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Monday, February 1, 2021

Installing totalitarianism with a convenient app

That's the come-on to an article at American Thinker this morning that everyone should read:


As you'll see, the article touches on themes we've been discussing with regard to Nicolle Wallaces's characterization of all who question Election 2020 and the Covid Regime as "domestic terrorists." As we noted this morning, by implication the Senate Dems are now applying that standard to Senators Hawley and Cruz. Wallace's, of course, is only one of many voices advancing these totalitarian notions for purging dissent from our public square. Who can imagine that's the end of it all, especially with what we've seen of the new ruthlessness of the Big Tech companies?

The digital Rubicon has, of course, already been crossed. The author, concentrating on the ubiquity of cell phones and especially of 'smart' phones, urges us to consider whether, in exchange for "handheld convenience", we have exchanged much of our personal lives, including "personal details, even intimate psychological profiles", for exploitation and coercion by our woke ruling Oligarchs.

Here's a brief excerpt to give you an idea of the scope of the issues:

“The new corporate authoritarian liberal-left monoculture is going to be absolutely ruthless — and in 12 days it is merging with the state.”  Michael Tracey, 9 Jan 2020.

Meanwhile, the infrastructure for a monstrous surveillance state glows in commodified hands. Portrayed by the leftist New Republic as another tendril of the ‘military-industrial complex,’ shadowy data tracking companies such as Factual identify not only app usage patterns, but physical locations for profiling consumer behavior. They state on their website that U.S. users may ‘opt-out’ of data collection, but nevertheless they will “continue to collect, use, and transfer mobile app data for purposes other than interest-based advertising or ad delivery/reporting.” Expect commandeering of this data for political policing of compliance with the authoritarian liberal-left monoculture. Soon, even emotional responses and the technology to manipulate them will enable ensuring fervid belief in Big-Tech Benevolence.

Brace for a Ministry of Information amassing in warehouses of whirring servers detailed profiles of not just purchasing history, but locations, associations ... politics. Imagine the delirious delight of, say, the East German Stasi marvelling at their targets willingly revealing their daily whereabouts and rendezvous, obviating clumsy radioactive tagging techniques. Surreptitious meetings of desperate dissidents will be naked to the Eye of the State all thanks to the insidious trade of convenience for lack of privacyLaw enforcement and the military already map cell-users’ relationships — even if the phone is not ‘smart.’

The authoritarian liberal-left monoculture has crossed the Rubicon. Behold the Progressive Praetorian Guard — all carefully vetted for loyalty — and their Potemkin Village President now seated in power, whose pitiful popularity is quietly disguised. Do not be fooled: the barbed wire and boots are a threat to those who dare dissent. The smearing of Trump supporters as ‘terrorists’ is justification for a new Secret Police, while Democrats demand wholesale purges from government, evoking the words and associations forbidden by other paranoid Parties. Merely questioning the Biden ascendance to power is ‘sedition,' ignoring the insidious hand of Big-Tech tilting the scales


Obviously, we should all be reconsidering our digital profiles--what are we exchanging for convenience, and how necessary is that convenience? Has it really simply become habit that doesn't serve much of a need at all?

Now I want to excerpt one of the linked articles from above. Consider as you read: If LE--state, local, federal--had wanted to actually do something about the violent 'Resistance' of this past year--they had the digital tools to facilitate that. Consider what we're seeing in the wake of the January 6 event. The tools described--and, no doubt, many more--are now being extensively employed against supposed 'insurrectionists' in a wideranging and indiscriminate manner. Why, really, did Bluto Barr refuse to take effective action action the 'Resistance,' which he now endorses against 'insurrectionists'?


CellHawk helps law enforcement visualize large quantities of information collected by cellular towers and providers.

...
CellHawk’s surveillance capabilities go beyond analyzing metadata from cellphone towers. Hawk Analytics claims it can churn out incredibly revealing intelligence from large datasets like ride-hailing records and GPS — information commonly generated by the average American. According to the company’s website, CellHawk uses GPS records in its “unique animation analysis tool,” which, according to company promotional materials, plots a target’s calls and locations over time. “Watch data come to life as it moves around town or the entire county,” the site states.

The tool can also help map interpersonal connections, with an ability to animate more than 20 phones at once and “see how they move relative to each other,” according to a promotional brochure.

CellHawk helps police exploit information already collected by private telecommunications providers.

The company has touted features that make CellHawk sound more like a tool for automated, continuous surveillance than for just processing the occasional spreadsheet from a cellular company. CellHawk’s website touts the ability to send email and text alerts “to surveillance teams” when a target moves, or enters or exits a particular “location or Geozone (e.g. your entire county border).”

On its website, Hawk Analytics claims this capability can help investigators “view plots & maps of the cell towers used most frequently at the beginning and end of each day.” But in brochures sent to potential clients, it was much more blunt, claiming that CellHawk can help “find out where your suspect sleeps at night."

These capabilities are certainly not news to those of us who follow such things, but the implications of all this rarely intrudes on the thoughts of the average cell phone user. The legitimate LE uses are obvious enough, but the question arises, just as with Covid: How much protection do we as a society need or want? To my knowledge there has been nothing remotely resembling a public debate of the abuses of these capabilities. I say "the abuse" in the present tense because there's no question that government agencies at every level are making widespread, even routine, use of these capabilities without the benefit of a warrant.

File all this under: The New Normal.


13 comments:

  1. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Add true AI, coming on line in two, possibly as little as one decade, with the capacity to monitor ten's of millions, draw all data from FB; Twitter; ISP's; financial records; personal and company laptops; Amazon; GrubHub; the NSA storage facility in Utah, or wherever they build the new ones; the computer in the subjects auto; travel records; captures on CCTV using facial recognition; and apply predictive analysis in real time. The Cheka will know what your going to do/react before you do.

    The good news is it will put FBI informants, and actual investigative agents, in the same boat as buggy-whip makers and coalminers. Maybe they can learn to code, or make solar panels. Probably interrogators, judges, and prosecutors as well. AI will have already arrested, tried, and convicted any co-conspirators; and jailors too, since 99% of terms will be served by social credit score on your phone.
    Tom S.

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    1. With all the insanity around for the last decade or two, I am beginning to think the Real General AI might already be in existence. In fact, what we attribute to deep state could very well be such a digital entity, blackmailing and controlling people in key positions from behind the scenes, for the "greater good" as it perceives and accepts as its mission.

      The book and movie Colossus and Forbin Project is a masterpiece.

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    2. My bad. Making solar panels was offered to former XL pipeline workers. Soon to be former coalminers were offered retraining clearing minefields. I wasn't aware that DoL had designated it a growth occupation, but I haven't been keeping up with DC landscaping changes since I read their intent to make barbwire entanglements permanent. Maybe we could reserve that retraining for former judges and DoJ prosecutors. That's an idea I could get behind. ;-)
      Tom S.

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    3. Yes, although it remains possible that Kama Sutra thought that 'minefields' had something to do with coal production.

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  2. hmmm...at the rate things are going, betcha it won't be long before you are required to take your cell phone with you when you leave the house so you can be tracked, I'm jest sayin'

    Woe unto you if you leave your home without your phone and not wearing at least 4 masks

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  3. https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/02/01/ex-cia-army-officer-says-we-can-defeat-the-fascist-thugs-who-stormed-the-capitol-by-taking-similar-measures-we-took-to-defeat-al-qaeda/

    https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/02/01/chad-felix-greene-you-think-the-left-wont-declare-homeschooling-a-white-supremacist-radicalization-threat/

    https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2021/02/01/wapo-editor-imagines-un-sponsored-disarmament-program-for-post-civil-war-america-2021-segregationists/

    We can not assume anything is hyperbole or delusional thinking. The Masters have already outstripped the wildest "conspiracy theories" of even four years ago. Anything that these people say in public with a straight face you can be sure they have "focus tested" with friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. It will be attempted. What you call an insane idea is their logical, utilitarian, progression towards the goal of complete mastery. That's why their called Progressives.
    Tom S.

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    1. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/02/01/jackie-speier-calls-for-screening-of-military-recruits-social-media-posts/

      The day of decision for uniformed gov't employees is fast approaching: the Republic; or the Oligarchy.

      I would urge extreme circumspection at this time. While I do believe that this idea will be implemented soon, I view these very public calls as "a stone in the underbrush" designed to flush the quail. If you have, or know, anyone in uniform who might be inclined to support the Republic advise them that now is not the time for excited chatter. The Organs, to use Solzhenitsyn's phrase, are hoovering up vast amounts of data and will clearly be targeting/purging uniformed members in the near future. In particular caution them that they must be careful of what they text, e-mail, comment on in the digital world; and to steer clear of "acquaintances" who are vociferous about their politics or appear to be advocating creating or recruiting for politically oriented groups. Don't be driven like game.

      The military has maintained undercover operatives on a fairly wide scale since the '50's. Originally to weed out communists (what a quaint idea) and criminal activity. That entire apparatus is being given a new mission and will accept it readily, who doesn't like more power and prestige. What is advocated by the Oligarch Chamberlains is literally a Political Commissar in every unit and at every level, albeit a digital one at this point.
      Tom S.

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  4. Is US headed towards a unitary state, i.e. PDRA (Peoples' Democratic Republic of America)?

    Quoting Turchin: "... the more important level is not the federal one, but that of the states, many of which are getting so cash-strapped that they are forced to reduce their police forces, or unable to hire additional medical personnel that are needed to administer Covid-19 vaccine."

    Are we watching the play "End of Federalism", written by the Globalist Oligarchy and produced by the Uniparty?

    http://peterturchin.com/cliodynamica/the-storming-of-the-u-s-capitol/

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  5. This has been an ongoing issue. The need to surveil versus constitutional commandments. No matter what part of our history we look at, the battle between those has been waged.

    What has happened, though, is that technology, Moore’s Law etc, and the Patriot Act has made it existential for the very survival of the US as it was set out in the Constitution.

    We have had Echelon with the Five Eyes (foreign nation allies), Omnivore morphing into Carnivore and then DSC1000, and private “off the shelf” mass electronic surveillance.

    Today, modeling the FBI’s use of Omnivore and it successors, we have the NSA intercepting and storing communications with the help of the major telephone/internet providers, which today are pretty much one and the same.

    This storage of data has been documented to have been abused since at least 2012, the year I believe Maxine Waters made her statement that Obama is building a file on everyone.

    Look up at your traffic intersections. You will see traffic sensors that are cameras sending a regular video feed to a computer in a control box nearby. The computer sees vehicles and makes the signal light change. The control box has regular monitors in them for the tech to help troubleshoot. Also, looking up, you might see a security camera covering part or all of the intersection. This is fed into a local/semi-regional system for monitoring of traffic flow. Granted this isn’t everywhere, but it’s common in Texas.

    It’s not that big of step to have those system feed into a statewide or national system.

    Put into this a group of people who want to control you and have no issues subverting or sidestepping the constitution and we have a police state that rivals China and that the old East German Stasi would have creamed their pants for.

    And, we, collectively, are sleepwalking our way there assuming that the constitution is really being followed.

    Sigh.



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  6. People should consider this (now shipping) phone as an initial step in combatting the corporate-surveillance state:
    https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

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    1. PureOS is based on Debian Linux. Android is based on the Linux kernel, but doesn't focus on privacy vis a vis Google.

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  7. As a often say... Alex Jones now seems sane, plausible and overly rational today.

    If you care, and many if us do, small things like using VPN service on your devices is cheap, easy to use today and go a long ways towards anonymity.

    Skip the apps, use the website(s), keep a burner in the drawer. Get your friends and family using a E2E encrypted messaging app.

    Move your contact list(s) over to paper or local storage as backups. You never know when your providers will yank service.

    Don't use cloud storage for anything personal!!

    Use https://www.deseat.me/ and cleanup your digital mess.

    Pairing down, and not giving into the big tech craze of Alexia, digital appliances, IOT devices, etc helps as well. Unplug, none of us grew up with it!

    Low tech, old school ham radios, if you don't have a base, plus accessories in the closet and a few handhelds, get a few. Their cheep. (I'd give anything to know what Nelly Ohr was doing with hers). Download Ham For Dummies, it's free. Embrace the learning curve as a hobby.

    Nothing besides Alaskan mountain side living is safe but you can do a lot to curb the stupid. We practice this as a family as best as possible.

    Digital living makes us lazy, just practice doing less of it.

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  8. "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
    - Leonardo da Vinci

    "The better part of valor is discretion"
    - William Shakespeare

    Tom S.

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