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Chicago Police Are Using a Facial Recognition Program That Scans Billions of Facebook Photos

January 30, 2020

Chicago Police Are Using a Facial Recognition Program That Scans Billions of Facebook Photos

The end of privacy as we know it? 

Chicago Police Facial Recognition Billions Photos Facebook

(TMU) — Manhattan-based Clearview AI is collecting data from unsuspecting social media users and the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is using the controversial facial recognition tool to pinpoint the identity of unknown suspects, reads a report from the Chicago Sun-Times.

And according to a bombshell New York Times report, it is also being used by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.

The software’s creator, Hoan Ton-That, maintains that it is purely “an after-the-fact research tool for law enforcement, not a surveillance system or a consumer application.” However, privacy advocates are saying this technology is so intrusive and ripe for abuse its use should be immediately halted. And earlier this month, a lawsuit was filed in federal court seeking to do just that.

Chicago attorney Scott Drury who filed the lawsuit describes CPD’s signing of a two-year, $49,875 contract with Illinois tech firm CDW Government to use Clearview AI’s software as “frightening.”

Conversely, Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi explains:Get the latest from The Mind Unleashed in your inbox. Sign up right here.

“Our obligation is to find those individuals that hurt other people and bring them to justice. And we want to be able to use every tool available to be able to perform that function, but we want to be able to do so responsibly.”

According to police, some CPD officials at the Crime Prevention and Information Center used the software for two months on a trial basis prior to the signing of the contract in January.Robin Williams’ Net Worth Left His Family in TearspopcornewsFIND OUT MORE >

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

Chicago Hopes To “Solve” Record Pension Deficit With Creative Solution: More Debt

August 23, 2018

Chicago Hopes To “Solve” Record Pension Deficit With Creative Solution: More Debt

John Maynard Keynes would be thrilled to hear about the brilliant solution Chicago has come up with to help solve its pension deficit: issue a $10 billion bond and take on more debt.

Chicago’s pension deficit has been a problem that we’ve been covering at length. The stunning funding gap, which comes in at about $28 billion, is an issue that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel campaigned on fixing, along with the rest of the city’s finances.  “It’ll be a big test for sure,” said Vikram Rai, head of municipal strategy at  Citigroup Inc. “But if it works it’ll set a good precedent for the other cities and states that have pension problems.”

It won’t work.

Absent dramatic haircuts to pension promises, it’s simply impossible to resolve the third largest US city’s pension crisis: as we noted last month when looking at the broader pension problems faced by Illinois, in 1987, pension promises made to active workers and retirees in the state’s five state-run pension plans totaled just $18 billion. By 2016, they had ballooned to $208 billion. That’s a cumulative 1,067 percent increase.

Contrast that to the state’s budget (general fund revenues) which was up just 236 percent over the same time period. Or household incomes, which were up just 127 percent. Or inflation, up just 111 percent. Promised pension benefits have blown past any ability of the state, the economy or taxpayers to pay for them.

Which leaves only debt as the “solution”, one which reportedly came after Chicago leaders gave up on actual long-term economic solutions such as budget cuts, reductions in benefits and tax increases. With those pesky old “traditional” ways to shore up in the city’s finances seemingly causing too much austerity for America’s third largest city, they have instead embraced the new school of economics in the form of considering a $10 billion bond issuance, one which would push pension obligation bond issuance in Chicago to a 15 year high.

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

15 Flashpoints Which Could Produce A “Perfect Storm” During The 2nd Half Of 2018

July 16, 2018

15 Flashpoints Which Could Produce A “Perfect Storm” During The 2nd Half Of 2018

Events are beginning to greatly accelerate, and many believe that the ingredients for a “perfect storm” are starting to come together as we enter the second half of 2018. Other than the continual drama surrounding the Trump presidency, things have been quite calm for the past couple of years. We have been enjoying a time of peace, safety and relative economic prosperity that a lot of Americans have begun to take for granted. But great trouble has been brewing under the surface, and many are wondering if we are about to reach a major turning point. Our planet is being shaken physically, emotionally and financially, and it isn’t going to take much to push us over the edge. The following are 15 flashpoints which could create world changing events during the 2nd half of 2018…

#1 War In The Middle East – A state of war already exists in Israel. 200 rockets and mortar shells were fired into Israel on Saturday alone, and it won’t take much to spark a much broader regional war.

#2 Civil Unrest In U.S. Cities – Progressives are promising a “summer of rage”, and they are assuring us that all of the anger that has been building up against President Trump and his administration is about to starting boiling over onto the streets of our major cities all across America.

#3 The Nomination Of Brett Kavanaugh To The Supreme Court – Prominent liberals are stoking fears that the Supreme Court will start taking away “our most cherished liberties” if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed by the Senate. Expect Washington D.C. to be the focus for a lot of the chaos that will happen later this summer.

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

Bull Run

March 14, 2016

Bull Run

The Twitter-incited mob that shut down last week’s Donald Trump rally at the University of Illinois’ Chicago pavilion was the first skirmish in what is shaping up to be a civil war between a political Left that has lost its mind and a political Right that has lost its mind and its soul. The tensions between these two camps are so contorted and dishonest that even trying to unpack the issues puts the un-packer in jeopardy of being branded as one kind of thought-criminal or another.

The Left has lost its mind in a climax of zealotry over the new religion of social justice, with its sacred “victims” (blacks, LBGTQs, etc), its sacred tenets (“diversity,” “inclusion”), and its endless charges of blasphemy (renamed “micro-aggressions”) against heretics (“racists,” “homophobes”) who object to absolutist thought policing. This was nicely described by Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University in a recent podcast with author Sam Harris. (Skip to 1 hour 30 minutes in the long discussion.)

The religion got started on the campuses, where social science careerists ginned up an elaborate doctrine to justify the self-importance of their new departments in so-called race, gender, and privilege studies — the main point of which was to create new categories of sacred victims suffering spiritual torments (“traumas”) that could never be healed. These crypto-religious “studies” led to a multiplication of demons that had to be exorcized by an equal multiplication of diversity deans and committees aimed at punishing blasphemies — such as arguing against affirmative action (“racist”), or wearing a Mexican sombrero at a tequila party (“cultural appropriation” + “racist”), which happened recently at posh Bowdoin College.

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

In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril

May 29, 2015

 

James Steidl/Shutterstock

In Denial: We Pursue Endless Growth At Our Peril

A requiem for planet Earth

As we’ve been discussing of late here at PeakProsperity.com, humans desperately need a new story to live by. The old one is increasingly dysfunctional and rather obviously headed for either a quite dismal or possibly disastrous future. One of the chief impediments to recognizing the dysfunction of the old story and adopting a new one is the most powerful of all human emotional states: Denial.

I used to think that Desire was the most powerful human emotion because people are prone to risking everything in their lives – careers, marriages, relationships with their family and close friends – pursuing lust or accumulating 10,000 times more money and possessions than they need in their desire for “more.”

Perhaps it was my own blind spot(s) that prevented me from really appreciating just how powerful human denial really is. But here we are, 40 years after the Club of Rome and 7 years after the Great Financial Accident of 2008, collectively pretending that neither was a sign warning of the dangers we face — as a global society — if we continue our unsustainable policies and practices that assume perpetual growth.

Economic Denial

In the realm of economics, the level of collective denial gripping the earth’s power centers is extraordinary. Perhaps that should be of little surprise, as we’re now at the height of the largest set of nested financial bubbles ever blown in world history.

The bigger the bubble(s) the bigger the levels of denial required to sustain their expansion. These bubbles are doozies, and that explains the massive and ongoing efforts to prevent any sort of reality from creeping into the national and global dialog.

To understand this pattern of avoidance of unpleasant realities, consider the behavior of cities — even entire nations — which cannot bring themselves to talk openly about their state of insolvency, let alone do something about it.

 

 

A Secret “Black Site” Revealed In Chicago: “When You Go In, You Just Disappear”

February 25, 2015

A Secret “Black Site” Revealed In Chicago: “When You Go In, You Just Disappear”

Located in a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side is where, according to the Guardian, one can find the domestic equivalent of a CIA “black site” – an illegal, off-the-books interrogation compound used by Chicago special police units, one which renders “Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside”; a place whose former occupants say is where you end up when you are “disappeared”; a place which confirms that when it comes to the eternal “who is better – us or them” debate, there really is no difference: “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East.The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.” It’s a Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib rolled into one. In short: it is a place where the US constitution and basic human rights have absolutely no access.

And it may be located in a building just down your street.

According to an exclusive piece by the Guardian that is sure to send not only shivers down the spine of those who are still paying attention, but ripples across the “land of the free”, not least because if there is one dark site on US soil, there are countless more – places where every single constitutional right of US citizens is trampled on – the secretive warehouse known as Homan Square is the latest example of Chicago police practices that echo the much-criticized detention abuses of the US war on terrorism. However, there is one huge difference: while those abuses impacted people overseas, Homan Square – said to house military-style vehicles, interrogation cells and even a cage – trains its focus on Americans, most often poor, black and brown.

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

 

 

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