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“This is No Longer Fiction” – The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

“This is No Longer Fiction” – The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here

Whenever cryptographer and computer security specialist Bruce Schneier issues a warning about something, I pay close attention.

What follows are excerpts from a recent piece he wrote for Forbestitled, The Era of Automatic Facial Recognition and Surveillance Is Here:

ID checks were a common response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, but they’ll soon be obsolete. You won’t have to show your ID, because you’ll be identified automatically. A security camera will capture your face, and it’ll be matched with your name and a whole lot of other information besides. Welcome to the world of automatic facial recognition. Those who have access to databases of identified photos will have the power to identify us. Yes, it’ll enable some amazing personalized services; but it’ll also enable whole new levels of surveillance. The underlying technologies are being developed today, and there are currently no rules limiting their use.

Read that again: “There are no rules limiting their use.”

Walk by a policeman, and she will know your name, address, criminal record, and with whom you routinely are seen. The potential for discrimination is enormous, especially in low-income communities where people are routinely harassed for things like unpaid parking tickets and other minor violations. And in a country where people are arrested for their political views, the use of this technology quickly turns into a nightmare scenario.

The critical technology here is computer face recognition. Traditionally it has been pretty poor, but it’s slowly improving. A computer is now as good as a person. Already Google’s algorithms can accurately match child and adult photos of the same person, and Facebook has an algorithm that works by recognizing hair style, body shape, and body language — and works even when it can’t see faces. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Deterioration of America’s Corporate Balance Sheet

The Deterioration of America’s Corporate Balance Sheet

I don’t comment frequently on the state of financial markets these days, but the following article from Bloomberg really grabbed my attention.

It relates to interest coverage ratios across corporate America, and quite frankly, I was stunned to see how badly balance sheets have deteriorated during the recent pitiful cyclical economic rebound which I have dubbed the oligarch recovery.

From Bloomberg:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

How America’s Modern Shadow Government Can Be Traced Back to One Very Evil Man – Allen Dulles

Allen Dulles, the CIA director under presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the younger brother of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and the architect of a secretive national security apparatus that functioned as essentially an autonomous branch of government. Talbot offers a portrait of a black-and-white Cold War-era world full of spy games and nuclear brinkmanship, in which everyone is either a good guy or a bad guy. Dulles—who deceived American elected leaders and overthrew foreign ones, who backed ex-Nazis and thwarted left-leaning democrats—falls firmly in the latter camp. 

But what I was really trying to do was a biography on the American power elite from World War II up to the 60s. That was the key period when the national security state was constructed in this country, and where it begins to overshadow American democracy. It’s almost like Game of Thrones to me, where you have the dynastic struggles between these power groups within the American system for control of the country and the world…

Absolutely. The surveillance state that Snowden and others have exposed is very much a legacy of the Dulles past. I think Dulles would have been delighted by how technology and other developments have allowed the American security state to go much further than he went. He had to build a team of cutthroats and assassins on the ground to go around eliminating the people he wanted to eliminate, who he felt were in the way of American interests. He called them communists. We call them terrorists today. And of course the most controversial part of my book, I’m sure, will be the end, where I say there was blowback from that. Because that killing machine in some way was brought back home.

– From the Mother Jones article: You Think the NSA Is Bad? Meet Former CIA Director Allen Dulles

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

David Cameron Attacks Twitter Users, Following in the Footsteps of the Saudi Religious Police Chief

David Cameron Attacks Twitter Users, Following in the Footsteps of the Saudi Religious Police Chief

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You know things are not well in the world when you hear claims that the Prime Minister of Great Britain had sex with a dead pig’s head and you barely flinch. That’s because sexual relations with farm animal carcasses simply pales in comparison to the man’s disastrous, authoritarian political positions.

In his latest act of verbal diarrhea, David Cameron has gone on the offensive…against Twitter. Little did he know it, but he’s actually quite late in his perceived “insight” into those who use the social media platform. For instance, it was over two years ago when Saudi authorities made their position quite clear. Here’s a excerpt from the post, Saudi Religious Police Chief Goes on the Attack…Against Twitter:

The head of Saudi Arabia’s religious police has warned citizens against using Twitter, which is rising in popularity among Saudis.

Sheikh Abdul Latif Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said anyone using social media sites – and especially Twitter – “has lost this world and his afterlife”.

Twitter was the platform for those who did not have any platform, he said.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, the kingdom’s most senior Muslim cleric, had dismissed Twitter users as “fools”.

Now here’s the UK Prime Minister’s take. From the Independent:

Delivering his keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference, the Prime Minister implied there were fundamental differences between most Britons and many of those who post on the social network. 

“Let me put it as simply as I can: Britain and Twitter are not the same thing. The British people are decent, sensible, reasonable.”

Despite his apparent disdain for the social network, Mr Cameron has been a user of Twitter for three years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Declassified 1952 Footage of the U.S. Navy’s Plans for “Offensive Biological and Chemical Warfare” is Released

Declassified 1952 Footage of the U.S. Navy’s Plans for “Offensive Biological and Chemical Warfare” is Released

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Earlier this year, I published a post titled, Conspiracy Fact – How the Government Conducted 239 Secret Bioweapon Experiments on the American People. Here are a few excerpts:

It all began in late September of 1950, when over a few days, a Navy vessel used giant hoses to spray a fog of two kinds of bacteria, Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii — both believed at the time to be harmless — out into the fog, where they disappeared and spread over the city.

The unsuspecting residents of San Francisco certainly could not consent to the military’s germ warfare test, and there’s good evidence that it could have caused the death of at least one resident of the city, Edward Nevin, and hospitalized 10 others.

Over the next 20 years, the military would conduct 239 “germ warfare” tests over populated areas, according to news reports from the 1970s.

These tests included the large-scale releases of bacteria in the New York City subway system, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and in National Airport just outside Washington, D.C.

So how seriously was the U.S. military planning for offensive biological and chemical warfare? Very seriously, as this recently declassified 1952 video demonstrates (h/t to Motherboard for highlighting this):

Surely I’m not the only one who noticed that 90% of the video is dedicated to “offensive” use of biological and chemical agents, with only a couple of minutes at the end briefly describing “defensive” capabilities.

Imagine the labels your neighbors would have called you in the 50’s if you had warned them that this was happening. 

For related articles, see:

Conspiracy Fact – How the Government Conducted 239 Secret Bioweapon Experiments on the American People

Documents Show the U.S. Military Sprayed Radioactive Zinc Cadmium Sulfide on Poor People in St. Louis

10 Chemical Weapons Attacks the U.S. Government Doesn’t Want You to Know About

Ranking the Peasants – China Introduces Orwellian “Citizen Scores”

Ranking the Peasants – China Introduces Orwellian “Citizen Scores”

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The following is extraordinarily creepy and disturbing. It’s also extremely clever, from a jackbooted, fascist thug perspective. When massive censorship itself isn’t enough…

TechDirt reports:

China’s plan to control the hearts, minds and internet connections of its citizens continues unimpeded. That’s the great thing about authoritarian regimes: rollout of mandatory programs is usually only a problem of logistics, not opposition.

The Chinese government has mandated a rating system for all of its connected citizens. It looks like a credit rating but goes much deeper than just tying a measurement of financial risk to a number. It’s a way of defining who someone in terms of the government’s desires and aims. And its desires aren’t all that honorable.

Everybody is measured by a score between 350 and 950, which is linked to their national identity card. While currently supposedly voluntary, the government has announced that it will be mandatory by 2020…

In addition to measuring your ability to pay, as in the United States, the scores serve as a measure of political compliance.Among the things that will hurt a citizen’s score are posting political opinions without prior permission, or posting information that the regime does not like, such as about the Tiananmen Square massacre that the government carried out to hold on to power, or the Shanghai stock market collapse.

This is where all the government’s moves towards greater control of the internet comes to fruition. To keep “score,” the government needs to tie IDs to online activity. Keeping the internet within the government’s walls makes it that much easier. But it’s not just online activity that will affect “citizen scores.” It’s almost every aspect of their lives.

Most disheartening is the fact that many citizens seem to view higher scores as status symbols.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When it Really Mattered, Ben Bernanke Coddled, Protected & Bailed Out Financial Criminals

When it Really Mattered, Ben Bernanke Coddled, Protected & Bailed Out Financial Criminals

Most of you will have seen Ben Bernanke’s recent crocodile tears regarding how he wished more individuals were held responsible, for you know, destroying the American middle class and handing over the nation to a handful of criminal oligarchs.

As David Dayen notes, he is completely full of shit. As usual.

From the Intercept:

Former Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke joined practically everyone in America by saying in his new memoir, The Courage to Act, that more Wall Street executives should have gone to jail for criminal misconduct that led to the financial crisis.

“It would have been my preference to have more investigation of individual action, since obviously everything what went wrong or was illegal was done by some individual, not by an abstract firm,” he wrote.

Unlike practically everyone else in America, however, Bernanke was in a pretty good position to actually facilitate criminal misconduct proceedings, if he wanted to see them so badly — as  head of the nation’s most powerful bank supervisory agency from 2006 to 2014.

The Fed, like all banking regulators, can initiate criminal referrals to the Justice Department for individuals they find to have broken the law. This acts as the first line of defense to discipline criminal misconduct on Wall Street.

But such activities were absent during the period when Bernanke was chair, according to criminologist and law professor Bill Black“The Federal Reserve appears to have made zero criminal referrals; it made three about discrimination,” Black told Bill Moyers in 2013.

This is just an excerpt, I suggest reading the entire article.

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U.S. Bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Was No Accident – “It Was the Target”

U.S. Bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Was No Accident – “It Was the Target”

In particular, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes.  

– From Glenn Greenwald’s article: The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification

By now, all of you will have read about the U.S. military’s recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. What you may not be aware of, is how much the official story has changed in the days since this inexcusable act of barbarism became public.

Doctors Without Borders has been calling the attack a “war crime,” which to the average American sounds outlandish and impossible. The justification for this claim is simple — that the airstrike wasn’t an accident at all, and that the U.S. military intentionally targeted the hospital. As the days go by, it becomes increasingly clear that this is indeed the case, and the Pentagon is now scrambling to justify the intentional targeting of a hospital.

As Glenn Greenwald reports at the Intercept:

When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

California Mayor Forced to Hand Over Electronics and Passwords at Airport – Compares U.S. to Nazi Germany

California Mayor Forced to Hand Over Electronics and Passwords at Airport – Compares U.S. to Nazi Germany

“I think the American people should be extremely concerned about their personal rights and privacy. As I was being searched at the airport, there was a Latino couple to my left, and an Asian couple to my right also being aggressively searched. I briefly had to remind myself that this was not North Korea or Nazi Germany. This is the land of the Free.

– Anthony Silva, Mayor of Stockton, California

Just in case you’re still under the infantile illusion that you reside in a free country.

From ArsTechnica:

Stockton, California Mayor Anthony R. Silva attended a recent mayor’s conference in China, but his return trip took a bit longer than usual. At the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) this week, agents with the Department of Homeland Security detained Silva and confiscated his personal cell phone among other electronics. According to comments from the mayor, that may not even be the most alarming part.

“Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property,” Silva told SFGate. “In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices.”

The mayor’s attorney, Mark Reichel, told SFGate that Silva was not allowed to leave the airport without forfeiting his passwords. Reichel was not present for Silva’s interaction with the DHS agents, either. The mayor was told he had “no right for a lawyer to be present” and that being a US citizen did not “entitle me to rights that I probably thought,” according to the paper.

Evidently, Silva was well aware of the situation and only had his concerns heightened by first-hand experience. Talking to SFGate, he briefly compared the government battle on privacy to notorious dictatorships worldwide.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How America’s “Think Tanks” are Compromised and Bought Off by Foreign Governments

How America’s “Think Tanks” are Compromised and Bought Off by Foreign Governments

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The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.

As a result, policy makers who rely on think tanks are often unaware of the role of foreign governments in funding the research.

Several legal experts who reviewed the documents, however, said the tightening relationships between United States think tanks and their overseas sponsors could violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the 1938 federal law that sought to combat a Nazi propaganda campaign in the United States. The law requires groups that are paid by foreign governments with the intention of influencing public policy to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department.

At least one of the research groups conceded that it may in fact be violating the federal law.

– From the New York Times article: Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks

Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be under no illusions when it comes to the role “Think Tanks” play within America’s crony, unethical, slimy and entirely compromised political system. Nevertheless, today’s New York Times article exposing how foreign government, likely illegally, use them to buy influence in Washington D.C., is extremely important and disturbing. Let’s examine a few excerpts.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The agreement signed last year by the Norway Ministry of Foreign Affairs was explicit: For $5 million, Norway’s partner in Washington would push top officials at the White House, at the Treasury Department and in Congress to double spending on a United States foreign aid program.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

HBO and Snapchat are Actively Working with the U.S. Government to Create Propaganda

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In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty‑five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception.

– From Carl Bernstein’s 1977 article: The CIA and the Media

What is art, when the artist is working with the host government to promote a particular message?

It is propaganda, and just because it’s your government doing it with the help of your friends and neighbors, doesn’t make it any less so. Even if you agree with the message, it is still propaganda. No wonder so many movies suck.

Today, we learn that both HBO and Snapchat are actively working with the U.S. State Department to push an anti-ISIS message. Again, even if the message is a good one, make no mistake about it, it is still propaganda. This is a very slippery slope, and something that Americans shouldn’t tolerate.

The National Journal reports:

The State De­part­ment is seek­ing a counter-nar­rat­ive to the pro­pa­ganda be­ing spread by IS­IS, and it is re­portedly turn­ing to some of Amer­ica’s pree­m­in­ent storytellers for help. Ac­cord­ing to The Daily Beast, ex­ec­ut­ives from both HBO and Snapchat are part of a team of film­makers and so­cial me­dia spe­cial­ists that’s brain­storm­ing how to hamper the ef­fect­ive­ness of ISIL’s mes­saging.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Regime Change is Coming – Saudi Prince Calls for Coup to Remove King

Regime Change is Coming – Saudi Prince Calls for Coup to Remove King

You know things are bad in Saudi Arabia when one of its princes, and son of the state’s founder, is openly calling for a coup to displace the current King. This isn’t just some ambitious power play either, Saudi Arabia is an unmitigated disaster. I’ve repeatedly pointed this out, and also predicted regime change on several occasions.

For example in the post, The Great Wall of Saudi – Feudal Desert Kingdom to Build 600-Mile Wall to Protect from ISIS, I wrote:

I believe that the recent drop in oil prices puts the current leadership in Saudi Arabia under a significantly higher threat of “regime change” over the next several years. In fact, I’d be surprised if the current status quo continues beyond 2020. While many have noted that the Gulf states are in a good position to ride out the recent price collapse due to massive FX reserves, these reserves can go much faster than expected. Particularly when you need to consistently bribe your own citizenry and build enormous walls on your northern and southern borders.

It appears this rebel prince can see the writing on the wall, and is wisely trying to diffuse the situation before they are all removed unceremoniously by non-royals.

To better understand the situation, it’s key to have a sense of the dynamics currently in play. In January, there was a major transition in Saudi leadership, which resulted in Prince Mohammed bin Salman, also known as “Reckless,” taking on dramatically increased responsibilities. In fact, many are claiming that “Reckless” is actually running the country due to the King’s (his father) poor health. I suggest reading the May post, New Saudi King Unveils Internal Power Shake-up in Desperate Pivot Toward Increased Authoritarianism, to get caught up.

Tech Company Censorship – Apple Bans App Cataloguing Every U.S. Drone Strike; Facebook Blocks Ad for “Negativity”

Tech Company Censorship – Apple Bans App Cataloguing Every U.S. Drone Strike; Facebook Blocks Ad for “Negativity”

One thing I’ve learned from my three and a half years of writing publicly on the internet, is you never know which posts are going to go viral. Nothing proves this point more than last week’s post, The UN Releases Plan to Push for Worldwide Internet Censorship. Although I certainly thought it was an important story, I never expected it to become the beast it did.

The paragraph that really caught people’s eye was the following:

Under U.S. law — the law that, not coincidentally, governs most of the world’s largest online platforms — intermediaries such as Twitter and Facebook generally can’t be held responsible for what people do on them. But the United Nations proposes both that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only “license” those who agree to do so.

Interestingly, it appears Apple wants to get ahead of the curve and begin censoring news the U.S. government might find embarrassing right away.

As reported by Mic:

Freelance journalist and data artist Josh Begley has been methodically recording U.S. military drone activity for years. Every week or so — whenever the strikes occur — Begley will post a news story from the @dronestreamTwitter account, identifying when and where drone strikes have occurred before feeding the results into an app called Metadata+.

Longtime Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be familiar with “Dronestream,” as I highlighted it all the way back in 2012 in the post: The Kid Who Tweets Every Drone Strike.

Now back to Mic.

But on Sunday, Dronestream tweeted that Metadata+, which sends out push notifications every time there is a U.S. drone strike, had been removed from the App Store after seven months of being openly available.

Apple still aspires to be a hub for serious news. It’s building tools like Apple News to help journalists and publishers reach new audiences. But Apple’s opaque filtering process shows that it may not be ready to decide for the public what kind of content we should or shouldn’t be exposed to.

The UN Releases Plan to Push for Worldwide Internet Censorship

The UN Releases Plan to Push for Worldwide Internet Censorship

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The United Nations has disgraced itself immeasurably over the past month or so.

In case you missed the following stories, I suggest catching up now:

The UN’s “Sustainable Development Agenda” is Basically a Giant Corporatist Fraud

Not a Joke – Saudi Arabia Chosen to Head UN Human Rights Panel

Fresh off the scene from those two epic embarrassments, the UN now wants to tell governments of the world how to censor the internet. I wish I was kidding.

From the Washington Post:

On Thursday, the organization’s Broadband Commission for Digital Development released a damning “world-wide wake-up call” on what it calls “cyber VAWG,” or violence against women and girls. The report concludes that online harassment is “a problem of pandemic proportion” — which, nbd, we’ve all heard before.

But the United Nations then goes on to propose radical, proactive policy changes for both governments and social networks, effectively projecting a whole new vision for how the Internet could work.

Under U.S. law — the law that, not coincidentally, governs most of the world’s largest online platforms — intermediaries such as Twitter and Facebook generally can’t be held responsible for what people do on them.But the United Nations proposes both that social networks proactively police every profile and post, and that government agencies only “license” those who agree to do so.

People are being harassed online, and the solution is to censor everything and license speech? Remarkable.

How that would actually work, we don’t know; the report is light on concrete, actionable policy. But it repeatedly suggests both that social networks need to opt-in to stronger anti-harassment regimes and that governments need to enforce them proactively.

At one point toward the end of the paper, the U.N. panel concludes that“political and governmental bodies need to use their licensing prerogative” to better protect human and women’s rights, only granting licenses to “those Telecoms and search engines” that “supervise content and its dissemination.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

The Australian Government Proclaims – Environmentalism and Alternative Music Are Signs of Terrorism

The Australian Government Proclaims – Environmentalism and Alternative Music Are Signs of Terrorism

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Earlier this year, I highlighted how the UK government was cheerfully stretching the boundary of terrorist fear-mongering when it made it policy for registered childminders to “report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists.”

No, that’s not a joke. Here’s an excerpt from the post, The War on Toddler Terrorists – Britain Wants to Force Nursery School Teachers to Identify “Extremist” Children:

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan.

But concern was raised over the practicalities of making it a legal requirement for staff to inform on toddlers.

Clearly not wanting to be outdone when it comes to bureaucratic buffoonery, the Commonwealth of Australia is fighting back. We learnfrom ABC Online:

Environmentalists and teachers are up in arms over a new Federal Government anti-radicalisation kit that links green activism and “alternative music” to terrorism.

The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Terrorism Michael Keenan launched the Radicalisation Awareness Kit in the form of a 32-page booklet on Monday.

Australia has a Prime Minister on Terrorism? Are you kidding me. You’re more likely to get scratched to death by a koala than die in a terrorist attack.

Through a series of examples and fictitious case studies, the booklet aims to illustrate the circumstances which can lead young people to become radicalised.

But one surprising example cites the power of the alternative music scene and environmental activism in the radicalisation process.

He said the kit was designed to help teachers understand how the radicalisation process worked, and how to respond if they felt there was somebody in their community who is susceptible to it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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