Category Archives: Technology

FBI ‘Deeply Concerned’ After Apple Says Nearly All iCloud Data Now Has End-to-End Encryption, by Katabella Roberts

Posted on December 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

The government is deeply concerned that someone out there might be keeping secrets from the government. From Katabella Roberts at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Apple on Dec. 7 announced a string of new security features, including full end-to-end encryption for nearly all the data its users store in its global iCloud storage system, prompting concern from the FBI.

The Apple logo at an Apple Store in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Oct. 23, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

In an overview of the new feature posted to the Apple website, the California-headquartered tech giant said its “Advanced Data Protection” optional setting will provide its users with the “highest level of cloud data security” and keep user data safe even in the event of a data breach in the cloud.

“If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, your trusted devices retain sole access to the encryption keys for the majority of your iCloud data, thereby protecting it using end-to-end encryption. Additional data protected includes iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more,” Apple said.

End-to-end encryption means that not even Apple can access the data, according to the company.

“If you lose access to your account, only you can recover this data, using your device passcode or password, recovery contact, or recovery key,” the company said.

The new feature will be available on iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS 13.1 for users in the United States by the end of the year, before rolling out to the rest of the world in early 2023, according to Apple.

Users can enable it by enrolling in two-factor authentication for their Apple ID and setting a password or passcode on their devices.

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I Don’t Want A Sci-Fi Future, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on December 7, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s easier to fantasize about the future than it is to live, really live, in the present. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

I don’t desire a future for humanity like the ones imagined by our culturally designated future-imaginers. I don’t want humans living in Elon Musk Mars colonies or Jeff Bezos space cylinders. I don’t want us to fly out into the stars, to disappear into virtual reality universes, or to move away from our humanness by becoming cybernetic organisms.

Not yet anyway. Not for a long time. Not until we’ve done what we need to do here first.

Have you ever noticed that most books, shows and movies set in the future tend to depict a humanity that’s more technologically advanced than our own, but thinks and behaves in basically the same way? In the average sci-fi story people are still waging wars, still fighting, conquering, subjugating, toiling and surviving just like today, except they’re doing it out in space surrounded by a bunch of aliens (who are also oddly entangled in the same egoic patternings as humans in the 21st century).

In this common vision for the future, we have mastered space travel but still haven’t mastered basic psychological health. Our technology has enabled us to kill, enslave, manipulate and exploit among the stars so that we are no longer confined to killing, enslaving, manipulating and exploiting down here.

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Occasional Use Vehicles, by Eric Peters

Posted on December 6, 2022 | Leave a comment

If you force everyone to drive electric vehicles, the electric power and grid to support those vehicles will just happen. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

 

There are a couple of things to be worried about with regard to electric vehicles – assuming you like electric vehicles – that have nothing to do with how far they can go or how long it takes before you can get going again.

The first thing is the disparity between electrical generating capacity – which is analogous to crude oil supplies, if we were talking about fueling cars with engines – and the amount of electricity that would be required to power a fleet of electric vehicles. As of right now, total U.S. grid generating capacity is about 1.2 million megawatts, with another 412,000 in the pipeline (so to speak). That would bring the total available capacity up to  . . . not even close to what a fleet of electric vehicles – including commercial vehicles – would require.

That being something in the neighborhood of 23 million megawatts.

The disparity is worse than that, too – if you factor out the electricity currently generated by the burning of hydrocarbon fuels such as natural gas (which accounts of about 42 percent of all electricity generated in the United States) and coal (another 18.5 percent). The two latter together constitute more than half of  all current generating capacity.

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An Invisible Prison Has Been Built Just for You, by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Posted on December 5, 2022 | 1 comment

The technology for the digital Panopticon is being rolled out. From Dr. Joseph Mercola at theburningplatform.com:

Story at-a-glance

  • An international vaccine passport, digital identity, a social credit system and a central bank digital currency (CBDC) form a digital control system that will lock down the population in perpetuity
  • Facial recognition is an essential part of the control structure, as it’s the “password” to your digital identity
  • By the end of 2022, there will be 1 billion data collecting surveillance cameras in the world, all connected to the internet and artificial intelligence (AI). Cameras and audio recording devices in cell phones, automobiles and smart appliances also collect and share data
  • All these data are then used to give each person an individual score, based on their behavior, expression and interaction with the world. Ultimately, your social credit score, will dictate what you can and cannot do, what you can buy and where you can go
  • Artificial intelligence (AI) is an absolutely crucial component, without which the control system cannot work. The easiest way to push against this system is to starve AI of data by refusing to use technologies that collect and share your personal data

In the video above, Maria Zeee with ZeeeMedia interviews computer scientist Aman Jabbi about the coming international vaccine passport, digital identity, the social credit system being built in the West, and central bank digital currency (CBDC).

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Economy, Government, Media, Politics, Privacy, Science, Surveillance, Technology, Tyranny

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A Baseline Understanding Mostly Missing Behind the Twitter Discussion – Govt Influence Over Social Media Influence and the Surveillance State, by Sundance

Posted on December 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Barack Obama and Eric Holder turned the Intelligence Branch and its private sector partners into Democratic weapons. From Sundance at theconservativetreehouse.com:

I am ONE Hour into listening to the Three-Hour broadcast that Elon Musk joined tonight {YouTube Here}, and the amount of cognitive dissonance and circular discussion is off the proverbial charts.

Elon Musk joins the “Twitter Stages” conversation at 01:03:00 of the VIDEO HERE.  Musk noted that in addition to Matt Taibbi he has given the Twitter files to Bari Weiss. However, the debate over what DC bureaucrats did -and are doing- from within the Biden administration, to censor speech, take down social media content and stop information adverse to their political interests, is a futile conversation without the full understanding of the current U.S. surveillance state.

Some of the stage participants on the call with Mr. Musk have self-identified as targeted by the intelligence community, some are under active and ongoing investigation, yet they do not seem to have an understanding of what this U.S. social media surveillance system is.

We cannot fight our way through the issues until we first realize what lies at the root of the problem.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act.  What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.

This point is where many people understandably get confused.

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Extreme Danger: “Boring” Election Issues, by J. Christian Adams

Posted on December 4, 2022 | Leave a comment

If those who want fair elections aren’t willing to get in the “boring” weeds of election laws and procedures, they’ll never get what they want. From J. Christian Adams at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • One of the beautiful things about a democratic republic is you agree on the rules in advance. That way, everybody buys into the outcome. It’s like a football game. If you were to change the rules in the middle of the game, first half Super Bowl for example, the Los Angeles Rams needed 10 yards for a first down, but in the second half, it went up to 15. That’s what happened in the 2020 election, is the rules changed in the middle of the game.

  • The second thing that happened, and this is the most important. Philanthropy, primarily through the Center for Technology and Civic Life, started pouring money through educational 501(c)3s. The Mark Zuckerberg‑funded C3s poured money into state and local election offices. They would give the state and election office money and say, You now need to enact these policies. In the old days, giving a government official money and telling them what to do with it was called a bribe, right? It was. It was a bribe. If I were to give money to a government official and say, you need to now do this, I would be arrested. But that is what happened all over the country to the tune of almost $600 million, according to 990 filings.

  • Let me show you Philadelphia. In Philadelphia, the original election budget was $9 million for the city office, according to records from the city council’s budget. Center for Technology and Civic Life gift to Philadelphia totaled $12.3 million, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer article on 8/26/20. They massively increased the Philadelphia budget; what did they do with the money?

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The Incremental Normalization Of Police Murderbots Probably Needs More Attention, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on December 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

A robot has neither conscience nor soul. From Caitlin Johnstone at caitlinjohnstone.com:

One of the most under-discussed topics in the world right now is how governments have been incrementally pacing the public toward accepting the use of police robots that kill people.

The city of San Francisco has voted to legalize the use of killbots in specific emergency situations like active shooters and suicide bombers, with high-ranking officers making the call as to whether their use is warranted.

“Police in San Francisco will be allowed to deploy potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations,” The Guardian reports. “The controversial policy was approved after weeks of scrutiny and a heated debate among the city’s board of supervisors during their meeting on Tuesday.”

“The proposed policy does not lay out specifics for how the weapons can and cannot be equipped, leaving open the option to arm them,” The Guardian reports, adding that the current plan is to equip them with “explosive charges” rather than firearms.

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Make Way for the Killer Robots: The Government Is Expanding Its Power to Kill, by John and Nisha Whitehead

Posted on December 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

The police’s new deadly toys will allow them to reach new heights in unconstitutional behavior (well unconstitutional when we actually had a Constitution). From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“Crush! Kill! Destroy!”—The Robot, Lost in Space

The purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.

Unfortunately, we have gone so far in the opposite direction from the ideals of a good government that it’s hard to see how this trainwreck can be redeemed.

It gets worse by the day.

For instance, despite an outcry by civil liberties groups and concerned citizens alike, in an 8-3 vote on Nov. 29, 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a proposal to allow police to arm robots with deadly weapons for use in emergency situations.

This is how the slippery slope begins.

According to the San Francisco Police Department’s draft policy, “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.”

Yet as investigative journalist Sam Biddle points out, this is “what nearly every security agency says when it asks the public to trust it with an alarming new power: We’ll only use it in emergencies—but we get to decide what’s an emergency.”

A last-minute amendment to the SFPD policy limits the decision-making authority for deploying robots as a deadly force option to high-ranking officers, and only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means.

In other words, police now have the power to kill with immunity using remote-controlled robots.

These robots, often acquired by local police departments through federal grants and military surplus programs, signal a tipping point in the final shift from a Mayberry style of community policing to a technologically-driven version of law enforcement dominated by artificial intelligence, surveillance, and militarization.

It’s only a matter of time before these killer robots intended for use as a last resort become as common as SWAT teams.

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The Emperor Elonicus, by CJ Hopkins

Posted on November 29, 2022 | 1 comment

It remains to be seen if Elon Musk turns Twitter into anything remotely approaching a beacon of free speech, but just the thought that he might occasions apoplexy among the liberal and leftist crowd. From CJ Hopkins at consentfactory.org:

Everyone is going to hate this column. Musk worshipers are going to hate it because I’m going to blaspheme against Elon Musk. Musk demonizers are going to hate it because I am not going to blaspheme against him enough. Everyone else is going to hate it because they’re sick to the gills of hearing about Musk, and Musk’s destruction of Twitter, or his salvation of Twitter, and censorship, and “hate speech,” and all that stuff.

I’ll get to the blasphemy part in a minute, but first, let’s quickly review what’s happened, and where things now stand, or appear to stand.

On October 27, 2022, so almost exactly a month ago, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, US government military contractor and all-around global-capitalist oligarch with a net worth approaching $200 billion, completed his acquisition of Twitter, the notorious “hell-site” where Donald Trump, the Russian-backed literal Resurrection of Hitler, Jordan Peterson, the “lobster hierarchy” guy, Alex “the Devil Incarnate” Jones, and assorted members of the “deplorable” masses had been wantonly perpetrating acts of “hate speech,” disseminating “disinformation,” and otherwise unrestrainedly expressing themselves, until Twitter’s “content moderators” started censoring, deboosting, and deplatforming everyone whose views and opinions they didn’t like.

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New Twitter Sign Ups Hit All-Time Record Despite Cancel Campaign, by Jonathan Turley

Posted on November 28, 2022 | Leave a comment

Money sentences: “Of course, it has long been known that the public wants more, not less, free speech. It is the political establishment that is struggling to retain control over speech on social media at any cost.” From Jonathan Turley at jonathanturley.org:

Since Elon Musk bought Twitter with a pledge to restore free speech protections, the media and political establishment have maintained an unrelenting campaign to use pressure from corporations and foreign governments to force him to restore censorship policies. Reporters have covered seemingly every celebrity declaring that they are leaving the site or even selling their Teslas in protest. As companies joined the boycott, commentators gleefully announced the “death,” “collapse,” and “demise” of the social media company with some mocking Musk risking billions of dollars for free speech principles. New figures, however, appear to show that the public is solidly with Musk on the free speech issue. New signups at Twitter are at an all-time high with two million new signups per day.

As these companies and activists demand censorship, customers are signing up in mass to embrace the greater diversity of viewpoints and expression at the company. While companies are yielding to demands from the left that they cut off ad revenue until Musk restores censorship, users are flocking to the site.

The over two million new sign-ups per day represent a 66% increase over the same time frame last year, according to figures released by Musk.

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