Installing totalitarianism with a convenient app

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

Crossing the Digital Rubicon

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 privacy. Law 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'?

POWERFUL MOBILE PHONE SURVEILLANCE TOOL OPERATES IN OBSCURITY ACROSS THE COUNTRY

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.