Category Archives: Privacy

Letter to the South African Government, by Margaret Anna Alice

Posted on August 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

South Africa considers legislation that would take it back to its repressive past. From Margaret Anna Alice at margaretannaalice.substack.com:

You can change the definitions of the targeted parties, but you cannot change the discriminatory rot underlying this vile legislation.

(long version here)

The People’s Lawctivist Sabelo Sibanda explains that under the proposed amendments:

“These regulations basically declare a scenario where everyone will end up in one of three categories where you are either deemed to be a case, or you are considered a suspect, or, alternatively, you are considered as one who has been in contact with someone who is a case.

“And once you fall into any one of those three categories, this is what this means to you. Government says, ‘You may not refuse to be medically examined,’ whereby the medical examination process is whatever government will determine.

“Second to that, you may not refuse to be put in quarantine or put in isolation. And the requirements for quarantine and isolation are such that the majority of the people of South Africa will not be able to self-quarantine so they have to be put in a state institution.

“Further to that, and most critical, is that you may not refuse to take whatever medication that the government says you should take. Your freedom—which is supposed to be guaranteed and protected by the same act in as far as the right to be informed—is taken away. You are caught in a situation whereby government has full control.

“Once you are put in this isolation space, this quarantine space, you don’t have the ability to determine when and how you get out. It will be up to government to decide.

“So now the country of South Africa will be under a permanent state of disaster where masking will be permanent, where social distancing is permanent, through the National Health Act.”

In case you’ve forgotten what it looks like for your government to discriminate against citizens under the guise of a “state of emergency” and to demand people’s papers, here are a couple of reminders:

Apartheid: South Africa State of Emergency
Apartheid: South Africa Passport

Today, that passport looks like a QR code on your phone.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Privacy, Surveillance, Tyranny

Tagged

The Genetic Panopticon: We’re All Suspects in a DNA Lineup, Waiting to be Matched with a Crime, by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

Posted on July 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

They’ll be no escaping from the government when it has everyone’s DNA on file. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“Solving unsolved crimes is a noble objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people from suspicionless law-enforcement searches… Make no mistake about it…your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason… Perhaps the construction of such a genetic panopticon is wise. But I doubt that the proud men who wrote the charter of our liberties would have been so eager to open their mouths for royal inspection.”—Justice Antonin Scalia dissenting in Maryland v. King

Be warned: the DNA detectives are on the prowl.

Whatever skeletons may be lurking on your family tree or in your closet, whatever crimes you may have committed, whatever associations you may have with those on the government’s most wanted lists: the police state is determined to ferret them out.

In an age of overcriminalization, round-the-clock surveillance, and a police state eager to flex its muscles in a show of power, we are all guilty of some transgression or other.

No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged

Digital Authoritarianism: AI Surveillance Signals the Death of Privacy, by John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead

Posted on July 21, 2022 | 5 comments

They already know virtually everything you do and say and they want to know more. They don’t gather all this information for your benefit. From John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.” ― Philip K. Dick

Nothing is private.

We teeter on the cusp of a cultural, technological and societal revolution the likes of which have never been seen before.

While the political Left and Right continue to make abortion the face of the debate over the right to privacy in America, the government and its corporate partners, aided by rapidly advancing technology, are reshaping the world into one in which there is no privacy at all.

Nothing that was once private is protected.

We have not even begun to register the fallout from the tsunami bearing down upon us in the form of AI (artificial intelligence) surveillance, and yet it is already re-orienting our world into one in which freedom is almost unrecognizable.

AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude.

Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer.

Governments and corporations alike have heedlessly adopted AI surveillance technologies without any care or concern for their long-term impact on the rights of the citizenry.

As a special report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warns, “A growing number of states are deploying advanced AI surveillance tools to monitor, track, and surveil citizens to accomplish a range of policy objectives—some lawful, others that violate human rights, and many of which fall into a murky middle ground.”

Continue reading→

5 Comments

Posted in Civil Liberties, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged

Why China Is Subsidizing Cheap Surveillance Cameras, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on July 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Way back when, hidden cameras were the province of pervert voyeurs and Allen Funt (search engine Candid Camera). Nowadays totalitarians are putting them everywhere. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

china hikvision cameras

Story at-a-glance

  • Hikvision began as an entity of China, and its largest shareholder remains the state-owned China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), a defense-industrial firm
  • Hikvision receives generous support from China’s Communist leaders, allowing the company to offer low prices and expand abroad rapidly, outpacing much of its competition
  • Hikvision cameras are used to surveil prisoners in “re-education” camps in China’s Xinjiang region, raising significant human rights concerns
  • In the U.S., federal agencies were ordered by Congress to remove Hikvision cameras by August 2019 due to national security concerns

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Governments, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged , ,

Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship, by Margaret Anna Alice

Posted on June 30, 2022 | Leave a comment

The third in Margaret Anna Alice’s series about democide and dictatorship. From Margaret Anna Alice at margaretannaalice.substack.com:

Part 3: Yuval Noah Harari: Not the Man We Think He Is?

This is Part 3 of Anatomy of a Philanthropath. Read Part 1: A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation and Part 2: Downloadable Digital Dictatorships to see what you missed:

Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
“Tyranny is a habit which may be developed until at last it becomes a disease. I declare that the noblest nature can become so hardened and bestial that nothing distinguishes it from that of a wild animal. Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery. The mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty, which it reg…

Read more

5 days ago · Margaret Anna Alice
Margaret Anna Alice Through the Looking Glass
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
This is Part 2 of Anatomy of a Philanthropath. Read Part 1: A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation for context…

Read more

5 days ago · Margaret Anna Alice
Yuval Noah Harari: Not the Man We Think He Is? Woman Wearing Mask Underneath Mask Being Removed

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.… To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

—C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology & Ethics (Kindle, paperback, audiobook)

Given the zest with which Yuval Noah Harari pontificates about global digital surveillance dictatorships, you may be inclined to think he is advocating these scenarios. When you see the context that has been excised from these clips, however, it becomes clear he is actually warning against such nightmarish outcomes.

As enticing as it is to paint Harari as a diabolical mastermind, it requires a dismissal of the unexpurgated footage in which he reflects on how we can veer off the nearly inevitable path to totalitarian dystopia.1

He frequently suggests, for example, that engineering and computer science programs incorporate an ethics curriculum, and he recommends books such as Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality & Threatens Democracy, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, and Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, Surveillance, Tyranny

Tagged ,

Sad: No One At Whole Foods Has Yet Received The News That The Pandemic Ended 18 Months Ago

Posted on June 10, 2022 | 1 comment

From The Babylon Bee:

GRAND RAPIDS, MI—According to sources, a tragic breakdown in communication has led to thousands of Whole Foods shoppers being completely unaware that the global pandemic ended 18 months ago.

“I wear my mask to protect those around me. Please maintain a six-foot distance. EEEEEEEEEEE!” said local shopper Sable Channing when asked by a local reporter for comment. “Don’t touch my North Face jacket! Please put your mask up around your nose! GET AWAY FROM ME! YOU’RE A GRANDMA KILLER!”

Reports from around the country claim to be finding entire stores full of terrified millenial hipsters still using the social distancing “X” on the floor, donning two or three masks, and wearing fashion scarves all year round for some reason. Shoppers are being warned that any attempt to enter a Whole Foods unmasked could lead to hostile stares or being murdered.

“We have made several attempts to make contact with these out-of-touch primitives, but so far have only been met with primal screeches and thrown heads of cabbage,” said Grand Rapids Police Chief Camden Connors. “We may need more time to practice their language and dialect to reach them.”

At publishing time, experts warned that many Whole Foods shoppers are also unaware that organic food is a scam.

https://babylonbee.com/news/sad-no-one-at-whole-foods-has-yet-received-the-news-that-the-pandemic-ended-18-months-ago

1 Comment

Posted in Money, Morality, Politics, Privacy, Science

Tagged

Doug Casey on the Rapid Cultural Decline and What Comes Next

Posted on June 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

Western Civilization and the ideas that truly made America exceptional are under full frontal intellectual and political assault. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

International Man: Nations in decline often experience cultural degeneracy. We saw that in the Roman Empire and Weimar Germany, for example.

Today, in the US, we see increasing signs of cultural degeneracy in Hollywood, advertisements, academia, science, corporations, politics, and other areas of life.

What is your take?

Doug Casey: There have been a number of major turning points throughout history. Rome in the third century was one of them. It was a period of economic, political, and military chaos, aggravated by the social chaos accompanying the rise of Christianity. These things set the stage for the complete collapse of the old civilization in the West with the barbarian invasions after Adrianople in 378.

The Renaissance changed the nature of life in Western Europe starting in the 15th century, as did the Enlightenment in the 18th century. And, most important, in many ways, the Industrial Revolution overturned the pre-existing economic order starting in the early 19th century.

Whenever the public was in a frenzy about something or other, my friend Herman Kahn (look him up) liked to quip, “There are only two important things that have happened since the dawn of history—and this isn’t one of them.” He was referring to the Agricultural Revolution around 5000 years ago and the Industrial Revolution. It’s good to keep things in perspective…

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Capitalism, Collapse, Culture, Economics, Economy, Governments, Horseshit, Media, Morality, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, race relations, Society

Tagged ,

World Economic Forum Pushes Facial Recognition Technology, John Mac Ghlionn

Posted on May 29, 2022 | 2 comments

It’s essential for the WEF to know who we are so they can “reeducate” anyone who might rebel against the Great Reset. From John Mac Ghlionn at brownstone.org:

The World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, has just ended. The theme of the five-day event, “Working Together, Restoring Trust,” was both vague and troubling, in equal measures.

Remember, this is the WEF we are discussing here, an international organization actively pushing “The Great Reset.” The theme could just as easily have read: “Suffering Together, Restoring Compliance.”

Among the many issues discussed, members focused on the spread of misinformation and disinformation. How, they asked, can the proliferation of harmful content be combatted? It’s easy, they answered, how about introducing digital IDs?

The WEF recently rolled out the Global Coalition for Digital Safety, an initiative designed to “accelerate public-private cooperation to tackle harmful content online.” In an effort to remedy the scourge of malicious material, the WEF has brought together a “diverse group of leaders who are well placed to exchange best practices for new online safety regulation and help millions of connected citizens improve digital media literacy.”

These “diverse leaders” include head executives at the likes of Google, Microsoft, Interpol, and a number of government ministers. Another coalition member is Yoti, a company that strives to make the internet a safer place. How so? Through the use of digital IDs.

The dangers posed by digital IDs cannot be emphasized enough. As the researcher Brett Solomon—a man “who has tracked the advantages and perils of technology for human rights” for well over a decade—previously noted, the mass rollout of digital IDs “poses one of the gravest risks to human rights of any technology that we have encountered.”

Continue reading→

2 Comments

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Governments, History, Horseshit, Politics, Privacy, Propaganda, Surveillance

Tagged ,

The Globalists’ Race Against Time, by Eamon McKinney

Posted on May 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

The world just refuses to move in lockstep with the globalists’ plans. To the globalists, that stems from flawed people, not flawed plans. From Eamon McKinney at strategic-culture.org:

A Great Reset will happen, just not the one intended by the Globalists. They may have to settle for the Great Decoupling instead.

The green economy, de-industrialisation, digital health passports, Central Bank digital currencies, these are all core components of the Globalists’ plan for the Great reset. The WEF has painted a picture of their proposed future via Klaus Schwab and his acolytes. “We will have nothing, own nothing and be happy”. The main obstacle to this grand vision is that not surprisingly very few countries wish to go along with it. The Globalists know their game is coming to an end and the Great Reset is their way of ensuring that the same financial cabal that has brought the world to its current lamentable state will continue to rule over all in the next world order. The most prominent objectors to this insidious plan are of course Russia and China. Unlike their western counterparts both have strong leaders who enjoy popular support, have strong economies and are optimistic about future prospects for growth. Neither intends to sacrifice their countries so that Western elites can maintain their control over the Global economic system and impose their self-serving will on weaker nations. Which in its simplest terms is why both countries need to be destroyed, at least economically before the Great Reset can be imposed on the world. Time, however, is not on the Globalists’ side, recent events have demonstrated that they are aware of this and are accelerating their timelines.

Continue reading→

Leave a comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economics, Economy, Geopolitics, Governments, Law, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Privacy

Tagged , ,

Report Shows FBI Spied On 3.3 Million Americans Without A Warrant, GOP Demands Answers, by Joseph Lord

Posted on May 26, 2022 | 1 comment

It looks like roughly one in a hundred Americans have been spied on by the FBI without a warrant or probable cause. From Joseph Lord at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Top House Republicans are demanding answers from the FBI after court-ordered information came to light showing that the federal agency had collected the information of over 3 million Americans without a warrant.

Republican Representative from Ohio Jim Jordan speaks during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Policing Practices and Law Enforcement Accountability at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2020. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

In a May 25 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant (pdf).

Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Specifically, section 702 of the bill says: “the Attorney General (AG) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) may jointly authorize the targeting of (i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

However, this power can grant an expanding circle of possible searches to the FBI and other intel agencies, who can use the same power against American citizens who had any interaction with targeted foreigners.

Historically, insight into how FISA has been used against American citizens has been limited and hidden behind classified reports.

However, a November 2020 decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—which serves as a watchdog for U.S. intelligence agencies—required that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report “the number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI against Section 702-acquired information.”

In accordance with these new requirements, ODNI’s recently-released Annual Statistical Transparency Report included data on how often the FBI gathered information on American citizens using section 702 in 2021.

Continue reading→

1 Comment

Posted in Civil Liberties, Government, Intelligence, Law, Privacy, Surveillance

Tagged ,