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Mar 24, 2020 | off-guardian.org
We is set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State,[3] an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.[4][5] The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.[6]
Francis Lee ,
Sounds very much like Yevgeny Zamyatin – We . But we never thought it would happen!
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Mar 23, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jay , Mar 23 2020 18:34 utc | 14
In the case of "Brave New World", the establishment knows how to cure pretty much any conventional disease. Then if you're in approved society you die around age 60 because of everything that's kept you alive and looking like 40.I just read the book last month for the first time in 30+ years. It does belong on that diagram. And "1984" doesn't either, since it really doesn't deal with anything like infectious diseases--reread that about 2 years ago.
I've not read the other 2 outer books ever, but the movie of "Fahrenheit 451", which I just watched and Bradbury certainly had a hand in writing, has nothing to do with infectious disease.There might be something in Camus' "The Plague" though. Haven't read that since the 1980s.
There aren't food shortages so not sure about the "Soylent Green" reference, yet at least. "Long's Run" is about killing people off at age 35, which I guess overlaps with "kill 80% of the poor workers", something the likes of Charles Koch certainly supports. So indirectly there could be a "Logan's Run" connection.
Gattica is just about favored people with the right genes, so an update of "Brave New World", without the highly literate "savage" as the main character.
I don't see how "The Matrix" relates, that's more about the material world's completeness being an illusion.
"Clockwork Orange?" A thug suppressed with mind control?
Haven't read "Lord of the Flies", but don't the kids worship a god of the island, and justify the horrors they commit based on that conception of god or a god?
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Mar 18, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
Obvious cognitive decline is a stutter.
Massive exit poll discrepancies are normal.
An ex-president installing his right-hand man as his successor is democracy.
Facts are Kremlin talking points.
Journalism is a crime.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
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Mar 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Richard , Mar 10 2020 16:40 utc | 150
No need to worry about the corona virus - it'll all be okay as long as you buy enough toilet roll...Nothing speaks more loudly of the dumbed down, idiotic, Fakebook groupthink of the age than the current rush to buy toilet roll as a response to the Coronavirus crisis.
You've seen it on the tele and (un)social media – supermarket shelves denuded of bog roll and fat birds beating seven shades of sh*t out of each other over the last bag of ass wipe.
I mean, what the hell!? Is this how stupid and pathetic we've become? Someone sees a post on Fakebook that says its a good idea to respond to a potentially fatal virus by buying lots of bog roll and within 5 minutes there's a massive rush on the stuff – after all, you gotta buy it, right, COS IT SAYS SO ON FAKEBOOK...
https://richardhennerley.com/2020/03/10/of-coronavirus-toilet-roll-and-idiocy/
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Mar 09, 2020 | www.counterpunch.org
Big Tech has become notorious for its hoarding of its users' personal data, collected with great breadth and down to minute details. Billions have been paid by online platforms to settle legal charges over their invasive and reckless privacy follies. Facebook in particular is associated with this, especially after a series of major scandals involving leaks or hacks of personal data. But Google is inarguably the greediest of these companies in its data collection, to an extent that can surprise even jaded users. This makes sense economically, since the collection of data is a key part of the network effect of online search -- more searches and click data mean algorithms that deliver more accurate searches, attracting more users and searches, in the familiar positive feedback cycle of what economists call "network effects."From early days, Google held onto all the data it could get its hands on -- who searched for what, what kind of results were likely desired, where searches came from, and so on. A major step in this was the release of Google's email service, Gmail. It caused a large stir itself as users learned the free, high-storage email service served ads on-screen that were targeted to the user by scanning the text of their emails. The scanning was conducted automatically by software algorithms similar to those used to filter out spam from inboxes, but the company was completely unprepared for the backlash, not realizing that their huge scale and power made such moves feel creepier. However the service had a crucial ancillary benefit for the company -- it required a login. With that, Google could cross-reference people's email data with their search history on Google and their YouTube platform (which also required login to post video), along with precise location data from Maps and GPS data from phones running Android -- the beginning of its program to synthesize its data into comprehensive individual profiles.
But the real turning point was the acquisition of the major display ad agency DoubleClick, which brought pivotal changes to the company's "cookies." Cookies are pieces of software planted on your computer or phone by sites as you browse the Web, recording where you've been for the purpose of presenting ads you're likely to be interested in. Cookies are now stupendously widespread -- visiting a typical websites like CNN or dictionary.com can put dozens of them on your PC or phone.
Google's AdSense system had always used these cookies, but the escalation was dramatic, as Wired 's pro-industry reporter Steven Levy wrote covered in his book In the Plex . He reported that the company gained "an omniscient cookie that no other company could match." As a user browses, the cookie:
develops into a rather lengthy log that provides a fully fleshed out profile of the user's interests virtually all of it compiled by stealth. Though savvy and motivated consumers could block or delete the cookies, very few knew about this possibility and even fewer took advantage of it. The information in the DoubleClick cookie was limited, however. It logged visits only to sites that ran DoubleClick's display ads, typically large commercial websites. Many sites on the Internet were smaller ones that didn't use big ad networks Millions of those smaller sites, however, did use an advertising network: Google's AdSense. AdSense had its own cookie, but it was not as snoopy as DoubleClick's. Only when the user actually clicked on an ad would the AdSense cookie log the presence of the user on the site. This 'cookie on click' process was lauded by privacy experts Google now owned an ad network whose business hinged on a cookie that peered over the shoulder of users as it viewed their ads and logged their travels on much of the web. This was no longer a third-party cookie; DoubleClick was Google. Google became the only company with the ability to pull together user data on both the fat head and the long tail of the Internet. The question was, would Google aggregate that data to track the complete activity of Internet users? The answer was yes after FTC regulators approved the DoubleClick purchase, Google quietly made the change that created the most powerful cookie on the Internet. It did away with the AdSense cookie entirely and instead arranged to drop the DoubleClick cookie when someone visited a site with an AdSense ad Now Google would record users' presence when they visited those sites. And it would combine that information with all the other data in the DoubleClick cookie. That single cookie, unique to Google, could track a user to every corner of the Internet.
Amazingly, Google co-founder Sergei Brin dismissed fears about this mega-cookie as "more of the Big Brother type," meaning exaggerated. But even that might be putting a positive gloss on today's data hoarding -- Lawrence Lessig, who has defended the company in areas like its book scanning, noted that in Orwell's book 1984 where Big Brother was introduced, at least the characters "knew where the telescreen was In the Internet, you have no idea who is being watched by whom. In a world where everything is surveilled, how to protect privacy?"
And in 2016, Google went even further by changing its terms of service, asking users to activate new functions that would give them more control over their data, and let Google serve more relevant ads. But what the change did was merge its tracking data with your search history and the personal information in your Gmail/YouTube/Google + accounts, into "super-profiles." And Google wasn't done -- beside using the mega-cookie to record our browsing history, combined with our search logs and Gmail contents, Google "Now Tracks Your Credit Card Purchases and Connects Them to Its Online Profile of You," as a recent MIT Technology Review headline indicates. By contracting with third party data firms that track 70% of all credit and debit card purchases, Google can now offer advertisers further confirmation of which ads are working, not just to the point of clicking but to the point of sale.
With its new TOS, Google does let users view some of the data it holds on them, but it takes "an esoteric process of clicks," as Ken Auletta put it in his book Googled , and again most users are unaware of these issues in the first place, and since we're opted in, most fail to view their data files. Additionally, each Google service has its own privacy terms and settings, and they change without warning, so we have to be constantly vigilant for their changes and subtleties. And Google joins the tech community in its use of "dark patterns," repetitive tactics that wear down users into allowing data access. And finally, even opting-out of customization doesn't end the data collection, just the use of it to target ads to you -- your movements, browsing, searching, emailing and credit card buying are all still compiled. In time Google announced it would soon stop the unpopular scanning of Gmail text to place ads -- the catch was that the company had enough data on users from its super-profiles that it could personalize them without the scanning.
And for all its hoarding, the pile isn't secure -- Google had allowed software developers to design applications like games for Google +, the company's unsuccessful attempt to compete with Facebook in social media. But a glitch in the software allowed developers access to private portions of Google + user profiles over a three-year period before its discovery, including full names, email, gender, pictures, locations, occupation and marital status. An internal memo indicates that as with Facebook's own developer data leaks, there's no way to know if the data was misused in any way. But most important, Google learned of the issue in spring 2018 but refused to announce or disclose it, fearing "reputational damage" to itself.
Whatever this company is, it rhymes with "shmevil."
Rob Larson is a professor of economics at Tacoma Community College and author of Capitalism vs. Freedom: The Toll Road to Serfdom
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Mar 07, 2020 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
WobblyTelomeres , March 6, 2020 at 3:00 pm
Re Intel security flaw
Interviewed there in the 90s. Hiring manager picked me up at the hotel, took me out to dinner and told me, flat out, that he was NSA. I doubt it has changed much.
(I said, to myself, "f*ck this", flagged the waiter and ordered the most expensive cab on the menu, then another)
Lambert Strether Post author , March 7, 2020 at 3:27 am
> told me, flat out, that he was NSA.
Ha ha! I posted this only this morning:
Uncovering The CIA's Audacious Operation That Gave Them Access To State Secrets (interview) WaPo. "So we end up with ostensibly private company that is secretly owned by two intelligence services." That company is probably just an outlier , even though this operation is presented as incredibly successful.
I've helpfully underlined the irony. I should add Surveillance Valley to my reading list, I suppose
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Feb 25, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
TJ , Feb 23 2020 15:50 utc | 10
@3 LikklemoreLikklemore , Feb 23 2020 16:36 utc | 19
TJ @ 9Thank you. Expect some meaty revelations during Extradition proceedings tomorrow 24th. Ecuador was recording ALL visitors conversations with Assange
Assange to Testify on Being Recorded in Embassy in London1 Dec.2019
Recordings have emerged of private conversations that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, had while living in the Ecuadorean Embassy. He and a Spanish prosecutor blame the United States.[.]These recordings should be subpoenaed.
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Feb 23, 2020 | www.youtube.com
Jacqueline Grace , 2 months ago
It's not "your tube" anymore.......it's "their tube".
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Feb 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Norwegian , Feb 22 2020 19:12 utc | 66
Posted by: Bemildred | Feb 22 2020 13:41 utc | 20The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or "commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Feb 11 2020 20:13 utc | 13
thanks b...no shortage of hypocrisy in all this...regarding @ 4 mike r which @8 ian2 linked properly to, i enjoyed the last paragraph which i think sums it up well.. here it is..
"I continue to believe that the United States cannot effectively restrict the spread of a technology under Chinese leadership without offering a superior product of its own. The fact that the United States has attempted to suppress Huawei's market leadership in the absence of any American competitor in this field is one of the oddest occurrences in the history of US foreign policy. If the US were to announce something like a Manhattan Project for 5G broadband and solicit the cooperation of its European and Asian allies, it probably would get an enthusiastic response. As matters stand, America's efforts to stop Huawei have become an embarrassment."
Petri Krohn , Feb 11 2020 20:38 utc | 16
The reason European customers trust Huawei is because Huawei uses open-source software or at least makes their code available for inspection by customers.Piotr Berman , Feb 11 2020 23:04 utc | 25Closed-source software cannot provide secrecy or security. This was vividly demonstrated last month when NSA revealed a critical vulnerability in Windows 10 that rendered any cryptographic security worthless.
Critical Windows 10 vulnerability used to Rickroll the NSA and GithubRashid's simulated attack exploits CVE-2020-0601, the critical vulnerability that Microsoft patched on Tuesday after receiving a private tipoff from the NSA. As Ars reported, the flaw can completely break certificate validation for websites, software updates, VPNs, and other security-critical computer uses. It affects Windows 10 systems, including server versions Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. Other versions of Windows are unaffected.
The flaw involves the way the new versions of Windows check the validity of certificates that use elliptic-curve cryptography. While the vulnerable Windows versions check three ECC parameters, they fail to verify a fourth, crucial one, which is known as a base point generator and is often represented in algorithms as 'G.' This failure is a result of Microsoft's implementation of ECC rather than any flaw or weakness in the ECC algorithms themselves.
The attacker examines the specific ECC algorithm used to generate the root-certificate public key and proceeds to craft a private key that copies all of the certificate parameters for that algorithm except for the point generator. Because vulnerable Windows versions fail to check that parameter, they accept the private key as valid. With that, the attacker has spoofed a Windows-trusted root certificate that can be used to mint any individual certificate used for authentication of websites, software, and other sensitive properties.
I do not believe this vulnerability was a bug. It is more likely a backdoor intentionally left in the code for NSA to utilize. Whatever the case, NSA must have known about it for years. Why did they reveal it now? Most likely someone else had discovered the back door and may have been about to publish it.
(I commented on these same issues on Sputnik a few weeks ago.)
The other possible US objection is that Huawei will only let their customers spy, not third countries.Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Feb 11 2020 21:57 utc | 24
It reminds me a joke about Emperor Napoleon arriving in a town. The population, the notables and the mayor are greeting him, and the Emperor says "No gun salute, hm?". Mayor replies "Sire, we have twenty reasons. Fist, we have canons", "Enough", replied Napoleon.
Isn't the "other possible US objection" exactly "Enough"? Of course, USA is not a mere "third country", USA is the rule maker of rule based international order.
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Likklemore , Feb 12 2020 21:54 utc | 72
@ james 43The UK position? In a heart beat, Boris will trade Assange for a US-UK trade deal. The lack of UK journalists' support for Assange is telling. Spineless media critters failed Assange..
The Truth About Julian Assange
A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum security prison, psychological torture – and soon extradition to the U.S., [.]
This interview was conducted by Swiss Journalist Daniel Ryser, Yves Bachmann (Photos) and Charles Hawley (Translation), 31.01.2020.
[.]
Let's start at the beginning: What led you to take up the case?In December 2018, I was asked by his lawyers to intervene. I initially declined. I was overloaded with other petitions and wasn't really familiar with the case. My impression, largely influenced by the media, was also colored by the prejudice that Julian Assange was somehow guilty and that he wanted to manipulate me. In March 2019, his lawyers approached me for a second time because indications were mounting that Assange would soon be expelled from the Ecuadorian Embassy. They sent me a few key documents and a summary of the case and I figured that my professional integrity demanded that I at least take a look at the material.
And then?
It quickly became clear to me that something was wrong. That there was a contradiction that made no sense to me with my extensive legal experience: Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges ever having been filed?
Is that unusual?
I have never seen a comparable case. Anyone can trigger a preliminary investigation against anyone else by simply going to the police and accusing the other person of a crime. The Swedish authorities, though, were never interested in testimony from Assange. They intentionally left him in limbo. Just imagine being accused of rape for nine-and-a-half years by an entire state apparatus and by the media without ever being given the chance to defend yourself because no charges had ever been filed.
You say that the Swedish authorities were never interested in testimony from Assange. But the media and government agencies have painted a completely different picture over the years: Julian Assange, they say, fled the Swedish judiciary in order to avoid being held accountable.
That's what I always thought, until I started investigating. The opposite is true. Assange reported to the Swedish authorities on several occasions because he wanted to respond to the accusations. But the authorities stonewalled.[...]
more
And then, they came for me.
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
snake , Feb 12 2020 8:56 utc | 48
Thanks for the narrative your article is excellent one more piece of the puzzle. follows.
US, German spies plundered global secrets via Swiss encryption firm:
Report Names names of companies involved.
If the link does not work just url to presstv.com for the article.One more example of how Mobsters are using the nation state as a platform to conduct their controlled, targeted and authenticated access to, every human in the world. The people are contained within one of the nation state franchises, each a part of the 20 6 nation state system franchises that divides 206 people into separate, but not independent containers under one organized and coordinated roof. The nation state system has prevented the humanity across the globe from becoming democratic. No matter the innocence of the nation state platform, it is the franchised nature of the organization [the nation state system] to which each individual nation state belongs and is a part of, that provides the mobsters with an efficient platform from which to conduct their crimes against humanity and to impose their mind control technologies. .
ralphieboy , Feb 12 2020 11:54 utc | 50
Advocates of the Free Market like to pretend that there is a clear distinction between the workings of government and the workings of corporations and individuals. But they are deeply and inexorably interlinked and there can be no study of economics without politics and no study of politics without economics.Some Random Passerby , Feb 12 2020 12:48 utc | 51@43 A Userdiv> The Huawei equipment will have NSA monitors installed before they're installed. They made a point of boasting about that process some 15 years ago. The US companies are using the issue because they're behind Huawei.It's safe to assume this sort of thing has been going on for a long time. Even before computers made everything that much harder.
The BBC operated a system where a Christmas tree was used as a marker. If you had this on your file, you were going nowhere.
Posted by: Les , Feb 12 2020 15:25 utc | 55
The Huawei equipment will have NSA monitors installed before they're installed. They made a point of boasting about that process some 15 years ago. The US companies are using the issue because they're behind Huawei.elkern , Feb 12 2020 16:32 utc | 57Posted by: Les | Feb 12 2020 15:25 utc | 55
To me, the real question is "why 5G"? No human can talk or type fast enough to need more bandwidth for text or phone.c1ue , Feb 12 2020 17:40 utc | 58I finally got an answer which makes sense, from a tech-savvy friend: 5G isn't for us (humans), it's for the Internet Of Things (IoT). Which - to me - is an even better argument to avoid 5G. IMO, running control systems through the internet is stupid & dangerous. Spying is a relatively benign problem; and I'm not even really that worried about hacking (who's gonna hack my dishwasher? why?).
To me, the real problems are (1) proliferation of pathways for failure ("cloud"-burst!), (2) stupid interfaces (dials & buttons are better than Apps), and worst (3) increased Corporate control (software licensing fees, forced upgrades, right-to-repair, etc).
So, Huawei, whoever, whatever, I say screw 'em all, screw the IoT, screw 5G. Sell me simple Things with local controls which won't stop working when somebody plugs (or unplugs) something somewhere else.
OTOH, yeah, it's time for another Church Commission - with bigger teeth - to get the CIA back (?) under control. Review Financial Assets as well as covert atrocities. But, uh, good luck with that.
@uncle tungsten #22Pft , Feb 12 2020 19:09 utc | 59
The thing to keep in mind with VPN is that it addresses one of 3 security areas (concerning data): Data in Transit. The only thing VPN does is make it difficult for someone to sample your internet traffic bits to see what's in them.Data at Rest and Data at Work are not affected. For example, if you use a VPN to connect to MoA - no one along the path can see what you're doing, but your browser knows; your computer knows; your internet router knows; MoA knows; MoA's hosting provider knows.
As for F-Secure and its VPN:
- Pluses: they haven't had a breach or serious security flaw that I can recall.
- Minuses: expensive. They keep logs. No Netflix or torrenting. Not a very good worldwide network (water hole issue).
On its surface it seems non-sensible to call out someone from doing what you do. However, it serves the purpose of promoting the illusion China and US are on different sides . Its fake wrestling promotion. Working together to spy on you. When caught, they point the finger at the other guy or claim they need to do it to protect you from them.arby , Feb 12 2020 19:15 utc | 60Don't trust the US? Buy Huawei, and not only are you not protected but you get special attention for buying Huawei in a futile attempt for privacy from US prying eyes (but opening your curtain to give China a peak). Carry on.
Pft, you got any evidence to back up your statement that China is having a peak?c1ue , Feb 12 2020 21:06 utc | 62There is considerable evidence that the US is but I have yet to see any that implicates Huawei or China.
I forgot to add: something like 0.6% of Internet traffic, ditto emails, are non-standard encrypted: i.e. VPN or PGP. So using these services primarily just highlights you for the surveillance people as a "person of interest".Esteban , Feb 12 2020 21:14 utc | 63In Switzerland we're experiencing an enourmous outrage regarding the Crypto AG company. Even tough Swiss MSM and Alt-Media revealed the foul play of the company in the past, the public outcry is astonishing. Politicians are now demanding to form a Parliamentary Investigation Commission. This timely set trans-atlantic coordination of WaPo, German ZDF and Swiss National TV SRF is more than odd. Is it really about Huawei and how does Switzerland fit in this circumstance? Could the clever readership of this fantastic site enlighten me?
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.theamericanconservative.com
How Surveillance Capitalism Targets the Vulnerable
Google and Facebook are making handsome profits off of the elderly, the lonely, and the depressed. Credit: pressmaster/Shutterstock
February 11, 2020
|1:01 pm
Grayson Logue Surrounded by chips, dip, beer, and some delicious chicken chili, I tuned in to the Super Bowl excited to see not only the game but whatever meme-worthy commercials corporate America had dreamed up. Among those was an ad for Google Home, a smart speaker and voice assistant. In it, an elderly gentleman spoke with his Google Home about his deceased wife Loretta, asking the device to remind him of their favorite memories, show him old photos and home videos of their time together, and even play their favorite movie Casablanca.Yet what struck me was what was absent in the picture -- any other people. Let's imagine a different scene: an elderly gentleman is sitting on his couch showing an old photo album to his granddaughter while his son tees up the VHS of grandma and grandpa during their 20th anniversary, vacationing in Sitka, Alaska. The picture is quite different, though interestingly, it's been used in the past by Google in its commercials.
In their 2017 Super Bowl ad , Google portrayed its home assistant, not as a central character, but as a simple aide among joyful scenes filled with friends and family, dimming the lights as a group of friends prepare for a birthday surprise, playing a recording of whales as a father reads a storybook to his daughter.
No doubt Google was trying to strike that same tone in this year's ad, flashing the text "a little help with the little things" across the screen at the close of the spot. Nonetheless, the ad landed flat, at least at my Super Bowl party. Yet it also reflected something important: the progression of popular thought about the role of tech in our lives.
Once, we believed that putting voice assistants in our homes and pockets offered only more convenience. We justified our time on social networks, believing that seeing a wider range of friends and family through screens and texts, rather than hearing their voices or being with them in person, was actually drawing us closer, connecting us more deeply to our relationships with each other. Now, more and more people are coming to realize that these devices, services, and the culture they've created contributes more to feelings of placelessness, anxiety, and isolation than meaningful connectedness and relationships.
According to data from the Pew Research Center in 2018, 74 percent of Facebook users have taken steps to distance themselves from the platform over the past 12 months, by adjusting their privacy settings, taking a break from the service, or deleting the app on their phone. Young people (ages 18 to 29) are the most likely to take these actions, while those 65 and older are least likely. Since the elderly represent the last generation that smartphones and social media have reached, it follows that they would be the last to take these steps.
Additional Pew data fills in more of the picture. The average older American spends over half of the waking day alone. And between 2005 and 2015, the average time spent on screens for Americans over 60 has increased, while time spent socializing, reading, and other leisure activities has decreased. This timeline overlaps with the shift in internet use among those 65 and older. Twenty years ago, only 14 percent of 65-and-older Americans used the internet, but now 73 percent are internet users and 53 percent own a smartphone. While the elderly might have showed up late to the internet and smartphones, there's no reason to be believe they will be immune to the consequences that young people in particular are now beginning to understand.
And the problems of our digital landscape are even wider than most people imagine.
In reality, this landscape, termed " surveillance capitalism " by Shoshana Zuboff of Harvard Business School, is not limited to just Google or Facebook or any one technology they employ. Rather, surveillance capitalism is a larger system of economic thought and practice that runs on the conscious and deliberate manipulation of the human experience. Zuboff writes :
Surveillance capitalists discovered that the most predictive data come from intervening in human action to coax, tune, herd, and modify behavior in the direction of guaranteed outcomes. This new species of power works remotely, engineering subliminal cues, social comparison dynamics, rewards and punishments, and varieties of enforcers to shape behavior that aligns with its commercial interests.
According to a leaked Facebook document in 2017, the company presented psychological data to advertisers on over 6 million young Australians and New Zealanders. Facebook could tell when these users felt "worthless," "insecure," "stressed," and "anxious" and target ads for "moments when young people need a confidence boost." Facebook denied that the information was actually used for ad targeting, but regardless, it clearly has models and data for when and how to manipulate people's emotional states to make them most likely to take a profitable action without them ever knowing.
While virtually everyone is affected by surveillance capitalism, the consequences become particularly clear when the victims are the elderly, the young, the lonely, and the depressed.
How hard would it be for Google to use the voice recordings it receives from Google Home to induce ad-based behavior modification, something it did for years by scanning email correspondence in Gmail? The corporation is already taking initial steps to monetize its smart assistant. If this were the case, a more accurate ad spot wouldn't end with an elderly man asking for reminders about memories of his late wife. It would end with an AI model analyzing recordings of the man and determining when is the optimal time to place a flight discount ad to his late wife's favorite vacation spot. Perhaps that ad placement time would be targeted to when he was at his lowest emotional state.
We live in a world where it's very possible that Google and Facebook know more about the emotions of our grandparents than we do, and that should deeply disturb us. After all, the negative effects of a ubiquitous cultural problem are typically felt the most by the vulnerable; technology and the elderly are no different. It's time we reflected on the consequences of our pervasive digital culture.
Grayson Logue is a writer living in New York and a contributor to Providence Magazine.
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Feb 10, 2020 | angrybearblog.com
run75441 | February 9, 2020 7:00 pm
History Politics I hang around some pretty intelligent people who have smart friends commenting on their facebook pages. The first part of this post is from a comment on Claude Scales's Facebook page by William R. Everdell. I think it fits with the NYT article Claude referenced. The second part of this is a shorten version of the NYT Opinion article "Why You May Never Learn the Truth About ICE," Matthew Connelly, Professor of History, Columbia.George Orwell in "'1984', Winston Smith was dropping documents into the 'memory hole' by his desk at the Ministry of Truth – Minitrue
'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'
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Feb 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
c1ue , Feb 2 2020 19:02 utc | 19
Great article on cell phone spoofing to create a traffic jam on Google maps.
Imagine if you had a Chinese cell phone clickbait farm to do it instead.
Turn on developer options, feed in location, suppress flags and warnings, voila!
No more annoying Waze driving coming through your residential neighborhood.
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Feb 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
FSD , Jan 31 2020 19:59 utc | 28
Britain has finally made the Orwellian Pivot. Brazil is Bolsonaro-fied, Mexico and Canada are USMCA-ed, Venezuela will be MAGA-cized. The Monroe Doctrine is growing carnivorous incisors. Oceania is born!Qparticle , Feb 1 2020 17:27 utc | 114
No wonder banker boy Macron has been nice to Vlad lately, time to go east...Posted by: Paco | Feb 1 2020 7:36 utc | 84
-- --Hee hee hee! ;)
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Jan 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003 , and of Syria since 2012 , and their coup against Ukraine in 2014 , and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands -- America's subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991 .
All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these matters.
That's being done in all news-media except a few of the non -mainstream ones.
So: this is about an actual Western samizdat - the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not.
(The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.)
Right now, Julian Assange is rotting to death inside Britain's equivalent to the U.S. regime's Guantanamo Bay prison, which is Belmarsh Prison, in London. As the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia's article on Belmarsh Prison retrospectively admits, "Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the 'British version of Guantanamo Bay'." However, only because of the case of Julian Assange is it now publicly known that this characterization of that prison is -- at least for him -- equally true today . And Assange is, indeed, being held there "indefinitely without charge or trial," even after his having previously been held in various other forms of confinement, ever since at least 12 April 2012, when -- being then 'temporarily' under house-arrest in Norfolk England, while awaiting trial on a manufactured rape-charge against him which was reluctantly abandoned by the Government only when the alleged victim refused to testify against him -- Assange broadcast an interview for RT, Russian Television, an interview of the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.
The U.S.-and-allied regimes' billionaires-owned-and-controlled 'news'-media condemned Assange for this interview, because it enabled whomever still had an open mind, amongst the Western public, to hear from one of those billionares' destruction-targets (Nasrallah), and for Assange's doing this on the TV-news network of the main country that America's billionaires are especially trying to conquer, which is (and since 26 July 1945 has consistently been ) Russia.
The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, "Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it." How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. Greenwald wrote:
Let's examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it's perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government ( Kaplan/The Washington Post ), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it's an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?
But from 'temporary' house-arrest there, Assange was allowed asylum by Ecuador's progressive President Rafael Correa on 20 June 2012 , to stay in London's Ecuadoran Embassy, so as not to be seized by the UK regime to be sent to prison and probable death-without-trial in the U.S. To Correa's shock, it turned out that Correa's successor, Vice President Lenin Moreno, was actually a U.S. agent, who promptly forced Assange out of the Embassy, into Belmarsh prison, to die there or else become extradited to die in a U.S. prison, also without trial.
And, for what, then, is Assange being imprisoned, and perhaps murdered? He divulged government secrets that should never even have been secrets! He raised the blanket of lies, which covers over these actually dictatorial clandestine international operations. He exposed these evil imperialistic operations, which are hidden behind (and under) that blanket of imperialists' lies. For this, he is being martyred -- a martyr for democracy, where there is no actual democracy (but only those lies).
Here is an example:
On December 29th, I headlined "Further Proof: U.S., UK, & France Committed War-Crime on 14 April 2018" and reported highlights of the latest Wikileaks document-dumps regarding a U.S.-UK-French operation to cover-up (via their control over the OPCW) their having committed an international war-crime when they had fired 105 missiles against Syria on 14 April 2018, which was done allegedly to punish Syria for having perpetrated a gas-attack in Douma seven days before -- except that there hadn't been any such gas-attack, but the OPCW simply lied and said that there might have been one, and that the Syrian Government might have done it! That's playing the public for suckers.
Back on 3 November 2019, Fox News bannered "Fox News Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria" and reported that when citing ISIS as America's enemy that must be defeated, 69% of U.S. respondents wanted U.S. troops to stay in Syria. But when did ISIS ever constitute a threat to U.S. national security? And under what international law is any U.S. soldier, who is inside Syria, anything other than an invader there? The answer, to both of these questions, is obviously "never" and "none." But if you are an investor in Lockheed Martin, don't you want Americans to be suckers about both ? And, so, they are . People such as Julian Assange don't want the public anywhere to be lied-to. Anyone who is in the propaganda-business -- serving companies such as Lockheed Martin -- wants the public to be suckers.
This is the way the free market actually works. It works by lying, and in such a country the Government serves the people who have the money, and not the people who don't. The people who don't have the money are supposed to be lied-to. And, so, they are. But this is not democracy.
Democracy, in fact, is impossible if the public are predominantly deceived.
If the public are predominantly deceived, then the people who do the deceiving will be the dictators there. And if a country has dictators, then it's no democracy. In a totally free market, only the people with the most money will have any freedom at all; everyone else will be merely their suckers, who are fooled by the professionals at doing that -- lying.
The super-rich enforce their smears, and their other lies, by hiring people to do this.
When Barack Obama said that "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation" - so that each other nation is "dispensable" - he was merely exemplifying the view that only the most powerful is indispensable, and that therefore everyone else is dispensable. Of course, this is the way that he, and Donald Trump, both have governed in the U.S. And Americans overwhelmingly endorse this viewpoint . They're fooled by both parties, because both parties serve only their respective billionaires -- and billionaires are above the law; they are the law, in America and its allied regimes. That's the way it is.
This is the American gospel, and it is called "capitalism." Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest -- über -imperialism -- and the American public didn't even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That's today's American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today's Amerika.
And as far as whistleblowers -- such as Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and other champions of honesty and of democracy -- are concerned: Americans agree with the billionaires, who detest and destroy such whistleblowers. Champions of democracy are shunned here, where PR reigns and real journalism is almost non-existent.
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Jan 27, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Jen , Jan 26 2020 20:03 utc | 30
Latest I have seen online on Julian Assange's incarceration at Belmarsh Prison is that he is no longer in solitary confinement (for most of the day, every day, anyway) and he is currently in a section of the prison with about 40 other inmates.Significantly the pressure to get him out of solitary confinement came from other prisoners at Belmarsh. Note that Belmarsh Prison is a maximum security prison so those prisoners who petitioned on Assange's behalf included people who committed what we'd consider to be very serious crimes including violence, murder and terrorism.
We certainly do live in "interesting times" when criminals in prison have more compassion and higher ethics than the authorities who put them there.
I'm on a smartphone and haven't yet worked out how to link to the article referring to Assange's move so please try Googling Assange's name and "Belmarsh". Caitlin Johnstone was one source of the news.
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Jan 21, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
January 14, 2020 • 7 Comments
WikiLeaks ' publication of "Cablegate" in late 2010 dwarfed previous releases in both size and impact and helped cause what one news outlet called a political meltdown for United States foreign policy.
Today we resume our series The Revelations of WikiLeaks with little more than a month before the extradition hearing for imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange begins. This is the sixth in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks' work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange's personality. It is WikiLeaks' uncovering of governments' crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange, ultimately leading to his arrest on April 11 last year and indictment under the U.S. Espionage Act.
'A Political Meltdown for US Foreign Policy'
By Elizabeth Vos
Special to Consortium NewsO f all WikiLeaks' releases, probably the most globally significant have been the more than a quarter of a million U.S. State Department diplomatic cables leaked in 2010, the publication of which helped spark a revolt in Tunisia that spread into the so-called Arab Spring, revealed Saudi intentions towards Iran and exposed spying on the UN secretary general and other diplomats.
The releases were surrounded by a significant controversy (to be covered in a separate installment of this series) alleging that WikiLeaks purposely endangered U.S. informants by deliberately revealing their names. That allegation formed a major part of the U.S. indictment on May 23 of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange under the Espionage Act, though revealing informants' names is not a crime, nor is there evidence that any of them were ever harmed.
WikiLeaks ' publication of "Cablegate," beginning on Nov. 28, 2010, dwarfed previous WikiLeaks releases, in both size and impact. The publication amounted to 251,287 leaked American diplomatic cables that, at the time of publication, Der Spiegel described as"no less than a political meltdown for United States foreign policy."
Cablegate revealed a previously unknown history of diplomatic relations between the United States and the rest of the world, and in doing so, exposed U.S. views of both allies and adversaries. As a result of such revelations, Cablegate's release was widely condemned by the U.S. political class and especially by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The Twitter handle Cable Drum, called it,
" The largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into U.S. Government foreign activities. The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February 2010, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret."
Among the historic documents that were grouped with Cablegate in WikiLeaks ' Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy are 1.7 million that involve Henry Kissinger, national security adviser and secretary of state under President Richard Nixon; and 1.4 million related to the Jimmy Carter administration.
Der Spiegel reported that the majority were "composed by ambassadors, consuls or their staff. Most contain assessments of the political situation in the individual countries, interview protocols and background information about personnel decisions and events. In many cases, they also provide political and personal profiles of individual politicians and leaders."
Cablegate rounded out WikiLeaks' output in 2010, which had seen the explosive publication of previous leaks also from Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning including " Collateral Murder ," the " Afghan War Diaries " and " Iraq War Logs ," the subject of earlier installments in this series. As in the case of the two prior releases, WikiLeaks published Cablegate in partnerships with establishment media outlets.
The "Cablegate" archive was later integrated with the WikiLeaks Public Library of U.S. Diplomacy , which contains over 10 million documents.
Global U.S. Empire Revealed
The impact of "Cablegate" is impossible to fully encapsulate, and should be the subject of historical study for decades to come. In September 2015 Verso published " The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to U.S. Empire ," with a foreword by Assange. It is a compendium of chapters written by various regional experts and historians giving a broader and more in-depth geopolitical analysis of U.S. foreign policy as revealed by the cables.
"The internal communications of the US Department of State are the logistical by-product of its activities: their publication is the vivisection of a living empire, showing what substance flowed from which state organ and when. Only by approaching this corpus holistically – over and above the documentation of each individual abuse, each localized atrocity – does the true human cost of empire heave into view," Assange wrote in the foreword.
' WikiLeaks Revolt' in Tunisia
The release of "Cablegate" provided the spark that many argue heralded the Arab Spring, earning the late-November publication the moniker of the " WikiLeaks Winter ."
Eventually, many would also credit WikiLeaks' publication of the diplomatic cables with initiating a chain-reaction that spread from the Middle East ( specifically from Egypt) to the global Occupy Wall Street movement by late 2011.
The first of the Arab uprisings was Tunisia's 28-day so-called Jasmine Revolution, stretching from Dec. 17, 2010, to Jan. 14, 2011, described as the "first WikiLeaks revolution."
Cables published by WikiLeaks revealed the extent of the Tunisian ruling family's corruption, and were widely accessible in Tunisia thanks to the advent of social media platforms like Twitter. Then-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had been in power for over two decades at the time of the cables' publication.
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One State Department cable, labeled Secret , said:
"President Ben Ali's extended family is often cited as the nexus of Tunisian corruption. Often referred to as a quasi-mafia, an oblique mention of 'the Family' is enough to indicate which family you mean. Seemingly half of the Tunisian business community can claim a Ben Ali connection through marriage, and many of these relations are reported to have made the most of their lineage."
A June 2008 cable said: "Whether it's cash, services, land, property, or yes, even your yacht, President [Zine el Abidine] Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants."
Symbolic middle finger gesture representing the Tunisian Revolution and its influences in the Arab world. From left to right, fingers are painted as flags of Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and Algeria. (Khalid from Doha, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The cables revealed that Ben Ali's extended family controlled nearly the entire Tunisian economy, from banking to media to property development, while 30 percent of Tunisians were unemployed. They showed that state-owned property was expropriated to be passed on to private ownership by family members.
"Lax oversight makes the banking sector an excellent target of opportunity, with multiple stories of 'First Family' schemes," one cable read. ""With real estate development booming and land prices on the rise, owning property or land in the right location can either be a windfall or a one-way ticket to expropriation," said another.
The revolt was facilitated once the U.S. abandoned Ali. Counterpunch reported that: "The U.S. campaign of unwavering public support for President Ali led to a widespread belief among the Tunisian people that it would be very difficult to dislodge the autocratic regime from power. This view was shattered when leaked cables exposed the U.S. government's private assessment: that the U.S. would not support the regime in the event of a popular uprising."
The internet and large social media platforms played a crucial role in the spread of public awareness of the cables and their content amongst the Tunisian public. "Thousands of home-made videos of police repression and popular resistance have been posted on the web. The Tunisian people have used Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to organize and direct the mobilizations against the regime," the World Socialist Website wrote.
Foreign Policy magazine reported:
"WikiLeaks acted as a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for political outcry. Which is probably the best compliment one could give the whistle-blower site." The magazine added: "The people of Tunisia shouldn't have had to wait for Wikileaks to learn that the U.S. saw their country just as they did. It's time that the gulf between what American diplomats know and what they say got smaller."
The Guardian published an account in January 2011 by a young Tunisian, Sami Ben Hassine, who wrote: "The internet is blocked, and censored pages are referred to as pages "not found" – as if they had never existed. And then, WikiLeaks reveals what everyone was whispering. And then, a young man [Mohamed Bouazizi] immolates himself. And then, 20 Tunisians are killed in one day. And for the first time, we see the opportunity to rebel, to take revenge on the 'royal' family who has taken everything, to overturn the established order that has accompanied our youth."
Protester in Tunis, Jan. 14, 2011, holding sign. Translation from French: "Ben Ali out." (Skotch 79, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)
On the first day of Chelsea Manning's pretrial in December 2011, Daniel Ellsberg told Democracy Now:
"The combination of the WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning exposures in Tunis and the exemplification of that by Mohamed Bouazizi led to the protests, the nonviolent protests, that drove Ben Ali out of power, our ally there who we supported up 'til that moment, and in turn sparked the uprising in Egypt, in Tahrir Square occupation, which immediately stimulated the Occupy Wall Street and the other occupations in the Middle East and elsewhere. I hope [Manning and Assange] will have the effect in liberating us from the lawlessness that we have seen and the corruption -- the corruption -- that we have seen in this country in the last 10 years and more, which has been no less than that of Tunis and Egypt."
Clinton Told US Diplomats to Spy at UN
The cables' revelation that the U.S. State Department under then-Secretary-of-State Clinton had demanded officials act as spies on officials at the United Nations -- including the Secretary General -- was particularly embarrassing for the United States.
El Pais summarized the bombshell: "The State Department sent officials of 38 embassies and diplomatic missions a detailed account of the personal and other information they must obtain about the United Nations, including its secretary general, and especially about officials and representatives linked to Sudan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and North Korea.
El Pais continued: "Several dispatches, signed 'Clinton' and probably made by the office of Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, contain precise instructions about the myriad of inquiries to be developed in conflict zones, in the world of deserters and asylum seekers, in the engine room of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or about the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China to know their plans regarding the nuclear threat in Tehran."
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton & UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in 2012. (Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Flickr)
CNN described the information diplomats were ordered to gather: "In the July 2009 document, Clinton directs her envoys at the United Nations and embassies around the world to collect information ranging from basic biographical data on foreign diplomats to their frequent flyer and credit card numbers and even 'biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats.' Typical biometric information can include fingerprints, signatures and iris recognition data."
Der Spiegel reported that Clinton justified the espionage orders by emphasizing that "a large share of the information that the US intelligence agencies works with comes from the reports put together by State Department staff around the world."
Der Spiegel added: "The US State Department also wanted to obtain information on the plans and intentions of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his secretariat relating to issues like Iran, according to the detailed wish list in the directive. The instructions were sent to 30 US embassies around the world, including the one in Berlin."
Philip J. Crowley as assistant secretary of state for public affairs in 2010. (State Department)
The State Department responded to the revelations, with then- State-Department-spokesman P.J. Crowley reportedly disputing that American diplomats had assumed a new role overseas.
"Our diplomats are just that, diplomats," he said. "They represent our country around the world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of foreign governments and civil society. Through this process, they collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years."
In December 2010, just after the cables' publication, Assange told Time : "She should resign if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up."
Saudis & Iran
A diplomatic cable dated April 20, 2008, made clear Saudi Arabia's pressure on the United States to take action against its enemy Iran, including not ruling out military action against Teheran:
"[Then Saudi ambassador to the US Abbdel] Al-Jubeir recalled the King's frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. 'He told you to cut off the head of the snake,' he recalled to the Charge', adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government. 11. (S) The Foreign Minister, on the other hand, called instead for much more severe US and international sanctions on Iran, including a travel ban and further restrictions on bank lending. Prince Muqrin echoed these views, emphasizing that some sanctions could be implemented without UN approval. The Foreign Minister also stated that the use of military pressure against Iran should not be ruled out."
Dyncorp & the 'Dancing Boys' of Afghanistan
The cables indicate that Afghan authorities asked the United States government to quash U.S. reporting on a scandal stemming from the actions of Dyncorp employees in Afghanistan in 2009.
Employees of Dyncorp, a paramilitary group with an infamous track-record of alleged involvement in sex trafficking and other human rights abuses in multiple countries, were revealed by Cablegate to have been involved with illegal drug use and hiring the services of a "bacha bazi," or underage dancing boy.
A 2009 cable published by WikiLeaks described an event where Dyncorp had purchased the service of a "bacha bazi." The writer of the cable does not specify what happened during the event, describing it only as "purchasing a service from a child," and he tries to convince a journalist not to cover the story in order to not "risk lives."
Although Dyncorp was no stranger to controversy by the time of the cables' publication, the revelation of the mercenary force's continued involvement in bacha bazi provoked further questions as to why the company continued to receive tax-payer funded contracts from the United States.
Sexual abuse allegations were not the only issue haunting Dyncorp. The State Department admitted in 2017 that it "could not account for" more than $1 billion paid to the company, as reported by Foreign Policy .
The New York Times later reported that U.S. soldiers had been told to turn a blind eye to the abuse of minors by those in positions of power: "Soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead of weeding out pedophiles, the American military was arming them in some cases and placing them as the commanders of villages -- and doing little when they began abusing children."
Australia Lied About Troop Withdrawal
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia, left, with U.S. President Barack Obama, in the Oval Office, Nov. 30, 2009, to discuss a range of issues including Afghanistan and climate change. (White House/Pete Souza)
The Green Left related that the cables exposed Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's double talk about withdrawing troops. "Despite government spin about withdrawing all 'combat forces,' the cables said some of these forces could be deployed in combat roles. One cable said, "[d]espite the withdrawal of combat forces, Rudd agreed to allow Australian forces embedded or seconded to units of other countries including the U.S. to deploy to Iraq in combat and combat support roles with those units."
US Meddling in Latin America
Cables revealed that U.S. ambassadors to Ecuador had opposed the presidential candidacy of Raphael Correa despite their pretense of neutrality, as observed by The Green Left Weekly .
Additional cables revealed the Vatican attempted to increase its influence in Latin America with the aid of the U.S. Further cables illustrated the history of Pope Francis while he was a cardinal in Argentina, with the U.S. appearing to have a positive outlook on the future pontiff.
Illegal Dealings Between US & Sweden
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote in his affidavit :
"Through the diplomatic cables I also learned of secret, informal arrangements between Sweden and the United States. The cables revealed that Swedish intelligence services have a pattern of lawless conduct where US interests are concerned. The US diplomatic cables revealed that the Swedish Justice Department had deliberately hidden particular intelligence information exchanges with the United States from the Parliament of Sweden because the exchanges were likely unlawful."
Military Reaction
On Nov. 30, 2010, the State Department declared it would remove the diplomatic cables from its secure network in order to prevent additional leaks. Antiwar.com added: "The cables had previously been accessible through SIPRNet, an ostensibly secure network which is accessible by millions of officials and soldiers. It is presumably through this network that the cables were obtained and leaked to WikiLeaks ."
The Guardian described SIPRNet as a "worldwide US military internet system, kept separate from the ordinary civilian internet and run by the Defence Department in Washington."
Political Fury
On Nov. 29, 2010, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said of the "Cablegate" release:
"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy; it is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."
The next day, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called for Chelsea Manning's execution, according to Politico .
Some political figures did express support for Assange, including U.K. Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who wrote via Twitter days after Cablegate was published: "USA and others don't like any scrutiny via wikileaks and they are leaning on everybody to pillory Assange. What happened to free speech?"
Other notable revelations from the diplomatic cables included multiple instances of U.S. meddling in Latin America, the demand by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that diplomatic staff act as spies , the documentation of misconduct by U.S. paramilitary forces, the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis in Iceland, the deployment of U.S. nuclear weapons in Germany and other European countries, that the Vatican attempted to increase its influence in Latin America with the aid of the U.S. , that U.S. diplomats had essentially spied on German Chancellor Angele Merkel, and much more.
Der Spiegel reported on Hillary Clinton's demand that U.S. diplomats act as spies:
"As justification for the espionage orders, Clinton emphasized that a large share of the information that the U.S. intelligence agencies works with comes from the reports put together by State Department staff around the world. The information to be collected included personal credit card information, frequent flyer customer numbers, as well as e-mail and telephone accounts. In many cases the State Department also requested 'biometric information,' 'passwords' and 'personal encryption keys.' "
Der Spiegel added: "The U.S. State Department also wanted to obtain information on the plans and intentions of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his secretariat relating to issues like Iran, according to the detailed wish list in the directive. The instructions were sent to 30 U.S. embassies around the world, including the one in Berlin."
Elizabeth Vos is a freelance reporter and co-host of CN Live.
CORRECTION: CableDrum is an independent Twitter feed and is not associated with WikiLeaks as was incorrectly reported here.
jmg , January 15, 2020 at 09:53
A truly great series, thank you.
The Revelations of WikiLeaks -- Consortium News Series
1. The Video that Put Assange in US Crosshairs -- April 23, 2019
2. The Leak That 'Exposed the True Afghan War' -- May 9, 2019
3. The Most Extensive Classified Leak in History -- May 16, 2019
4. The Haunting Case of a Belgian Child Killer and How WikiLeaks Helped Crack It -- July 11, 2019
5. Busting the Myth WikiLeaks Never Published Damaging Material on Russia -- September 23, 2019
6. US Diplomatic Cables Spark 'Arab Spring,' Expose Spying at UN & Elsewhere -- January 14, 2020For an updated list with links to the articles, a Google search is:
"The Revelations of WikiLeaks" site:consortiumnews.com For an updated list with links to the articles, a Google search is:
"The Revelations of WikiLeaks" site:consortiumnews.com
– – –
Consortium News wrote:
> Today we resume our series The Revelations of WikiLeaks with little more than a month before the extradition hearing for imprisoned WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange begins.Yes and, shockingly, Julian has been allowed only 2 hours with his lawyers in the last month, crucial to prepare the extradition hearings. See:
Summary from Assange hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning -- Tareq Haddad -- Thread Reader -- Jan 13th 2020
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,An app called Clearview allows the user to snap a photo of anyone. Once that's done, the person who took your picture will have access to all of your information. Privacy is now all but obsolete.
People will not, for much longer, be able to walk down the street minding their own business anonymously. According to a report by The New York Times, it won't be long before anyone at any time knows exactly who you are while you're in public.
What if a stranger could snap your picture on the sidewalk then use an app to quickly discover your name, address and other details? A startup called Clearview AI has made that possible. Perhaps the worst news is that the police state is already using this technology in some parts of the "land of the free." The app is currently being used by hundreds of law enforcement agencies in the United States, including the deep state FBI, says a Saturday report in The New York Times.
Our Orwellian future has arrived. We are to be tracked, monitored, spied on, and have no privacy whatsoever at any time. And now, other strangers will have access to your private information is you dare to show your face in public.
According to the Times, this human rights violating app works by comparing a photo snapped to a database of more than 3 billion pictures that Clearview says it's scraped off Facebook, Venmo, YouTube and other sites. It then serves up matches, along with links to the sites where those database photos originally appeared. A name might easily be unearthed, and from there, other info could be dug up online.
The size of the Clearview database dwarfs others in use by law enforcement. The FBI's own database, which taps passport and driver's license photos, is one of the largest, with over 641 million images of US citizens.
The Clearview app isn't currently available to the public, but the Times says police officers and Clearview investors think it will be in the future. – CNET
Even though law enforcement says they've used the app's technology to solve horrible crimes, human rights advocates warn that the privacy violations are going to be immense. Privacy advocates are warning that the app could return false matches to police and that it could also be used by stalkers and other creeps. They've also warned that facial recognition technologies , in general, could be used to conduct mass surveillance.
Most facial recognition technology is already used for Orwellian and tyrannical purposes by the powers that shouldn't be. It should come as no surprise that this will also be used by the ruling class to eliminate basic human rights.
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Jan 19, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
Fran Macadam , January 14, 2020 at 07:28
You've been zucked.
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Jan 19, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Sasha , Jan 18 2020 19:44 utc | 167
What if the real "rebellion" consist on the intertwinning of the Executive, Military and Corporate factions to all feed on profit while at the same time better control population and above all dissidents through the control of and proffitering from big data?MILITARY-DIGITAL COMPLEX: Why Amazon is going to become the next US MIC giant
....And perhaps the ultimate goal is not just more government contracts, but influence over regulations that could affect Amazon. Today, some of its biggest threats aren't competitors, but lawmakers and politicians arguing for antitrust moves against tech giants. (Or, perhaps, a president arguing it should pay more taxes.) And Bezos clearly understands that operating in Washington requires access to, and influence on, whoever is in the White House; in 2015 he hired Obama's former press secretary, Jay Carney, as a senior executive, and earlier this year AWS enlisted Jeff Miller, a Trump fund-raiser, to lobby on its behalf.....Steve Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, has tracked intelligence spending and privacy issues for decades. I asked him if he has any concerns about Amazon's rapid expansion into national security. "We seem to be racing toward a new configuration of government and industry without having fully thought through all of the implications. And some of those implications may not be entirely foreseeable," he wrote in an email. "But any time you establish a new concentration of power and influence, you also need to create some countervailing structure that will have the authority and the ability to perform effective oversight. Up to now, that oversight structure doesn't seem to [be] getting the attention it deserves."
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Jan 08, 2020 | www.militarytimes.com
Before his death in 2015, renowned British author and neurologist Oliver Sacks penned an essay lamenting society's limitless plunge into the personality-depriving depths of smart phones and social media.
"Everything is public now, potentially: one's thoughts, one's photos, one's movements, one's purchases," he wrote in the essay published posthumously in The New Yorker. "There is no privacy and apparently little desire for it in a world devoted to non-stop use of social media. Every minute, every second, has to be spent with one's device clutched in one's hand."
Sacks' smart phone-induced melancholia, however, had yet to extend to the arena of national security.
But here we are.
Like the general population, today's troops entranced by the glowing hypnosis of iPhone and Android screens grow increasingly unaware of the security breach potential at their fingertips. Lurking enemies capable of crippling cybersecurity attacks seek to prey on the complacent, and junior personnel have shown little in the way of resistance -- opting instead to prioritize online popularity at the expense of information sharing and operational security.
A concerned Gen. Robert Neller, the now-retired former Marine Commandant, addressed this trend at a 2016 Center for Strategic and International Studies conference discussion in which he urged Marines to put down their inanimate soulmates and turn their focus to the mission.
"We're going to go to the field for 30 days; everybody leave your phone in the car and tell your significant other or your mom, your aunt, your uncle, that you're not going to get 75 texts each day and answer them," he said.
"You're living out of your pack, you're going to stop at night, you're going to dig a hole, you're going to camouflage, you're going to turn off all your stuff, and you're going to sit there. And you've got to be careful to not make any noise, and you're going to try to have absolutely no signature. Because if you can be seen, you will be attacked."
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Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com
BluebellWood -> Supermassive , 29 Nov 2018 12:41
Yep - education is the key.I remember at school we read Orwell's essay Politics and the English Language in an English class and then we were set a writing task as a follow-up, reporting on the same story using the same facts, from completely opposing points of view, using euphemism and mind-numbing cliches. Teach children to do this themselves and they can see how language can be skewed and facts distorted and misrepresented without technically lying.
How many children in schools are taught such critical thinking these days, I wonder? It might be taught in Media Studies, I suppose - but gosh, don't the right really hate that particular subject! Critical thinking is anathema to them.
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Oct 25, 2019 | www.youtube.com
Forrest LeMay , 2 hours ago (edited)"patriotism isn't about the loyalty to government. Patriotism isn't a loyalty to anything. Patriotism is constant effort to do good for the people of your country"
Free Ryder , 3 hours ago"People talk about the deep state like it's a conspiracy theory of lizard people, it's not, its something much simpler, the deep state is the career government." - Edward Snowden
Fuzzy Gaming , 2 hours ago"I'd be working on umm economic takeover of Guatemala for example" Lol CIA's bread and butter
Khonh lo , 2 hours ago div class=1:57:00 Snowden talks about how the Intelligence agencies can stonewall you and sabotage your presidency... Exactly what President Trump has been saying for years.
postedhere9 , 1 hour agoWhat I really got out of this episode is realization that companies and the government can now track where I have been on a particular date at a particular time forever. Its crazy what a time we live in.
Imagine kids born in 2006 or so until they expire. They government or companies can pull up data of their entire life timeline at any point in their lives. Example where were they on 2/15/2010 at 2:15 PM.
Someone born in 1965 can only recall memories of their pass experiences that only they know or the people around can remember whereas now days and beyond, they can pull that information out depending on how specific the query you want to obtain. This is not including all the other data such as relationship they have had, where they had lived, where they had eaten, what they had buy, etc...
Rasikh Ali , 3 hours agoPelosi's involvement in the impeachment sounds oddly familiar to her involvement in this scandal... hmm
Mar Z , 1 hour agoMainstream media is only focusing on the alien comment. Scum of the earth.. smh 🤦🏽♂️
Christopher Mulvey , 1 hour ago38:00 . CIA and FBI competing for clout . I'm sorry I know this is serious but just imagined them as annoying social media acc trying to get the most likes. But seriously, thanks Joe, you let your guest talk and it was so incredibly insightful!!
M Somogyi , 2 hours agoWhen this Edward Snowden thing first happened, the first thing I thought was wow this is a very very smart man but not smart enough to realize how stupid people are and how powerful mainstream media is when it comes to the general public's perception.
The general public doesn't realize that the mainstream news has nowhere near 5million views in 3 days but if it's not talked about on main stream news for a week or if the president does not acknowledge something then it does not exist. That's the truth.
Flash Harry , 4 hours agoSnowden tries to advertise his book the whole time Rogan asks him a simple question.. Okay, I get it you go into details in the book... Just answer the question. "Oh yeah, let me give you a fast version....". 1 hr later - He still hasn't answered.
Joe Rogan is one patient ass man. Thanks for having such interesting and awesome content on your podcast! :)
Wowbagger , 3 hours ago (edited)"> My obsevation is that if I was in charge of keeping our "They Live" clandestine alien government's secret, then I wouldn't allow that information wrote down on paper in a room with a computer even in it , let alone have it in a computer document.
Not many people should even be aware of the information and When they are they stick to analogue pens and paper other than when they are reverse engineering anything, When specialist use hardware/software it is in TOTAL contained environment .
And that dudes is how ya keeps a secret . Oh and the moon he is wrong with that and you can use the same reasoning, what did they do for example with all of the film tape recordings of all the footage of Apollo landing. Yes they taped over it, all of it. If you have ever seen moon landing footage it's a recording of a recording to hide multitudes of oversights. x
JC Stuart , 1 day ago09:45 Sounds more like escalating the surveillance of the general population was the main goal from the start. A slow subversion made palatable by a perceived threat.
Tim Leniston , 2 hours ago"when we become fearful we become vulnerable, to anyone who promises to make things better, even if they will actively make things worse."
HyperActive7 , 3 hours agoWe need to stand up to this somehow. Just think of the chilling effect on anyone who might want to do a public service but fears exposure of some detail in their private life or their explorations or communications which could be used to silence or embarrass them. Bastards!
Stacy Starnes , 3 hours agoI can barely keep my eyes open with Snowden. You'd think to yourself, how come such a sleepy personality individual be so dangerous to the government elite?
Well, the proof is in what he's saying and it is the truth that 9/11 was a mass conspiracy aimed to change America and ruin The Will of The American people. I was his age when all this crap went down and I believed all of it like he and many of my generation did because we didn't have the Alex Jones of the world waking us up to this sick reality which is our government is treasonous against its own people.
Benjamin Wright , 1 day agoI guess that what Schumer meant when he said that the intelligence community has a million and one ways to get you. "Drain the swamp".
GoogleSearch TheEsseneGospelOfPeace.#JesusGang , 1 day ago"The FBI has joined the chat"
Reegan O'Hara , 4 hours agoJoe: Google searching "free proxy servers" before this interview
Destinyxos , 4 hours agoHe was given the same speech training as Obama. Same cadence, same pauses, same use of "uhh", "right" and "Look...". The repeating of certain words quickly before finishing the main point is particularly noticeable, i.e. "th- the.." "th- that", "whe- when..."
m1force , 1 hour agoI feel like lack of communication is so the reason for a lot occupational struggles as well as in the government structures. It makes me sad to see that sharing and informing is just so hard for some people. And that negative energy rubs of on everyone else and I feel like it's a huge spiraling butterfly affect.
But I'm glad to see someone talking about the issues with our society so intensely and so carefully and so factually and I honestly love it. I feel included because of this video and for that, I am great full!
chilakil , 1 hour agoWhile I'm not saying Snowden is wrong, it's important to realize that this is "his side of the story." This is why fair trials are important.. He complains about the D.C. circuit and perhaps for good reason; I say fine, bring him to the 8th circuit and let's put all the cards on the table.
FatalFinality , 1 day agoI completely believe after following Rogan for a couple of Months that joe is complete controlled opposition
Tom Hol , 2 hours agoWell, this is definitely one of those mornings when being unemployed is convenient.
Raul Montes , 4 hours agoHonestly don't know how so many can be shocked by these claims. Did you really think that your government sweetheart is trying to protect you? They collectively have an agenda to keep people asleep.
To keep them in their routines so that they don't ask questions. Also throw them a bone every now and then so that they feel as if they are getting rewarded while we extort them, spy on them and use them and then throw them away.
ck black , 33 minutes agoThis was longest plug for a book ever...
Mar Z , 35 minutes agoSnowden is a D.S. Cutout. Period. Disinfo Personified. He didn't get out of Hong Kong W/O HELP This is pure Agregis B.S.
Guillermo Baltazar , 3 hours ago"The public is not partnered with government. The public does not hold the leash to government. We are subject to them. Subordinate to government" " National security does not equal to public safety. National security is the safety of the state"
Nicco Sanchez , 1 hour ago44:20 he kinda dis Obama
Erma4ella Eu , 5 minutes agoIs anybody else kinda thrown off by how condescending and patronizing Snowden is towards Joe? He seems to be throwing low key shade/jabs about his preconceived notions about Joe based off his avatar.
I mean he could have spoken on his initial impression as a little anecdotal segway into how this interview came to fruition, but he seems arrogant to me. Like he feels the average layman is beneath him or of lessor intellectualism. Great interview nonetheless, but I just think Snowden comes off a little uppity (for lack of a better term)😒
Jakob , 1 day agoIt wasn't Joe Rogan's podcast. It was a Snowden's podcast
Carlo Anardu , 1 day agoSnowden made a "FBI has joined the chat" meme hahahaah
Scott what , 2 hours agoI can't believe NSA and CIA hired someone that talks that much...
John B , 4 hours agoSo every politician I disagree with is a dictator or fascist. Seems someone hasn't learned much
Scarack Truther , 4 hours agoIt was the Russian government that took him in, the alternative would be rotting in a dark off shore CIA prison. I would not bite the hand that saved me. Snowden is a good guy but i think he needs to learn gratitude.
Szimba Zsununnu , 5 hours agoIf this video is trending, this mean Snowden is a puppet to the NWO. NO WAY THEY WILL ALLOW A VIDEO LIKE THIS TO EVER TREND IN YOUTUBE OR ANY WHERE.
Grasshopper , 4 hours agoEd, you made one mistake: Americans are not "afraid"! US citizens did NOT vote for DT out of fear. They voted out of CONCERN. The average American? Goes to McD's once a month (they're lovin' it), buys their daughter an ice cream at Dairy Queen (or equivalent ice cream place in town), anticipates when is the most convenient day to schedule an oil change, etc. "Fear", "scared", "fearmonger"?
These are nonsensical words the other side likes to spew. Americans are c-o-n-c-e-r-n-e-d about their country. The British (and I speak on behalf of all Americans, British, and so forth - thank you, thank you) opted out of the EU because of CONCERN for their future. Not fear. You're a smart guy Ed, and this interview is very telling, (and we the people think you're gonna get your ass assassinated for speaking so freely like this), and although I only had the patience to sit through the first hour, this is a good video, and a memorable interview.
But just understand -- aside from North Koreans and maybe a Syrian here and there, citizens are not afraid. We are instead courageous. We CARE about the now. We care about the future. We support those that care as well. We're concerned, kiddo. Not fearful. Boris, Donald, Orban, that green-faced Putin opponent Alexei Navalny guy, Nigel, Milo, Geert, PJW, Brigitte Bardot, August Sabbe, Romas Kalanta, Joan of Arc (and countless others) - at risk of their safety / public standing / status quo / whatever - CARE.
Those are the leaders (ASS KICKERS) that we support and vote for. We are members of the human race. We are not afraid.
Z.A.C. , 1 day ago (edited)#1 if people didn't realize this was going on before 2013, then I don't know where your brain was. #2 this guy may correct, but he's an opportunist.
He's spent a lot of time putting this story together. How can he say there are no bodies laying around when Obama was sending up drones that fired missles at cell phones? I worked in the telecom industry starting in the 90s... I was tracking calls on 9/11. I knew who was calling who, and the FBI didn't ask permission to see where the calls were going or coming from.
Reuben Handel , 4 hours ago (edited)He's had John McAfee, Rhonda Patrick, Mike Tyson, Graham Hancock, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Lance Armstrong, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Jay Leno, Anthony Bourdain, David Goggins, Ron White, Jordan Peterson, Everlast, Immortal Technique, Bernie Sanders, Ben Shapiro, George St.Pierre, Elon Musk, Alex Jones, and now Edward Snowden. Just to name a few.
Trey Wilson , 1 minute ago div clBut there were numerous people warned not to fly/go to wtc on 911. Willie Brown, Salmon Rushdie, Israeli citizens, apparently the French knew as well... But Snowden says they didn't know
Invincible Osprey , 4 hours ago"Give me one good reason the government would have committed 9/11." - steel beams don't melt jet fuel, also watch this podcast and you'll wish you still lived in the matrix
J. Copache , 34 minutes ago (edited)Ed Snowden is creepily still playing his role for the same people behind 9/11 and other False Flags...
Alek Kelly , 22 minutes agoRight now, Chile, my home country, is going through a very difficult and delicate process of civil unrest that has been met with relentless repression at the hands of a government that works in favor of private interests and has been confirmed to commit several and systematic human rights violations, including torture, murder, rape, state terrorism, and the list goes on. Listening to this podcast right now really puts in perspective the extent to wich a State can manipulate, hide and forge information in order to limit civil rights with the excuse of protecting the people.
We NEED guys like Snowden to come forth and show governments around the world that any measures taken to protect order and national interests should always be second to the well-being, civil and human rights of the people that constitute the very foundation of what a country is.
People from the US are lucky to have true patriots like Snowden, willing to go against the rotten systems so deeply ingrained in their institutional complexes in order to uphold the ideals that gave birth to their country in the first place. We need help, and we need clarity. If y'all can, please get informed and divulge what you learn about our situation right now. Get people talking and get people acting.
No government that - literally- fires against its people should be left unchecked. Information is a tool, the greatest one we've got in this day and age, and we the people are more capable than ever of using it in our advantage.
Joseph Edward , 5 hours ago (edited)At 14:15 , he says he went to journalists with the information and gave them conditions on how that information could be published. Was this a trust or legal based transaction? If it was trust, would Snowden still be as confident in doing it that way in today's media climate?
Brian Houck , 6 hours ago34:50 . Our founding fathers are turning in their graves.
Joseph Edward , 6 hours agoSo James Clapper just straight-up lied to Congress under oath and there were no repercussions, yet they did their best to hunt down Ed Snowden and treat him like a dirty dog? What is wrong with this picture? Besides everything, I mean.
therealjoelsalazar , 6 hours agoAround 30:00 Snowden said that the highest members of our government have the lowest loyalty. (The ones at the top are the ones selling us out.)
words wpns , 7 hours agoThe scary thing is, is that while Snowden is telling us what happened in the past, the government is actively abusing powers while looking for new ways to violate our rights. We need to really look at ourselves as citizens and make sure the people we vote for are actually serving the public no matter what party or tak they're on.
With all do respect to snowden , 9 11 was an inside job The whole event was controlled. Controlled demolition , controlled airlines to launch them in to the towers. All orchestrated by elements of the CIA , FBI , and NSA
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