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Amazon Goes Full Orwellian

December 21, 2018

Amazon Goes Full Orwellian

Bezos poised to become knower of all things, with strategic moves to collect info on individuals inside and out.

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it,” came a warning from George Orwell’s novel, 1984, that is rapidly, wickedly, becoming prophecy with new Amazon eye-in-the- sky technology and a dark and disturbing twist. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is poking that eye with a sharp stick.

And Jeff Bezos is not feeling the love.

In what appears to be Bezos’s latest strategic move in the quest to replace God as knower of all things is a hybrid monster of facial recognition software and a doorbell camera widget manufactured by Ring, a company that Amazon bought earlier this year.

In a gross assault on the right to privacy, a patent filed months ago essentially describes a product that captures information on people who as much as walk past a doorbell, sending real-time information to police databases.  It also will allow customers the ability to upload to law enforcement photos of anyone they deem might be a sketchy individual.

What does a non-sketchy, normal person wear when ringing a doorbell?

Jacob Snow, a technology and civil liberties attorney for the ACLU, is fired up and fighting:

“It’s rare for patent applications to lay out, in such nightmarish detail, the world a company wants to bring about.  Amazon is dreaming of a dangerous future … ”

Or perhaps Bezos dreams of ruling the world.

Biometrics Bastardization

But attaining an unlimited collection of facial snapshots is just the beginning. A deeper dive into the patent application reveals that Amazon is prepping to expand its unlimited munitions stash of photos with other biometrics.  And what it plans to extract from unsuspecting folks will horrify freedom-loving Americans.

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

Canada Secretly Collected Banking Information From 500,000 Canadians Without Their Knowledge

October 29, 2018

Canada Secretly Collected Banking Information From 500,000 Canadians Without Their Knowledge

As it turns out, Silicon Valley tech giants aren’t the only institutions surreptitiously collecting massive troves of sensitive data from unsuspecting consumers. On Friday, Canada’s the Global Times published a report exposing a recently launched data collection program adopted by StatCan, the Canadian government’s economic research agency, that the agency introduced to help it collect more accurate data about consumers’ spending habits. The agency has asked Canada’s nine largest banks to turn over all the transaction records and sensitive identifying financial information (including customer’s social insurance numbers) for 500,000 randomly selected Canadians. The agency will collect and crunch this data as part of its statistical research and then, at the end of the year, it will produce a new list of 500,000 Canadians, and perform all of the same operations with their data.

Statcan

After being called out by Global News, the agency explained that the data would be anonymized shortly after being compiled (meaning that all identifying information, like consumers’ SINs, would be removed).

“Canadians should know we are not accessing all of the payments data for all Canadians. It’s a small sample relative to the total number of households,” he said. “Our access to this data is permitted through both the Privacy Act and the Statistics Act.”

But that’s not exactly true. The fact that it didn’t publicly disclose the plan has left some Canadians feeling uneasy. Given that Canada has a population of roughly 20 million people, the likelihood that any one individuals’ information will be collected. To be sure, the agency said in a letter to Canada’s privacy commissioner that the data would only be used for statistics purposes. But a former privacy regulator who spoke with GN said she was “shocked” to learn of the program.

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

More of the Unrelenting Data Collection Toward Totalitarian Rule

October 21, 2018

More of the Unrelenting Data Collection Toward Totalitarian Rule

Totalitarian – Of or being a form of government in which the political authority exercises absolute control over all aspects of life and opposition is outlawed; a practitioner or supporter of such a government.

– American Heritage Dictionary, 3rd Ed.

We have almost reached the point where the country can be referred to as “totalitarian” in accordance with the definition provided. Incrementally, it creeps forward: the “soft” tyranny. Curing, refining itself, and hardening, there will be a point of no return that is reached…a point where it has metastasized until it is both all encompassing and ubiquitous.

The problem is twofold: the incremental spread as mentioned, and the complacency and inability of people to recognize it for what it is. Someone posted a comment recently with a paragraph from Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” where the author regretfully lamented the complacency displayed by the Russians as the country turned Communist overnight. His regret was that the citizenry could have stopped it with hatchets and pitchforks at that point if they had acted and been of one accord. I have recommended it as a “must read,” and strongly advise you to consider it as a “window” to what is happening in the U.S.

Two articles surfaced this week that are astonishing: they show the surveillance and data-collection “culture” that is being inflicted upon us, dulling our already stultified public into vapidity and inaction by desensitization. This latter term: the outrage of yesterday becomes the “accepted” and commonplace of today, and even further/worse tomorrow. Paradigm shift.

First, one written by Betsy Mikel entitled “Walmart just made an announcement that may make you never want to shop there again,” published on 10/9/18 by Inc. Here is an excerpt:

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

How Globalists Predict Your Behavior

January 11, 2017

How Globalists Predict Your Behavior

The globalists seem to have an overarching obsession with data collection. As we have seen with revelations from multiple government whistle-blowers, the establishment spends most of its time, energy and manpower collecting information not just on known threats to their supremacy, but information on EVERYONE through FISA-based surveillance protocols. This is because the establishment sees every individual as a potential threat.

Thus, the system, without warrant, is programmed to collate data from everywhere, not necessarily to be analyzed on the spot, but to be analyzed later in the event that a specific person rises to a level that poses legitimate harm to the globalist power structure.

There was a time not long ago when this notion was considered “conspiracy theory” by the mainstream, but with multiple exposures from Wikileaks to Edward Snowden it is now common knowledge that the government (and the globalists) spy on us en masse. However, I do not think that many people understand the greater implications or uses for this full spectrum surveillance. This is why you sometimes hear the argument that “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about…”

The truth is, mass surveillance is not done merely for the sake of surveillance, and it is certainly not undertaken for the sake of public safety. There is a greater purpose, and it is something the elites crave dearly — the purpose of total and PREDICTIVE information awareness.

The establishment is not just hoping to observe our present behavior in detail. No, they hope to use today’s data to predict our behavior tomorrow, and at this very moment, they are extremely close to achieving their goal.

Lets examine some of the methods they use in the pursuit of this goal…

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

The Facebook of the Future Has Privacy Implications Today

September 18, 2015

The Facebook of the Future Has Privacy Implications Today

It’s well established that joining a social network means trading privacy for information. Your Facebook friends, for example, get to see that picture of you looking like you might be stoned, and you get to “like” their posts celebrating the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado. Or, perhaps you simply post about your 50th birthday party or celebrating Ramadan. Potential employers get to see all that stuff too, depending on your privacy settings, and there is evidence that some of them discriminate on the basis of age and against Muslims. Facebook, meanwhile, gets to target ads at you.

What’s not as well appreciated, but becoming increasingly clear, is that users of social networks in general, and of social networking kingpin Facebook in particular, are ill-equipped to evaluate the price they’re paying in this trade — to determine just how much privacy they’ll lose over time in exchange for status updates from their friends, and what that loss will eventually mean for themselves and their loved ones.

Part of the reason it’s hard to think clearly about privacy tradeoffs is that data collection now occurs at a staggering scale. Facebook earlier this year announced that it had figured out how to store a billion gigabytes, known as an “exabyte,” in each “data hall” room in its data centers. As people upload two billion pictures a day to the social network, older photos are moved to these “cold storage” exabyte systems.

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

 

Biometric data collection evolves and expands in Canada

June 5, 2015

Biometric data collection evolves and expands in Canada

Ottawa wants to collect data from visitors of 150 countries, up from the current 30

The federal government’s plan to increase its collection of biometric data from visitors to Canada has been met with concern, but the practice is already a large part of our day-to-day lives.

Biometrics measure a person’s unique physiological characteristics — including face, iris, retinal veins, fingerprints, voice and hand geometry — to verify identity.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada told CBC News that digital photos and fingerprints are “the only biometrics data applicants will have to provide” under the government’s plan for expanded collection of data. Visitors will have to pay $85 to cover the cost of data collection.

Here are some ways that biometrics already touch our lives.

How it works now

The government currently collects the biometric data of foreign nationals from 29 countries and one territory. For an $85 fee, a visitor’s fingers are scanned on a glass screen and their digital photo is taken. Exemptions include those under 14 or over 80 years of age, as well as diplomats.

New regulations expected by 2018-19 would expand screening to include visitors from about 150 more countries, including those visitors who need visas, work or study permits. Americans are exempt.

Move to biometrics launched in 2008

The government first announced it was moving to biometrics in 2008 because they are more reliable than the use of subjective photo identification.

The 2008 budget said, “Border security remains a priority for Canadians. Criminals are increasingly more sophisticated and well-funded, including those who engage in document fraud to illegally move people or goods across borders.”

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

 

 

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