Source: CorbettReport
June 30, 2017
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES: http://www.corbettreport.com/?p=8602
As the public finally becomes outraged over the NSA’s illegal spying, members of government and the corporate media wage an information war to misdirect that anger to issues of less importance. To counteract this, a bold new citizen-led initiative to nullify the NSA is now gaining momentum around the United States. This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.
TheBreakaway | BreakawayConciousness
Zy Marquiez
June 14, 2017
“We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.”
– Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”—George Orwell, 1984
Over the last decade, American has been sinking deeper and deeper into a totalitarian landscape. Battlefield America by John W. Whitehead not only catalogues many of the tyrannical events that should have never taken place against the populace in America, but soberingly warns about the further incoming tyranny that’s slowly seeping in America and will certainly continue if the people don’t wake up to these.
The overall pattern of tyranny in America has been covered by much of the alternative media, but rarely the mainstream media. That’s why a book like this is so important, because it brings clarity to such a sobering and disconcerting topic.
That said, what does the “Police State” encompass? For starters, it involves hyper-criminalization of many events. How do we know this is taking place? For incisiveness and accuracy, let’s cite the author in his own words:
“…it is estimated that the average American actually commits three felonies a day without knowing it. In fact, according to law professor John Baker, “There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime. That is not an exaggeration.”[1][Bold emphasis added.]
Such is the foundation of a tyrannical police state.
Citing dozens and dozens of examples, the author catalogues a Marine having been detained for criticizing the government on facebook, a reporter persecuted for not revealing his sources, many instances of SWAT teams bursting into homes unannounced to investigate minor crimes [or sometimes none at all!], and more. Examples of police brutality are also covered, as well as invasive searches with no warrant where they have stripped searched people, drawn blood, probed people intimately, charged people for feeding crows, charged individuals for living off grid, charged others for watering a neighbor’s yard, or for installing solar panels, or raising chickens in the back yard, and even carrying out the heinous crime! of growing vegetables. It is no coincidence that much of what the government has criminalized are things that allow self sufficiency to individuals. Self-sufficient individuals take care of themselves and rarely if ever need the government. The less and less people need government, the more the Government power seeps away. It’s a simple formula. As such, forcing people to tyrannically have to be dependent on the corrupt system is part of the plan. It’s crystal clear.
And yet, do we really need all of this policing? The number of violent crimes in the country is down to the lowest rate in 40 years.[2] Violent crimes are going down, but the power of the police continues to increase. That’s called a paradox. That’s the opposite of what should be taking place.
As the author notes:
“You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart diseases than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. You are 9 more times likely to choke to dean in your own vomit that n die from a terrorist attack. You are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.”[3]
Even actual police officers are more likely to harm individuals than terrorists – that’s an incredibly frightening prospect, and one that is oft-overlooked in the age of distraction and sound-bites.
In conjunction with that, the desensitization of the police state is also covered by the author. As the author notes, TV shows, movies and video games, accustom the mind to seeing a police state as normal, while schools now criminalize child behavior, all of which is leading to the next generation seeing as normal something that the founding fathers clearly warned about. To the next generation growing up in a police state will be normal because that is all they have ever known. That will make this disturbing trend even harder to reverse.
Battlefield America also delves into the ominous growth of Big Brother and it’s endless surveillance machinations. From the ubiquitous presence in spying by the NSA, as well as the disturbing connection between Google and the government in facilitating spying on citizens, the author sifts through a wide range of modalities that are employed against the populace.
Also exposed is coming age of drones (that will also aid in spying, by the way), which has already begun, and also the ceaseless growth of DHS. The enormous scope of the Big Brother & Police State expansion covered by the author branches far and wide showing, and it shows many of the components that undergird such this growing totalitarian system.
The author even goes on to juxtapose the current pattern of tyranny with similar patterns in history, while also drawing parallels from fiction such as 1984 and Brave New World.
Comprehensive in its aim, and disturbing implications, this is a book that should be read by everyone. The Police State affects all of us, and it’s only going to get worse given the complacency and ignorance that a sizeable portion of the population retains. Whatever future manifests, it will come about through the action, and inactions of individuals from all over. If you value freedom, you should ponder about this issue, because not only does the system already show everyone as a criminal (remember the first quote), but worse, history has shown, time and time again that those that value freedom, and yet don’t act to keep their freedoms end up in a life of servitude.
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Footnotes:
[1] John W. Whitehead, Battlefield America, p. 3.
[2] Ibid., p. 63., citing Richard A. Oppel Jr. “Steady Decline In Major Crime Baffles Experts,” The New York Times (May 23, 2011), http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html
[3] Ibid., pp. 43-44.
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If you find value in this information, please share it. This article is free and open source. All individuals have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Zy Marquiez and TheBreakaway.wordpress.com.
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About The Author:
Zy Marquiez is an avid book reviewer, inquirer, an open-minded skeptic, yogi, and freelance writer who studies and mirrors regularly subjects like Consciousness, Education, Creativity, The Individual, Ancient History & Ancient Civilizations, Forbidden Archaeology, Big Pharma, Alternative Health, Space, Geoengineering, Social Engineering, Propaganda, and much more.
His other blog, BreakawayConsciousnessBlog.wordpress.com features mainly his personal work, while TheBreakaway.wordpress.com serves as a media portal which mirrors vital information nigh always ignored by mainstream press, but still highly crucial to our individual understanding of various facets of the world.
Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 7, 2017
Color me crazy, but I’ve never been on the cashless society bandwagon for a variety of reasons, not the least being that anything Mr. Globaloney is for, is probably ab initio et in principio a bad idea. Crypto-currencies, in this light, always struck me as being “too good to be true” and their principal selling point – security and privacy – a little too convenient. They struck me then, and strike me now, as being taylor-made to press Mr. Globaloney’s desire to move everyone to cashlessness.
Which brings me to my second reason for skepticism: the integrity of cyber systems in general. Why anyone would trust such a system is beyond me, especially when, if one wants to turn the clock back a bit to the 1980s, there were already stories circulating about computers being sold with “clipper chips” that allowed your local not-so-friendly three-letter-agencies access to every electronic communication. Then, of course, came the Inslaw-PROMIS scandals of the late 1980s, and we were off and running.
Now, in that context, consider the following article by Rich Haridy – a very intriguing article from several points of view – that was shared by Mr. J.K.:
Shadow Brokers hacking group reveals bizarre data dump subscription plan
Several things caught my eye in this article, and we’d be here for days if I were to blog about all of them, but I want to draw attention to the first thing that really leaped off the page:
The Shadow Brokers first appeared in August 2016, announcing an auction to sell off a set of security exploits the group purportedly stole from the NSA. After the auction failed to reach the absurd asking price of one million bitcoins, the group publicly released four sets of exploits over the following months. One of those exploits contained the now infamous EternalBlue vulnerability that underpinned the recent WannaCry attack.
Since the WannaCry outbreak, the Shadow Brokers have been threatening to release more NSA hacking tools, and in early May the group published a blog post in broken English ominously announcing a bizarre subscription model offering members a monthly haul of data.
The group described it as a, “new monthly subscription model. Is being like wine of month club. Each month peoples can be paying membership fee, then getting members only data dump each month. What members doing with data after is up to members.”
In a follow-up post published more recently, the group explained the process in greater detail. Subscribers can pay 100 Zcash coins (equivalent to over US$20,000) to access the data dump, which will be revealed in the first two weeks of July.
Zcash is a relatively new cryptocurrency launched in October 2016. Purportedly more secure than Bitcoin, the Shadow Brokers’ use of Zcash seems to be less about using a safer cryptocurrency and more about revealing to the public the US government’s connection to its development.
The Shadow Brokers’ blog post explicitly points out that the development of Zcash is allegedly linked to the Department of Defense, DARPA and Israel. It also claims the new cryptocurrency, which was recently accepted as a legitimate currency on iOS and Android platforms, could be a trojan horse with a cryptographic flaw monitored by the NSA or used by the government to send money to deep cover assets outside of banking systems. (Italicized emphasis added)
Now, before we get to my high octane speculation de jour, note the following things:
(1) The hacking group “Anonymous” seems to have dropped off the radar, to be replaced now with “The Shadow Brokers” which raises the interesting questions: (a) has the former group simply rebranded itself and reemerged under a new name? Or did the former simply cease operations? Or are they two discrete groups? One may never know, but as we’ll see in a moment, the question of who and what this new group – the Shadow Brokers – is, is an important component of any speculation regarding what it going on.
(2) The new group is exposing the alleged links of the new cyber-currency to the US Department of Defense, DARPA, and Israel; and,
(3) that said cyber-currency has a “back door” built in, which, of course, raises the entire philosophical objection I have to the whole idea: what is to prevent any cyber-currency, state-sponsored or otherwise, from having a similar “flaw”? Answer: nothing.
Given that flaw, however, note that The Shadow Brokers have tapped into it, which raises the question of just who they are. Here Mr. Haridy explores the options at opposite ends of the spectrum:
This odd series of actions, which seem to be constantly iterating information with a strong anti-government bent, has caused many to question who The Shadows Brokers actually are, and whether their motives are simply mercenary.
Much speculation has floated around the possibility that the group could be a foreign nation state working to embarrass or disrupt the US government’s cyber-spying efforts. A former NSA employee tells Ars Technica that they, “are foreign intelligence, and the continued requests for money are all geared towards plausible deniability that they are intel.”
Edward Snowden tweeted suspicions that the group were Russian hackers back in August 2016, when the original auction was revealed. Over a series of 15 tweets he laid out a compelling case for the original NSA hacks coming from a foreign intelligence, in particular, Russia.
Security specialist Bruce Schneier also published a more recent, and exhaustive, investigation into the source of the mysterious hacking group. He concludes, quite reasonably, that while they are seemingly not just random hackers or cybercriminals, it also looks unlikely they are a cyber-intelligence sector of a nation state due to their erratic and anarchic activities.
All of this brings me to my high octane speculation of the day. Assuming the first hypothesis, that the group is a state-sponsored group, then the effect of their action seems to be to expose the extent of NSA electronic eavesdropping, and the lack of integrity of cyber systems. If, on the other hand, it is a private group, the effect would be the same. But it is the effect itself that seems to be being ignored by analysts hypothesizing on who they are and what they’re up to, for regardless of whether or not they are state-sponsored (and that means, even a group or faction within the American military-intelligence complex), or not, the group is (1) Calling into question the integrity of cyber systems in general and (2) crypto-cyber currencies in particular. And hence it strikes me as being entirely possible that the real ultimate and deepest motivation of these types of attacks is to call into question the whole agenda of cashless society, all firmly under the control of Mr. Globaloney. In support of this high octane speculation, recall that even Darth Soros was recently hacked, and some of his financial dealings exposed to scrutiny.
If my hypothesis is true, expect more such hacks, and more such exposure of the global super-elite.
See you on the flip side…
Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
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Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.
Source: NaturalNews.com
D. Samuelson
March 30, 2017
Millions of Americans bow down to their smart phone, tweeting, typing and texting their politics, social grievances, emotional explosions, insecurities, purchases, investments, health concerns, musical tastes, children’s photos, travels, food cravings, collaborations, loves, hates and just about anything else imaginable. Most users know, and may not care, that the data they share is quickly sold to high tech marketers looking to make a buck by offering the user hyper-personalized products. ?
As reported by Readynutrition.com, Wikileaks has produced proof of the CIA’s ability to “identify and exploit vulnerabilities for the purpose of secretly collecting data on individuals” from “85% of the world’s smart phones.” The common link among these devices is that they run on the Android operating system by Google. Samsung phones and Sony phones are among those mentioned, along with certain social messaging apps like Clockman, Weibo and WhatsApp.
What’s even more chilling is a report by The Intercept, which documented that the National Security Agency (NSA) targets those they want to eliminate through “cell-phone tracking technologies.” In other words, after the NSA locates the SIM card, the CIA or the U.S military sends in the drone to kill the person holding that phone.
So how can you stop being monitored and block the signals from your smart phone? It’s amazingly simple. Mylar, best defined as a “strong polyester film” that can be used for insulation and storage bags, plays an important role in attaining your privacy. It’s used in three of these four strategies shared by Readynutrtion.com.
There are lots of sizes, and these bags are everywhere. You’ll need at least three layers. To avoid the residue salt or crumbs from the food, put your phone in a zip lock bag before placing it in the mylar snack bags. You can put duct tape around all three bags and create a secure pouch.
If you don’t have a few mylar blankets or ponchos in your emergency kit, it’s time to get a few, along with some organic emergency storable food. Mylar ponchos and blankets are small and packable and not too pricey. Buy an extra one and cut it as needed for your smart phone. As before, you’ll need three layers for your bag or pouch.
This will work for your laptop as well. Again, three layers for the devices.
When you find one, it’s important that the rubber gasket is secure.
Before you snuggle your phone into its tracking proof bag, make sure it’s turned on and the volume is up all the way. Wrap it securely, then hold the bag with the phone close to your ear while you call your number from another phone. Only allow 3 rings, don’t let it go to voice mail. If your phone is securely wrapped, you won’t hear a thing. That’s a good sign.
With the mylar protection, or the ammo can, that “continuous signal your cell phone sends out every 4 seconds” is interrupted. With this new protection, you may miss a few calls, but now you have a choice to be tracked, or not.
RELATED: For more information on privacy and surveillance, visit Privacywatch.news.
Sources:
Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
Jon Rappoport
February 16, 2017
The US intelligence community continues its war to kick Donald Trump to the curb and destroy his presidency.
Obviously, the NSA, the CIA, and their silent partners want to continue to run this country.
So they spy and leak, spy and leak.
We’ll get to the guts of the problem in a minute, but first a word from Bill Binney.
Breitbart: “William Binney, a former highly placed NSA official turned whistleblower, contended in an exclusive interview today that the National Security Agency (NSA) is ‘absolutely’ monitoring the phone calls of President Donald Trump.”
“Binney was an architect of the NSA’s surveillance program. He became a famed whistleblower when he resigned on October 31, 2001 after spending more than 30 years with the agency.”
“Asked whether he believes the NSA is tapping Trump, Binney replied: ‘Absolutely. How did they get the phone call between the president and the president of Australia? Or the one that he made with Mexico? Those are not targeted foreigners’.”
“Binney further contended the NSA may have been behind a data leak that might have revealed that Michael Flynn, Trump’s national security adviser, allegedly misled Vice President Mike Pence and other Trump administration officials about the contents of his phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.”
“Regarding Flynn’s case, Binney stated of the NSA”:
“’If they weren’t behind it, they certainly had the data. Now the difference here is that FBI and CIA have direct access inside the NSA databases. So, they may be able to go directly in there and see that material there. And NSA doesn’t monitor that. They don’t even monitor their own people going into databases’.”
“So, they don’t monitor what CIA and FBI do. And there’s no oversight or attempted oversight by any of the committees or even the FISA court. So, any way you look at it, ultimately the NSA is responsible because they are doing the collection on everybody inside the United States. Phone calls. Emails. All of that stuff’.”
“Utilizing data provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Guardian and Washington Post in June 2013 released a series of articles reporting that the NSA was collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans.”
“…’they [the NSA, Binney said]] are given too much money anyway. When they are given too much money, they get to do wild and crazy things. And this is wild and crazy. Violations of the Constitution’s 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments’.”
—end of Breitbart clip—
—Nearly two years ago, on April 19, 2014, I wrote: “Taking the overall [NSA] scheme to another level, consider this: those same [NSA] heavy hitters who have unfettered access to financial information can also choose, at opportune moments, to expose certain scandals [e.g., Michael Flynn] and crimes. In this way, they can, at their whim, cripple governments [e.g., the Trump administration]…”
Now we come to the guts of the problem. Here is my complete article from April 10, 2014:
The Surveillance State has created an apparatus whose implications are staggering. It’s a different world now. And sometimes it takes a writer of fiction to flesh out the larger landscape.
Brad Thor’s novel, Black List, posits the existence of a monster corporation, ATS, that stands alongside the NSA in collecting information on every move we make. ATS’ intelligence-gathering capability is unmatched anywhere in the world.
On pages 117-118 of Black List, Thor makes a stunning inference that, on reflection, is as obvious as the fingers on your hand:
“For years ATS had been using its technological superiority to conduct massive insider trading. Since the early 1980s, the company had spied on anyone and everyone in the financial world. They listened in on phone calls, intercepted faxes, and evolved right along with the technology, hacking internal computer networks and e-mail accounts. They created mountains of ‘black dollars’ for themselves, which they washed through various programs they were running under secret contract, far from the prying eyes of financial regulators.”
“Those black dollars were invested into hard assets around the world, as well as in the stock market, through sham, offshore corporations. They also funneled the money into reams of promising R&D projects, which eventually would be turned around and sold to the Pentagon or the CIA.”
“In short, ATS had created its own license to print money and had assured itself a place beyond examination or reproach.”
In real life, whether the prime criminal source is one monster- corporation or a consortium of companies, or elite banks, or the NSA itself, the outcome would be the same.
It would be as Thor describes it.
We think about total surveillance as being directed at private citizens, but the capability has unlimited payoffs when it targets financial markets and the people who have intimate knowledge of them.
“Total security awareness” programs of surveillance are ideal spying ops in the financial arena, designed to suck up millions of bits of inside information, then utilizing them to make investments and suck up billions (trillions?) of dollars.
It gives new meaning to “the rich get richer.”
Taking the overall scheme to another level, consider this: those same heavy hitters who have unfettered access to financial information can also choose, at opportune moments, to expose certain scandals and crimes (not their own, of course).
In this way, they can, at their whim, cripple governments, banks, and corporations. They can cripple investment houses, insurance companies, and hedge funds. Or, alternatively, they can merely blackmail these organizations.
We think we know how scandals are exposed by the press, but actually we don’t. Tips are given to people who give them to other people. Usually, the first clue that starts the ball rolling comes from a source who remains in the shadows.
What we are talking about here is the creation and managing of realities on all sides, including the choice of when and where and how to provide a glimpse of a crime or scandal.
It’s likely that the probe Ron Paul had been pushing—audit the Federal Reserve—has already been done by those who control unlimited global surveillance [NSA]. They already know far more than any Congressional investigation will uncover. If they know the deepest truths, they can use them to blackmail, manipulate, and control the Fed itself.
The information matrix can be tapped into and plumbed, and it can also be used to dispense choice clusters of data that end up constituting the media reality of painted pictures which, every day, tell billions of people “what’s news.”
In this global-surveillance world, we need to ask new questions and think along different lines now.
For example, how long before the mortgage-derivative crisis hit did the Masters of Surveillance know, from spying on bank records, that insupportable debt was accumulating at a lethal pace? What did they…
Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
Source: Corbett Report Extras
James Corbett
January 25, 2017
In this episode of our EyeOpener Report James Corbett presents the latest revelations about Steve Jobs’ security clearance with the Department of Defense, the history and examples of the disturbing government connections, stockholdings, regulations and infiltrations when it comes to technology companies, and how the Department of Defense, the NSA, the Department of Homeland Security, In-Q-Tel and other agencies are quietly opening doors and writing checks for the technology industry’s chosen few.
Source: TheHealthRanger
January 7, 2017
Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com
Jon Rappoport
December 15, 2016
What are college students focusing on these days—apart from sex, booze, and drugs? Well, moral values, if you can call a deep desire for “free everything” a value. And maybe “feeling triggered” and “needing a safe space” is also, somehow, a value. As is demanding that many words be excised from the English language, because they might offend someone who is a member of a designated victim-class. College is quite a scene these days.
Once upon a time, college students were aware of the maxim: follow the money. They did research and discovered what kind of money was keeping their schools afloat. It was an instructive exercise, and it made professors and administrators very nervous, for the right reasons.
Therefore, a different kind of propaganda had to be sprayed on students; the most shallow kind of “social justice” possible—in order to divert these boys and girls from revealing the underlying corruption of their adult minders. Hence, China-style political correctness.
These days, students are, for the most part, oblivious to how their colleges and universities are funded.
I’m not talking about donations from graduates and boosters, or revenue generated from televised football games. I’m talking, for example, about secretive government agencies.
CIA, NSA, DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency).
At WikiLeaks, Julian Assange posted an overview (10/7/2007), “On the take and loving it—academic recipients of the US intelligence budget.”
Consider Assange’s stunning conclusion: “Over the last decade, U.S intelligence funding of academic research has taken on cavalier, even brazen qualities. This article reveals over 3,000 National Security Agency and over 100 Defense Intelligence Agency funded papers [written by professors] and draws attention to recent unreported revelations of CIA funding for torture research.”
Torture research. If people need evidence that the CIA’s MKULTRA is still alive, there it is.
Assange: “The NSA has pushed tens or hundreds of millions into the academy [colleges] through research grants using one particular grant code. NSA funding sources are often nakedly, even proudly, declared in research papers (‘I may be nothing, but look, a big gang threw me a sovereign’). Some researchers try to conceal or otherwise downplay the source using accepted covers, weasel words and acronyms, yet commonality in the NSA grant code prefix makes all these attempts transparent. The primary NSA grant-code prefix is MDA904.”
“An examination of academic papers referencing the code gives the impression that most or all research grantees know the true source of their funding. These are not academics who have been fooled. These are willing, even eager, participants.”
The NSA uses a number of “contracting and grant making light covers,” Assange writes. Among them: Maryland Procurement Office, Department of Defense, DOD, ARDA.”
Naturally, all the NSA grants to academics are for research on how to spy. Don’t be fooled by the numerous NSA awards for work in abstract mathematics. The NSA’s interest in math per se is zero. The Agency seeks to apply the research to universal snooping.
College students who claim to be activists can dig into records and discover what grants the NSA is making to their professors.
The students can name names. They can make the facts public on campus and stage protests. They can demand de-funding and cutting NSA relationships. They can refuse to enroll in those professors’ classes.
A quick search led me to…
Continue Reading At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com
Jon Rappoport
November 19, 2016
Trump has tapped Congressman Mike Pompeo to head the CIA.
In April of 2014, Pompeo introduced the bill that would become The Dark Act, banning states from passing laws mandating GMO labeling on food. Instead, The Dark Act introduces very weak and confusing federal GMO labels. Few people will pay attention to them or even realize they’re there.
I’m sure Monsanto execs are popping a few champagne corks right now. “Hey, remember Mike Pompeo? Can you believe it? He’s the new director of the CIA. If we need an extra helping hand taking over the world’s food supply, why can’t we call on good old Mike? Ha-ha…”
Mike is also a heavy supporter of the NSA’s surveillance programs: “Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.” (The Atlantic, 11/18/16)
Here’s what Mike had to say about Edward Snowden: “[He] should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.” (Washington Examiner, 2/11/16)
Very bad move, Donald.
Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at NoMoreFakeNews.com or OutsideTheRealityMachine.
Source: LibertyBlitzkrieg.com
Michael Krieger
September 7, 2016
As the Guardian reported, Clapper made clear that the internet of things – the many devices like thermostats, cameras and other appliances that are increasingly connected to the internet – are providing ample opportunity for intelligence agencies to spy on targets, and possibly the masses. And it’s a danger that many consumers who buy these products may be wholly unaware of.
“In the future, intelligence services might use the [internet of things] for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user credentials,” Clapper told a Senate panel as part of his annual “assessment of threats” against the US.
– From February’s post: Top U.S. Official Admits – Government Will Use “Internet of Things” to Spy on the Public
Serving as an important followup to the post above, Cory Doctorow has just penned an extremely important warning at Locust titled, The Privacy Wars Are About to Get A Whole Lot Worse. Below are the relevant passages. Please read and share with everyone you know.
As more and more companies twigged to the power of ‘‘surveillance capitalism,’’ these agreements proliferated, as did the need for them, because before long, everything was gathering data. As the Internet everted into the physical world and colonized our phones, we started to get a taste of what this would look like in the coming years. Apps that did innocuous things like turning your phone into a flashlight, or recording voice memos, or letting your kids join the dots on public domain clip-art, would come with ‘‘permissions’’ screens that required you to let them raid your phone for all the salient facts of your life: your phone number, e-mail address, SMSes and other messages, e-mail, location – everything that could be sensed or inferred about you by a device that you carried at all times and made privy to all your most sensitive moments.
When a backlash began, the app vendors and smartphone companies had a rebuttal ready: ‘‘You agreed to let us do this. We gave you notice of our privacy practices, and you consented.’’
This ‘‘notice and consent’’ model is absurd on its face, and yet it is surprisingly legally robust. As I write this in July of 2016, US federal appellate courts have just ruled on two cases that asked whether End User Licenses that no one read and no one understands and no one takes seriously are enforceable. The cases differed a little in their answer, but in both cases, the judges said that they were enforceable at least some of the time (and that violating them can be a felony!). These rulings come down as the entirety of America has been consumed with Pokémon Go fever, only to have a few killjoys like me point out that merely by installing the game, all those millions of players have ‘‘agreed’’ to forfeit their right to sue any of Pokémon’s corporate masters should the companies breach all that private player data. You do, however, have 30 days to opt out of this forfeiture; if Pokémon Go still exists in your timeline and you signed up for it in the past 30 days, send an e-mail to termsofservice@nianticlabs.com with the subject ‘‘Arbitration Opt-out Notice’’ and include in the body ‘‘a clear declaration that you are opting out of the arbitration clause in the Pokémon Go terms of service.’’
Notice and consent is an absurd legal fiction. Jonathan A. Obar and Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, a pair of communications professors from York University and the University of Connecticut, published a working paper in 2016 called ‘‘The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Networking Services.’’ The paper details how the profs gave their students, who are studying license agreements and privacy, a chance to beta-test a new social network (this service was fictitious, but the students didn’t know that). To test the network, the students had to create accounts, and were given a chance to review the service’s terms of service and privacy policy, which prominently promised to give all the users’ personal data to the NSA, and demanded the students’ first-born children in return for access to the service. As you may have gathered from the paper’s title, none of the students noticed either fact, and almost none of them even glanced at the terms of service for more than a few seconds.
Indeed, you can’t examine the terms of service you interact with in any depth – it would take more than 24 hours a day just to figure out what rights you’ve given away that day. But as terrible as notice-and-consent is, at least it pretends that people should have some say in the destiny of the data that evanescences off of their lives as they move through time, space, and information.
TheBreakAway 