pernicious", according to one expert
source.
The hypothesis that the NSA would "launch an entire operation overseas under false
pretenses" just to track targets is "pernicious," said Matthew Green, assistant professor at
the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute. Such a practice could spread
distrust of privacy software in general, particularly in areas like Iran where such tools are
desperately needed by dissidents. This "feeds a narrative that the U.S. is untrustworthy,"
said Green. "That worries me."
But forget bitcoin: the notion that the NSA has been illegally feeding intelligence to other
federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies has been a watershed issue for civil
libertarians, with implications far beyond cryptocurrency money laundering . The process, known
as "parallel construction", would, if definitive proof could ever be obtained by a defense
attorney, render an entire case as inadmissible.
Civil libertarians and security researchers have long been concerned that otherwise
inadmissible intelligence from the agency is used to build cases against Americans though a
process known as "parallel construction": building a criminal case using admissible evidence
obtained by first consulting other evidence, which is kept secret, out of courtrooms and the
public eye. An earlier investigation by The Intercept, drawing on court records and documents
from Snowden, found evidence the NSA's most controversial forms of surveillance, which
involve warrantless bulk monitoring of emails and fiber optic cables, may have been used in
court via parallel construction.
The timing of the Intercept's report is also interesting.
We reported last year that a Russian national named Alexander Vinnick, the alleged
mastermind of a $4 billion bitcoin-based money laundering operation, had been arrested
following an indictment that levied 21 counts of money laundering and other crimes that could
land him in a US prison for up to 55 years.
And given the justice system's treatment of other cryptocurrency-related criminals, the
notion that Vinnick might spend multiple decades in prison is not beyond the realm of
possibility. Of course, if the case against him is built on illegally obtained evidence, one
would think his defense team would want to know.
Heavily redacted versions of the Snowden documents
are available on the Intercept's website.
"NSA Has Been Tracking Bitcoin Users Since 2013, New Snowden Documents Reveal"
Yep, I knew it! I've been trying to tell the crypto-enthusiasts that the gov't is on their
trail, but they are in utter denial. They think their tech is superior. Sad mistake.
So again I ask... can you say... "Poof it's gone!"
I don't believe the NSA knows the content of crypto transactions due to packet data
encryption. They do likely know the identities of frequent Bitcoin users via traffic
tracking. Infrequent users very unlikely. That's what the IT programmer in me says. But we're
talking Ed Snowden who knows a lot about networks and encryption. This suggests that NSA has
a man-in-the-middle attack.
Nobody cracked TOR and the code is open source. Identities were determined via the host
site communications not in TOR transit. The govt does have https keys - isp told me. But
software encrypted data in packets - no they don't. TOR and OpenPGP are very good to have
with govts and social media getting more abusive collecting/selling any data that will bring
a buck.
T he data analysis firm at the centre of a privacy scandal came under more pressure on
Monday when Channel 4 broadcast footage of Cambridge Analytica's chief executive discussing
using bribes, former spies and Ukrainian women to entrap politicians.
It emerged as the Information Commissioner said she was seeking a warrant to search its
computers and servers as part of investigation into the use of personal data of Facebook
users.
The controversy
wiped billions of dollars off Facebook's value as its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, faced
questions on both sides of the Atlantic about how a private company was able to gather personal
information of 50 million users.
"... "Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as "surveillance companies." Their rebranding as "social media" is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense." ..."
Well, there seems to be a new wrinkle in the Skripal hoax,
Adam Garrie muses :
"... whether the still evidence free accusations that Russia was behind the poisoning of a
former double-agent on UK soil, are not related to the breaking of the Cambridge Analytica
scandal. The revelations from Christopher Wylie were published by the New York Times and The
Observer (an off-shoot of The Guardian) on the 17th of March, just three days after the
British Prime Minister announced that she has found Russia guilty of murder, in spite of
failing to produce any real evidence. Logic would dictate that it took far more than three
days to produce and edit the piece about Wylie's revelations."
Assange, Snowden and others join Garrie in saying the real investigation ought to be of
Cambridge. Assange also notes on
his Twitter the massive mining the Obama campaign did via Facebook in 2012--an action it
appears Cambridge copied for Trump's campaign. Given the info on Assange's Twitter, Cambridge
and Facebook are both up to their necks in the illegal mining of personal data and worse.
"Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives
were once plainly described as "surveillance companies." Their rebranding as "social media"
is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of
Defense."
And an observation about the reports of Russian election ballot box stuffing -- none of the
reports I've seen say for which candidate the stuffing was for. Clearly, Putin didn't need
any help, so I suspect US/UK embassy staffers going around and trying to help their liberal
candidates get at least 1% of the vote. Russia's election authority did announce there were
irregularities including the stuffing, a fact omitted from the items I read, which all
implied it was Putin's team that did the deed.
NSA whistleblower and former CIA employee Edward Snowden slammed Facebook in a Saturday
tweet following the suspension of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and its political
data analytics firm, Cambridge Analytica, over what Facebook says was imporoper use of
collected data.
In a nutshell, in 2015 Cambridge Analytica bought data from a University of Cambridge
psychology professor, Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, who had developed an app called
"thisisyourdigitallife" that vacuumed up loads of information on users and their contacts.
After making Kogan and Cambridge Analytica promise to delete the data the app had gathered,
Facebook received reports (from sources they would not identify) which claimed that not all the
data had been deleted - which led the social media giant to delete Cambridge Analytica and
parent company SCL's accounts.
"By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and
Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned
of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from
Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge
Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data." - Facebook
Of note, Cambridge Analytica worked for Ted Cruz and Ben Carson during the 2016 election
before contracting with the Trump campaign. Cruz stopped using CA after their data modeling
failed to identify likely supporters.
In response to the ban, Edward Snowden fired off two tweets on Saturday criticizing
Facebook, and claimed social media companies were simply "surveillance companies" who engaged
in a "successful deception" by rebranding themselves.
Snowden isn't the first big name to call out Silicon Valley companies over their data
collection and monitoring practices, or their notorious intersection with the U.S.
Government.
In his 2014 book:
When Google Met WikiLeaks
,
Julian Assange describes Google's close relationship with the NSA and the Pentagon.
Around the same time, Google was becoming involved in a program known as the "Enduring
Security Framework" (ESF), which entailed the sharing of information between Silicon Valley
tech companies and Pentagon-affiliated agencies "at network speed." Emails obtained in 2014
under Freedom of Information requests show Schmidt and his fellow Googler Sergey Brin
corresponding on first-name terms with NSA chief General Keith Alexander about ESF Reportage
on the emails focused on the familiarity in the correspondence: "General Keith . . . so great
to see you . . . !" Schmidt wrote. But most reports overlooked a crucial detail. " Your
insights as a key member of the Defense Industrial Base," Alexander wrote to Brin, "are
valuable to ensure ESF's efforts have measurable impact." -
Julian Assange
Kim Dotcom has also opined on social media's close ties to the government, tweeting in
February "Unfortunately all big US Internet companies are in bed with the deep state. Google,
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. are all providing backdoors to your data."
In 2013, the
Washington Post
and
The Guardian
revealed that the NSA has backdoor access to all major Silicon Valley social
media firms, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and
Apple - all through the notorious PRISM program which began in 2007 under the Protect America
Act. PRISM's existence was leaked by Edward Snowden before he entered into ongoing asylum in
Moscow. Microsoft was the first company to join the PRISM program.
The NSA has the ability to pull any sort of data it likes from these companies, but it
claims that it does not try to collect it all. The PRISM program goes above and beyond the
existing laws that state companies must comply with government requests for data, as it gives
the NSA direct access to each company's servers -- essentially letting the NSA do as it
pleases. -
The Verge
After PRISM's existence was leaked by Snowden, the Director of National Intelligence issued
a statment which stated that the only people targed by the programs are "outside the United
States," and that the program "does not allow" the targeting of citizens within US borders.
In 2006,
Wired
magazine published
evidence from a retired AT&T communications technician, Mark Klein, that revealed a secret
room used to "split" internet data at a San Francisco office as part of the NSA's bulk data
collection techniques used on millions of Americans.
During the course of that work, he learned from a co-worker that similar cabins were being
installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego, he
said.
The split circuits included traffic from peering links connecting to other internet
backbone providers, meaning that AT&T was also diverting traffic routed from its network
to or from other domestic and international providers , Klein said. -
Wired
"They are collecting everything on everybody," Klein said.
Well look on the bright side, only idiots are placing their most vital thoughts,
and innovations on Facebook or any social media for that matter. So basically
big brother has acres of databases full of idiotic things. Believe me, if it can
take humans a step into the future, its not on the web. So basically big brother
is mining through vast amounts of useless data. Here's your sign!
If you actually worked for the Navy for
any period of time, you should know that this government cannot tie its
own shoes. No way are any of your whacked-out conspiracy theories even
remotely possible.
Yes, Zuckerberg and the Winkelvoss twins came up with Facebook for
social reasons. The government spy agencies, who know a good opportunity
to use someone else's invention to serve their own ends when they see one,
co-opted it. It really doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.
The fact of WHO did this is irrelevant. What matters is that we should
have understood what this meant from the begining. Many did, many more
did not. We complain of being treated like sheep, bleeting all the way
to our pens.
What we must accept is that there are many who could
care less about liberty, happy to live in a cell, as long as th
econveniences continue to poor in.
I wonder how livestock feel about living in a pen while receiving
free food and healthcare? I wonder if given the choice of freedom or
feed lot, which way they would go. I think we see the answer in the
inner cities of our nation (and others).
It's all well and good to be disgusted by surveillance, but it's
ever-encroaching, and soon you won't be able to function without complying.
Privacy will be impossible, except for the elite for whom privacy will be
another luxury that they get which you don't. Sort of like a gun.
I initially thought Snowden was a traitor. But over careful examination, he
exposed lying by Brennan and Clapper, unwarranted surveillance of Americans
and lot of complete lies told by the government to We The People.
Well look on the bright side, only idiots are placing their most vital
thoughts, and innovations on Facebook or any social media for that matter. So
basically big brother has acres of databases full of idiotic things. Believe
me, if it can take humans a step into the future, its not on the web. So
basically big brother is mining through vast amounts of useless data. Here's
your sign!
Tape over the user facing camera, don't use finger print to unlock, and dont
do voice search, it will buy you a bit more time before they can profile u
completely. Of course, stay away from FB. Install no script addon to your
Firefox browser.
That's where I'm counting on. Years of showing middle finger for every
potential partner related to potential use of this surveillance media. I
wanna piss everyone off big time, make myself active target, and to see what
happens.
Picture this: a civilization muzzled for decades upon decades by political
correctness, the pressures building inside people not being able to spout off
at the mouth. Then along comes the internet and socials where people can
imagine they're anonymously blabbing away at the keyboard. My point is that
most people mean very little of what they put on the web, it's just that the
dam broke with the onset of the web. That's another reason data collection is
useless.
"... The custom software program was secretly built last year to comply with a classified US government directive. The program scanned hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts, according to revelations first reported by Reuters. ..."
"... Surveillance experts told Reuters this is the first case to surface of an US internet company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to requests for stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time. ..."
The custom software program was secretly built last year to comply with a
classified US government directive. The program scanned hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail
accounts, according to revelations first reported by
Reuters.
It is not known whether the directive, which was sent to the company's legal team, came from
the National Security Agency or the FBI, according to the two former Yahoo employees. It is
also not known what the intelligence officials were seeking, except wanting the company to
search for a set of characters, which could mean a phrase in an email or an attachment.
The former employees said Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's decision to follow the directive angered
some senior executive and led to the departure of Alex Stamos, the company's chief information
officer.
When Stamos discovered Mayer had authorized the program, he told his subordinates that he
had been left out of a decision that hurt users' security, the sources said. Due to a
programming flaw, he told them, hackers could have accessed the stored emails.
Yahoo said in a statement issued to Reuters about the intelligence demand that it "is a law
abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States."
Surveillance experts told Reuters this is the first case to surface of an US internet
company agreeing to a spy agency's demand by searching all arriving messages, as opposed to
requests for stored messages or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.
"... by Norman Solomon Posted on March 09, 2018 ..."
"... "If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful policies or an aggressive war," he said in a statement released last week, "don't wait to put that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself . Do what Katharine Gun did." ..."
"... That's the kind of reality George Orwell was referring to when he wrote: "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." ..."
"... What Ellsberg read in the newspaper story "was a cable from the NSA asking GCHQ to help in the intercepting of communications, and that implied both office and home communications, of every member of the Security Council of the UN. ..."
"... Now, why would NSA need GCHQ to do that? Because a condition of having the UN headquarters and the Security Council in the US in New York was that the US intelligence agencies promised or were required not to conduct intelligence on members of the UN. Well, of course they want that. So, they rely on their allies, their buddies in the British GCHQ, to commit these criminal acts for them. And with this clearly I thought someone very high in access in Britain intelligence services must dissent from what was already clear the path to an illegal war. ..."
Those Who Controlled the Past Should Not Control the Future
by Norman Solomon
Posted on
March 09, 2018
Daniel Ellsberg has a message that managers of the warfare state don't
want people to hear.
"If you have information that bears on deception or illegality in pursuing wrongful
policies or an aggressive war," he said in a statement released last week, "don't wait to put
that out and think about it, consider acting in a timely way at whatever cost to yourself . Do
what Katharine Gun did."
If you don't know what Katharine Gun did, chalk that up to the media power of the war
system.
Ellsberg's
video statement went public as this month began, just before the 15th anniversary of when a
British newspaper, the Observer , revealed a secret NSA memo – thanks to
Katharine Gun. At the UK's intelligence agency GCHQ, about 100 people received the same email
memo from the National
Security Agency on the last day of January 2003, seven weeks before the invasion of Iraq got
underway. Only Katharine Gun, at great personal risk, decided to leak the document.
If more people had taken such risks in early 2003, the Iraq War might have been prevented.
If more people were willing to take such risks in 2018, the current military slaughter in
several nations, mainly funded by U.S. taxpayers, might be curtailed if not stopped. Blockage
of information about past whistleblowing deprives the public of inspiring role models.
That's the kind of reality George Orwell was referring to when he wrote: "Who controls
the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
Fifteen years ago, "I find myself reading on my computer from the Observer the most
extraordinary leak, or unauthorized disclosure, of classified information that I'd ever seen,"
Ellsberg recalled, "and that definitely included and surpassed my own disclosure of top-secret
information, a history of US decision-making in Vietnam years earlier." The Pentagon Papers
whistleblower instantly recognized that, in the Observer article, "I was looking at
something that was clearly classified much higher than top secret . It was an operational cable
having to do with how to conduct communications intelligence."
What Ellsberg read in the newspaper story "was a cable from the NSA asking GCHQ to help
in the intercepting of communications, and that implied both office and home communications, of
every member of the Security Council of the UN.
Now, why would NSA need GCHQ to do that? Because a condition of having the UN
headquarters and the Security Council in the US in New York was that the US intelligence
agencies promised or were required not to conduct intelligence on members of the UN. Well, of
course they want that. So, they rely on their allies, their buddies in the British GCHQ, to
commit these criminal acts for them. And with this clearly I thought someone very high in
access in Britain intelligence services must dissent from what was already clear the path to an
illegal war. "
Best Buy's Geek Squad has been discovered acting as undercover FBI informants, snooping on
their customers' computers and reporting anything that looks amiss to the FBI...for cash
payments!
And Google is teaming up with the Pentagon to help it better analyze drone footage
for targeting and other purposes.
While once it seemed the big tech firms would provide us
protection against the ever-prying eyes of the national security state, it seems now they have
become arms of the national security state. We look at this troubling phenomenon in today's
Liberty Report:
"... Of course, the whole idea of having secret courts applying secret law in secret decisions without adversary parties, and no mandatory disclosure after the fact, is also fundamentally incompatible with the idea of transparency and accountability, without which free speech and elections are little more than a travelling circus and a vehicle for advertising profit. ..."
We have come a long way from the reactionary and authoritarian chants of "if you have done
nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide" in the lead-up and then wake of the sarcastically
name PATRIOT Act.
Surveillance and monitoring are, like all other "national securities" spending, primarily
profit extraction driven public-private "partnerships", but the major point here always was
"if you build it, they will use it".
That, too, is the foundational criticism driving Global Zero and the insistence that
Article IV of the Non-Proliferation Treaty be honored by all signatory nuclear powers.
The basic principle of any evolutionary stable open society based on checks and balances
is that no self-inflating institutions and power centers are permissible – whether that
is inbred, networked multi-generational wealth, incorporated power such as financial
institutions, or specific government institutions, such as the military, the "intelligence"
agencies etc.
Of course, the whole idea of having secret courts applying secret law in secret
decisions without adversary parties, and no mandatory disclosure after the fact, is also
fundamentally incompatible with the idea of transparency and accountability, without which
free speech and elections are little more than a travelling circus and a vehicle for
advertising profit.
"... The legitimate Tor application for Android ("Orbot") doesn't do that. You either downloaded a second-party Tor impostor app, or you have some OS problem with your phone. ..."
"... Google doesn't need Tor's help, or anyone's help, to collect data directly from your phone on behalf of the USG. ..."
"... It was born our of a need for internal use, but not internal use only. In fact, it required external users to provide cover for internal users. ..."
When I upgraded the Tor in my Android, it requested access to my phone hardware no. and
all communication records. I was just wondering why the developers of Tor needed this
information. Now, I think I have the answer.
The legitimate Tor application for Android ("Orbot") doesn't do that. You either
downloaded a second-party Tor impostor app, or you have some OS problem with your phone.
Google doesn't need Tor's help, or anyone's help, to collect data directly from your phone
on behalf of the USG.
It's was either born out of a need for something secure for INTERNAL USE ONLY (and it got
out)... or it's a big cluster fuck for those seeking online privacy.
I don't really know enough about how Tor works to make a informed opinion.
"... I find it absurd that anyone is making it news that foreign governments are trying to find ways to manipulate White House connected officials. Surely this is the nature of the beast. Both in the US and in foreign governments. Why would anyone expect anything different. Ah, yes, because everyone in the US government is supposed to be honest, honorable, and of impeccable character (and brilliant to boot) - whereas anyone in a foreign government is a scumbag capable only of nefarious intentions and criminal methods. ..."
"... So, yes, our leakers are revealing our SIGINT capabilities - without revealing how it's done. But since Snowden, my guess is most foreign government officials have already been told by their intelligence people that nothing they say is really secure unless it's face to face in a SCIF. ..."
I find it absurd that anyone is making it news that foreign governments are trying to
find ways to manipulate White House connected officials. Surely this is the nature of the
beast. Both in the US and in foreign governments. Why would anyone expect anything different.
Ah, yes, because everyone in the US government is supposed to be honest, honorable, and of
impeccable character (and brilliant to boot) - whereas anyone in a foreign government is a
scumbag capable only of nefarious intentions and criminal methods.
Well, the latter might be true - but it's also true of the former.
As for SIGINT leaks, I suspect anyone in any government who isn't assuming their most
encrypted conversations are immediately revealed to the NSA are idiots. If they don't know
how it's being done, I would imagine they've already ordered their intelligence people to
find out how. In the meantime, they're resigned to speaking over any communication link only
information that isn't "Eyes Only" military technology secrets.
And even that isn't necessarily true. Yesterday Putin revealed no less than FIVE major
Russian military breakthroughs in a speech.
So, yes, our leakers are revealing our SIGINT capabilities - without revealing how
it's done. But since Snowden, my guess is most foreign government officials have already been
told by their intelligence people that nothing they say is really secure unless it's face to
face in a SCIF.
I have a meme I use in computer security: "You can haz better security, you can haz worse
security. But you cannot haz 'security'. There is no security. Deal." It would behoove most
people to take that to heart.
However, the Colonel is certainly correct in that our leakers appear intent to reveal our
secrets for political purposes - and they should be arrested and imprisoned for that.
For fun I often run NORDvpn which apparently keeps no records, and you can even use its
double VPN if you want (vpn in vpn tunnel),
PLUS Opera with javascript disabled, AdBlock, Click&Clean, DuckDuckGo privacy
essentials, WebRTC leak control....and set your PC time to that of your vpn server.
You think that protects you? - well not really - each browser has a 'finger print' - the
way you set up your browser, with add-ons etc gives it a finger print - so your setup maybe
equivalent to 1 in 10,000 globally - and if they narrow down your location, maybe 1 in 5 and
so on.
"... It wasn't until 2013, however, that the issue gained wider public attention when it was revealed that an SS7 network had been exploited for purposes of illicit information gathering. ..."
"... Subsequent incidents have since revealed that unauthorised access to the network is not only possible but far simpler to achieve than was once believed. Networks are vulnerable to fraud and misuse, with loopholes in the SS7 protocol being used to steal money, listen in on conversations, monitor messages, determine a subscriber's location, manipulate network and subscriber data, and generally disrupt services. ..."
"... an attacker can leverage data commonly used for real-time tariffing of a subscriber's incoming calls to determine the subscriber's location to within a few hundred metres. ..."
"... More worryingly, a spoofed MSC/VLR zone can allow attackers to intercept incoming SMS messages, from which they can gain critical personal information and sensitive data such as one-time mobile banking passwords, two-factor authentication interactions, and password resets for various services including email accounts or social networks. ..."
Signaling networks enable the exchange of information that sets up, controls and terminates
phone calls.
Signaling System No. 7, or SS7, is widely used by mobile companies to enable subscribers to
communicate with anyone, anywhere. The central nervous system of a mobile operator's network,
it contains mission-critical real-time data such as a subscriber's identity, status, location,
and technology, providing the operator with the ability to manage communications, as well as
bill subscribers for the services they provide.
As each network component in a core network uses SS7 to interface with other network
components, any vulnerability related to the SS7 protocol could severely threaten the trust and
privacy of subscribers.
Gaining access to the information it holds and using it for commercial or nefarious ends can
prove very valuable to the right person. So when you consider that the SS7 network has more
users worldwide than the Internet, it's perhaps little surprise that operators and subscribers
alike are seriously concerned about its security.
Using SS7 to exploit the mobile network
Designed for use as a 'trusted network', it has since transpired that the network is not as
secure as was once believed. Indeed, vulnerabilities in SS7 were being publicly discussed as
long ago as 2008.
Telecom engineers had warned of possible risks and even top government officials were
voicing concern about its security after a German researcher was able to demonstrate how the
protocol could be used to determine the location of a mobile phone.
It wasn't until 2013, however, that the issue gained wider public attention when it was
revealed that an SS7 network had been exploited for purposes of illicit information
gathering.
Subsequent incidents have since revealed that unauthorised access to the network is not only
possible but far simpler to achieve than was once believed. Networks are vulnerable to fraud
and misuse, with loopholes in the SS7 protocol being used to steal money, listen in on
conversations, monitor messages, determine a subscriber's location, manipulate network and
subscriber data, and generally disrupt services.
In the past, safety protocols around an SS7 network's hosts and communications channels
involved physical security, making it almost impossible to obtain access through a remote
unauthorised host. Today though, while the process of placing voice calls in modern mobile
networks still relies on SS7 technology dating back to the 70s, the deployment of new
signalling transport protocols known as SIGTRAN allow SS7 to run over IP.
Unfortunately, while this move offers the advantages of greater bandwidth, redundancy,
reliability, and access to IP-based functions and applications, it has also opened up new
points of vulnerability.
With the right technical skill and intent, it's possible for someone to use SS7 to exploit
the mobile network and its users.
Examples of exploitations
IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) is a unique subscriber identification used
by mobile network operators, and is generally considered to be secure and confidential. Using
the target subscriber's number, however, an attacker could exploit an SS7 vulnerability to
obtain the subscriber's IMSI as part of a routine SMS delivery protocol.
By using the IMSI in conjunction with the current Mobile Switching Centre (MSC) and Visitor
Location Register (VLR) address - also obtainable via an SS7 vulnerability - an attacker can
leverage data commonly used for real-time tariffing of a subscriber's incoming calls to
determine the subscriber's location to within a few hundred metres.
The combination of IMSI and current MSC/VLR address can also be used to block a subscriber
from receiving incoming calls and text messages by registering the handset in a spoofed
coverage zone; an experience similar to being a roaming subscriber registered on a different
network.
More worryingly, a spoofed MSC/VLR zone can allow attackers to intercept incoming SMS
messages, from which they can gain critical personal information and sensitive data such as
one-time mobile banking passwords, two-factor authentication interactions, and password resets
for various services including email accounts or social networks.
Similarly, it's possible to intercept incoming voice calls and illegally monitor
conversations, or redirect calls to expensive international numbers or pay-per-use schemes
where voice traffic can be monetised.
Of considerable concern to many, USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) commands are
widely used by subscribers in some markets as a means of communicating directly with the
automated billing or payment services offered by mobile network providers or those partners
offering monetary transactions and banking services.
Attackers are able to use USSD commands to spoof transactions such as authorising purchases
or transferring funds between accounts. And, by intercepting incoming SMS messages confirming
the transactions, they can go undetected for some time.
Building and implementing solutions
With potential threats to the SS7 network coming from a growing number of sources including
hackers and fraudsters with criminal intent, operators are under increasing pressure to protect
the privacy of their subscribers.
The mobile ecosystem has begun work on defining recommendations, and building and
implementing solutions to detect and prevent potential attacks. Operators need a solution that
is easy to deploy whilst being comprehensive, and which ideally should overlay existing
architecture, eliminating the need and expense of redesigning that which is already in
place.
Not only should it block suspicious traffic, but it should also use global threat
intelligence and advanced analytics to secure the network against privacy and fraud
attacks.
Mobile communications are a prime target for hackers looking to exploit personal information
as well as penetrate critical infrastructure and businesses, and SS7 vulnerabilities provide
the way in they're looking for. It's crucial therefore that the ecosystem works together to
quickly find and implement protective measures now, before subscribers, businesses and even
governments are severely impacted.
"... None of the articles you linked to provided any clear indication that Russian secure communications were compromised or that there was a drop in productivity of any USI penetration operations. ..."
"... The common denominator in all this reporting is the SS7 exploitation that was known for a long time and was publicly explained at the 2014 Chaos Computer Communications convention in Berlin. ..."
"... This was probably how Nuland's "F the EU" conversation was picked up. This is no longer a technical breach of secure communications. It's a breach of human behavior. These smartphones are ubiquitous and open everyone around them to 24/7 surveillance. ..."
None of the articles you linked to provided any clear indication that Russian secure
communications were compromised or that there was a drop in productivity of any USI
penetration operations.
The most recent account talks about intelligence briefings provided
to McMaster. These briefings could have referred to SIGINT outside of secure diplomatic
communications or even diplomatic cocktail party chitchat. Much of the reporting about
Kislyak referred to conversations with Trump associates. Certainly that wasn't secure
communications systems.
The common denominator in all this reporting is the SS7 exploitation that was known for a
long time and was publicly explained at the 2014 Chaos Computer Communications convention in
Berlin.
This was probably how Nuland's "F the EU" conversation was picked up. This is no
longer a technical breach of secure communications. It's a breach of human behavior. These
smartphones are ubiquitous and open everyone around them to 24/7 surveillance.
Having said all that, I agree with you in considering these disclosures felonious.
The Tor Project - a private nonprofit known as the "
NSA-proof"
gateway to the "dark web,"
turns out to be
almost "100% funded by the US government
" according to documents
obtained by investigative journalist and author Yasha Levine.
The Tor browser, launched in 2001, utilizes so-called "onion routing" technology developed by the
US Navy in 1998 to provide anonymity over computer networks.
In a recent
blog post
,
Levine details how he was able to obtain roughly
2,500 pages
of correspondence via FOIA requests while performing research for a book. The
documents include strategy, contract, budgets and status updates between the Tor project and its
primary source of funding; a CIA spinoff known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), which
"oversees America's foreign broadcasting operations like Radio Free Asia and Radio Free Europe."
By following the money,
I discovered that Tor was not a grassroots
. I was able
to show that despite its indie radical cred and claims to help its users protect themselves from
government surveillance online,
Tor was almost 100% funded by three U.S. National Security
agencies: the Navy, the State Department and the BBG.
Following the money revealed that
Tor was not a grassroots outfit, but a military contractor with its own government contractor
number.
In other words: it was a privatized extension of the very same government that it
claimed to be fighting.
The documents conclusively showed that Tor is not independent at all.
The
organization did not have free reign to do whatever it wanted, but was kept on a very short leash
and bound by contracts with strict contractual obligations.
It was also required to file
detailed monthly status reports that gave the U.S. government a clear picture of what Tor employees
were developing, where they went and who they saw.
-
Yasha Levine
The FOIA documents also suggest that
Tor's ability to shield users from government spying
may be nothing more than hot air.
While no evidence of a "backdoor" exists, the documents
obtained by Levine reveal that Tor has "no qualms with privately tipping off the federal government to
security vulnerabilities before alerting the public, a move that would give the feds an opportunity to
exploit the security weakness long before informing Tor users."
Exit nodes
Cybersecurity experts have noted for years that while Tor may be technically anonymous in theory -
the 'exit nodes' where traffic leaves the secure "onion" protocol and is decrypted can be established
by anyone - including government agencies.
Anyone running an exit node can read the traffic passing through it.
In 2007 Egerstad set up just five Tor exit nodes and used them to intercept thousands of private
emails, instant messages and email account credentials.
Amongst his unwitting victims were the Australia, Japanese, Iranian, India and Russia embassies,
the Iranian Foreign Ministry, the Indian Ministry of Defence and the Dalai Lama's liaison office.
He concluded that people were using Tor in the mistaken belief that it was an end-to-end
encryption tool.
It is many things, but it isn't that.
Dan Egerstad proved then that exit nodes were a fine place to spy on people
and
his research convinced him in 2007, long before Snowden, that
governments were funding
expensive, high bandwidth exit nodes for exactly that purpose
. -
Naked Security
Interestingly, Edward Snowden is a big fan of Tor - even throwing a "cryptoparty" while he was
still an NSA contractor where he set up a Tor exit node to show off how cool they are.
In a
2015
interview
with
The Intercept's
(Wikileaks hating) Micah Lee, Snowden said:
LEE:
What do you think about Tor?
Do you think that everyone should be familiar
with it, or do you think that it's only a use-it-if-you-need-it thing?
SNOWDEN:
I think Tor is the most important privacy-enhancing technology project being
used today.
"Tor Browser is a great way to selectively use Tor to look something up and not leave a trace that
you did it. It can also help bypass censorship when you're on a network where certain sites are
blocked.
If you want to get more involved, you can volunteer to run your own Tor node, as I
do, and support the diversity of the Tor network."
This should not be a surprise at all. Tor's own release notes state it was developed
by the US with the aim of allowing citizens in repressive countries to communicate
over the Internet without their governments being able to read the traffic. People
who don't read the instruction manual deserve what happens to them.
Nice indictment of every spy and every military service member
in history. Not everyone can code. And most people who think
they can write secure software, can't.
Is Tor via Tails safe?
"Safe" is not an either-or thing. Make a threat model and
conduct an assessment or go home.
No, the internet was set up as a communications system for government and
academic research centers. It was transformed into an intelligence-gathering
system decades later, when it began to be used by the public.
Peer to peer networks are very costly. The
cheapest to set up and operate are hub & spoke. This means you end up with
big hubs which are easy to monitor.
If you want to avoid this you need to look into mobile and wifi peer to
peer networking.
Peer-to-peer wifi is trivial to set up. If you're talking about mesh or
other decentralized wifi, it's nontrivial but it's not "very costly".
Look at Freifunk BATMAN.
In cities like New York with SIGINT packages
integrated into every public wifi kiosk, it gives no privacy advantage.
Outside of cities it may provide a privacy advantage, but only if you
are not being actively targeted by widely-available police SIGINT
equipment.
This is hardly breaking news, on many of the sites you can download TOR from there
is a little preface about its history, so anyone that has used TOR and read anything
about it will find that it was developed by the CIA/FBI for their operatives.
but it is still very useful if you live somewhere that has any form of
censorship. but you are better of using a VPN for downloading anything you do not
want screened.
but if a government actively wants to track you, they will.
However the Tor system is a product of DARPA and now we have reports that the
supposedly 'non-profit' Tor of today is in fact nearly 100 percent funded by some very scary
US agencies. Including the Broadcasting Board of Governors the US propaganda arm that runs
Radio Liberty, Radio free Europe etc
This based on Freedom of Information requests that netted 2,500 pages of documents
' employees of the non-profit met regularly with the Department of Justice, the FBI, and
other three-letter agencies for training sessions and conferences, where the agencies
pitched their software needs, the documents show '
My rule of thumb is to assume that the massive NSA data scooping is able to get everything
that goes online and I have long suspected that services like Tor and VPNs are actually
convenient backdoors for the malefactors
The basic assumption is that there is no online anonymity the smartphone is the ideal
spying device even better than the computer since it also tracks your movements
When I first read this editorial, I assumed it would not be open to comments. Then
later I saw it was. The first half dozen comment were deleted by moderators and then there was
a blizzard of 'american bots' praising the article.
What amazed me was why Putin, who has reversed the shock doctrine neoliberal attack on
Russia and reversed declining mortality rate, raised living standards etc., etc. in Russia and
very logically has a very high approval rating, 80% or so, would need to 'steal' the
election.
The observer/guardian is mindblowing in its simplicity and assumptions that its
readership are complete idiots to be drip fed any old crap about USA good, Russia bad. That
paper sinks further and further into the morass of insignificance.
It's part of a web of stories designed to reinforce each other aka perception management.
Google any of the subjects and the establishment viewpoint will come first, second and third.
"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own
understanding of
US intelligence bodies haven't particularly enjoyed their time in the spotlight these last
few years. The National Security Agency, or NSA, occupies a particularly complicated and
frustrating place in the collective unconscious: It's an institution we must trust with our
wellbeing on a daily basis, but it is also fundamentally unaccountable and untrustworthy. When
was the last time you voted for an NSA director?
So it might feel like schadenfreude to watch this feared and reviled agency fall into
disarray over the past half decade. But the truth is that the NSA still serves a vital purpose,
now more than ever, yet it is barely any longer able to do its job (ie. monitoring malign
foreign actors, anticipating the future moves of national governments, and keeping America's
intel safe from prying eyes). The latest crisis: the NSA's hemorrhaging of talent.
Hey,
Where's Everyone Going?
Of the country's 17 intelligence-gathering apparatuses, the NSA is the most prolific. The
agency's headquarters, located in Fort Meade, Md., staffs some 21,000 individuals. But their
heavy workload is now imperiled by a chronic flight of talent from the agency, described from
within as an "epidemic". It's hard to know exactly how bad of a situation we're talking about
because, of course, the NSA won't tell us details. But we do have some rough numbers:
• The NSA's current attrition rate for science, math and technology specialists is 5.6
percent.
• The attrition rate for hackers and cyberattack specialists is as high as 9
percent.
• And some teams within the NSA have lost as much as
half their staff .
Interestingly, between 2016 and 2017, the agency made the conspicuous decision to remove all
references to "openness," "honor" and "trust" from its core values and mission statements.
Which begs the question: Is it any wonder nobody wants to work there?
... ... ...
Kate Harveston is a journalist and a member of the CODEPINK communications team.
Interesting information Guccifer II. He falsified the evidence.
Follow the money. Along with a smoke screen for Hillary political fiasco, Russiagate is a swindle to get more money for intelligence
agencies and MIC. For about 15 companies who run the US foreign policy.
Notable quotes:
"... The CIA and NSA, and other intelligence agencies all work on behalf of these corporate entities. There main objective is to keep us all uninformed and dumber than a bag of hammers, so they can extort all the wealth from our great nation ..."
"... If this video won't stop the brainless McCarthyist regressives from knowing the truth about Russiagate, nothing will. And I mean absolutely nothing. Except maybe if they come here to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NYC. We got lots of Russian immigrants here and they are just normal people ..."
"... Russiagate is an excuse to spend more on the military. Wow- surprising, yet somehow not surprising. American Empire is the biggest destabilizing force in the world ..."
"... Guccifer 2.0 is the United States government. Either the CIA, FBI, NSA or DHS. I'd say it was the CIA with the NSA being a close second ..."
Also, when did Russian hackers become so stupid? Since when has the GRU being unable to get even the basics like the up to
date email list for the Clinton campaign, started using two-year-old obsolete malware instead of 0-day exploits, completely forgetting
that VPN's exist and how to spoof an IP address, and on and on and on. These aren't the guys who cloned Nasdaq!
Thank you jimmy so much for doing this interview and thank you Bill Binney for so clearly explaining the technical and structural
reasons why Russiagate is both false and ceaselessly pushed. Amazing interview!
My experience working on the Mississippi democratic party executive committee, the Hinds county Executive committee, and working
for the state employees union here in Mississippi has educated me on the fact that democratic reps and republican reps work together
to pass legislation to benefit the corporate class i.e. business. All you who have replied to my comment make sense, but we must
remember that there is no difference between the Democratic and Republician parties, they all work for their corporate masters.
The CIA and NSA, and other intelligence agencies all work on behalf of these corporate entities. There main objective is
to keep us all uninformed and dumber than a bag of hammers, so they can extort all the wealth from our great nation. In other
words they our commiting treason upon the American people and our constitution and all should be through in prison for the rest
of their lives and all ill-gotten wealth given back to the people of these great nation by rebuilding the infrastructure of America,
investing in the education of our people to secure a prosperous future, and provide healthcare for all Americans. We can ensure
this happens in two ways, pass the 28th amendment and pass FDR's 2nd bill of rights(worker's bill of rights). This will ensure
that corporations will never take control of our country again.
Can we please now move onto whom the person was that stole the data from the DNC? Can I take a stab in the dark (or maybe two
shots to the back of the head?) and guess his name was Seth Rich?
I know I commented this already in the last segment, but this guy is absolutely awesome. Everything he says is substantial,
non-speculative and supported by facts. You're becoming a proper journalist Jimmy. More of people like this please. I got my credit
card again. I will donate shortly. Keep up.
As long as they keep lying about Russia they can continue the sanctions against Russia. Russia is holding it's own even with
the sanctions but originally under Putin Russia had paid off all it's debt to the IMF (World Bank). Now their debt is increasing,
partly because of the sanctions and partly because of helping Syria and preparing for the US to cause a great war. Russia is a
threat to the IMF (World Bank). Russia and China want trade outside of the Petrol Dollar. When Russia was debt free from the IMF
(World Bank) it was completely independent of them. Russia did not have to take orders from the international bankers. That is
why they lie about Russia.
If this video won't stop the brainless McCarthyist regressives from knowing the truth about Russiagate, nothing will. And
I mean absolutely nothing. Except maybe if they come here to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NYC. We got lots of Russian immigrants
here and they are just normal people.
Russiagate is an excuse to spend more on the military. Wow- surprising, yet somehow not surprising. American Empire is
the biggest destabilizing force in the world
As I tried to tell you the previous time you had referenced the "conclusions" of the CIA groups, this data nonsense he is handwaving
about is all quite feasible, by using a nearby national server, and much skepticism is deserved! Also he doesn't seem to know
what he is talking about, from all of the paraphrasing.
I am also quite reminded of the psychological incorporation into personal behaviors by habit of the standards and policies
of the industry or professional standards, which for the US Intelligence community includes an explicit policy of disinformation
and dishonesty.
How the hell would the NSA's "man in the middle" logging servers see that the transfer occurs to a local USB2 drive (he assumes
this is the case because 40 megabytes per second is approximately the rate of the USB2 protocol of 400 megabits per second...
Very few USB flash drives were manufactured with solid state storage chips fast enough to reach that full transfer rate before
the widespread adoption of USB3, or the modern USB3.1. Essentially, your chosen headline title is a false clickbait, because as
of today there is insufficient evidence to draw ANY conclusion
Just as they smeared Joe Wilson & his wife, and other great Courageous Americans that came out AGAINST the invasion of Iraq!
Until we start DEMANDING those LIARS leave their seats in Washington, put on the Military Gear, and GO to the Countries they want
to invade! I am past FED UP with them sacrificing our Troops, they return home to be MISTREATED, and kicked to the curb! Americans,
wake up and DEMAND that they GO!
A very interesting interview. It is almost one year old.
When intelligence agencies use the phase "with high confidence" means that they do not have evidence. This is one of
the biggest lie intelligence agencies resort to. They are all professional liars and should be treated as such.
If DNC email offloading was done over Internet (which means it was a hack not an internal leak) NSA should have the direct evidence.
They do not. So this is a progpaganda move by Brennan and Clapper to unleash MSM witch hunt, which is a key part of the color revolution
against Trump.
Another question is who downloaded this information to Wikileaks. Here NSA also should have evidence. And again they do not.
They have already to direct attention from the main issues. Oversight of intelligence agencies is joke. They can lie with impunity.
BTW NSA has all Hillary emails, including deleted.
He also exposes the NSA penchant for "swindles", such as preventing the plugging of holes in software around the world, to preserve
their spying access.
It's almost comical to hear that they lie to each other. No wonder why these retards in the mid-east and every other third
world country gets the better of us.
The Clinton campaign to divert attention to Russia instead of her myriad of crimes that were revealed during the election must
be stopped and the alt media needs to start talking about her and Obama's crimes again and demand justice...control the dialogue
"... The Deep State (Oligarchs and the MIC) is totally fucking loving this: they have Trump and the GOP giving them everything they ever wanted and they have the optics and distraction of an "embattled" president that claims to be against or a victim of the "deep state" and a base that rally's, circles the wagons around him, and falls for the narrative. ..."
"... They know exactly who it was with the memory stick, there is always video of one form or another either in the data center or near the premises that can indicate who it was. They either have a video of Seth Rich putting the stick into the server directly, or they at least have a video of his car entering and leaving the vicinity of the ex-filtration. ..."
"... This would have been an open and shut case if shillary was not involved. Since it was involved, you can all chalk it up to the Clinton body count. I pray that it gets justice. It and the country, the world - needs justice. ..."
Kim Dotcom has once again chimed in on the DNC hack, following a Sunday morning tweet from President Trump clarifying his previous
comments on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
In response, Dotcom tweeted " Let me assure you, the DNC hack wasn't even a hack. It was an insider with a memory stick. I know
this because I know who did it and why," adding "Special Counsel Mueller is not interested in my evidence. My lawyers wrote to him
twice. He never replied. 360 pounds! " alluding of course to Trump's "400 pound genius" comment.
Dotcom's assertion is backed up by an analysis done last year by a researcher who goes by the name Forensicator , who determined
that the DNC files were copied at
22.6 MB/s - a speed virtually impossible to achieve from halfway around the world, much less over a local network - yet a speed
typical of file transfers to a memory stick.
The local transfer theory of course blows the Russian hacking narrative out of the water, lending credibility to the theory that
the DNC "hack" was in fact an inside job, potentially implicating late DNC IT staffer, Seth Rich.
John Podesta's email was allegely successfully "hacked" (he fell victim to a
phishing scam
) in March 2016, while the DNC reported suspicious activity (the suspected Seth Rich file transfer) in late April, 2016 according
to the
Washington Post.
On May 18, 2017, Dotcom proposed that if Congress includes the Seth Rich investigation in their Russia probe, he would provide
written testimony with evidence that Seth Rich was WikiLeaks' source.
On May 19 2017 Dotcom tweeted "I knew Seth Rich. I was involved"
Three days later, Dotcom again released a guarded statement saying "I KNOW THAT SETH RICH WAS INVOLVED IN THE DNC LEAK," adding:
"I have consulted with my lawyers. I accept that my full statement should be provided to the authorities and I am prepared
to do that so that there can be a full investigation. My lawyers will speak with the authorities regarding the proper process.
If my evidence is required to be given in the United States I would be prepared to do so if appropriate arrangements are made.
I would need a guarantee from Special Counsel Mueller, on behalf of the United States, of safe passage from New Zealand to the
United States and back. In the coming days we will be communicating with the appropriate authorities to make the necessary arrangements.
In the meantime, I will make no further comment."
Dotcom knew.
While one could simply write off Dotcom's claims as an attention seeking stunt, he made several comments and a series of tweets
hinting at the upcoming email releases prior to both the WikiLeaks dumps as well as the publication of the hacked DNC emails to a
website known as "DCLeaks."
In a May 14, 2015
Bloomberg article entitled "Kim Dotcom: Julian Assange Will Be Hillary Clinton's Worst Nightmare In 2016 ": "I have to say it's
probably more Julian," who threatens Hillary, Dotcom said. " But I'm aware of some of the things that are going to be roadblocks
for her ."
Two days later, Dotcom tweeted this:
Around two months later, Kim asks a provocative question
Two weeks after that, Dotcom then tweeted "Mishandling classified info is a crime. When Hillary's emails eventually pop up on
the internet who's going to jail?"
It should thus be fairly obvious to anyone that Dotcom was somehow involved, and therefore any evidence he claims to have, should
be taken seriously as part of Mueller's investigation. Instead, as Dotcom tweeted, "Special Counsel Mueller is not interested in
my evidence. My lawyers wrote to him twice. He never replied. "
The Deep State (Oligarchs and the MIC) is totally fucking loving this: they have Trump and the GOP giving them everything
they ever wanted and they have the optics and distraction of an "embattled" president that claims to be against or a victim of
the "deep state" and a base that rally's, circles the wagons around him, and falls for the narrative.
Meanwhile they keep enacting the most Pro Deep State/MIC/Police State/Zionist/Wall Street agenda possible. And they call it
#winning
"Had to be a Russian mole with a computer stick. MSM, DNC and Muller say so."
They know exactly who it was with the memory stick, there is always video of one form or another either in the data center
or near the premises that can indicate who it was. They either have a video of Seth Rich putting the stick into the server directly,
or they at least have a video of his car entering and leaving the vicinity of the ex-filtration.
This would have been an open and shut case if shillary was not involved. Since it was involved, you can all chalk it up
to the Clinton body count. I pray that it gets justice. It and the country, the world - needs justice.
Kim is great, Assange is great. Kim is playing a double game. He wants immunity from the US GUmmint overreach that destroyed
his company and made him a prisoner in NZ.
Good on ya Kim.
His name was Seth Rich...and he will reach out from the grave and bury Killary who murdered him.
There are so many nuances to this and all are getting mentioned but the one that also stands out is that in an age of demands
for gun control by the Dems, Seth Rich is never, ever mentioned. He should be the poster child for gun control. Young man, draped
in a American flag, helping democracy, gunned down...it writes itself.
They either are afraid of the possible racial issues should it turn out to be a black man killing a white man (but why should
that matter in a gun control debate?) or they just don't want people looking at this case. I go for #2.
Funny that George Webb can figure it out, but Trump, Leader of the Free World, is sitting there with his dick in his hand waiting
for someone to save him.
Whatever he might turn out to be, this much is clear: Trump is a spineless weakling. He might be able to fuck starlets, but
he hasn't got the balls to defend either himself or the Republic.
Webb's research is also...managed. But a lot of it was/is really good (don't follow it anymore) and I agree re: SR piece of
it.
I think SR is such an interesting case. It's not really an anomaly because SO many Bush-CFR-related hits end the same way and
his had typical signatures. But his also squeels of a job done w/out much prior planning because I think SR surprised everyone.
If, in fact, that was when he was killed. Everything regarding the family's demeanor suggests no.
MANY patterns in shootings: failure in law enforcement/intelligence who were notified of problem individuals ahead of time,
ARs, mental health and SSRIs, and ongoing resistance to gun control in DC ----these are NOT coincidences. Nor are distractions
in MSM's version of events w/ controlled propaganda.
Children will stop being killed when America wakes the
fuck up and starts asking the right questions, making the right demands. It's time.
I don't think you know how these hackers have nearly ALL been intercepted by CIA--for decades now. DS has had backdoor access
to just about all of them. I agree that Kim is great, brilliant and was sabotaged but he's also cooperating. Otherwise he'd be
dead.
Bes is either "disinfo plant" or energy draining pessimist. Result is the same - to deflate your power to create a new future.
Trump saw the goal of the Fed Reserve banksters decades ago and spoke often about it. Like Prez Kennedy he wants to return
USA economy to silver or gold backed dollar then transition to new system away from the Black Magic fed reserve/ tax natl debt
machine.
The Globalist Cabal has been working to destroy the US economy ever since they income tax April 15th Lincoln at the Ford theater.
125 years. But Bes claims because Trump cannot reverse 125 years of history in one year that it is kabuki.
Disobedient Media previously opined on the dagger-in-the-back publication of a hit piece
against Wikileaks' Julian Assange just one day after a UK magistrate, with blatant conflict of
interest in the matter, shot down his legal representatives' attempt to finally free him from
the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy.
What that article did not address was the patently obvious terminal illness suffered by The
Intercept. That is, the outlet claims to publish "fearless, adversarial" reporting, while it is
funded by a billionaire. Ken Silverstein
, formerly employed at The Intercept and by Omidyar's First Look Media, has described endemic
problems at the outlet that have risen directly out of Omidyar's leadership or lack
thereof.
The fundamental problem facing The Intercept is not ultimately about how or why the outlet
published a smear specifically timed to cut support away from Assange, even though that is in
and of itself despicable. It's that doing so acts in support of the very deep state and
moneyed, military interests that The Intercept purports to critique "fearlessly."
Adding to a sense of betrayal of The Intercept's principals in the wake of the outlet's
hit-piece is the fact that a number of writers at the publication are by all accounts on good
terms with Assange, and have worked with mutual supporters including the superb Italian
journalist Stefania Maurizi. Maurizi collaborated with Wikileaks on the verification of
documents for many years, and worked with Glenn Greenwald on preparation for the disclosure of
the Snowden files.
Adding to the years of support Greenwald has shown Assange, the Wikileaks co-founder also
sent Wikileaks' own Sarah Harrison to
the aid of Snowden after he was marooned in Hong Kong in 2013, an act which Stefania Maurizi
revealed very likely cost the publisher his freedom.
After the publication of the Snowden files, the UK ceased any attempt to create a legal
process by which Assange might have been safely freed , and in the same year pressured
Sweden to continue its investigation after the country's authorities expressed their intent to
drop the matter. Likewise, in the wake of Assange's actions towards Snowden, the Obama White
House changed its stance from a reluctant acceptance that prosecution of WikiLeaks for
publishing might not be possible given that US publishers had also published the same
material.
Snowden's revelations also provided much of the impetus for the launch of The Intercept as
an outlet, after Glenn Greenwald departed from The Guardian . In this way, Assange's story and his fate in the
Ecuadorian embassy is inextricably linked with the origin of The Intercept's rise on the back
of the Snowden revelations.
Only a few months later, in October 2013 while Snowden was still stuck in a Moscow airport
and out of reach of US authorities and The Intercept was gearing up for launch, the UK made it
clear to the Swedish prosecutor that she should not drop her investigation and European Arrest
Warrant for Assange, even though Sweden's law on proportionality required her to do so.
In the wake of Snowden's escape to Russia, Assange remained trapped in 30 square meters of
an embassy and lost any hope that had existed earlier in 2013 that he would soon be released
from that space, where we now know he cannot receive even the most basic medical care.
Meanwhile, The Intercept has become what it set out to destroy.
The relationship between Assange and The intercept makes it impossible to see the
organization's publication of an intrinsically flawed smear piece aimed at Assange as anything
other than a deep betrayal.
Which brings us inevitably to Pierre
Omidyar . That the multi-billionaire Ebay founder despises Trump and would have preferred
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to assume the mantle of the Presidency is an
understatement, but to focus only on his political outlook also misses the point of the larger
issue facing The Intercept.
The billionaire's incoherent vision of the First Amendment
(disturbing for someone who funds journalistic endeavors) aside, the nature of The Intercept's
fatal catch-22 would remain if Omidyar woke up tomorrow to become a MAGA-hat wearing,
NRA-supporting conservative. That is, a media outlet cannot perform as an 'independent and
adversarial' entity when it is birthed within and nurtured by the very establishment it must
confront.
When USA
Today reported that Omidyar would contribute $250 million to pursue "independent
journalism," a genetic malfunction was written into the Intercept's DNA. One cannot operate in
an adversarial manner when one is supported directly by the same moneyed interests that require
the most scrutiny and transparency of all.
That the magnate's influence would seep, tide-like, into the reporting and editorial
decisions of The Intercept seems difficult to ignore, but it is that inevitable creep itself
and not the flavor of his beliefs which makes the situation so damning for The Intercept.
I've previously
written at length in an effort to describe the chilling uniformity that ultimately pervades
the plutocratic class. Being a billionaire makes Pierre Omidyar much more like one of the Koch
Brothers than any liberal without access to the same magnitude of wealth and influence in the
US political sphere. The fact that wealth translates to political influence was described in a
Princeton University study, indicating
that the United States operates as a plutocracy. In that light, it is the wealth that binds
Omidyar, the Kochs and their ilk, as opposed to political outlook.
When Omidyar made use of Citizens' United to supply
an anti-Trump super PAC with $100,000 in 2016, it's not the flavor of the political activism
that he bought – it's that he bought it at all. Omidyar is a power-player within the same
corrupt establishment that WikiLeaks and The Intercept – in principle – aim to
critique regularly.
Omidyar has also provided funds to
the Clinton Foundation. As indicated by Wikileaks via Twitter , the Freedom Of The Press Foundation recently made the
controversial decision to terminate processing of Wikileaks donations. The move represented an
end to the role that was a central cause for the Foundation's creation, according to a
statement by Assange.
Ironically, the initial financial
blockade that made the Freedom Of The Press necessary was in part initiated by Paypal,
which was a spin-off from Ebay, a company that Omidyar founded. Omidyar served on the board of the
company until last year.
Sarah Harisson expressed the conflict of interest that Omidyar's involvement with The
Intercept represents to German Press ,
saying: " How can you take something seriously when the person behind this platform went along
with the financial boycott against WikiLeaks?"
Here lies the gulf between an adversarial organization like WikiLeaks and a news outlet that
purports to be fearless while subsisting on the payroll of a member of the plutocratic
elite.
The issue here goes beyond Omidyar's politics and the petty, obsessively personal
derangement of The Intercept's Micah Lee towards Julian Assange. The crux of the terminal
illness suffered by The Intercept is that it cannot stand as an outlet that wishes to both
participate in adversarial, anti-establishment reporting while it also relies on the funds of a
billionaire – any billionaire.
The rough beast born of the marriage between Omidyar's funds and the yearning for freedom
that surrounded the release of the Snowden Files cannot help but spiral towards its inevitable
fate.
At The Intercept, the center cannot hold in the widening gyre between its best journalists
and its worst impulses.
Disobedient Media previously opined on the dagger-in-the-back publication of a hit piece
against Wikileaks' Julian Assange just one day after a UK magistrate, with blatant conflict of
interest in the matter, shot down his legal representatives' attempt to finally free him from
the confines of the Ecuadorian embassy.
What that article did not address was the patently obvious terminal illness suffered by The
Intercept. That is, the outlet claims to publish "fearless, adversarial" reporting, while it is
funded by a billionaire. Ken Silverstein
, formerly employed at The Intercept and by Omidyar's First Look Media, has described endemic
problems at the outlet that have risen directly out of Omidyar's leadership or lack
thereof.
The fundamental problem facing The Intercept is not ultimately about how or why the outlet
published a smear specifically timed to cut support away from Assange, even though that is in
and of itself despicable. It's that doing so acts in support of the very deep state and
moneyed, military interests that The Intercept purports to critique "fearlessly."
Adding to a sense of betrayal of The Intercept's principals in the wake of the outlet's
hit-piece is the fact that a number of writers at the publication are by all accounts on good
terms with Assange, and have worked with mutual supporters including the superb Italian
journalist Stefania Maurizi. Maurizi collaborated with Wikileaks on the verification of
documents for many years, and worked with Glenn Greenwald on preparation for the disclosure of
the Snowden files.
Adding to the years of support Greenwald has shown Assange, the Wikileaks co-founder also
sent Wikileaks' own Sarah Harrison to
the aid of Snowden after he was marooned in Hong Kong in 2013, an act which Stefania Maurizi
revealed very likely cost the publisher his freedom.
After the publication of the Snowden files, the UK ceased any attempt to create a legal
process by which Assange might have been safely freed , and in the same year pressured
Sweden to continue its investigation after the country's authorities expressed their intent to
drop the matter. Likewise, in the wake of Assange's actions towards Snowden, the Obama White
House changed its stance from a reluctant acceptance that prosecution of WikiLeaks for
publishing might not be possible given that US publishers had also published the same
material.
Snowden's revelations also provided much of the impetus for the launch of The Intercept as
an outlet, after Glenn Greenwald departed from The Guardian . In this way, Assange's story and his fate in the
Ecuadorian embassy is inextricably linked with the origin of The Intercept's rise on the back
of the Snowden revelations.
Only a few months later, in October 2013 while Snowden was still stuck in a Moscow airport
and out of reach of US authorities and The Intercept was gearing up for launch, the UK made it
clear to the Swedish prosecutor that she should not drop her investigation and European Arrest
Warrant for Assange, even though Sweden's law on proportionality required her to do so.
In the wake of Snowden's escape to Russia, Assange remained trapped in 30 square meters of
an embassy and lost any hope that had existed earlier in 2013 that he would soon be released
from that space, where we now know he cannot receive even the most basic medical care.
Meanwhile, The Intercept has become what it set out to destroy.
The relationship between Assange and The intercept makes it impossible to see the
organization's publication of an intrinsically flawed smear piece aimed at Assange as anything
other than a deep betrayal.
Which brings us inevitably to Pierre
Omidyar . That the multi-billionaire Ebay founder despises Trump and would have preferred
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to assume the mantle of the Presidency is an
understatement, but to focus only on his political outlook also misses the point of the larger
issue facing The Intercept.
The billionaire's incoherent vision of the First Amendment
(disturbing for someone who funds journalistic endeavors) aside, the nature of The Intercept's
fatal catch-22 would remain if Omidyar woke up tomorrow to become a MAGA-hat wearing,
NRA-supporting conservative. That is, a media outlet cannot perform as an 'independent and
adversarial' entity when it is birthed within and nurtured by the very establishment it must
confront.
When USA
Today reported that Omidyar would contribute $250 million to pursue "independent
journalism," a genetic malfunction was written into the Intercept's DNA. One cannot operate in
an adversarial manner when one is supported directly by the same moneyed interests that require
the most scrutiny and transparency of all.
That the magnate's influence would seep, tide-like, into the reporting and editorial
decisions of The Intercept seems difficult to ignore, but it is that inevitable creep itself
and not the flavor of his beliefs which makes the situation so damning for The Intercept.
I've previously
written at length in an effort to describe the chilling uniformity that ultimately pervades
the plutocratic class. Being a billionaire makes Pierre Omidyar much more like one of the Koch
Brothers than any liberal without access to the same magnitude of wealth and influence in the
US political sphere. The fact that wealth translates to political influence was described in a
Princeton University study, indicating
that the United States operates as a plutocracy. In that light, it is the wealth that binds
Omidyar, the Kochs and their ilk, as opposed to political outlook.
When Omidyar made use of Citizens' United to supply
an anti-Trump super PAC with $100,000 in 2016, it's not the flavor of the political activism
that he bought – it's that he bought it at all. Omidyar is a power-player within the same
corrupt establishment that WikiLeaks and The Intercept – in principle – aim to
critique regularly.
Omidyar has also provided funds to
the Clinton Foundation. As indicated by Wikileaks via Twitter , the Freedom Of The Press Foundation recently made the
controversial decision to terminate processing of Wikileaks donations. The move represented an
end to the role that was a central cause for the Foundation's creation, according to a
statement by Assange.
Ironically, the initial financial
blockade that made the Freedom Of The Press necessary was in part initiated by Paypal,
which was a spin-off from Ebay, a company that Omidyar founded. Omidyar served on the board of the
company until last year.
Sarah Harisson expressed the conflict of interest that Omidyar's involvement with The
Intercept represents to German Press ,
saying: " How can you take something seriously when the person behind this platform went along
with the financial boycott against WikiLeaks?"
Here lies the gulf between an adversarial organization like WikiLeaks and a news outlet that
purports to be fearless while subsisting on the payroll of a member of the plutocratic
elite.
The issue here goes beyond Omidyar's politics and the petty, obsessively personal
derangement of The Intercept's Micah Lee towards Julian Assange. The crux of the terminal
illness suffered by The Intercept is that it cannot stand as an outlet that wishes to both
participate in adversarial, anti-establishment reporting while it also relies on the funds of a
billionaire – any billionaire.
The rough beast born of the marriage between Omidyar's funds and the yearning for freedom
that surrounded the release of the Snowden Files cannot help but spiral towards its inevitable
fate.
At The Intercept, the center cannot hold in the widening gyre between its best journalists
and its worst impulses.
"... Cooks at restaurants routinely work in similar heat with similar levels of exertion. I know, because I was a cook at multiple restaurants. ..."
"... The reason OSHA doesn't care is because working people in extreme heat is SOP for scores of industries that you may not even realize. ..."
"... In an earlier generation, that would be an excellent question. But since then, we've seen the distribution and adoption of the neoliberal memo that such things are always and everywhere bad. Nor would they be high on the current administration's to do list. ..."
"... Amazon doesn't employ the workers. It employs temp agencies who supply the workers. This is a standard procedure these days for high-turnover workplaces, because in the end no one is responsible for what happens to the workers. ..."
"... A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper. ..."
"... I spent 25 years in the grocery business with 20 of them in management. The expectations stated above were industry standards (except the minutiae of sales goals). Only in Whole Foods was this model ignored. When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar you have to be a TIGHT operator to turn a profit or you are doomed. As a department manager my entire job depended on how I managed my P&L report on a quarterly basis .. if I was over on payroll hours I DAMN well better be cutting back on other areas such as shrink, supplies or payroll mix (high paid FT vs low paid PT) ..."
"... Thanks for bringing up the industry baseline! Bezos' intense exploitation of labor merits a spotlight, but what's happening off in the shadows in other corporations? I recall seeing Costco held up as a + example, but what about others? ..."
"... It seems to me that Amazon are a one trick company (albeit, a very good trick), and they are likely to get burned very badly if they extend their predatory model to high value brands.. ..."
"... "When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar" This figure is complete nonsense. It means nothing. It's the "profit margin" after paying themselves rent, which is where the profits in grocery stores end up.. No one is in business for a 3% return. It does make good for PR though. ..."
"... Its not clear to me that OTS originated with Amazon. Amazon only completed the Whole Foods purchase around Labor Day in 2017. It usually takes more than a month or two to come up with an entire computer-based software system and roll it out company-wide. ..."
"... Corporate America is capable of coming up with bone-headed implementations of what could be good ideas without the need to get Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple to push them to it. Wells Fargo was able to come up with "Eight is Great" for new account generation even with the guidance of Warren Buffet instead of Jeff Bezos. ..."
"... At any rate, I won't be frequenting Whole Foods any longer as I find worker abuse nauseating. ..."
"... So much paperwork that there's no time to deliver the food, hence empty shelves. A situation instantly recognizable to anyone who ever lived in the USSR. ..."
"... You didn't hear it from me, but from a friend who was a cashier at a grocery store, a small way to fight back against self checkout is to be creative in naming your produce to get a 95% discount ..."
"... Wal-Mart can man-up with a new ad campaign – Our Employees Don't Cry, they get food stamps. ..."
"... "I'm amazed at how many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's employees in order to receive free shipping." ..."
"... (Suggesting that AMZ is a sh*t business.) ..."
"... fast forward 1-2 years ..."
"... fast forward 1-2 more years . ..."
"... Rinse. Repeat. Ad nauseum, ad infinitum . ..."
Posted on
February 2, 2018 by Yves Smith As we've said, Jeff Bezos
clearly hates people, except as appendages to bank accounts. All you need to do is observe how
he treats his workers.
In a scoop, Business Insider reports on how Amazon is creating massive turnover and
pointless misery at Whole Food by imposing a reign of terror impossible and
misguided productivity targets.
Anyone who has paid the slightest attention to Amazon will see its abuse of out of Whole
Foods workers as confirmation of an established pattern. And even more tellingly, despite Whole
Foods supposedly being a retail business that Bezos would understand, the unrealistic Whole
Foods metrics aren't making the shopping experience better.
As we'll discuss below, we'd already expressed doubts about how relevant Bezos' hyped Amazon
model would be to Whole Foods. Proof is surfacing even faster than we expected.
But first to Bezos' general pattern of employee mistreatment.
It's bad enough that Bezos engages in the worst sort of class warfare and treats warehouse
workers worse than the ASPCA would allow livery drivers to use horses. Not only do horses at
least get fed an adequate ration, while Amazon warehouse workers regularly earn less than a
local living wage, but even after pressure to end literal sweatshop conditions (no air
conditioning so inside temperatures could hit 100 degrees;
Amazon preferred to have ambulances at ready for the inevitable heatstroke victims rather than
pay to cool air ), Amazon warehouse workers are, thanks to intensive monitoring, pressed to
work at such a brutal pace that most can't handle it physically and quit by the six month mark.
For instance, from a 2017 Gizmodo story, Reminder:
Amazon Treats Its Employees Like Shit :
Amazon, like most tech companies, is skilled at getting stories about whatever bullshit it
decides to feed the press. Amazon would very much prefer to have reporters writing some
drivel about a discount code than reminding people that its tens of thousands of engineers
and warehouse workers are fucking miserable. How do I know they're miserable? Because (as the
testimony below demonstrates) they've told every writer who's bothered to ask for years.
Mind you, Amazon's institutionalized sadism isn't limited to its sweatshops. Amazon is also
cruel to its office workers. The New York Times story that Gizmodo selected, based on over 100
employee interviews, included:
Bo Olson lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring
image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. "You
walk out of a conference room and you'll see a grown man covering his face," he said. "Nearly
every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk."
While that paragraph was the most widely quoted from that story, some reporters reacted
strongly to other bits. For instance, from The
Verge :
Perhaps worst of all is Amazon's apparent approach when its employees need help. The Times
has uncovered several cases where workers who were sick, grieving, or otherwise encumbered by
the realities of life were pushed out of the company. A woman who had a miscarriage was told
to travel on a business trip the day after both her twins were stillborn. Another woman
recovering from breast cancer was given poor performance rankings and was warned that she was
in danger of losing her job.
I have yet to hear of anyone who has actually enjoyed working for Amazon. I know several
people who have worked on building out their data centers, and it's the same type of
experience – demanding, long hours, must be responsive to calls and emails 24×7.
Even people who are otherwise highly skilled, highly competent workers are treated as
disposable items. It's no surprise that they treat grocery workers the same.
According to
this Business Insider article the OTS inventory management system was something brought
in by whole foods management; not amazon. Employees are actually hoping amazon fixes the
issues created by OTS.
Things are definitely bad when workers are hoping things will get better with Bezos in
charge.
I can't remember where I read an article in which an amazon employee said people at the
company joked that amazon is where overachievers go to feel bad about themselves.
If working conditions are so bad at the warehouses (heatstrokes from lack of air
conditioning), then why hasn't the Department of Labor gone after them? Surely the DoL or
some local labor bureau most have gotten hundreds if not thousands of complaints?
Where are the unions? The Teamsters or UFCW should be all over this. Their complete
absence from the story is telling. When the first three conclusions to be drawn from this
story are:
1. That boss (and company culture) are awful
2. Why doesn't the government do something?
3. Maybe the workers can do a class action
then it's really not surprising that things are this bad.
Where are the unions? They've been systematic eradicated or are being led by
"pro-business" stooges. About the only union worth a damn and bucking the system is the
Nurses Union led by Rose Ann DeMoro. If you have the inclunation, take a look at labor during
the first Gilded Age (late 1800s early 1900s) to see what it took to get the modest reforms
of the New Deal enacted -- the very policies that are almost extinct now.
Efforts to get Amazon to change its labor practices have been unsuccessful thus far.
Randy Korgan, the business representative and director of the Teamsters Local 63, which
represents the Stater Brothers employees, told me that his office frequently gets calls
from Amazon employees wanting to organize. But organizing is difficult because there's so
much turnover at Amazon facilities and because people fear losing their jobs if they speak
up. Burgett, the Indiana Amazon worker, repeatedly tried to organize his facility, he told
me. The turnover was so high that it was difficult to get people to commit to a union
campaign. The temps at Amazon are too focused on getting a full-time job to join a union,
he said, and the full-time employees don't stick around long enough to join. He worked with
both the local SEIU and then the Teamsters to start an organizing drive, but could never
get any traction. He told me that whenever Amazon hears rumors of a union drive, the
company calls a special "all hands" meeting to explain why a union wouldn't be good for the
facility. (Lindsey said that Amazon has an open-door policy that encourages associates to
bring concerns directly to the management team. "We firmly believe this direct connection
is the most effective way to understand and respond to the needs of our workforce," she
wrote, in an email.)
This is a common anti-union trick among low-wage jobs these days -- intentionally abuse
your workers as much as possible to ensure the highest possible turnover (and even better,
turnover in the form of voluntary quits, which do not qualify for unemployment benefits or
impact the employer's UI tax). Workers who have zero investment in their jobs and who intend
to quit at the earliest possible opportunity are less likely to go through the trouble and
risk of supporting a union effort.
As a bonus, the high turnover results in many of the workers not ever becoming eligible
for benefits. Most common tax-advantaged benefit plans, like health insurance and 401(k), are
required to be offered to all employees with only a few limited exceptions. The permitted
exceptions differ depending on the benefit type, but usually include criteria like length of
service (often no more than 12 months or so) and in some cases, minimum work hours. The plan
will lose its tax-advantaged status if it excludes more employees than the law permits, which
can cost the employer back taxes and penalties. Firing employees for the purpose of
interfering with their ERISA-regulated benefits is illegal , but treating them so poorly
from day 1 that they are unlikely to last long enough to qualify for benefits is not.
From a policy perspective, we need to realize the instability created by high-turnover and
fissured work environments
and penalize it accordingly. A beneficial side effect of this is that it would likely
incentivize employers to train and promote low-level workers upwards; low-level jobs like
warehouse workers probably inherently have higher turnover than average, just because most
workers don't want to do that for the rest of their lives (and some are successful in finding
a way out), but when there's
a path for the janitor to become CTO you can reduce that turnover.
I found these just by Googling "OSHA amazon". Keep in mind, the low amounts of the fines
doesn't necessarily reflect the severity of the underlying issues–my understanding is
that OSHA has relatively weak abilities to fine violators in the first place.
Government regulation and enforcement? In an earlier generation, that would be an
excellent question. But since then, we've seen the distribution and adoption of the
neoliberal memo that such things are always and everywhere bad. Nor would they be high on the
current administration's to do list.
Amazon doesn't employ the workers. It employs temp agencies who supply the workers. This
is a standard procedure these days for high-turnover workplaces, because in the end no one is
responsible for what happens to the workers.
To quote: "the beatings will continue until morale improves"
A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper. There is a high touch rate
between customers and employees in this industry. Also, this is an industry with many options
and competition; unlike airlines for example. We shop at WF from time to time, partly due to
the experience being more pleasant. We have no issue moving (and no love of Amazon).
A service business that gives crappy service will not prosper.
if and only if there are preferable alternatives. If that business is cheaper, a monopoly, or if all other businesses deliver crappy service
too, then it may well prosper. Case in point: the telecommunications market in the USA.
This is an important reason why the notion that market competition will increase social
welfare isn't inherently true. It's long been understood that in concentrated markets
(oligopolies) the market actors might implicitly coordinate their prices without a price
increase. For example, Companies A, B, and C sell widgets; Company A announces a price
increase via press release; B and C follow with similar increases a week later.
But companies can also implicitly coordinate on the quality of goods. If Company A pursues
crapification, that can cover B and C for doing the same.
It's akin the the Greesham's Dyamic that Professor Black has written about extensively on
this blog and in other places in connection with finance creating a criminogenic environment.
Under the right circumstances, cheap bad quality can drive out good quality, leaving only
bad.
Indeed. A "market" focusing solely on profitability would consider human values an
inefficiency. It would remove them, along with what produced them, from the system, using
routine failure modes and effects analysis. (An interesting point for promoters of AI.)
California witnessed considerable consolidation in its grocery business ten years or so
ago. Similar, if somewhat less draconian conditions, resulted. I don't believe the "market"
will generate a different result this time.
In addition, there's the question of Jeff Bezos's purposes in buying WF. It would not be
to learn from another industry; I don't imagine Bezos values that concept. It would more
likely be to expand his own methodologies and priorities to another industry, one that gives
him access to a human activity outside the already extensive reach of his current
business.
WF may be an experiment, whose survival might not be dictated by immediate notional
profitability. Besides, the utility and profitability of the data flow from this experiment
might never be visible.
This is an important reason why the notion that market competition will increase social
welfare isn't inherently true. It's long been understood that in concentrated markets
(oligopolies) the market actors might implicitly coordinate their prices without a price
increase.
I agree, except that the situations you describe are not "market competition". Any
marketplace with fewer than about 7 truly independent competitors is not a competitive
market.
But as you say, when there are few participants there is a lot of implicit signaling and
coordination, which work to benefit the few participants at the expense of the general
welfare.
We have a lot of faux markets, and a lot of faux competition. This is not helped by the
prevalence of multiple "brands" owned by the same small number of large conglomerates. You
could shut down just 2 or 3 companies in each product line and the supermarket shelves would
lose 90% of their items. That ain't a competitive marketplace, even though the proliferation
of brands provides the illusion of freedom of choice.
We need a populist wave to take back our democracy.
Yes it's not textbook competition, but while textbook competition with many small players
may be good for the consumer, there is no evidence that it is good for the worker. In fact I
suspect it's bad for the worker as super competitive industries will nearly kill their
employees just to stay in business. I'd rather work for an oligopoly (but it all depends on
which one) as the freedom from relentless competition enables better working conditions in
theory (again does not always materialize).
I spent 25 years in the grocery business with 20 of them in management. The expectations
stated above were industry standards (except the minutiae of sales goals). Only in Whole
Foods was this model ignored. When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar you have
to be a TIGHT operator to turn a profit or you are doomed. As a department manager my entire
job depended on how I managed my P&L report on a quarterly basis .. if I was over on
payroll hours I DAMN well better be cutting back on other areas such as shrink, supplies or
payroll mix (high paid FT vs low paid PT)
I guess the Whole Foods employees are learning this now.
Thanks for bringing up the industry baseline! Bezos' intense exploitation of labor merits
a spotlight, but what's happening off in the shadows in other corporations? I recall seeing
Costco held up as a + example, but what about others?
To me, it doesn't make sense to penny pinch if you're a quasi-monopolistic supplier due to
a special brand position. Whole Foods was associated with high quality goods, and was clearly
able to charge a substantial price premium. Changing its operations as described above
appears to reduce the justification for the price premium and destroy the company's unique
market position.
It is almost like McDonald's deciding that beef patties cost too much, and that it would
only serve chicken going forward.
It seems to me that in the grocery business (like many), you either make money by being
more efficient and cheaper than your competitors, or by having a unique selling point that
allows you charge a premium (high quality, great service, etc).
If you look at the car industry, when mass market brands have bought high value brands
(for example, Ford buying Jaguar), the sensible companies have been very cautious about
ensuring that the brand aura (and hence high profit margin per car) is not tarnished by
crudely cutting costs. Mercedes made that mistake in the 1980's with excessive cost cutting
and it took them more than a decade, and billions of DM in investment, to win back their
brand value when it became apparent that their cars were often less reliable than cheap Asian
compacts.
It seems to me that Amazon are a one trick company (albeit, a very good trick), and they
are likely to get burned very badly if they extend their predatory model to high value
brands..
In scale, WF is a hobby business for Bezos, little more than a personal tax deduction. If
it does not go as Bezos intends, it is not likely to have an effect on his primary
business.
"When the industry wide profit margin of grocers is less the 3cents on the dollar" This figure is complete nonsense. It means nothing. It's the "profit margin" after paying themselves rent, which is where the profits in
grocery stores end up.. No one is in business for a 3% return. It does make good for PR
though.
A 3% margin isn't the same thing as a 3% return. Maybe think about it this way, 26 turns
on a 3% margin (once every 2 weeks). Without compounding that's a 78% return on average
inventory level, before fixed and variable costs, interest expense and equity returns. You're
right nobody is in the business for a 3% return!
"A 3% margin isn't the same thing as a 3% return." I know this. But the way that figure is trotted out, relentlessly, is to leave the masses,
and employees, with the idea that they only 'make' 3%, which is nonsense. Whatever they
"make" is carefully chosen in accounting fairytale land.
The point about rents still stands. Most grocery stores/chains are REITs with captive
retailers. No one ever sees the REIT side of things. Rite Aid is well know for being the
captive retailer in this practice. Rite Aid doesn't 'make' any money (118M 'income' over 25
billion in sales = .004 Less that half a percent).. They 'make' the landlord LOTS of money.
Tax dodge or money laundering, which does it better fit the definition of?
Agreed. I think they trot out the 3% meme so nobody pushes them too hard on their
"providing a public good" nature.
And on rent and landlord's, I absolutely agree. Regrettably it seems most of us are making
our commercial landlords a lot of money (before we ever get to equity returns). So many small
business owner's would loose their minds if they thought about that thoroughly. And to answer
your last question, "I'll take Tax Dodge for $500, Alex"
The way I read it way back when was that that 3% markup is on fresh produce and what not.
So the turnover is necessarily high. So their return on invested capital might get as high as
3%/day, if they're lucky.
bob, can you direct me to an article and/or site which backs your claims. I would be most
interested to read it. Perhaps my information is incorrect, but multiple Google searches have
articles in which independent grocery business analysts confirm my number.
Its not clear to me that OTS originated with Amazon. Amazon only completed the Whole Foods
purchase around Labor Day in 2017. It usually takes more than a month or two to come up with
an entire computer-based software system and roll it out company-wide.
My guess is that Whole Foods was able to conceive of this all by themselves and since it
fits into the Amazon way of doing things, they didn't stop them.
Corporate America is capable of coming up with bone-headed implementations of what could
be good ideas without the need to get Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Apple to push them to it.
Wells Fargo was able to come up with "Eight is Great" for new account generation even with
the guidance of Warren Buffet instead of Jeff Bezos.
Does this 3% margin count the rent that is extracted from manufacturers for prime real
estate in the stores? ( End caps for example).
Slotting fees are rent extraction. Customers pay for this with higher prices for the items.
Oh please. I shop at two of the major branded grocery chains, and while the staff is
generally good and competent, they exhibit none of the hyper-awareness expected under
OTS.
If you run into an employee and ask them where certain items can be found, they'll usually
know and usually direct you to an aisle that has the item. But they will generally not know
the exact location in the aisle, shelf, blah blah.
And the stupidity of corporate management is beyond belief. Due to niche marketing, items
can be found in 3, 4 or even 5 different places. (My favorite is canned beans – organic
and other high-end brands in the specialty fancy food aisle, a bunch in the
Mexican/international/Spanish aisle, run of the mill murican brands and the same Goya brands
that are in the international aisle in the general canned vegetable aisle, sale displays at
the end of any random aisle. And dont even get me started on gluten-freeness).
At stop and shop they replaced the end of the checkout counters with a carousel for
bagging, meaning a) that checkers had to bag each item as they went, b) no more baggers c)
customers couldn't help bag stuff, and, my favorite, d) making it nearly impossible to use
reusable bags. Talking to workers about it is simultaneously hilarious and enraging. "They
said it was supposed to make it easier for us, but *shrug*". Everyone understands that it's
designed to fail, slow things to a crawl, and piss customers off so they'll use the
self-check line.
So spare us the tight-ship, low margin
Whole-Foods-and-Amazon-are-just-just-learning-how-intense-the-business-really-is-and-too-bad-for-those-whiney-workers
old school macho bullshit. Yes, it's not the most profitable industry in the world. But
amazon is a whole other level of abusive monitoring of workers everywhere it goes.
Makes me wonder what's happening at Washington Post. Quick search results are that Post
has been "revived." Note that Bezos stays out of editorial process, but is heavily involved
in tech ops.
I happened to stop by the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle, NYC yesterday for some produce
and something is definitely different there.
It was around 4 pm, the store was packed, and apparently management had people out there
with brooms and dustpans sweeping up what appeared to be clean floors. Between the crowds,
the sweeping employees, and the boxes of stock on the floor it was much harder to move in
there.
After navigating the aisles, I grabbed a bottle of cold beer for my subway ride home, and
then proceeded to the in-house ramen/draft beer spot. The employees there seemed absolutely
miserable and kept wandering away to talk in hushed voices about what was clearly some sort
of work problem in the store from what I could gather. To the employees' credit however, they
treated me with courtesy and respect even though their body language and demeanor screamed
misery.
Following my mediocre Ramen and yummy draft beers, I wandered back over to the beer aisle
to exchange my now warm subway subs for a cold bottle. I was shocked to find that the entire
cold reach-in beer shelves had been re-stocked while I was in the ramen bar. After several
moments of digging through freshly stocked warm beer I found a cold one, paid, and departed
Whole Foods.
Thanks for this article, as it ties together all the oddities I observed today. It is
really sad what happened to Whole Foods, particularly that location. I used to work on the
Time Warner Center maintenance staff and frequently interacted with employees in that
particular store and they used to be a jolly bunch.
At any rate, I won't be frequenting Whole Foods any longer as I find worker abuse
nauseating.
So much paperwork that there's no time to deliver the food, hence empty shelves.
A situation instantly recognizable to anyone who ever lived in the USSR.
Funny that. It was only a coupla months ago that a big story making the rounds was that
Walmart shelves ( http://theweek.com/articles/466144/why-walmarts-shelves-are-empty
) were constantly empty. I suppose you have to be a mega-corporation to make blunders like
this but still get away with it for a few months running.
Interesting you mention Wallmart. I live in central AZ and our local Wallmarts (3 ea) for several years had empty shelves,
few workers – and they did not know where anything was, the greeters were gone,
literally 1-2 actual cashiers – they were trying to force you to the
self-checkout. Recently the stores are almost like they used to be with more workers, greeters back,
still not enough cashiers though, and better stocking.
Has anyone else noticed this. It does seem to coincide with the Amazon purchase of WF.
Correlation is not causation and all that but it might be a reaction to some extent.
I'm probably one of the few people around here that shops at Walmart and yes they have
cleaned up their act although it depends on the store. I'd say the thing people don't get
about Walmart is that they are responsive to public opinion and customer gripes even if they
supposedly treat their employees like disposable parts, easily replaced (but then they have
lots of company in that department). For example a few years ago they took the clutter out of
the aisles and did away with the craft/sewing section–trying to be more like
Target -- and then reversed all those changes because their customers hated it.
Seems to me Bezos is taking on a much bigger challenge trying to reinvent brick and mortar
than he did by innovating mail order. Here's betting he's not up to it. Perhaps his top
honchos–meditating in their new waterfall equipped Seattle biosphere–will prove
me wrong.
You didn't hear it from me, but from a friend who was a cashier at a grocery store, a
small way to fight back against self checkout is to be creative in naming your produce to get
a 95% discount
Yeah, that one was 5 year old but I chose it because it gave a bit more info in it. There
are plenty more from last year. Just go to Google and punch in the search term Wal-Mart
shelves empty and see what come back, especially Google images. This means that this problem
is not a one-off but has been a running theme for at least a four year period. Amazing.
People who shop at Whole Foods want to look at employees with that NPR vegan faux-hippy
gaze. Not a lot of difference from the evangelical gaze, imo. Some sort of self hypnosis
involved? Now that gaze will be replaced with the look of a desperate near homeless employee
all Wal-Mart shoppers have grown accustomed to ignoring, Wal-Mart can man-up with a new ad
campaign – Our Employees Don't Cry, they get food stamps.
If I were a rich man I would give everyone of these people a T-shirt which says – I
am not a robot.
I wonder if Wal-Mart will discover increasing in-store staff, as well as an upgraded store
experience, will actually improve its competitive position versus online retailers. That's
pretty much what Best Buy has to do.
Is this just an Amazon/WF issue or something larger for grocer chains? I find myself
shopping at a Meijers (big Midwest chain) superstore whilst visiting my mother and noticed
the same kind of strangeness with not just employee morale (they are clearly miserable) but
stocking issues. Items that were ALWAYS available are no longer there. I needed pasta shells
the other day. They had none. How can a super grocer NOT have pasta shells. Larger than
normal sections of shelves are bare. Pallets haphazardly placed. Meijors used to be a
somewhat pleasant and orderly experience with happy workers now approaching a WalMart
experience.
Re the NPR vegan faux-hippy gaze, The WF near me in suburban Philadelphia, has a very
upscale clientele. Once, in the produce section, they had set up a booth where a Hispanic
woman would mix guacamole using just the ingredients the customers wished, without any
extraneous chatter on her part. Wow! Your guac would be mixed by an ACTUAL MEXICAN PERSON!
Just gotta be good, eh? Conservatives might say she was happy to have such a nice job. I
thought it was downright creepy, like those catalogues where people beam as they demonstrate
expensive vacuum cleaners. Yuk.
Our Soviet style master planners hard at work. At least the Soviets had 5 year plans that
they would abandon after 5 years. How many years of failure can we tolerate? What ever happened to profit?
Not a fan of Bezos, Amazon, or their practices, but strict planogram scorecarding is not
uncommon in grocery, auto parts and similar retail orgs. The only part of that section of the
article that strikes me as out of the ordinary is the employee's reaction to it.
The framing of the article suggests this is Amazon-ian behavior. Just pointing out that I
don't believe that's accurate because the practice is commonplace in the industry.
I've got more than a few friends who have worked in grocery stores recently, and while
they had many complaints, having to know last week's best selling item or this week's sales
goals weren't among them. Just sayin' .
Thank you for highlighting Amazon's continued abuse of its employees. I'm amazed at how
many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's employees in order to receive free
shipping. My favorite people are the type that by books on late stage capitalism and
plutocracy through their Amazon prime accounts.
"I'm amazed at how many people choose to simply ignore the fate of Amazon's
employees in order to receive free shipping."
Sad but true, Chuck. My daughter, who's a total Social Justice Warrior type (speaking as a
progessive, I'm proud of her for that) and her long-time boyfriend are proud Amazon
customers. They have Amazon technobuttons on the walls of the house they bought so that all
they have to do to re-order toilet paper and kitty litter is touch the device.
(Suggesting that AMZ is a sh*t business.) A day or two later, it's delivered, for
free, because they are Primes! Daughter's BF, who luuuuuvs him some tech, revels in this
because it's so futuristic. When I suggest going to the store to buy some -- it's quicker --
or simply thinking ahead and purchasing stuff before they run out, I get the eye-roll given
to Olds who old-splain oldways. They're Jellbylically concerned about the plight of abused
North Koreans and the like. When I mentioned why I was buying their Christmas book gifts via
Barnes & Noble rather than Amazon due to its mistreatment of workers, their ears glazed
over. I'll forward this post to her, but I doubt it will get read, since it wasn't on her
Fakebook feed.
I like the cut of your jib: " to Olds who old-splain oldways."
Grampa Simpson classic – One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere – like the time I caught the
ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to
Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my
belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those
days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd
say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was
the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you
could get was those big yellow ones
Local co-ops are a great idea but (sorry for the but) in much of the country wholesale
food distribution has been decimated or wiped out over the years due to competition from
Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, the legacy grocers or Sysco (on the restaurant side).
Geographically, few areas in the US are fortunate enough to have an independent and
thriving food/produce wholesale market which helps bring down price and bring up quality to
be competitive with the vertically integrated big boys.
Well, here's Slim from drought-stricken AZ. And I'm about to rain on that co-op
parade. When I lived in Pittsburgh, I worked at a food co-op that was the lone survivor after its
main competitor went under. And we got REAL busy. We also had a bit of a management problem. Ours was a drunk who often came to work
hungover. All the better way to abuse the rest of us. After a staff revolt (yes, I took part in it), he left and took a job as manager of the
regional co-op warehouse in Columbus, Ohio. Where he treated the warehouse gals as his harem
and got one of them pregnant.
To our utter and total amazement back in Pittsburgh, he took responsibility for his son
and tried to be the best father he could. I have no idea what happened with the drinking
problem.
The manager who succeeded him was even worse. He even called himself a martinet, and he
was. After less than a year of his BS, I bailed out of the co-op and got a sit-down job in an
office. Yeah, there was another lousy boss there, and I've talked about her on other
threads.
But there was further fun and merriment back at the co-op. I was still friendly with the
people who worked there, and guess what? Another staff revolt! They ran Mr. Martinet outta
there too! Go staff! Mr. Martinet went to a yuppie grocery store in North Carolina. From there, he went on to
become one of the original senior executives in Whole Foods.
Bummer about the food co-op, Slim. Some of us "in the movement" are trying to work out how
to provide accountability for guys like the drunk manager you mention, so that they don't end
up doing like he did, and just sliding around from one co-op to another. Open to
suggestions
Unfortunately, the co-op name doesn't necessarily imply that everything is groovy for the
workers. Hence, REI workers in Seattle trying to unionize, and why UFCW has had such success
in organizing every single food co-op in Minneapolis-St. Paul (and there are quite a few).
The history of consumer co-ops seems pretty clear – workers in them need union
representation just as much as workers in regular businesses.
For those who need examples, there is an excellent co-op in Ocean Beach, San Diego. Its
customer/members are devoutly loyal. By design, each is small and adapted to its local
culture and food ecosystem. Michael Pollan is a good resource for ideas on this topic and on
real food in general.
American businesses might prefer home runs, but singles and bunts are more common and
sustainable. Besides, co-ops are harder to buy up or put out of business in the manner
reputed to be practiced by, say, some retail coffee companies.
Except Jeff Bezos has sold the Ayn Rand way of life to the 'progressive' intelligensia who
would happily rant over John Galt if you gave them your ear and a glass of Bordeaux.
Not just at Amazon, but I'm seeing an anecdotal trend of "get people to quit within a year
or two of starting". Not just with ridiculous requests from above, but even with good ol'
passive-aggressiveness.
I can't remember if this article was tipped off to me by NC but here it is anyway: https://www.ft.com/content/356ea48c-e6cf-11e6-967b-c88452263daf
(paywall, or websearch for "how employers manage out unwanted staff")
Don't you all get it? First they took away their freedom to form unions with others. Now
they want to take away your freedom to form a union with you own bodies actions. This will crush the idea of sabotage and work slowdowns as an expression of labor
power.
Waste is inherent to selling fresh food. Trimmings, dry, damaged meats, fish, fruits,
vegetables, breads, prepared foods. That's especially true of anything organic and not
engineered to be harder, more colorful, durable and less tasty than their natural analogs.
Whole Paycheck's intended customers – really, most shoppers anywhere – do not
want to buy adulterated, processed versions of eggs, beakless turkeys, caged hens, and
drugged industrially raised cows and pigs.
Fresh food, especially organic, does not last as long as industrial bread, fruits and
vegetables or highly sugared packaged foods. It is the antithesis of such foods. The reason
chicken soup made the way it was c.1940 is tastier and nutritionally better than soup made
from a caged, medicated, neurotic fowl today is not great Grandma's recipe: it's the
chicken.
Local sourcing, environmentally safe, animal friendly methods of raising require a wider
supplier net. What Michael Pollan would call real food costs more. It should. But real food
and real people are ripe for the cruel "more efficient" methods of production, distribution
and sale that seem part of Jeff Bezos's DNA. Besides, what he really wants is probably the
data flow. WF is simply a way to get it.
Typical uber-"capitalist" idiocy -- seen this happen in a lot of different industries over
the years (esp techs):
CEO: "Our product sucks. We've grown too big, lost our innovative edge, we need to get
back to our roots!"
Toady: "Uh, tried that already, boss. No can do. Too much bureaucracy now."
CEO: "Shit! Any ideas?"
Toady: "Actually, yes! We can buy out and take over one of the smaller competitors that's
eating our lunch now, and steal their latest ideas and projects."
CEO: "Brilliant! Make it so!"
fast forward 1-2 years
CEO: "How's that takeover working out?"
Toady: "Well, it's taken a while, but we've fully integrated the company in with ours --
all of our corporate policies and procedures etc etc are in place there now."
CEO: "Excellent!"
fast forward 1-2 more years .
CEO: "Our product sucks! What happened to all those great ideas coming from that company
we took over?"
Toady: "Well, most everyone working there when we bought it out are gone now. The founders
and senior management cashed out the takeover premium and bailed immediately, and everybody
else got frustrated with our corporate style and policies and eventually quit. Our people
took over their projects, and promptly fucked them up beyond all belief. Instead of a cash
cow, we got a dead cow on our hands now."
CEO: "Shit! Any ideas?"
Toady: "Yeah. We can either spin it off to the public again or just shut the whole fucking
thing down and take a huge earnings write-off."
CEO: "Hmmm,..decisions, decisions . By the way, are there any other small competitors out
there that we can buy out to rejuvenate our stale product line, toady?
Amazon corporate sounds like a sweatshop. Their treatment of warehouse staff is nothing
short of an abomination.
But I can't help feeling that some of the employee comments at WholeFoods are less about bad
management and work conditions and more about Millenials and a lack of ability handle
criticism and work pressure. (The average age of a Whole Food employee at my store is easily
28yo.)
To call working on an inventory system "punitive". It's called business, and yes, it is
difficult and takes a lot of effort. Punitive, though. To use an inventory system. Sorry. Not
buying the whole story.
If it's common for people to actually cry at work, and to have nightmares, with massive
turnover, decreasing quality of service, product, and cleanliness blaming millennials is an
inadequate response. Apparently Amazon wants to run Whole Foods with inadequate staff, fails
to reward good good work, unfailingly punish not only poor work, but honest mistakes, and
makes no allowance within the system for reality. If you did animal training this way, you
would see the same results, I promise. The management "techniques" described will destroy any
company, or at least reduce productivity massively.
You are straw manning the post and the underlying article. The staff is grilled very
frequently and graded, and much of what they are graded on isn't relevant to customer
service. The shelves are supposed to be "leveled" all day, which is a ridiculous standard.
The testing and insane shelf appearance standards are not normal to the industry and minor
deviations are the basis for firing.
I have yet to met a single "Millennial" that fits that ridiculous stereotype – and I
know a lot of people in that age bracket even though I was born in 1970. The very few who
even seem to have tendencies in those directions seem more influenced by being from wealthy
families than by their year of birth and I can think of at least as many Boomers and Gen
X'ers that are like that too.
When I think of the high-school age or university age jobs the people I grew up with had
and compare them to the jobs I've seen my "Millennial" friends doing the younger people have
had it substantially worse over all.
A college friend of my mother went on to run the Secret Service detail for the White
House. Very demanding position, but one that Mom's friend was quite proud of.
Lordy, Yves, please put a warning sign on that video! It's still breakfast time here in
Seattle, and I clicked on it. No, it didn't offend my 'sensibilities.' But it encapsulated
all the frustration and anger and helplessness I feel against our system. As well as being a
powerful metaphor for 'late stage capitalism.'
Share your sentiments, Eclair. Having breakfast? The observations about employee abuse
also pair well with a video of a 10 minute bike ride through the homeless encampments along
the Santa Ana River near Angels Stadium and Disneyland in Anaheim: https://mobile.twitter.com/Dalrymple/status/953739188050059265
Whole Foods employees still outnumber these Amazon creatures checking up on them, I
presume. If the WF workers and others at Amazon are so universally tormented and humiliated,
shouldn't they be taking some kind of collective action?
Twice during WWII German officers tried to get rid of Hitler. I guess American workers
don't measure up to even that standard.
I suspect Jeff Bezos would view unions at WF or Amazon the way Reagan viewed unionized Air
Traffic Controllers. Or Wal-Mart, which has abandoned markets whose employment laws provide
for unions or simply too many protections for employees.
Bezos is extracting resources from his employees with the same thought and in the same
manner that early California hard rock miners used massive water hoses (monitors) to
liquidate mountains in search for a few gold nuggets. (h/t Gray Brechin)
Which is why I Q-U-I-T the food co-op job mentioned above. Did the same in that office
job, which was my second-to-last full-time job.
Have I ever had a good job? Yup. Working in a hot, dark, and greasy bike shop. Place
closed in 2000 and I still miss the camaraderie with my fellow mechanics -- and the pride of
accomplishment that came with fixing the customers' bikes.
When arguing with my boss about crap we were required to do, he finally got frustrated and
told me "Shit flows downhill", "DEAL WITH IT!". To which my response was "Yep, right onto the
customer!"
It made him so angry I was lucky I wasn't fired on the spot, though in hindsight it would
have been a blessing. Looks like nothing has changed 30 years later.
I think it's gotten worse as the whole retail industry specifically and perhaps most
industries gradually, have had the slowly MBA'd management reorganized, streamlined,
outsourced and efficiencied it into a monetized Hades.
I was lucky to work in a couple of well run, or at competently run, businesses. So I know
one can be profitable without brutalizing people. It's depressing to see what has
happened.
Wonder what would happen if a customer started handing out union brochures to Whole Foods
employees in one of their stores. What are they going to do? Kick you, a customer, out of the
store?
They probably would. It's private space. But it would make for good news stories. You
would need to actually shop in fact handing them out to all the cashiers when you are
checking out would be the best move, since you'd be out the store before management would
catch on.
As the articles in the Business Insider series explicitly point out, this hated new system
preceded the acquisition by Amazon.
Amazon is terrible. The way Whole Foods is now treating its workers is terrible. But
Amazon simply did not develop or implement the policies at Whole Foods that this article is
ascribing to it.
Good for your saboteurs! Amazon is trying to stop shrinkage but they'll lose more through
deliberately missed scans. Oh, and a freezer door left open or temperature mysteriously reset
would wreak even more havoc.
I was in a Whole Foods last night, where I shop a few times per month, here in central
California. Lots of unfamiliar faces working there. Produce section definitely looking worse
than usual -- empty shelves, low quality items. At checkout, the cashier was a young woman
I'd never seen before, who looked tired and dispirited. I asked how she was doing that
evening. Smirking wearily, she said, "Hangin' in there " (Which is about how I feel these
days, too.) When it came time to pay, it was the first time in my life that the
total at Whole Foods was less than I was expecting. Wow, I thought, I didn't think
Amazon changed the prices that much? After I got home and looked at the receipt, I realized
why -- she hadn't charged me for all the items! Bless her.
I don't believe Amazon and Whole Foods were ever a good match for each other, and with
unhappy employees and other problems, I expect this particular branch of WF to be gone in a
few years. And I really couldn't care less. There are other good places to shop.
"... The abuse summarized in the Republican memo apparently spans the last year of the Obama administration and the first year of the Trump administration. If it comes through as advertised, it will show the deep state using the government's powers for petty or political or ideological reasons. ..."
"... The use of raw intelligence data by the NSA or the FBI for political purposes or to manipulate those in government is as serious a threat to popular government -- to personal liberty in a free society -- as has ever occurred in America since Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which punished speech critical of the government. ..."
"... No politician gives a hoot about what the people who vote for them think. I am sure, even if any house member or a senator knew of this memo, the bill would still have passed. ..."
"... It appears that the judge doesn't understand how the US government is run these days. ..."
"... Among other Establishment officials, "Robert Mueller, the no-nonsense special counsel investigating whether any Americans aided the Russian government in its now well-known interference in the 2016 American presidential election" (Andrew Napolitano, 12/7/17) helped conduct unlawful, mass surveillance in his FBI gig, and thus violated his "oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Right, "Judge"? ..."
"... Senator Wyden knew when Mr. Clapper was lying about governmental spying on every American in a public hearing years ago, Mr. Snowden pulled back the curtain for all to see, and Congress has since flopped. Right, "Judge"? ..."
I have argued for a few weeks now that House Intelligence Committee members have committed
misconduct in office by concealing evidence of spying abuses by the National Security Agency
and the FBI. They did this by sitting on a four-page memo that summarizes the abuse of raw
intelligence data while Congress was debating a massive expansion of FISA.
FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which was written to enable the
federal government to spy on foreign agents here and abroad. Using absurd and paranoid logic,
the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which only hears the government's lawyers,
has morphed "foreign intelligence surveillance" into undifferentiated bulk surveillance of all
Americans.
Undifferentiated bulk surveillance is the governmental acquisition of fiber-optic data
stored and transmitted by nearly everyone in America. This includes all telephone
conversations, text messages and emails, as well as all medical, legal and financial
records.
Ignorant of the hot potato on which the House Intelligence Committee had been sitting,
Congress recently passed and President Donald Trump signed a vast expansion of spying
authorities -- an expansion that authorizes legislatively the domestic spying that judges were
authorizing on everyone in the U.S. without individual suspicion of wrongdoing or probable
cause of crime; an expansion that passed in the Senate with no votes to spare; an expansion
that evades and avoids the Fourth Amendment; an expansion that the president signed into law
the day before we all learned of the House Intelligence Committee memo.
The FISA expansion would never have passed the Senate had the House Intelligence Committee
memo and the data on which it is based come to light seven days sooner than it did. Why should
22 members of a House committee keep their 500-plus congressional colleagues in the dark about
domestic spying abuses while those colleagues were debating the very subject matter of domestic
spying and voting to expand the power of those who have abused it?
The answer to this lies in the nature of the intelligence community today and the influence
it has on elected officials in the government. By the judicious, personalized and secret
revelation of data, both good and bad -- here is what we know about your enemies, and here is
what we know about you -- the NSA shows its might to the legislators who supposedly regulate
it. In reality, the NSA regulates them.
This is but one facet of the deep state -- the unseen parts of the government that are not
authorized by the Constitution and that never change, no matter which party controls the
legislative or executive branch. This time, they almost blew it. If just one conscientious
senator had changed her or his vote on the FISA expansion -- had that senator known of the NSA
and FBI abuses of FISA concealed by the House Intelligence Committee -- the expansion would
have failed.
Nevertheless, the evidence on which the committee members sat is essentially a
Republican-written summary of raw intelligence data. Earlier this week, the Democrats on the
committee authored their version -- based, they say, on the same raw intelligence data as was
used in writing the Republican version. But the House Intelligence Committee, made up of 13
Republicans and nine Democrats, voted to release only the Republican-written memo.
Late last week, when it became apparent that the Republican memo would soon be released, the
Department of Justice publicly contradicted President Trump by advising the leadership of the
House Intelligence Committee in very strong terms that the memo should not be released to the
public.
It soon became apparent that, notwithstanding the DOJ admonition, no one in the DOJ had
actually seen the memo. So FBI Director Chris Wray made a secret, hurried trip to the House
Intelligence Committee's vault last Sunday afternoon to view the memo. When asked by the folks
who showed it to him whether it contains secret or top-secret material, he couldn't or wouldn't
say. But he apparently saw in the memo the name of the No. 2 person at the FBI, Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, as one of the abusers of spying authority. That triggered McCabe's summary
departure from the FBI the next day, after a career of 30 years.
The abuse summarized in the Republican memo apparently spans the last year of the Obama
administration and the first year of the Trump administration. If it comes through as
advertised, it will show the deep state using the government's powers for petty or political or
ideological reasons.
The use of raw intelligence data by the NSA or the FBI for political purposes or to
manipulate those in government is as serious a threat to popular government -- to personal
liberty in a free society -- as has ever occurred in America since Congress passed the Alien
and Sedition Acts of 1798, which punished speech critical of the government.
The government works for us; we should not tolerate its treating us as children. When raw
intelligence data is capable of differing interpretations and is relevant to a public dispute
-- about, for example, whether the NSA and the FBI are trustworthy, whether FISA should even
exist, whether spying on everyone all the time keeps us safe and whether the Constitution even
permits this -- the raw data should be released to the American public.
Where is the personal courage on the House Intelligence Committee? Where is the patriotism?
Where is the fidelity to the Constitution? The government exists by our consent. It derives its
powers from us. We have a right to know what it has done in our names, who broke our trust, who
knew about it, who looked the other way and why and by whom all this was intentionally hidden
until after Congress voted to expand FISA.
Everyone in government takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. How
many take it meaningfully and seriously?
Copyright 2018 Andrew P. Napolitano. Distributed by Creators.com.
Where is the personal courage on the House Intelligence Committee? Where is the
patriotism? Where is the fidelity to the Constitution? The government exists by our
consent. It derives its powers from us. We have a right to know what it has done in our
names, who broke our trust, who knew about it, who looked the other way and why and by whom
all this was intentionally hidden until after Congress voted to expand FISA.
The Judge is wrong. The government exists by Israel's/AIPAC's consent. The fidelity is to
the state of Israel. No politician gives a hoot about what the people who vote for them
think. I am sure, even if any house member or a senator knew of this memo, the bill would
still have passed.
Everyone in government takes an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution (
State of Israel ). How many take it meaningfully and seriously?
The additions and bolds are mine. It appears that the judge doesn't understand how the
US government is run these days. The US government is for Israel, of Israel, and by
Israel . Every dishonorable house member and every dishonorable senator knows that. Pure and
simple.
Let us see how the Judge's own FOX channel reports on this story.
He'll soon get back to his Russophobia, but Mr. Napolitano's chore today is to create cover
for as much Establishment backside as possible by blaming the recent, further statutory
enshrinement of our police state on the members of a single committee within the House of
Representatives. (He leaves himself room to point his finger at unnamed others who knew about
what has now been summarized in a memorandum supposedly soon to be released.) But he fails to
address the flaws in this narrative.
1. Among other Establishment officials, "Robert Mueller, the no-nonsense special
counsel investigating whether any Americans aided the Russian government in its now
well-known interference in the 2016 American presidential election" (Andrew Napolitano,
12/7/17) helped conduct unlawful, mass surveillance in his FBI gig, and thus violated his
"oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." Right, "Judge"?
2. This article, foreshadowed in his published here last week, pounds on the farcical
notion that only members of a single House committee have known, and have known only
recently, about "[t]he abuse summarized in the Republican memo," that if "just one
conscientious senator had changed her or his vote on the FISA expansion -- had that senator
known of the NSA and FBI abuses of FISA concealed by the House Intelligence Committee -- the
expansion would have failed." But Senator Wyden knew when Mr. Clapper was lying about
governmental spying on every American in a public hearing years ago, Mr. Snowden pulled back
the curtain for all to see, and Congress has since flopped. Right, "Judge"?
3. Building on his article of last week, Mr. Napolitano wants his readers to think that,
daggum it, there's nothing to be done about this now, as though the tablets have been carved
and sent back up the mountain for several years. But "one conscientious senator" could take
the floor today to introduce a bill to repeal any of these previous or new FISA provisions.
Right, "Judge"?
4. None of this law matters because all these people are above it. Right, "Judge"?
I used to think that the 2 Parties just traded off every few elections and that the
President, being only a figure head, was predetermined. Julian Assange, before the election,
stated, very firmly, that the powers that be would never let Trump become President. I
believed him. I still can't figure out how Trump slipped in under the radar.
One of the mysteries of the Snowden affair was why none (almost none) of the 40,000 employees
of the disgusting 4th Amendment-trampling NSA blew the whistle on what they likely would have
known was massive illegal spying. It seems logical to assume they used their own technology
to screen applicants and I have it third hand that they screened each applicant or
nomination, for any left wing activity, any boat-rocking history, any standing up to
authority, emerging with a Stepford culture of fartcatching milquetoasts, who meekly and
submissively did what they were told and nothing else.
I now ask the same question of the disgraceful Guardian, which is nearly unrecognizably
distant from the aims of the family trust establishing it in the wake of Peterloo. Why have
none of their columnist railed publicly against the perverse mutilation of a grand old
establishment gad fly and formerly a beacon of integrity?
To read the Fraudian now, you have to discount nearly everything they say and decipher the
tiresome code for what they really think. Unless you can be sustained by mindless
gender-counting and lifestyle advice preceded by the things you 'must' do , delivered by
yapping non-experts, bulwarked by doctrinaire moderatrices.
This was a paper to which a whistleblower, not long ago might choose to go. They would be
mad to go there now after the Fraudian threw Snowden under the bus in their uninhibited
headlong fanatical drum eating for the dreaded Hillary. The pant-suited one wants him home
"to face the music". Nice. There were many lessons from Hillary's defeat and they have
learned none of them.
We live in an era where lying to Congress can be done with impunity cf. Alexander,
Clapper, Brennan et al. There was no consequence for them There could be a consequence for
the Fraudian.
This is really a "soft coup", a color revolution against Trump
Notable quotes:
"... It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages does incalculably more damage than that. ..."
"... We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State. ..."
"... More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate. ..."
"... But the main casualty is the FBI's 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama administration's Russia-gate intelligence "assessment," electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets ..."
"... Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for "evidence" of Russian-Trump collusion designed to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call "means, motive and opportunity ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly "hacked" Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario. ..."
"... on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that he said was compiled by "hand-picked" analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an "assessment" that Russia and President Putin were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency. ..."
"... Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking. He wrote at the time: "What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to 'trust us.'" ..."
"... Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free "assessment" was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian "hack." Even when that falsehood was belatedly acknowledged , the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the Russian "hack" conclusion. Shane's blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media's approved narrative of Russia-gate. ..."
"... Doubts about the Russian "hack" or dissident suggestions that what we were witnessing was a "soft coup" were scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about the weaknesses of the Russia-gate narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit of the goal of removing Trump from the White House. ..."
"... Justified or not, Trump's feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous -- particularly at a time when the most urgent need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals. ..."
"... On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of the Resistance's strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to "get Trump." ..."
"... Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment's storyline that there appears to be no room for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can't stop stoking the smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump's impeachment. ..."
"... Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of the "rule of law" and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the "rule of law" and "pursuit of truth" appear to have been reduced to high-falutin' phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack of evidence. ..."
"... In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page text-message exchange and told Mueller ..."
"... At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily cozy role as "overlook" committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today's technology permits blanket collection, and "Collect Everything" has become the motto. ..."
"... Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with almost four decades of membership in the House and Senate, openly warned incoming President Trump in January 2017 against criticizing the U.S. intelligence community because U.S. intelligence officials have "six ways from Sunday to get back at you" if you are "dumb" enough to take them on. ..."
"... If congressional investigators have been paying attention, they already know what former weapons inspector Scott Ritter shared with Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues this week; namely, that Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson, who commissioned the Russia dossier using Democratic Party money, said he reached out to Steele after June 17, just three days before Steele's first report was published , drawing on seven sources. ..."
"... How, you might ask, could Strzok and associates undertake these extra-legal steps with such blithe disregard for the possible consequences should they be caught? The answer is easy; Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? This was just extra insurance with no expectation of any "death benefit" ever coming into play -- save for Trump's electoral demise in November 2016. The attitude seemed to be that, if abuse of the FISA law should eventually be discovered -- there would be little interest in a serious investigation by the editors of The New York Times and other anti-Trump publications and whatever troubles remained could be handled by President Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... As you know Mr. McGovern the police state seldom loses. ..."
"... Compared to the criminal and corrupt US political system, the mafia is an honor society oriented on values. More and more evidence appears that the whole Russian Gate was precooked by the Obama and Clinton mafia together with crooks like Clapper, Brennan, Comey. Lynch and many of the top brass in the FBI and the DoJ. The installment of Bob Mueller who is hugely biased and a Comey body hired only Clinton supporters as his lawyers. But such a team shows how corrupt the US justice system has already become. ..."
"... Considering all the experience gleaned from 7+ decades of subverting and overthrowing governments around the world, the Deep State thugs must of thought securing the WH for their Killer Queen was a 'slam dunk.' ..."
"... The FBI answers to the CIA. This essay is absurd. ..."
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin's
"puppet.
Special Report: In the Watergate era, liberals warned about U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics, but now
Trump-hatred has blinded many of them to this danger becoming real, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.
Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate, thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence
official Peter Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Ten illustrative texts from their exchange appear at the
end of this article.)
Despite his former job as chief of the FBI's counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones
could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through "Surity 101." Or perhaps he was busy texting during that class. Girlfriend Page
cannot be happy at being misled by his assurance that using office phones would be a secure way to conduct their affair(s).
It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing
the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest
of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages
does incalculably more damage than that.
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S.
democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not
the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters
sometimes called the Deep State.
More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly
has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate.
Besides forcing the removal of Strzok and Page, the text exposures also sounded the death knell for the career of FBI Deputy Director
Andrew McCabe, in whose office some of the plotting took place and who has already announced his plans to retire soon.
But the main casualty is the FBI's 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama
administration's Russia-gate intelligence "assessment," electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that
could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest
advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets.
Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand
evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for "evidence" of Russian-Trump collusion designed
to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to
keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call "means, motive and opportunity."
Even more unfortunately for Russia-gate enthusiasts, the FBI lovers' correspondence provides factual evidence exposing much of
the made-up "Resistance" narrative – the contrived storyline that The New York Times and much of the rest of the U.S. mainstream
media deemed fit to print with little skepticism and few if any caveats, a scenario about brilliantly devious Russians that not only
lacks actual evidence – relying on unverified hearsay and rumor – but doesn't make sense on its face.
The Russia-gate narrative always hinged on the preposterous notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw years ago what
no American political analyst considered even possible, the political ascendancy of Donald Trump. According to the narrative, the
fortune-telling Putin then risked creating even worse tensions with a nuclear-armed America that would – by all odds – have been
led by a vengeful President Hillary Clinton.
Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly "hacked"
Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to
use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario.
The Trump Shock
But the shock of Trump's election and the decision of many never-Trumpers to cast their lot with the Resistance led to a situation
in which any prudent skepticism or demand for evidence was swept aside.
So, on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that
he said was compiled by "hand-picked" analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an "assessment" that Russia and President Putin
were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency.
Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking.
He wrote
at the time: "What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence
to back up the agencies' claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. Instead, the message from the agencies
essentially amounts to 'trust us.'"
But the "assessment" served a useful purpose for the never-Trumpers: it applied an official imprimatur on the case for delegitimizing
Trump's election and even raised the long-shot hope that the Electoral College might reverse the outcome and possibly install a compromise
candidate, such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the White House. Though the Powell ploy fizzled, the hope of somehow
removing Trump from office continued to bubble, fueled by the growing hysteria around Russia-gate.
Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free "assessment" was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record
repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian "hack." Even when that
falsehood was belatedly
acknowledged , the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the
Russian "hack" conclusion. Shane's blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media's approved
narrative of Russia-gate.
Doubts about the Russian "hack" or dissident suggestions that what we were
witnessing was a "soft coup" were
scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about
the weaknesses of the Russia-gate
narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit
of the goal of removing Trump from the White House.
It didn't even seem to matter when new
Russia-gate disclosures conflicted
with the original narrative
that Putin had somehow set Trump up as a Manchurian candidate. All normal journalistic skepticism was jettisoned. It was as if the
Russia-gate advocates started with the conclusion that Trump must go and then made the facts fit into that mold, but anyone who noted
the violations of normal investigative procedures was dismissed as a "Trump enabler" or a "Moscow stooge."
The Text Evidence
But then came the FBI text messages, providing documentary evidence that key FBI officials involved in the Russia-gate investigation
were indeed deeply biased and out to get Trump, adding hard proof to Trump's longstanding lament that he was the subject of a "witch
hunt ."
Peter Strzok, who served as a Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, second in command of counterintelligence.
Justified or not, Trump's feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous -- particularly at a time when the most urgent
need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche
to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of
the Resistance's strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to "get Trump."
Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment's storyline that there appears to be no room
for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can't stop stoking the
smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump's impeachment.
Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of
the "rule of law" and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the "rule of law" and "pursuit
of truth" appear to have been reduced to high-falutin' phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans
in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack
of evidence.
Strzok and Page
Peter Strzok (pronounced "struck") has an interesting pedigree with multiple tasks regarding both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.
As the FBI's chief of counterespionage during the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's unauthorized use of
a personal email server for classified information, Strzok reportedly changed the words "grossly negligent" (which could have triggered
legal prosecution) to the far less serious "extremely careless" in FBI Director James Comey's depiction of Clinton's actions. This
semantic shift cleared the way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that
"no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton.
Then, as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, Strzok led the FBI's investigation into alleged Russian
interference in the U.S. election of 2016. It is a safe bet that he took a strong hand in hand-picking the FBI contingent of analysts
that joined "hand-picked" counterparts from CIA and NSA in preparing the evidence-free, Jan. 6, 2017 assessment accusing Russian
President Vladimir Putin of interfering in the election of 2016. (Although accepted in Establishment groupthink as revealed truth,
that poor excuse for analysis reflected the apogee of intelligence politicization -- rivaled only by the fraudulent intelligence
on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq 15 years ago.)
In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible
links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page
text-message exchange and told Mueller.
There is no little irony in the fact that what did in the FBI sweathearts was their visceral disdain for Mr. Trump, their cheerleading-cum-kid-gloves
treatment of Mrs. Clinton and her associates, their 1950-ish, James Clapperesque attitude toward Russians as "almost genetically
driven" to evil, and their (Strzok/Page) elitist conviction that they know far better what is good for the country than regular American
citizens, including those "deplorables" whom Clinton said made up half of Trump's supporters.
But Strzok/Page had no idea that their hubris, elitism and scheming would be revealed in so tangible a way. Worst of all for them,
the very thing that Strzok, in particular, worked so hard to achieve -- the sabotaging of Trump and immunization of Mrs. Clinton
and her closest advisers is now coming apart at the seams.
Congress: Oversee? or Overlook?
At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily
cozy role as "overlook" committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The
latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including
J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today's
technology permits blanket collection, and "Collect Everything" has become the motto.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with almost four decades of membership in the House and Senate, openly warned incoming President
Trump in January 2017 against criticizing the U.S. intelligence community because U.S. intelligence officials have "six ways from
Sunday to get back at you" if you are "dumb" enough to take them on.
Thanks to the almost 10,000 text messages between Strzok and Page, only a small fraction of which were given to Congress four
weeks ago, there is now real evidentiary meat on the bones of the suspicions that there indeed was a "deep-state coup" to "correct"
the outcome of the 2016 election. We now know that the supposedly apolitical FBI officials had huge political axes to grind. The
Strzok-Page exchanges drip with disdain for Trump and those deemed his smelly deplorable supporters. In one text message, Strzok
expressed visceral contempt for those working-class Trump voters, writing on Aug. 26, 2016, "Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart.
I could SMELL the Trump support. it's scary real down here."
The texts even show Strzok warning of the need for an "insurance policy" to thwart Trump on the off-chance that his poll numbers
closed in on those of Mrs. Clinton.
An Aug. 6, 2016 text message, for example, shows Page giving her knight in shining armor strong affirmation: "Maybe you're meant
to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace [Trump]." That text to Strzok includes a link
to a David Brooks
column
in The New York Times, in which Brooks concludes with the clarion call: "There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become
dishonorable. If you're not in revolt, you're in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids
will look away in shame."
Another text message shows that other senior government officials – alarmed at the possibility of a Trump presidency – joined
the discussion. In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on
Aug. 15, 2016, "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office -- that there's no way he [Trump] gets
elected -- but I'm afraid we can't take that risk." Strzok added, "It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die
before you're 40."
Insurance Policy?
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says he will ask Strzok to explain the "insurance policy" when he calls
him to testify. What seems already clear is that the celebrated "Steele Dossier" was part of the "insurance," as was the evidence-less
legend that Russia hacked
the DNC's and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's emails and
gave them to WikiLeaks .
If congressional investigators have been paying attention, they already know what former weapons inspector Scott Ritter shared
with Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues this week; namely, that Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson, who commissioned
the Russia dossier using Democratic Party money, said he reached out to Steele after June 17, just three days before Steele's
first report was published
, drawing on seven sources.
"There is a snowball's chance in hell that this is raw intelligence gathered by Steele; rather he seems to have drawn on a single
'trusted intermediary' to gather unsubstantiated rumor already in existence."
Another VIPS colleague, Phil Giraldi, writing out of his own experience in private sector consulting, added: "The fact that you
do not control your sources frequently means that they will feed you what they think you want to hear. Since they are only doing
it for money, the more lurid the details the better, as it increases the apparent value of the information. The private security
firm in turn, which is also doing it for the money, will pass on the stories and even embroider them to keep the client happy and
to encourage him to come back for more. When I read the Steele dossier it looked awfully familiar to me, like the scores of similar
reports I had seen which combined bullshit with enough credible information to make the whole product look respectable."
It is now widely known that the Democrats ponied up the "insurance premiums," so to speak, for former British intelligence officer
Christopher Steele's "dossier" of lurid -- but largely unproven -- "intelligence" on Trump and the Russians. If, as many have concluded,
the dossier was used to help justify a FISA warrant to snoop on the Trump campaign, those involved will be in deep kimchi, if congressional
overseers do their job.
How, you might ask, could Strzok and associates undertake these extra-legal steps with such blithe disregard for the possible
consequences should they be caught? The answer is easy; Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? This was just extra insurance with
no expectation of any "death benefit" ever coming into play -- save for Trump's electoral demise in November 2016. The attitude seemed
to be that, if abuse of the FISA law should eventually be discovered -- there would be little interest in a serious investigation
by the editors of The New York Times and other anti-Trump publications and whatever troubles remained could be handled by President
Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee of Judiciary on Crime and Terrorism, joined Sen.
Grassley in signing the letter referring Christopher Steele to the Justice Department to investigate what appear to be false statements
about the dossier. In signing, Graham noted the "many stop signs the Department of Justice ignored in its use of the dossier." The
signature of committee ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, however, was missing -- an early sign that a highly partisan
battle royale is in the offing. On Tuesday, Feinstein unilaterally released a voluminous transcript of Glenn Simpson's earlier testimony
and, as though on cue, Establishment pundits portrayed Steele as a good source and Fusion GPS's Glenn Simpson as a victim.
The Donnybrook is now underway; the outcome uncertain.
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 and CIA intelligence analyst for 30 years; prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan;
and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Thanks for the article, Mr. McGovern. I sure wish this could be published where some liberal eyeballs could get a look at it.
I would also be interested in your opinion on the strange stuff found in some of the John Podesta emails. Although I can understand
why you may not want to swim in those murky waters.
The world is controlled by Corporate Fascist Military Industrial Intelligence Police States. They will pick the leaders of the
world and no one will tell the differently. This FBI scandal goes through all the intelligence agencies and begins with Obama
who basically runs the government in his "third term." This entire election was rigged by Dems starting with the exclusion of
Sanders. Unfortunately, for the Dems their plan failed because Hillary was such a terrible candidate. If this is not brought out
in the open we will never have a chance of getting a legitimate candidate again.
As you know Mr. McGovern the police state seldom loses.
An excellent, factual summary. (And, in light of the last two weeks, prescient.) This is true journalism, long gone from the rotten
husks of what used to be known as the Press.
But the passages about Mr. Strzok helping to alter Mr. Comey's letter picked a scab: Why is there such widespread acceptance
of the notion that Mrs. Clinton can not now be charged? I don't believe that Mr. McGovern shares that notion, other than seeing
how immunizing people, etc., makes her prosecution more difficult. But many Americans on each "side" seem to see Mr. Comey's exercise
of what was Mrs. Lynch's discretion to begin with as the equivalent of a Presidential pardon. In the meantime, applicable statutes
of limitation run
The more sunlight, the better. But before getting your hopes up about any of this hullabaloo, or expecting any change in how
the USG functions, go back and look for those pictures of Mr. Trump golfing with Mr. Clinton, the Clintons at his wedding(s),
etc.
Compared to the criminal and corrupt US political system, the mafia is an honor society oriented on values. More and more
evidence appears that the whole Russian Gate was precooked by the Obama and Clinton mafia together with crooks like Clapper, Brennan,
Comey. Lynch and many of the top brass in the FBI and the DoJ. The installment of Bob Mueller who is hugely biased and a Comey
body hired only Clinton supporters as his lawyers. But such a team shows how corrupt the US justice system has already become.
The mainstream media are involved in this witch hunt against Trump from the very beginning. Perhaps some of its bog shots were
even paid for fabricated political reporting. The NYT, the Post, CNN, MSNBC and all the other so-called opinion leaders spread
fake news and kept the legend of "Russian collusion" going over a year, despite presenting not a single piece of evidence. Their
task was to manipulate and brainwash the American public.
Just listen to this interview. One understands what was and still is going on in this crooked US political system.
" thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence official Peter
Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page."
Despite the efforts to destroy a significant part of the data trail. You know, in the good old days, evidence of the affair
would be enough for their clearances to be revoked, and use of Government telecomms for such purposes would be grounds for firing.
Don't know what Sessions is waiting for, but this bubba would like some red meat already. For that matter, he should have told
Mueller where to put his subpeona. Sessions really is an empty suit.
Well in reality it began with Bush the Stupid and his remark that the Constitution was only a GD piece of paper and promptly
tore it up,and as long as we continue to have the best government "money can buy" nothing will change,anymore than it will change
under Trump, as he switches from the war on terror to the war on competitors (Russia and China)and world domination and its resources..
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the
U.S. democratic process.
Considering all the experience gleaned from 7+ decades of subverting and overthrowing governments around the world, the
Deep State thugs must of thought securing the WH for their Killer Queen was a 'slam dunk.' My believe is that Trump actually
got around 70% of the vote, a number that overwhelmed their computerized vote fixing.
All the grief, misery and destruction we've visited upon nations around the world is now coming back to haunt Americans. Only
part missing is the violent overthrow or assassination of a leader and don't put the Deep State thugs beyond that.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte
blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans.
This looks like a disingenuous conflation of Trump (and his handful of presumably more or less dependable allies/minions) with
the Ryan-Koch- US Chamber of Commerce GOP establishment. Despite what Jeff Flake says, he's not a dictator, so he has to make
concessions to the donor class-controlled wing of the party. This stuff is so obvious I'm embarrassed as I type it out.
Keep right on sucking up that kool-aid,the economy has an up-tick because of government spending, which of course will add
another $1.7 trillion (per David Stockman Reagan's budget directer) to the debt that you just wished onto your children,g children
and their children (ain't you proud/) and lol if you believe those government figures on the unemployment stats than you must
believe in the tooth fairy,and of course along with those bonuses comes the lay-offs, a thousand here a thousand there (on the
Lay-off list) as the work is out sourced to other countries,meanwhile a few more billion goes to the military/industrial group.Ah
yes utopia at last,well while it last that is .
"It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing
the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the
rest of us."
True One of the first thoughts I had was that these were, at most, highschool level communications. To think this is 'high
level' government in action is, at once, amusing and disturbing.
Now, many companies are cutting corners by using "contract workers" on a temporary basis.
Concur all, but this especially. In the DC area starting with the internet boom and dot.com busts of the late 90s, Indians
started coming in and all of a sudden, everyone in IT and computer technologies was being replaced with a contract. After spending
years getting certs and continuously upgrading skills and certs, people were ruined with imported contractors. It started at FannyMae
and Freddie Mac, the entire board and hierarchy there read like the New Delhi phone book for twenty years now. Between the Chins
and Indians, there's been an enormous overclass installed and it's not going anywhere. Someone here recently wrote an article
about it but it isn't recent. With the handwriting on the wall so long ago, I gave up chasing Microsoft certs and contracts and
went back to analog phone systems and infrastructure and electrical, but I saw a lot of people that tried to follow the professional
IT path ruined. Throw in the racial and sexual politics in the offices and the environment is pretty miserable anyway..
Pretty bad as is, but with AI coming about, whole classes of Democrat folks unconcerned with immigration will be replaced by
Bots of all sorts, making the immigration hardships look like Disney World.
"Strzok reportedly changed the words "grossly negligent" (which could have triggered legal prosecution) to the far less
serious "extremely careless" in FBI Director James Comey's depiction of Clinton's actions. This semantic shift cleared the
way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that "no reasonable prosecutor"
would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton."
It's a thin line between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness." While "gross negligence" usually involves unintentional
acts, they can border on intentional conduct by the very recklessness of the activity. A senior government moving vast amounts
of classified data on unsecured networks can't begin to assert she didn't know the risks she was taking. Semantics here are irrelevant:
The substance of the law is that HRC was grossly negligent.
As a seasoned lawyer, Comey would know that a prosecutor could very reasonably equate the two and charge on a violation of
18 USC 793 (Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information) There are a couple paragraphs that could be applied, but (f)
looks most likely. The mere act of storing classified data on a personal server could also be a violation of 18 USC 798 (Disclosure
of classified information). Destroying the same data might also be charged as violations of the 2009 Federal Records Act, and
there is plenty of reason to pursue the limb of Obstruction of Justice in light of the other serious charges that could reasonably
be made.
In order to be credible, justice must be seen to be done. The longer Sessions and Trump let this charade go uninvestigated
for fear that investigating it looks overtly political, the more political it actually becomes, and the less credible the rule
of law in America becomes ("Laws and regulations are for the little people!)
The deep state coup was the appointment of Trump or it could have been Clinton. You have no choice when you vote. The work of
retired spooks like McGovern is to convince you that you live in a Democracy where voting matters. There's no evidence that voting
serves anyone other than appearances for the ruling elite.
The FBI is an inherently political organization. I would expect the FBI to tweet things like " that motherfucker is goin' down"
or "fuck her" or "Orange son of a bitch, let's make some noise" or more racist "those nigger motherfuckers in the city" or "think
you're anonymous on the internet lil'boy?" Those would be the tweets of the FBI that we all know and love.
This interference into a presidential election by an agency such as the FBI raises the question of whether there's been manipulation
of other previous elections. Were some of our previous presidents installed through machinations of an intelligence agency?
Sure they are these companies and corporations are saving millions upon millions due to Trump and the republicans, while throwing
a few crumbs to the workers who are suppose to lick their hands, many who only make $10-$11 dollars per hour, and seeing they
are bonuses the government will take more than their share, and down the road these same workers will be paying it back in spades
,after all someone has to fund the military/industrial racket
Trump needs to be impeached. The entire Government is a bad bit of fiction, why not use the symbolic figure head of empire to
generate excitement in the mass of American sheep? To that end, throw up any accusation that will stick, make it sound like a
Constitutional crisis but simple enough for the average begrudged redneck to understand. The FBI has an agenda, what part of the
Government doesn't? The whole point of elections is to have different groups employ every tactic under the sun to manipulate said
sheep. Let's get the impeachment show started.
This whole affair also totally destroys the G-Man mythos. From the outside Strzok looks the part. Yet both he and Page write texts
like they're particularly dim 20 year old girls.
Strzok – God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.
Page– I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Page – He's not ever going to become president, right? Right?!
Strzok – OMG did you hear what Trump just said?
Page – Yep. Out to lunch with (redacted) We both hate everyone and everything.
Page – Just riffing on the hot mess that is our country.
Strzok– Donald just said "bad hombres"
This is the level of discourse (Of course this could just be a biased sample to humiliate Strzok but leave the really bad conspiring
out of frame) he has with his mistress on an FBI phone as he plans dirty tricks on his own country?
The sad part will be to see how they will all, one after the other, get away with everything they've done.
If any of them will even go to trial for anything other than some procedural point, they'll all make a deal with DC-Democratic
prosecutors, Hollywood will make a film casting them as heroes and they'll all get a slap on the wrist, a la Petraeus.
The politicians will claim that they have to hide the truth so that the public will not loose their 'trust' in these institutions,
they'll name some RINO as the 'compromise' candidate to lead these institutions and it'll be back to business as usual in the
heart of the empire, as in all previous times, see James Bovard's article:
Page– I don't know. But we'll get it back. We're America. We rock.
Such vacuous shallowness, imagining themselves to be the heroes of some cheap Hollywood movie, not even suspecting how 2 dimensional,
delusional, and sophomoric it all sounds (of course, it only sound moronic because we found out about it before the plan reach
its planned conclusion).
After 14 years of non-stop wars and mass murder, we find out the empire is run by the cheerleading squad, motivating each other
with high fives while trying to take 'democracy' down. Still, I suspect there were adults at table also who mad sure to say one
step out of the spotlight.
"It's a thin line between "gross negligence" and "extreme carelessness." "
Not in the context of legal language. In fact, it's a great divide. "Extremely careless" is not a federal criminal charge,
while "gross negligence" actually is. Never mind about the difference in degree when speaking of the two terms, one is a crime,
and the other is merely grounds for an investigation.
They're not treating us like children. They're treating us like chumps. I don't think I'm
the only American citizen who's tired of it. Impanel a grand jury and get to the bottom of
the massive corruption going on in our country.
Next week we will be mad when we get the memo and find it blacked out every other
sentence... That's why they need 19 days to go over 4 lousy pages, To make sure the people don't
see anything that might make any sense.
treating Americans like children - more like treating Americans like subjects, vote cows
without them having any authority. Americans don't have to give up their authority as
employers of Congressmen, the Americans chose to be treated 'like children'.
The correct argument is not that universal spying on the public doesn't work, but that
it's inconsistent with our way of life. Freedom isn't free and one of the costs is not having
some of the options a dictator has to deal with adversaries.
"... Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the 'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT. ..."
"... I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to get political advantage ..."
"... "I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents." ..."
"... "The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe they did, and he believes that." ..."
"... "I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained. ..."
"... Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it ..."
"... "has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia. From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially." ..."
"... "I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like," he said. ..."
Unable to come to terms with losing the 2016 election, Democrats are still pushing the
'Russiagate' probe and blocking the release of a memo describing surveillance abuses by the
FBI, former Congressman Ron Paul told RT.
A top-secret intelligence memo, believed to reveal political bias at the highest levels of
the FBI and the DOJ towards President Trump, may well be as significant as the Republicans say,
Ron Paul told RT. But, he added, "there's still to many unknowns, especially, from my view
point."
"Trump connection to the Russians, I think, has been way overblown, and I'd like to just
get to the bottom of this the new information that's coming out, maybe this will reveal
things and help us out," he said.
"Right now it's just a political fight," the former US Congressman said. "I think they're
dealing with things a lot less important than the issue they ought to be talking about Right
now, I don't think anybody is seeking justice or seeking truth as much as they're seeking to
get political advantage."
Trump's claims that he was wiretapped by US intelligence agencies on the orders of the Obama
administration may well turn out to be true, Paul said.
"I would be surprised if they haven't spied on him. They spy on everybody else. And they
have spied on other members of the executive branch and other presidents."
However, he criticized Trump for doing nothing to prevent the Senate from voting in the
expansion of warrantless surveillance of US citizens under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) earlier this week.
"The other day when they voted to get FISA even more power to spy on American people, the
president couldn't be influenced by the fact that they used it against him. And I believe
they did, and he believes that."
"I've always maintained that government ought to be open and the people ought to have
their privacy. But right now the people have no privacy and all our government does is work
on secrecy and then it becomes competitive between the two parties, who get stuck with the
worst deal by arguing, who's guilty of some crime," the politician explained.
The fact that Democrats on the relevant committees have all voted against releasing the memo
"might mean that Trump is probably right; there's probably a lot of stuff there that would
exonerate him from any accusation they've been making," he said.
Paul also blasted the infamous 'Russian Dossier' compiled by former British spy Christopher
Steele, and which the Democrats used in their attack on Trump, saying it
"has no legitimacy being revealing [in terms of] of Trump being associated with Russia.
From the people I know The story has been all made up, essentially."
"I'm no fan of Trump. I'm not a supporter of his, but I think that has been carried way
overboard. I think the Democrats can't stand the fact that they've lost the election, and
they can't stand the fact that Trump is a little bit more independent minded than they like,"
he said.
Donald Trump Jr. called for the release of a memo that allegedly contains information about
Obama administration surveillance abuses and suggested that Democrats are complicit with the
media in misleading the public.
"It's the double standard that the people are fed by the Democrats in complicity with the
media, that's why neither have any trust from the American people anymore," Trump said on Fox
News Friday.
The is a single party of neoliberal oligarchy with two wings. Both are afraid of citizens and would like to sly on them.
Notable quotes:
"... Despite being in the minority, Democrats last week had enough Republican votes on their side to curb the president's ability, enhanced since 9/11, to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike. ..."
"... In the House, a majority of Democrats were willing to join a small minority of Republicans to do just that. But 55 Democrats – including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi; the minority whip, Steny Hoyer; and other Democratic leaders of the opposition to Trump – refused. ..."
"... After the House voted for an extension of the president's power to spy, a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans attempted to filibuster the bill. The critical 60th vote to shut down the filibuster was a Democrat. ..."
"... This is despite the fact that the surveillance bill gives precisely the sorts of powers viewers of an Academy Award-winning film about the Stasi from not long so ago ..."
"... Pelosi: 'We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted to Enable Them' ..."
"... But in the same way that discourse of authoritarianism misses the democratic forest for the anti-democratic tweets, so does it focus more on the rhetoric of an abusive man than the infrastructure of an oppressive state, more on the erosion of norms than the material instruments of repression. ..."
You'd think that Democrats in Congress would jump at the opportunity to impose a constraint on Donald Trump's presidency – one
that liberals and Democrats alike have characterized as authoritarian. Apparently, that's not the case.
Despite being in the minority, Democrats last week had enough Republican votes on their side to curb the president's ability,
enhanced since 9/11, to spy on citizens and non-citizens alike.
In the House, a majority of Democrats were willing to join a small minority of Republicans to do just that. But 55 Democrats
– including the minority leader, Nancy Pelosi; the minority whip, Steny Hoyer; and other Democratic leaders of the opposition to
Trump – refused.
After the House voted for an extension of the president's power to spy, a group of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans
attempted to filibuster the bill. The critical 60th vote to shut down the filibuster was a Democrat.
With the exception of Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept, a press that normally expresses great alarm over Trump's amassing and
abuse of power has had relatively little to say about this vote (or this vote or this vote).
This is despite the fact that the surveillance bill gives precisely the sorts of powers viewers of an Academy Award-winning
film about the Stasi from not long so ago would instantly recognize to a president whose view of the media a leading Republican
recently compared to Stalin.
It was left to the Onion to offer the best (and near only) comment:
Pelosi: 'We Must Fight Even Harder Against Trump's Authoritarian Impulses Now That We've Voted to Enable Them'
Last week, I wrote in these pages how the discourse of Trump's authoritarianism ignores or minimizes the ways in which democratic
citizens and institutions – the media, the courts, the opposition party, social movements – are opposing Trump, with seemingly little
fear of intimidation.
But in the same way that discourse of authoritarianism misses the democratic forest for the anti-democratic tweets, so does
it focus more on the rhetoric of an abusive man than the infrastructure of an oppressive state, more on the erosion of norms than
the material instruments of repression.
By default I block Google and its octopus of websites as third party sites on websites I
visit. This list includes doubleclick.net, googlesyndication.com, google-analytics.com,
googleusercontent.com, googleadservices.com, googlecode.com, gmail.com, gstatic.com,
googletagmanager.com and, yes, googleapis.com.
When you do this you find that a lot of websites stop working, and proves how google (and
its intelligence agency patrons) are able to egregiously violate your privacy and track you
all over the internet (in addition to whatever tracking your or your friends' Android devices
do).
Unfortunately this site uses googleapis.com for its comment submission. Why? There are
countless ways to activate a "Reply" button without requiring Big Brother Google to monitor
the event.
Please re-consider your reliance on Google to provide minor web features (new comment
submission works with googleapis.com disabled but it is not possible to reply to another
comment as the three options – Reply, Agree/Disagree/etc. and This Commenter links
– are all non-functional without permitting Google spying).
"... The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein. ..."
"... Binney: We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an article on this in July. First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic world, the NSA would know. Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points on the fiber lines, taking in everything. ..."
"... The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a charade. It was a download and not a transfer across the Web. The Web won't manage such a high speed. It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed. You would have to have high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us. There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here. ..."
"... Bernstein: Let me come at this from the other side. Has the United States ever tried to hack into and undermine Russian operations in this way? ..."
"... Binney: Oh, sure. We do it as much as anybody else. In the Ukraine, for example, we sponsored regime change. When someone who was pro-Soviet was elected president, we orchestrated a coup to put our man in power. ..."
"... Did the US meddle in the Russian elections that brought Yeltsin to power? ..."
"... I believe they did. We try to leverage our power and influence elections around the world. ..."
"... Binney: Yes, to defend privacy but also to defend the Constitution. Right now, our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways. Mueller did it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution. ..."
"... Bernstein: There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate investigation. It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because the Russians undermined the election. ..."
"... Bernstein: It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election. You're saying it was actually selected individuals from just three agencies. Is there anything to the revelations that FBI agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president? ..."
"... Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a frame-up. It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself internally ..."
"... Bernstein: What concerns do you have regarding the Russia-gate investigation and the McCarthyite tactics that are being employed? ..."
"... Binney: Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars. I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly unconstitutional. ..."
The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked
Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts
say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein.
A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more
skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question
the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support
the dangerous claims about Russian 'hacking" of Democratic emails especially when some veteran
U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were
guilty.
One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency
intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary
breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W.
Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home
in 2007.
Even before Edward Snowden's NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had
access to telecommunications companies' domestic and international billing records, and that
since 9/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden
has said: "I have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the
rules."
I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with
spying and America's expanding
national security state.
Dennis Bernstein: I would like you to begin by telling us a little about your background at
the NSA and how you got there.
William Binney: I was in the United States Army from 1965 to 1969. They put me in the
Army Security Agency, an affiliate of the NSA. They liked the work I was doing and they put me
on a priority hire in 1970. I was in the NSA for 32 years, mostly working against the Soviet
Union and the Warsaw Pact. I was solving what were called "wizard puzzles," and the NSA was
sometimes referred to as the "Puzzle Palace." I had to solve code systems and work on cyber
systems and data systems to be able to predict in advance the "intentions and capabilities of
adversaries or potential adversaries."
Bernstein: At a certain point you ran amiss of your supervisors. What did you come to
understand and try to tell people that got you in dutch with your higher-ups?
Binney: By 1998-1999, the "digital issue" was basically solved. This created a
problem for the upper ranks because at the time they were lobbying Congress for $3.8 billion to
continue working on what we had already accomplished. That lobby was started in 1989 for a
separate program called Trailblazer, which failed miserably in 2005-2006. We had to brief
Congress on how we were progressing and my information ran contrary to the efforts downtown to
secure more funding. And so this caused a problem internally.
We learned from some of our staff members in Congress that several of the corporations that
were getting contracts from the NSA were downtown lobbying against our program in Congress.
This is the military industrial complex in action. That lobby was supported by the NSA
management because they just wanted more money to build a bigger empire.
But Dick Cheney, who was behind all of this, wanted it because he grew up under Nixon, who
always wanted to know what his political enemies were thinking and doing. This kind of approach
of bulk acquisition of everything was possible after you removed certain segments of our
software and they used it against the entire digital world. Cheney wanted to know who his
political enemies were and get updates about them at any time.
Bernstein: Your expertise was in the Soviet Union and so you must know a lot about
bugging. Do you believe that Russia hacked and undermined our last election? Can Trump thank
Russia for the result?
Binney: We at Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published an
article on this in July. First of all, if any of the data went anywhere across the fiber optic
world, the NSA would know. Just inside the United States, the NSA has over a hundred tap points
on the fiber lines, taking in everything. Mark Klein exposed some of this at the AT&T
facility in San Francisco.
This is not for foreigners, by the way, this is for targeting US citizens. If they wanted
only foreigners, all they would have to do was look at the transatlantic cables where they
surface on the coast of the United States. But they are not there, they are distributed among
the US population.
Bernstein: So if, in fact, the Russians were tapping into DNC headquarters, the NSA
would absolutely know about it.
Binney: Yes, and they would also have trace routes on where they went specifically,
in Russia or anywhere else. If you remember, about three or four years ago, the Chinese hacked
into somewhere in the United States and our government came out and confirmed that it was the
Chinese who did it, and it came from a specific military facility in Shanghai. The NSA had
these trace route programs embedded by the hundreds across the US and all around the world.
The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a
charade. It was a download and not a transfer across the Web. The Web won't manage such a high
speed. It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed. You would have to have
high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us.
There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here.
Bernstein: So was this a leak by somebody at Democratic headquarters?
Binney: We don't know that for sure, either. All we know was that it was a local
download. We can likely attribute it to a USB device that was physically passed along.
Bernstein: Let me come at this from the other side. Has the United States ever tried
to hack into and undermine Russian operations in this way?
Binney: Oh, sure. We do it as much as anybody else. In the Ukraine, for example, we
sponsored regime change. When someone who was pro-Soviet was elected president, we orchestrated
a coup to put our man in power.
Then we invited the Ukraine into NATO. One of the agreements we made with the Russians when
the Soviet Union fell apart was that the Ukraine would give them their nuclear weapons to
manage and that we would not move NATO further east toward Russia. I think they made a big
mistake when they asked Ukraine to join NATO. They should have asked Russia to join as well,
making it all-inclusive. If you treat people as adversaries, they are going to act that
way.
Bernstein:Did the US meddle in the Russian elections that brought Yeltsin to
power?
Binney:I believe they did. We try to leverage our power and influence elections
around the world.
Bernstein: What has your group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, been
up to, and what has been the US government's response?
Binney: We have been discussing privacy and security with the European Union and with a
number of European parliaments. Recently the Austrian supreme court ruled that the entire bulk
acquisition system was unconstitutional. Everyone but the conservatives in the Austrian
parliament voted that bill down, making Austria the first country there to do the right
thing.
A slide from material leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden to the Washington Post,
showing what happens when an NSA analyst "tasks" the PRISM system for information about a new
surveillance target.
Bernstein: Is it your goal to defend people's privacy and their right to communicate
privately?
Binney: Yes, to defend privacy but also to defend the Constitution. Right now,
our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways. Mueller did
it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution.
Back in the 1990's, the idea was to make our analysts effective so that they could see
threats coming before they happened and alert people to take action so that lives would be
saved. What happens now is that people go out and kill someone and then the NSA and the FBI go
on a forensics mission. Intelligence is supposed to tell you in advance when a crime is coming
so that you can do something to avert it. They have lost that perspective.
Bernstein: They now have access to every single one of our electronic conversations,
is that right? The human mind has a hard time imagining how you could contain, move and study
all that information.
Binney: Basically, it is achievable because most of the processing is done by machine
so it doesn't cost human energy.
Bernstein: There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate
investigation. It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because
the Russians undermined the election.
Binney: I have seen no evidence at all from anybody, including the intelligence
community. If you look at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, they state on the
first page that "We have high confidence that the Russians did this." But when you get toward
the end of the report, they basically confess that "our judgment does not imply that we have
evidence to back it up."
Bernstein: It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found
compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election. You're saying it was actually
selected individuals from just three agencies. Is there anything to the revelations that FBI
agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president?
Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a
frame-up. It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself
internally.
Bernstein: I take it you are not a big supporter of Trump.
Binney: Well, I voted for him. I couldn't vote for a warmonger like Clinton. She
wanted to see our planes shooting down Russian planes in Syria. She advocated for destabilizing
Libya, for getting rid of Assad in Syria, she was a strong backer of the war in Iraq.
Bernstein: What concerns do you have regarding the Russia-gate investigation and
the McCarthyite tactics that are being employed?
Binney: Ultimately, my main concern is that it could lead to actual war with
Russia. We should definitely not be going down that path. We need to get out of all these wars.
I am also concerned about what we are doing to our own democracy. We are trampling the
fundamental principles contained in the Constitution. The only way to reverse all this is to
start indicting people who are participating in and managing these activities that are clearly
unconstitutional.
If this is true, then this is definitely a sophisticated false flag operation. Was malware Alperovich people injected specifically
designed to implicate Russians? In other words Crowdstrike=Fancy Bear
Images removed. For full content please thee the original source
One interesting corollary of this analysis is that installing Crowdstrike software is like inviting a wolf to guard your chicken.
If they are so dishonest you take enormous risks. That might be true for some other heavily advertized "intrusion prevention" toolkits.
So those criminals who use mistyped popular addresses or buy Google searches to drive lemmings to their site and then flash the screen
that they detected a virus on your computer a, please call provided number and for a small amount of money your virus will be removed
get a new more sinister life.
"... Disobedient Media outlines the DNC server cover-up evidenced in CrowdStrike malware infusion ..."
"... In the article, they claim to have just been working on eliminating the last of the hackers from the DNC's network during the past weekend (conveniently coinciding with Assange's statement and being an indirect admission that their Falcon software had failed to achieve it's stated capabilities at that time , assuming their statements were accurate) . ..."
"... To date, CrowdStrike has not been able to show how the malware had relayed any emails or accessed any mailboxes. They have also not responded to inquiries specifically asking for details about this. In fact, things have now been discovered that bring some of their malware discoveries into question. ..."
"... there is a reason to think Fancy Bear didn't start some of its activity until CrowdStrike had arrived at the DNC. CrowdStrike, in the indiciators of compromise they reported, identified three pieces of malware relating to Fancy Bear: ..."
"... They found that generally, in a lot of cases, malware developers didn't care to hide the compile times and that while implausible timestamps are used, it's rare that these use dates in the future. It's possible, but unlikely that one sample would have a postdated timestamp to coincide with their visit by mere chance but seems extremely unlikely to happen with two or more samples. Considering the dates of CrowdStrike's activities at the DNC coincide with the compile dates of two out of the three pieces of malware discovered and attributed to APT-28 (the other compiled approximately 2 weeks prior to their visit), the big question is: Did CrowdStrike plant some (or all) of the APT-28 malware? ..."
"... The IP address, according to those articles, was disabled in June 2015, eleven months before the DNC emails were acquired – meaning those IP addresses, in reality, had no involvement in the alleged hacking of the DNC. ..."
"... The fact that two out of three of the Fancy Bear malware samples identified were compiled on dates within the apparent five day period CrowdStrike were apparently at the DNC seems incredibly unlikely to have occurred by mere chance. ..."
"... That all three malware samples were compiled within ten days either side of their visit – makes it clear just how questionable the Fancy Bear malware discoveries were. ..."
Of course the DNC did not want to the FBI to investigate its "hacked servers". The plan was well underway to excuse Hillary's
pathetic election defeat to Trump, and
CrowdStrike would help out by planting evidence to pin on those evil "Russian hackers." Some would call this
entire DNC server hack an
"insurance policy."
"... The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden. ..."
"... In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the Washington Post . ..."
"... In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive. ..."
"... In August 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon, had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they invested in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon signed a $600 million deal to provide computing services for the CIA. ..."
"... The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is estimated to own a shameful $90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been a CIA front , George Soros' Open Society foundation is one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions" ..."
"... It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue. ..."
"... The Washington Post , which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded" with Trump. ..."
"... The revelation that the sole Russiagate "evidence" was the so-called Steele Dossier - i.e. opposition research funded by the Clinton campaign - which was used by the intelligence community to not only begin the public assertions of Trump's perfidy but to then initiate FISA approved surveillance on the Trump campaign, that is truly astonishing. Instructive then that the NY Times, Washington Post, etc have yet to acknowledge these facts to their readers, and instead have effectively doubled down on the story, insisting that the Russiagate allegations are established fact and constitute "objective reality." That suggests this fake news story will continue indefinitely. ..."
"... What we see here is these bastions of establishment thinking in the USA promoting "objective reality" as partisan - i.e. there is a Clinton reality versus a Trump reality, or a Russian reality versus a "Western" reality, facts and documentation be damned. This divorce from objectivity is a symptom of the overall decline of American institutions, an indicate a future hard, rather than soft, landing near the end of the road. ..."
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence
services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents
from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists,
Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the
Washington Post . Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian , others by Barton
Gellman in the Washington Post . Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of
NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.
In July 2013 the Guardian was
forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive.
In August 2013 Jeff Bezos
bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon,
had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they
invested
in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon
signed a $600 million
deal to provide computing services for the CIA.
In October 2013 Pierre Omidyar, the owner of Ebay, founded
First Look Media and hired Glenn Greenwald and Laura
Poitras. The total planned investment was said to be $250 million. It took up to February 2014 until the new organization launched
its first site, the Intercept . Only a few NSA stories appeared on it. The Intercept is a rather mediocre site.
Its management is
said to be chaotic . It publishes few stories of interests and one might ask if it ever was meant to be a serious outlet. Omidyar
has worked,
together with the U.S. government, to force regime change onto Ukraine. He had
strong ties with the Obama administration.
Snowden had copies of some
20,000 to 58,000 NSA files . Only 1,182 have been
published . Bezos and Omidyar obviously helped the NSA to keep more than 95% of the Snowden archive away from the public. The
Snowden papers were practically privatized into trusted hands of Silicon Valley billionaires with ties to the various secret services
and the Obama administration.
The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is
estimated to own a shameful
$90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use
of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been
a CIA front , George Soros' Open Society foundation is
one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions".
It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the
NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue.
The Interceptburned
a intelligence leaker, Realty Winner, who had trusted its journalists to keep her protected. It
smeared the President of Syria as neo-nazi based on an (intentional?) mistranslation of one of his speeches. It additionally
hired a Syrian supporter of the CIA's "regime change by Jihadis" in Syria. Despite its
pretense of "fearless, adversarial journalism" it hardly deviates from
U.S. policies.
The Washington Post , which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts
of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded"
with Trump.
Just today it provides two stories and one op-ed that lack any factual evidence for the anti-Russian claims made in them.
In
Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options the writers insinuate that some anonymous writer who
published a few pieces on Counterpunch and elsewhere was part of a Russian operation. They provide zero evidence to back that claim
up. Whatever that writer
wrote (see
list at end) was run of the mill stuff that had little to do with the U.S. election. The piece then dives into various cyber-operations
against Russia that the Obama and Trump administration have discussed.
A
second story in the paper today is based on "a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post." It claims that the Russian
military intelligence service GRU started a social media operation one day after the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally
removed from his office in a U.S. regime change
operation . What the story lists as alleged GRU puppet postings reads like normal internet talk of people opposed to the fascist
regime change in Kiev. The Washington Post leaves completely unexplained who handed it an alleged GRU report from 2014,
who classified it and how, if at all, it verified its veracity. To me the piece and the assertions therein have a strong odor of
bovine excrement.
An op-ed in the very same Washington Post has a similar smell. It is written by the intelligence flunkies Michael Morell
and Mike Rogers. Morell had hoped to become CIA boss under a President Hillary Clinton. The op-ed (which includes a serious misunderstanding
of "deterrence") asserts that
Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States :
Russia's information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here . But to get a sense of the
breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation
experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The author link to this page which claims to list Twitter
hashtags that are currently used by Russian influence agents. Apparently the top issue Russia's influence agents currently promote
is "#merrychristmas".
When the authors claim Russian operations are "more numerous than can be listed here" they practically admit that they have not
even one plausible operation they could cite. Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures
against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit
of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe.
If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn't Snowden spoken out about it yet? Surely he would
have said something about the Intercept and Greenwald keeping important stories buried by now. Yet, as far as I can tell, he has
a good relationship with Greenwald. I find it hard to believe hat a man who literally gave up everything he had in life to leak
important docs would remain silent for so long about a publishing cover up. I don't really like the Intercept and I think your
analysis of its content is accurate, but I do find it hard to believe that the NSA docs were "bought" back by the CIA.
If what you allege is true about Greenwald and the Intercept, then why hasn't Snowden spoken out about it yet?
_____________________________________________________
My understanding is that early on, Snowden placed his trove of documents in the exclusive care of Glenn Greenwald and his associates.
Although Snowden has since become a public figure in his own right, and his opinions on state-security events and issues are solicited,
as far as I know Snowden has no direct responsibility for managing the material he downloaded.
I haven't followed Snowden closely enough to know how familiar he may be with the contents of the reported "20,000 to 58,000
NSA files" turned over to GG/Omidyar. Snowden presumably took pains to acquire items of interest in his cache as he accumulated
classified material, but even if he has extraordinary powers of recall he may not remember precisely what remains unreleased.
FWIW, I was troubled from the first by one of the mainstays of GG's defense, or rationale, when it became clear that he was
the principal, and perhaps sole, executive "curator" of the Snowden material. In order to reassure and placate nervous "patriots"--
and GG calls himself a "patriot"-- he repeatedly emphasized that great care was being taken to vet the leaked information before
releasing it.
GG's role as whistleblower Snowden's enabler and facilitator was generally hailed uncritically by progressive-liberals and
civil-liberties advocates, to a point where public statements that should've raised skeptical doubts and questions were generally
passively accepted by complacent admirers.
Specifically, my crap detectors signaled "red alert" early on, when Greenwald (still affiliated with "The Guardian", IIRC)
took great pains to announce that his team was working closely with the US/UK governments to vet and screen Snowden's material
before releasing any of it; GG repeatedly asserted that he was reviewing the material with the relevant state-security agencies
to ensure that none of the released material would compromise or jeopardize government operatives and/or national security.
WTF? Bad enough that Greenwald was requiring the world to exclusively trust his judgment in deciding what should be released
and what shouldn't. He was also making it clear that he wasn't exactly committed to disclosing "the worst" of the material "though
the heavens fall".
In effect, as GG was telling the world that he could be trusted to manage the leaked information responsibly, he was also telling
the world that it simply had to trust his judgment in this crucial role.
To me, there was clearly a subliminal message for both Western authorities and the public: don't worry, we're conscientious,
patriotic leak-masters. We're not going to irresponsibly disclose anything too radical, or politically/socially destabilizing.
GG and the Omidyar Group have set themselves up as an independent "brand" in the new field of whistleblower/hacker impresario
and leak-broker.
Like only buying NFL-approved merchandise, or fox-approved eggs, the public is being encouraged to only buy (into) Intercept-approved
Snowden Leaks™. It's a going concern, which lends itself much more to the "modified limited hangout" approach than freely tossing
all the biggest eggs out of the basket.
GG found an opportunity to augment his rising career as a self-made investigative journalist and civil-liberties advocate.
Now he's sitting pretty, the celebrity point man for a lucrative modified limited hangout enterprise. What is wrong with this
picture?
@16 I just see no evidence of that aside from fitting the narrative of people who are convinced of a cover up in leaked docs.
Moreover, there is no way Russia would continue to offer Snowden asylum if he was gov agent. I'm sure Russian intelligence did
a very thorough background check on him.
@17 that's simply not true. He regularly tweets, gives online talks and publishes on his own. He has not used either Poitras
or Greenwald as a means of communication for years. And he has never dropped a single hint of being disappointed or frustrated
with how documents and info was published.
It just seems so implausible given the total lack of any sign of Snowden's dissatisfaction.
The revelation that the sole Russiagate "evidence" was the so-called Steele Dossier - i.e. opposition research funded by the
Clinton campaign - which was used by the intelligence community to not only begin the public assertions of Trump's perfidy but
to then initiate FISA approved surveillance on the Trump campaign, that is truly astonishing. Instructive then that the NY Times,
Washington Post, etc have yet to acknowledge these facts to their readers, and instead have effectively doubled down on the story,
insisting that the Russiagate allegations are established fact and constitute "objective reality." That suggests this fake news
story will continue indefinitely.
What we see here is these bastions of establishment thinking in the USA promoting "objective reality" as partisan - i.e.
there is a Clinton reality versus a Trump reality, or a Russian reality versus a "Western" reality, facts and documentation be
damned. This divorce from objectivity is a symptom of the overall decline of American institutions, an indicate a future hard,
rather than soft, landing near the end of the road.
G @ 1 and 18: My understanding is that Edward Snowden has been advised (warned?) by the Russian government or his lawyer in Moscow
not to reveal any more than he has said so far. The asylum Moscow has offered him may be dependent on his keeping discreet. That
may include not saying much about The Intercept, in case his communications are followed by the NSA or any other of the various
US intel agencies which could lead to their tracking his physical movements in Russia and enable any US-connected agent or agency
(including one based in Russia) to trace him, arrest him or kill him, and cover up and frame the seizure or murder in such a way
as to place suspicion or blame on the Russian government or on local criminal elements in Russia.
I believe that Snowden does have a job in Russia and possibly this job does not permit him the time to say any more than what
he currently tweets or says online.
There is nothing in MoA's article to suggest that Glenn Greenwald is deliberately burying stories in The Intercept. B has said
that its management is chaotic which could suggest among other things that Greenwald himself is dissatisfied with its current
operation.
@21 I'm not disputing that moneyed interests might have been leaned on by the CIA to stop publishing sensitive info. What I'm
disputing is the idea that people like Greenwald have deliberately with-held information that is in the public interest. I doubt
that, regardless of the strength of the Intercept as a publication.
@25 What interest would the Russian gov have in helping protect NSA? I assume Russia loves the idea of the US Intel agencies
being embarrassed. Snowden speaks his mind about plenty of domestic and international events in US. I have never seen him act
like he's being censored.
G @ 25: Moscow would have no interest in helping protect the NSA or any other US intel agency. The Russians would have advised
Snowden not to say more than he has said so far, not because they are interested in helping the NSA but because they can only
protect him as long as he is discreet and does not try to say or publish any more that would jeopardise his safety or give Washington
an excuse to pressure Moscow to extradite him back to the US. That would include placing more sanctions on Russia until Snowden
is given up.
There is the possibility also that Snowden trusts (or trusted) Greenwald to know what to do with the NSA documents. Perhaps
that trust was naively placed - we do not know.
b, a big exposition of facts, rich in links to more facts.
This is important material for all to understand.
Snowden is "the squirrel over there!" A distraction turned into a hope.
Compared to Assange, who is being slow-martyred in captivity, Snowden is a boy playing with gadgets.
Why did not Snowden make certain a copy of his theft went to Wikileaks? That would have been insurance.
Since he did not, it all could be just a distraction.
What is known about the Snowden affair is we received proof of what we knew. Not much else. For those who didn't know, they
received news.
And ever since, the shape of things from the Deep State/Shadow Government/IC has been lies and warmongering against American freedoms
and world cooperation among nations.
Fascism is corporate + the police state. The US government is a pure fascist tyranny that also protects the Empire and Global
Hegemony.
We connect the dots and it's always the same picture. It was this way in the 60s,70s,80s,90s, 00s, and this forlorn decade.
Fascism more bold each decade. Billionaires and millionaires have always been in the mix.
The Last but not LeastTechnology is dominated by
two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt.
Ph.D
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© Global Look Press / ZUMAPRESS.com / Panoramic The UK Parliament has taken hold of documents from Facebook that may shed light on the online giant's carefree approach to user privacy amid claims that it was fully aware of user data loopholes exploited by Cambridge Analytica. The documents were seized from the founder of US tech startup Six4Three, who was on a business trip to the UK, the Guardian reported , citing MP Damian Collins, chair of the Commons select committee for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The DCMS is in charge of investigating a siphoning of Facebook user data by UK consultancy firm Cambridge Analytica. The news on the massive data breach broke in March with Facebook later admitting the data of up to 87 million people might have been shared with Cambridge Analytica without their explicit consent. Read more
'In-house fake news shop' – Facebook facing new scandal and losing friends
There's a great deal of talk about how wonderful modern technology is. The internet, cell
phones, and computers are the stars of this firmament. I believe such talk is somewhat
overblown; 
