It Makes Perfect Sense.

I've read about, posted about, watched about, listened about big brother, big data, big tech, big "you-name-it", knowing full well that every keystroke I've every keyed; every website I've ever visited; every search I've ever searched; every Youtube I've ever watched; every post I've ever posted; every "like" I've ever liked; every download I've ever downloaded, etc., were and still are most certainly being stored, recorded, and/or deposited somewhere out there in the great big beyond, but it wasn't until I came across this post in Threadreaderapp.com-- and apparently this understates the problem considerably because what you get when you request your data, even if it's comparatively nothing because you'd already disabled all that, is still only a fraction of the total data they have for you -- that it really hit me, and kind of, sort of blew my mind., yet, like I said, of course, this didn't surprise me at all if that makes any sense. There's a kind of disconnect between what I know and what I know if that makes any sense. I mean, I know things in my head in an abstract intellectual sense that I don't really know in my heart if that makes any sense.

No, it doesn't make any sense?

Well, for example,  I might know lots about evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plans formulated in secret by two or more persons, yet when I see real life evidence of these, dare I say, conspiracies, I'm startled, as in my heart beats faster, my eyes get larger, my blood pressure rises, while at the same time, I'm  telling myself, "no surprise here," and to the very few people I have tried to convince of these, dare I say, conspiracies, whether they're there or not, I say, "I told you so."

I know this sounds like the ramblings of a lunatic, and maybe it is, but I need an outlet.  I need to pretend someone's paying attention to me, pretend that's someone is taking me seriously,  pretend that someone's reading this and just hope it's not anyone I know, or that if they do know me that they don't find out it's me blogging all of this stuff.  Because, yes, I'm a coward.

 However, now it's very clear to me that whether or not anyone's reading this stuff now, there is no doubt that everything I've ever posted about, read about, watched about, listened about, etc, is all out there for anyone to pull up in a heartbeat, connect it to me and...and that's kind of scary because those certain someones--multi-millionaire/billionaire class of data owners--certainly won't like what I've posted about, read about, listened about, watched about, etc...in other words, they won't like what I thought about.

But I'm just a nobody.  Why in the world would they care what I think?  That's what I've told myself all along so I kept on posting, reading, watching, listening, downloading....

More than ever before, I hope I'm being paranoid because surely, I'm a needle in a haystack or more aptly, a needle in a mountain of needles.  Surely, I'm a winning half-a billion-dollar lottery ticket,  a grain of sand on a beach, a book at the Library of Congress, a leaf in a forest, a blade of grass in a meadow...well, you get the picture.  

See how that works?  My need to outlet far exceeds my need to shut the hell up.

“So we are in a really bad state of affairs right now, in my opinion. It is eroding the core foundation of how people behave by and between each other. And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years. -Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of user growth @Facebook.

Links:

How Facebook Figures Out Everyone You've Ever Met

The Social Ties that Unbind

GDPR Reports

On May 25th, 2018, the new EU rules called General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) goes into effect. It applies to companies who have users that are EU citizens, residents or visitors. The fine to companies that violate the rules can be 20 million euro or up to 4% of global revenue. The new rules requires opt-in for data collection and deletion of data when users withdraw their consent. It also lets a user request user data from a company that has data on a user, the company has to send it within a month for free.

GDPR Subject Access Requests

Everybody (in the EU) vs. Facebook

Framasoft runs various open source services

Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy

TrackMeNot

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Las Vegas Shooting: Cui Bono?

I don't claim to know the truth about the Las Vegas incident, but I do know that like most lone gunman mass shooting events that turn into giant 24/7 media circuses, the official story just doesn't make sense even before you scratch the surface.

I mean, the guy carried 23 guns to his room and none of the security cameras caught it? Where is the camera footage of him prior to the shooting, carrying all of his weapons? Casinos literally hire former Marines with sharpshooter training in addition to the incredible surveillance of every public area, not to mention 22,000 people with smart phones. We should be awash with CCTV and cell phone footage of the chaos an event like this would create. 22,000 people with smart phones and so little , didn't smart-phone video this. Dig even deeper and the story gets even more ludicrous, preposterous, and should be downright offensive to anyone who spends five minutes on the official narrative.



High Incident Project?

Cui Bono? It certainly wasn't the alleged patsy shooter. Who benefits? An insidious industry that reaps maximum profit and influence for all the institutions that live off fear: the police, the justice system, the media, the weapons and security trade and most importantly, government, who create the "Big Brother" laws that increases their power over the masses. In other words, government and private contractors who have a stake in an exponentially growing national security state from which they stand to make a fortune and further limit our freedom of movement.

Collateral damage to push hidden agendas? Seems that way.

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Has The Patriot Act Metamorphosed into The Freedom Act?

US Spy Architecture Pared Back as Part of Patriot Act Expires, shouts the Wall Street Journal. The New York Times claims a decade-long shift from focus on national security to a shift on civil liberties in the post Snowden era. Yes, the corporate owned mainstream media is doing its very best to hype the expiration of the Patriot Act while extolling the virtues of its replacement, the USA Freedom Act, in the words of the NY Times:

“the strongest demonstration yet of a decade-long shift from a singular focus on national security at the expense of civil liberties to a new balance in the post-Snowden era.”

Not so fast!   The spotlight is on one agency, the NSA and one expiring unconstitutional body of legislation, the Patriot Act. when they have all sorts of other ways to collect the same kind of intelligence laid out in the original Patriot Act, when there are countless other, even more powerful agencies than the NSA.  It's what the profit-seeking "news" media, owned and run by a tiny elite, obscures that leads to truth.

The massive US intelligence apparatus (see above) has already figured out how to get what it needs through other means. Broadcasting the curbing of the NSA Surveillance Program just gives we, the people false hope that's something is being done. In fact, under the Freedom Act, the program of domestic mass surveillance will only intensify. The NSA is only one of the alphabet agencies under the umbrella of the colossal Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). 

It's all a game of smoke and mirrors to mask the ever-growing build-up of the surveillance and security industrial complex. This change they're trumpeting is purely cosmetic. It's basically the transference of responsibility for the retention of cell phone metadata from the NSA to telecommunication companies which now require the NSA to get a FISA stamp of approval before obtaining call records.

What about all of the spy planes equipped with technology capable of tracking and reviewing data from tens of thousands of phones in a single flight and provided to the Department of Justice, including agencies such as the FBI, DEA, ATF, etc.? 

From How you can track the FBI’s spy planes

“The thing is, when you fly planes in the U.S., you have to fill out lots of official forms that become part of the public record. Because the FBI didn’t want to publicly acknowledge it was sending “spy planes” out to circle American cities (and potentially alert its targets), it created front companies for them. It seems the FBI is uncreative when it comes to spy craft; the fake companies tracked down by the AP and by Wiseman mainly had three-letter names, including FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Because flight records in the U.S. are public, and planes are trackable on radar, the AP was able to track down where these planes flew.

Even politicians who speak out against the ever growing surveillance state cannot be trusted. Take Rand Paul who claims victory of the expired Patriot Act "proposed hiring 1,000 new FBI agents to track potential terrorists."

Anyway, what do you need the NSA for when you've got Google and Apple and Amazon and Facebook?

Newsflash: Big corporations and government are in bed together and cozier than ever. They don't even try to hide it anymore, what with Citizens United, huge corporate bailouts,  not to mention corporations actually write the laws that government officials don't even read.   Of course, I could go on forever but that should be enough to make one, at the very least, suspicious.

Links:

Zombie Patriot Act Will Keep U.S. Spying—Even if the Original Dies

Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

EPIC is an independent non-profit research center in Washington, DC. EPIC works to protect privacy, freedom of expression, democratic values, and to promote the Public Voice in decisions concerning the future of the Internet.

Also see: http://privacy.org/

Big Brother Inc

Bugged Planet

The body-worn “IMSI catcher” for all your covert phone snooping needs

National Security Analysis Center (NSAC),

NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program

“The top-secret PRISM program allows the U.S. intelligence community to gain access from nine Internet companies to a wide range of digital information, including e-mails and stored data, on foreign targets operating outside the United States. The program is court-approved but does not require individual warrants. Instead, it operates under a broader authorization from federal judges who oversee the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Some documents describing the program were first released by The Washington Post on June 6.

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Universal Human Control System: Defining Us Against Them.

In the battle of  Us against Them, we are led to believe "Us" is the United States, while "Them" is any country who "hates us for our freedom". Nothing could be further from the truth. The  NSA snooping scandal , the tip of a very dark and very large iceberg, makes that very clear. 

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA),   Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), and Ministry of State Security of the People's Republic of China (MSS), amongst many other global powers, have spent decades working together to spy on the whole world and they don't give a damn about you or your right to privacy. So who is "Them"? They, the fraction of a percent of international rulers working together to spy on us, the 99.9%, and that's the way it's always been. The only difference is now, they are allowing us in on the big secret. Why? Because it's too late to do anything about it. The grid designed to control and incarcerate Us is already in place, its tentacles deeply embedded. There is no place left to hide.

Now, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSA phone spying program, but that's like applying a band-aid to a sliced jugular vein. It will only attack one tentacle of this giant octopus. Aside from the NSA, who has over 50 unaccountable subcontractors that do most of the dirty work, the NSA being only a small part of the huge intelligence apparatus.  The DIA has a budget ten times the size of the budgets of the CIA and FBI combined and has 100 times the employees of the CIA and FBI combined. There are 13 intelligence agencies in the community and all but two or three are military intelligence. Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine, National Reconnaissance Organization--in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellite--the National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Industrial Securities Command, the largest internal police force in the US, started to guard the Manhattan Project.

And let's not forget about L.U.C.I.D. (Langton Ultimate Cosmic ray Intensity Detector), or as Dr. Jean-Paul Creusat, L.U.C.I.D.'s designer said, Logical Universal Communication Interactive Databank. an advanced computer technology, global control system. It will be ready for launch " in the Autumn of 2013," according to Langston Star Centre.

Why are they creating this huge Big Brother monster?  Well, to make us happy, of course.

“To make the people happy, their ideas must be reconstructed, laws must be changed, morals must be changed, men must be changed, things must be changed, yes everything must be destroyed, since everything must be remade." -- Frenchman Rabaud de Saint Etienne, a French revolutionary.

Remade into what? A system of universal slavery? An electronic prison camp or electronic internment camps to incarcerate us all as human resources for the state?  

In other words, it's us, the global 99%, against them, the mostly unelected international ruling .01%.

“In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time

Links:

Attacks from America: NSA Spied on European Union Offices

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Our Common Enemy Ain't Each Other

Rather it's our unaccountable lawmakers who can't be bothered to show up for important briefings. If any one of us failed to show up for a meeting, we would be fired, yet these jokers fail to show up on a regular basis.

That's right. Most of our senators decided to "leave Washington early Thursday afternoon instead of attending a briefing with James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, Keith Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency (NSA), and other officials."

Only 47 of 100 senators attended the 2:30 briefing, leaving dozens of chairs in the secure meeting room empty as Clapper, Alexander and other senior officials told lawmakers about classified programs to monitor millions of telephone calls and broad swaths of Internet activity. The room on the lower level of the Capitol Visitor Center is large enough to fit the entire Senate membership, according to a Senate aide.

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Biometric Database of All Americans Buried in 800 Pages of Immigration Reform

Republicans and Democrats may not agree on much, but they certainly do agree on ever-increasing government intrusion and power.  One of the big problem with all the so-called "security” legislation created since 9/11 is that it, unquestionably, will be used against American citizens who stand up to power. That's already happening.

Our Orwellian government already tracks and monitors everything we do, but apparently the political class is not satisfied. Hidden in the 800 pages of immigration reform " is a mandate for the creation of a national biometric database of virtually every American (take notice that the question of fining the corporations for employing illegal immigrants never comes up, because corporations thrive on cheap labor and our government is all about keeping corporations profitable as possible).

"The immigration reform measure the Senate began debating yesterday would create a national biometric database of virtually every adult in the U.S., in what privacy groups fear could be the first step to a ubiquitous national identification system.

Buried in the more than 800 pages of the bipartisan legislation (.pdf) is language mandating the creation of the innocuously-named “photo tool,” a massive federal database administered by the Department of Homeland Security and containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license or other state-issued photo ID.

Employers would be obliged to look up every new hire in the database to verify that they match their photo.

This piece of the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act is aimed at curbing employment of undocumented immigrants. But privacy advocates fear the inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet. Think of it as a government version of Foursquare, with Big Brother cataloging every check-in.

“It starts to change the relationship between the citizen and state, you do have to get permission to do things,” said Chris Calabrese, a congressional lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union. “More fundamentally, it could be the start of keeping a record of all things.”

For now, the legislation allows the database to be used solely for employment purposes. But historically such limitations don’t last. The Social Security card, for example, was created to track your government retirement benefits. Now you need it to purchase health insurance.

“The Social Security number itself, it’s pretty ubiquitous in your life,” Calabrese said.

David Bier, an analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, agrees with the ACLU’s fears.

“The most worrying aspect is that this creates a principle of permission basically to do certain activities and it can be used to restrict activities,” he said. “It’s like a national ID system without the card.”

For the moment, the debate in the Senate Judiciary Committee is focused on the parameters of legalization for unauthorized immigrants, a border fence and legal immigration in the future.

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Another Boston-Like Lockdown: Students Had to Use Buckets Instead of Bathrooms

Several schools in the Madison Wisconsin area went into lockdown after a Chicago fugitive, Paris Poe,  wanted for parole violation and questioning in a murder investigation, was spotted at a hotel in Madison, WI.  Poe had previously been imprisoned for armed robbery. Because of the sighting, a large area  was then locked down and swarmed with SWAT teams in what resulted in a day-long manhunt.

Reverse 911 calls were made to all landlines asking residents to lock their doors and remain inside. Police asked all the businesses in their area to close and lock their doors. All six schools in the area were placed on lockdown and surrounded by police. In Verona, no-one could enter or exit the schools. In some classrooms, children were told to crouch under their desks for hours.  Children were prohibited from using the bathroom, and were told to urinate in buckets.. Parents could not pick up their children since entry or exit was prohibited. Once the lockdown was ended, parents were required to present ID to take their children home.

Later in the day, Poe was arrested far outside the locked down area. He faces no charges in WI and will be transported back to IL.

All of this for a man wanted for questioning and a parole violation? I don't think so. More like any excuse to instill fear in the hearts of children and condition the people to accept "martial law" as the new normal.

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Mysterious Loud Booms? Acoustic Mapping for the Police State Infrastructure?

What are those loud mysterious booms heard across the US that the government claims ignorance? Well, according to Scott Portzline, a nuclear security expert, and activist security consultant to Three Mile Island Alert,claims it very well could be something called acoustic mapping.

Portzline searched through the Department of Energy (DOE) Information Bridge, which is the DOE's portal for scientific documents and discovered the Autonomous UAV-Based Mapping of Large Scale Urban Firefight from 2006, which "describes experimental results from a live-fire data collect designed to demonstrate the ability of IR and acoustic sensing systems to detect and map high-volume gunfire events from tactical UAVs," mapping out and collecting echo data in order to pinpoint large scale weaponry use during firefights that might break out during civil unrest, particularly in an urban setting.

Translated to English, that means that they came up with a fusion of four methodologies (4-D fusion),  which after inserted into a software program--aerial detection systems--that they install into UAVs, they can acoustically map the echoes from the terrain and buildings in urban areas across the US. The purpose is that should a firefight occur, the government will already know the acoustic properties, through acoustic sensing, of all the different buildings and terrain, thus giving them the capability to pinpoint, by subtracting out the echoes from the clutter, within seconds, where the firefight is coming from right down to the room/floor of the building you’re firing from, your motion, and type/caliber/ammunition you’re using.

Four methodologies:

• Acoustic observation – adheres to gun and motor (weapon) noises
• Infrared observation – see the flashes
• 3-D scenery information – already knows what the urban area targeted for acoustic mapping looks like.
• Prior Time-step data –

Why are they going to all of this trouble? The U.S. military is seeking to "better understand the [global] information battle space" through full spectrum dominance. What is that?  It's America’s grand strategy for achieving totalitarian democracy in the new world order. In other words, “full spectrum dominance” over all land, sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough power through “a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques” to maintain the unchallengeable military we have now through a "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which was created to bring about a major change in the nature of warfare. Essentially, RMA's goal is the implementation of global command and control sense and respond systems to ultimately enforce world government.

"A Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) is a major change in the nature of warfare brought about by the innovative application of new technologies which, combined with dramatic changes in military doctrine and operational and organisational concepts, fundamentally alters the character and conduct of military operations." -- Andrew Marshall, director of the Office of Net Assessments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense

The combination of  an Event Driven Architecture, created with built in backdoors, and sense and respond logistics will categorize, infer and 'engage' threats.  IBM has even admitted that they supply the military with their 'Sense and Respond' solutions, which have the specific aim of facilitating Network-Centric Operations/Warfare, which exists to further the war economy and exact full command and control over the population.



If you see this type of equipment in your area, you will know what's going on.



Edward Bernays, the father of public relations and 'perception-molding' who created the pretext for a US military invasion in Guatemala that ended up killing 200,000 and disappearing 100,000 amongst other achievements such as the creation of a 'fake enemy', selling cigarrettes to women, fake emancipation movements, and providing the knowledge base for cointelpro, it could be said, started a revolution in military affairs long before the official document came to be.

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Lethal Micro-Drones that Can Stalk, Crawl and Hover For Days.

The U.S. Air Force is developing agile micro-sized unmanned drones, the size of insects, with 'optic flow' "which will allow remote pilots to fly by 'sight' - rather than flying by GPS, which can be disrupted by buildings or deliberately jammed by enemy forces."

"As the drones fall, they begin to fly - not like planes, but like insects. High frequency flapping wings allow the drones to hover and maneuver in tight spaces.

The military has already produced a drone patterned after a hawk moth that can flap its wings 30 times a second. However, the activity exhausts the drone's tiny battery in just a few minutes, according to National Geographic.

Another drone type soars like a pigeon and perches unobtrusively on a power line to observe a surveillance target with a camera.

The Air Force is working on technology that will allow the drones to steal electricity from power cables and other sources - so they can continue to operate for days or weeks on end."

Great for urban and/or residential environments, right?


 

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Who Really Won the Cold War?

“A philosophy founded by Karl Marx… which forms the basis of Communist doctrine: it combines the materialistic idea of matter over mind with the Hegelian dialectic in which opposing forces are constantly being reunited at a higher level.” -- Lexicon Webster Dictionary

Many fallaciously believe that the cold war is over and that we actually won, but the evidence suggests otherwise. Manipulation of public opinion and the media are at an all time high. Our indoctrinated young citizens are so dumbed down and so addicted to their micro-screens of virtual reality, they almost present as zombies. Dissenters and whistle-blowers are increasingly being portrayed as enemies of the state, and "Big Brother" grows larger every single day. Then there is the breakdown--intentional, I might add, and no, it has nothing to do with gay marriage, and everything to do with the erosion of values and, of course,  economics--of the family, our increasing militarized culture of death, and  Agenda 21, whose mission encapsulates true communism.

In 1970, Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schuman) son of a high ranking Soviet army officer, trained by the KGB as a subversive, defected to America due to his disgust of the Soviet system. Prior to defecting, he did his job as a subversive, spreading Soviet propaganda in other countries in order to subvert their teachers, politicians, and other policy makers to a mindset receptive to the Soviet ideology. Prior to his defection, he was posing as a "journalist" in New Dehli, India in the 1960s.

In the interview (below), he said unbeknownst to most, the KGB spent only 15% of time, money and manpower on intelligence/espionage, as portrayed in Hollywood movies, while  85% of the Soviet's resources were dedicated to a slow process called ideological subversion or active measures or psychological warfare. The goal of which is to change the perception of reality to such an extent that despite the abundance of information, that no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country. It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow.  It's divided into four basic stages:

1. Demoralization, It takes 15-20 years to complete this stage because this is the minimum required to demoralize one generation of students exposed to the ideology of the enemy. Marxism/Leninism was being pumped into the students across three generations without being challenged of the basic ideals of Americanism. By 1985, the demoralization process was completed. .Thanks to a lack of moral standards, most of it is done by Americans to Americans. Exposure to true information does not matter anymore. .Someone who is demoralized in unable to assess true information. The facts do not matter.. This person will not understand the truth until the military boot crashes into his face.

2. Destabilization This stage takes approximately 2-5 years. At this stage, the subverter does not care about your ideas or the patterns of your consumption. What matters is the essentials: economy, foreign relations, and defense system. The influence of Marxist/ Leninist ideas in the United States is absolutely remarkable.

3. Crisis: This stage can take up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. After crisis, with a violent change of power, structure and economy,

4. Normalization: This stage lasts indefinitely. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in 1968, Comrade Brezhnev said, "Now the situation in Czechoslovakia is normalized."

These leaders--benevolent dictators-- promise all kinds of goodies, paradise on earth, "hope and change" while destabilizing the economy, eliminating the principle of free market competition, and installing a "Big Brother" government. Sound familiar?




Interestingly enough, the “Department of Homeland Security” translated to Russian is: Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti or KGB.

Links:

Community Oriented Policing

"The concept of the dialectic has been around for a long time. It is simply that of opposite positions: Thesis (position) vs. Antithesis (opposite position). In traditional logic, if my thesis was true, then all other positions were by definition untrue. For example, if my thesis is 2 + 2 = 4, then all other answers (antithesis) are false. Georg W.F. Hegel, the nineteenth century German philosopher, turned that concept upside down by equalizing Thesis and Antithesis. All things are now relative. There is no such thing as absolute truth to be found anywhere. Instead, “truth” is found in Synthesis, a compromise of Thesis and Antithesis. This is the heart and soul of the consensus process.
[...]
Who asked the citizenry if they wanted their communities “transformed” and their government “reinvented?” Who asked parents if they wanted their children to learn with their feelings instead of learning facts? Who asked your local police officers if they wanted their beliefs and attitudes manipulated? No one asked because if someone did, they would have been run out of town. Instead, using dialectic-reasoning skills, they have schemed to seduce, deceive and manipulate every community in the land into a utopian vision of so-called “unity in diversity.” These social engineers have no intention of taking America back to individual conscience within the family structure in order to preserve domestic peace and tranquility. That would mean a return to recognizing and submitting to the Higher Authority. This “vision” has failed whenever it has been tried. By participating in the dialectic, we have deified human reason; traded in God and truth for relative values and consensus; and abandoned individual liberty and inalienable rights for the common good and diversity. In the final analysis, we are destined for Totalitaria, and worse, the loss of our souls.

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Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss.

The genius of our current plutocratic power structure is their ability to present the illusion of change on the surface, while maintaining continuity just beneath the surface. In other words, despite change in leadership, despite change in political party, despite promises to make a difference in the state or condition of things, despite promises to reform, nothing deviates from the status quo, wealth and privilege continue to reign supreme and our leaders, regardless of party affiliation, remain faithful to imperialist aims and objectives.

Of course, this should come as no surprise, since it's the wealthy and privileged--whether individually, or corporately--who provide most, if not all the funding for both the National Democratic Party and National Republican Party. The same wealthy who who demand free enterprise, at the same time that they totally support monopoly and vested interest. They use the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously in order to keep "we the people" in eternal subjugation.

If you don't believe the two-party system is a sham, consider the continuing escalation of economic inequality, economic insecurity, economic exploitation, corporatized media, military intervention, assault on our civil liberties, "Big Brother", educational indoctrination, not to mention the ever-increasing prison population (since the 1970’s our prison population has increased by over 500%, with over 2.2 million people in prison, 900,000 of them, black) over the last four decades.

What is the point of voting when the outcome is the same?

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Did You Know Failing to Join Facebook Means You are a Psychopath?

Not only are you a potential mass-murdering psychopath, good luck getting a job, because employers are wary of individuals without Facebook profiles. They want to read all of your comments and look at all of your pictures. "Peeping Tom", anyone?  This is nothing but an effort by Big Brother to increase the social acceptability of what would've been - just years ago - considered very creepy behavior. It's a total violation of privacy. In fact, the lack of a Facebook account, more than likely, translates to a mature person, who chooses to use his or her time wisely, someone who is beyond petty schoolyard drama.

"I asked Kluemper about the “personality red flags” that their reviewers looked for. He was a little vague but said that a person with obvious mood swings, who is overly emotional in their postings would not be an attractive candidate. Meanwhile, a person with a lot of Facebook friends who takes a lot of crazy photos would be rated as extroverted and friendly — which are attractive qualities in a candidate.

Key takeaway for hiring employers: The Facebook page is the first interview; if you don’t like a person there, you probably won’t like working with them. The bad news for employers, though, who are hoping to take the Facebook shortcut: “So many more profiles are restricted in what the public can access,” says Kluemper.

Oh, and according to the German magazine Der Taggspiegel "James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles".

Here is an interesting comment article:

"At my company we do not hire people who do not have Facebook accounts or who make their Facebook accounts inaccessible to H.R. and security personnel. It's very simple, we are looking for a certain type of employee, one who lives a lifestyle that is compatible with our values and corporate mission. If you have anything you need to hide, then seek employment elsewhere. Job seekers, remember that your Facebook is a marketing tool, and the product you are marketing is yourself. Every single post you make, every picture you upload, everything you 'Like,' it's all subject to employer scrutiny. What employers are looking for are physically fit, morally upright, non-political individuals who have enough discretion to avoid posting comments about controversial topics, and who do not feel it necessary to post pictures that might bring discredit to themselves or the organizations they are affiliated with.

- Jim Thompson, Seattle, WA , 08/8/2012

The real message here is, conform, conform, conform...or else!

Links:

Facebook can tell you if a person is worth hiring.

Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'

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The Internet: A Walled World Under Constant Surveillance?

What happens when the physical and virtual worlds converge?  After all, the digital age is only in its infancy, and already, the boundaries between the two are becoming increasingly blurred. 

Will this dual reality "move toward more networked individualism based on continued technological progress and trust in computer and human networks—including the withering of boundaries"? Or, will it move toward walled surveillance, and corporate ownership of everyone and everything?

"The Individual in a Networked World: Two Scenarios". suggests two scenarios. One, "Collaborative Agents In Augmented Reality", and two, "A Walled and Surveilled World".

I'm betting on #2.

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We Want Your Soul.

You are free to do as we tell you!



We want your...

“your cellphone, your wallet, your time, your ideas
no bar-code, no party, no ID, no beers
your bankcard, your license, your thoughts, your fears
no SIM card, no disco, no photo, not here
your blood, your sweat, your passions, your regrets
your profits, your time off, your fashions, your sex
your pills, your grass, your tits, your ass
your laughs, your balls, we want it all (we want your soul)

your cash, your house, your phone, your life (we want your soul)

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Privacy and Safety Concerns Regarding Domestic Drone Program

Drones are not just for reconnaissance and deadly attack missions anymore. Departments and agencies at the federal, state and local levels are quickly adopting drone systems also known as unmanned aerial vehicles  as a cost-effective and supposedly "safer" alternative to piloted aircraft for many civilian missions.

The deployment of drones by law enforcement agencies within the US is obviously controversial. Not only could they potentially monitor law-abiding citizens, it's likely these drones will be weaponized. If nothing else, these unmanned vehicles will be armed with "non-lethal" - potentially lethal - crowd dispersal equipment.

Public Intelligence released a map (below) of current and future drone sites in the US, they assembled from many sources including this one. Altogether, there are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed.  Moreover, considering our current budget climate, these drones cost on average, $18 million a piece, and  $3,000/hour to fly.

The medium-size Shadow is used in 22 bases, the smaller Raven in 20 and the miniature Wasp in 11. California and Texas lead the pack, with 10 and six sites, respectively, and there are also 22 planned locations for future bases. "It is very likely that there are more domestic drone activities not included in the map, but it is designed to provide an approximate overview of the widespread nature of Department of Defense activities throughout the US," Michael Haynes from Public Intelligence tells Danger Room.

The possibility of military drones (as well as those controlled by police departments and universities) flying over American skies have raised concerns among privacy activists. As the American Civil Liberties Union explained in its December 2011 report, the machines potentially could be used to spy on American citizens. The drones' presence in our skies "threatens to eradicate existing practical limits on aerial monitoring and allow for pervasive surveillance, police fishing expeditions, and abusive use of these tools in a way that could eventually eliminate the privacy Americans have traditionally enjoyed in their movements and activities."

As Danger Room reported last month, even military drones, which are prohibited from spying on Americans, may "accidentally" conduct such surveillance - and keep the data for months afterwards while they figure out what to do with it. The material they collect without a warrant, as scholar Steven Aftergood revealed, could then be used to open an investigation.

The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits the U.S. military from operating on American soil, and there's no evidence that drones have violated it so far.

Source: Spying on Americans: 64 Drone Bases on US Soil

Additional Links:

The Federal Government Moves Forward with Drone Programs Despite Poor Planning and Lack of Oversight

Navy Loses Giant Drone in Maryland Crash

Department of Homeland Security's Report on Unmanned Vehicle Aircraft in the Nation's Border Security

Timeline for FAA Domestic Drone Integration

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Big Brother Rules NSA Can Stay Silent on Google Ties

A US Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, upheld a lower court decision, in EPIC v. NSA ruling that the NSA does not need to confirm nor deny (known as a “Glomar” response, a controversial legal claim that allows federal agencies to conceal the existence of records that might otherwise be subject to public disclosure) its collaborations with Google; how the two work together to spy on American citizens in the name of protecting the public from false flag “cyber-attacks”.

The ruling came in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the public interest group, EPIC, which stated the public has a right to know about the government spying on citizens.

"Any information pertaining to the relationship between Google and NSA would reveal protected information about NSA's implementation of its information assurance mission," Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote in the appeals opinion.

Then, there is the NSA's "Perfect Citizen" - how Orwellian - program. According to the Wall Street Journal, the program "would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack," although the agency has claimed that there "is no monitoring activity involved, and no sensors are employed in this endeavor" but has refused to release the details of the program.

Suffice to say, they have been tapping into domestic communications since the 1950s, if not before. However, the ever increasing technology combined with the current civil-liberty-eliminating legislation - starting with the Patriot Act - provides the perfect infrastructure for some Hitler/Stalin wannabe to take Nazi like control of your daily existence. 

The bottom line is "Perfect Citizen" and this growing convoluted web of bureaucracies to surveil and control the flow of information on the Internet has nothing to do with protecting critical infrastructure and utilities from being hacked, because all that is required to defend or guard against attack is to disconnect command and control systems for critical infrastructure from the Internet ...a dedicated line that is closed to the net. In other words, this is a ruse to expand the scope of government and domestic spying.

The incremental loss of liberty and privacy marches on as we frogs, distracted by bread and circus, slow-boil in our pots.

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FBI Pushing Plan to Force Surveillance Backdoors on Social Networks, Web Email Providers and VOIP

The FBI wants Internet companies to support a proposal that would require firms like Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, to build in backdoors for government surveillance. If passed, these ompanies would have to provide the bureau with decryption tools to make sense of the information that it captures.

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) already provides assistance to law enforcement by requiring that they cooperate with police in order to conduct lawfully-authorized electronic surveillance.  The FCC extended CALEA in 2004 to apply to broadband providers, but web companies are not covered under this law.  

Of course, once again, it's all in the name of national security and public safety.

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Avoid Big Brother: File Sharing Anonymously

Did U.S. authorities overstep their jurisdiction when they pulled the plug on cyberlocker service Megaupload? Of course. Don't they always? But it appears that the Fed's takedown of Megaupload - note, without SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, or any other special legislation - has only encouraged more sophisticated methods of file-sharing/storing, free from the prying eyes of governments, corporations and advertisers. 

Thwarting the state:

RetroShare is a Open Source cross-platform, private and secure decentralised communication platform.
It lets you to securely chat and share files with your friends and family, using a web-of-trust to authenticate peers and OpenSSL to encrypt all communication.

HFS HTTP File Server

... it's file sharing... it's webserver... it's open source... it's free... it's guaranteed to contain no malware

DiskCryptor

PeeJe -Share is an absolutely free file-hosting service for providing webspace on our servers without the need to sign-up.

Links:

Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder Richard Stallman

Control Your Computing Before It Controls You

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85 Things that Might Get You on a DHS Terrorist Watch List

The Department of Homeland Security has asked the public to report suspicious activity through the “Communities Against Terrorism” program. if you visit an airport, stay in a hotel, drink coffee at an Internet café, or in some other way interact with one of the Halloween G-men in the American public, a full-fledged FBI investigation is only one phone call away, says LaTi.

LaTi lists 85 things that might get you on a watch list, if a Halloween G-man spots you in the act::

1) Use Google Maps to find your way around a strange city.

2) Use Google Maps to view photos of sports stadiums.

3) Install online privacy protection software on your personal computer.

4) Attempt to shield your computer screen from the view of others.

5) Shave your beard, dye your hair or alter your mode of dress.

6) Sweat.

7) Avoid eye contact.

8) Use a cell-phone camera in an airport, train station or shopping mall.

9) Seek to work alone or without supervision.

10) Appear to be out of place.

11) Have bright colored stains on your clothing.

12) Be missing any fingers.

13) Emit strange odors.

14) Travel an “illogical distance” to do your shopping.

15) Have someone pick you up from a beauty supply store.

33) Act impatient.

16) Be nervous.

17) Be a new customer from out of town.

18) Use a credit card in someone else’s name.

19) Chant environmental slogans near construction sites.

20) Enter a construction site after work hours.

21) Rent watercraft for an extended period.

22) Make comments involving radical theology.

23) Make vague or cryptic warnings.

24) Express anti-U.S. sentiments.

25) Purchase a quantity of prepaid or disposable cell phones.

26) Leave store without preprogramming disposable phones.

27) Be overly interested in satellite phones and voice privacy.

28) Ask questions about swapping SIM cards in cell phones.

29) Ask questions about how phone location can be tracked.

30) Rewire cell phone’s ringer or backlight.

31) Express out-of-place and provocative religious or political sentiments.

32) Purchase a police scanner, infrared device or 2-way radio.

33) Act impatient.

34) Drive a vehicle that appears to be overloaded.

35) Depart quickly when seen or approached.

36) Be a person “acting suspiciously.”

37) Make illegible notes on a map.

38) Take photos of the Statue of Liberty or other “symbolic targets.”

39) Overdress for the weather.

40) Ask questions in a hobby shop about remote controlled aircraft.

41) Demonstrate interest that does not seem genuine.

42) Request specific room assignments or locations at a hotel or motel.

43) Arrive at a lodging with unusual amounts of luggage.

52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.

44) Refuse cleaning service.

45) Avoid the lobby of a hotel or motel.

46) Remain in your hotel or motel room.

47) Leave your hotel for several days, then return.

48) Leave behind clothing and toiletry items.

49) Park your vehicle in an isolated area.

50) Be observed switching a cell phone SIM card.

51) Be observed using multiple cell phones.

52) Make notes that are illegible to passersby.

53) Communicate through a PC game.

54) Download “extreme/radical” content.

55) Exhibit preoccupation with press coverage of terrorist attacks.

56) Wear a backpack when the weather is warm.

57) Speak to mall maintenance personnel or security guards.

58) Make racist comments.

59) Mumble to yourself.

60) Pass along any anonymous threats you may receive.

61) Discreetly take a photo in a mass transit site.

62) Arrive with a group of people and split off from them.

63)Demand “identity privacy.”

64) Appear to endorse the use of violence in support of a cause.

65) Make bulk purchases of meals ready to eat.

66) Arrive in America from a land where militant Islamic groups operate.

67) Take a long absence for religious education or charity work.

68) Travel to countries where militant Islam rules.

69) Study technical subjects that would aid a terror operation.

70) Work in a field that “serves as a cover for preparing for an operation.”

71) Exhibit ire at global policies of the U.S.

72) Balk at providing “complete personal information.”

73) Provide multiple names on rental car paperwork.

74) Receive an unusual number of package deliveries.

75) Replace rental property locks without permission.

76) Modify your property to conceal storage areas.

77) Fail to pay rent for a storage unit in a timely manner.

78) Inquire about security systems at your storage facility.

79) Place unusual items in storage units or dumpsters.

80) Avoid contact with rental facility personnel.

81) Access storage facilities an unusual number of times.

82) Request deliveries of items directly to a storage unit.

83) Be part of a group requesting identical tattoos.

84) Request tattoos that could conceal extremist symbols.

85) Fly while appearing to be Muslim on September 11 of any year.

You can find the collection of 25 flyers produced by the FBI and the Department of Justice that are distributed to local businesses in a variety of industries to promote suspicious activity reporting here . The flyers are not released publicly, though several have been published in the past by news media and various law enforcement agencies around the country. We have compiled this collection from a number of online sources.

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New DHS Headquarters: Largest Federal Project Since Construction of the Pentagon.

US Dept of Homeland Security Headquarters, Washington DC, Phase 1

Since the creation of the Office of Homeland Security 11 days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Department Homeland Security (DHS) has more than 230,000 employees. The problem is they do not have an official home.

So, in an effort to consolidate the Department of Homeland Security's workforce, now scattered across 55 campuses, into a central headquarters, a huge construction project is underway, the largest one in the country.  Pictured above is phase 1 of the new DHS headquarters on the campus of  what used to be St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital, the nation's first major federally run psychiatric institution founded in 1852. It is located in southeast section of Washington, DC.  This project is the largest federal project since the Pentagon.

Thankfully, this huge project has been pushed back 5-years:

Originally, the DHS headquarters plan carried a price tag of $3.45 billion and aimed to relocate 14,000 workers from more than 180 offices to the campus of the former St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast Washington by fiscal 2016. But, according to December projections, the project will cost at least $3.96 billion and won't be complete until the end of fiscal 2021, delaying the relocation of more than 10,000 workers by up to five years. Only the Coast Guard headquarters is expected to be completed on schedule in spring 2013.

Thankfully, because this is the same agency that has an $11 million contract with General Dynamics to monitor Web activity, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and  news sites. The only reason we even know about this is that the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained 300 documents through a Freedom of Information Act request which detailed how DHS had hired an outside contractor, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, to monitor social media outlets along with a list of websites, on a “24/7/365 basis,” in order to uncover “any media reports that reflect adversely on the U.S. Government and the Department of Homeland Security.” DHS has been surveying public online posts since as early as 2006.

The monitoring involves looking at “publicly available online forums, blogs, public websites and message boards, and disseminate information to "federal, state, local, and foreign government and private sector partners." - EPIC

Can you imagine the power DHS will have consolidated in an area that has the potential to house 60,000 employees?

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