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Employee privacy in the US is at stake as corporate surveillance technology monitors workers’ every move

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

Employees forget that they are the employee.

Too be fair the boss should let everyone know what is going on.

So companies are having all this monitoring technology developed but don’t know if they will be using it! Pull the other one!

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/15/employee-privacy-is-at-stake-as-surveillance-tech-monitors-workers.html

Ellen Sheng

  • Corporate interest in surveillance seems to be on the rise to boost productivity.
  • A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide are using employee-movement data, 17% are monitoring work-computer-usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook- or calendar-usage data.
  • Employees are concerned over this invasion of privacy.

The emergence of sensor and other technologies that let businesses track, listen to and even watch employees while on company time is raising concern about corporate levels of surveillance. Privacy advocates fear that, if the new technology is not wielded carefully, workers could be at risk of losing any sense of privacy while on the job.

Overall, corporate interest in surveillance seems to be on the rise. A 2018 survey by Gartner found that 22% of organizations worldwide in various industries are using employee-movement data, 17% are monitoring work-computer-usage data, and 16% are using Microsoft Outlook- or calendar-usage data.

Employers say it helps them boost productivity. Employees cringe at this invasion of privacy.

Earlier this year, Amazon received a patent for an ultrasonic bracelet that can detect a warehouse worker’s location and monitor their interaction with inventory bins by using ultrasonic sound pulses. The system can track when and where workers put in or remove items from the bins. An Amazon spokesperson said the company has “no plans to introduce this technology”…

Walmart last year patented a system that lets the retail giant listen in on workers and customers. The system can track employee “performance metrics” and ensure that employees are performing their jobs efficiently and correctly by listening for sounds such as rustling of bags or beeps of scanners at the checkout line and can determine the number of items placed in bags and number of bags. Sensors can also capture sounds from guests talking while in line and determine whether employees are greeting guests.

Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg said the company doesn’t have any immediate plans to implement the system…

Be seeing you

Employee Monitoring, a controversial topicSecurity Affairs

 

 

 

 

 

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Martin on Twitter: “250kg bomb from the second world war just blown up in Frankfurt… https://t.co/hmOQl0RP2c” / Twitter

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

The same thing is happening today from Vietnam to Iraq.

The problem is the explosions in those places are not set off by the explosives team.

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Bin Laden Won – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/bin-laden-won/

by

Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan by Scott Horton (Chicago: The Libertarian Institute, 2017); 317 pages.

According to official U.S. government accounts, the body of Osama bin Laden slid off the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson into his watery grave in the Indian Ocean sometime on the morning of May 2, 2011. Nearly 10 years after 9/11, the terrorist leader of al-Qaeda responsible for nearly 3,000 murdered Americans was no more, and the rationale for the Afghan War gone with him.

Fast-forward another seven years. On September 2, 2018, Gen. Austin S. Miller assumed control of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the 17th commander to inherit the longest military quagmire in the nation’s history. Miller replaced Gen. John W. Nicholson, who led the coalition war effort for 17 months. Upon his departure, Nicholson said, “It is time for this war in Afghanistan to end.”

The opposite, however, is happening.

What’s clear from Miller’s promotion from commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, the military’s most elite killing machines, is that Washington cannot leave well enough alone in this graveyard of empires. Seventeen years of unnecessary bloodshed and atrocity and wasted treasure and corruption in Afghanistan isn’t enough. In June, General Miller told lawmakers that there was no timeline for the end to the war, while the situation on the ground only worsens as the Taliban continues to gain territory at the expense of the U.S.-supported puppet government in Kabul.

As journalist Scott Horton documents in his exhaustive history of the Afghan War, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was always a mistake. Upon close scrutiny, Horton shows, every rationale for the war — from destroying al-Qaeda or defeating the Taliban or denying a terrorist safe haven or, even more unbelievable, creating a stable and democratic nation ruled from the capital city of Kabul — falls apart…

In the end, it didn’t matter that the United States finally got its man in neighboring Pakistan. The chants of “USA, USA” outside the White House on May 1, 2011, represented a pyrrhic victory. Bin Laden laid a trap on 9/11, and the U.S. government fell into it. Almost two decades after the towers fell, American soldiers continue to kill and die in vain in Afghanistan while propping up a corrupt regime in Kabul, a toxic combination that only ensures the insurgency never quits. Yet the powers that be continue to fight on, telling the American people that they can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

But this is a lie. Bin Laden, as Scott Horton masterfully documents, has already won. And nothing will change that fact, no matter how hard Washington spins various counter-narratives or promotes another commander to finally win the unwinnable in Afghanistan’s graveyard of empires.

Be seeing you

graveyard

 

 

 

 

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Assange Arrested, Brexit Squashed – Just Another Day in the Empire – Gold Goats ‘n Guns

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

https://tomluongo.me/2019/04/12/assange-arrested-brexit-squashed-just-another-day-in-the-empire/

Tom Luongo

And down goes Julian Assange, right beside Brexit. If there was ever any doubt that The Powers That Be are unrelenting in their cruelty just look at the 24 hours starting on Wednesday.

First Theresa “The Snake Oil Lady” May kicks 17.4 million voters into the weeds.

And then she oversees the arrest and judging of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

The timing of this is important beyond dovetailing it with her Brexit betrayal. They had to go after Assange now, because Theresa May’s time in office is ending.

A Jeremy Corbyn-led government would not grant the U.S. it’s prize.

Corbyn, for all of his faults, would be a breath of fresh air in the unraveling of the ‘special relationship’ between the U.S. and U.K. in foreign policy for as long as he lasted in office.

Still think Theresa works for anyone other than her owners?…

But nothing surprises me about the evil of Theresa May anymore. Read the rest of this entry »

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Useful Idiots on Parade – Kunstler

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

No one mentioned the fact that Ecuador was promised debt relief from the US-controlled International Monetary Fund within hours of expelling Mr. Assange.

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/useful-idiots-on-parade/

James Howard Kuntsler

Anyone interested in glimpsing the Wokester media mentality in full intellectual-yet-idiot smuggery might check out Slate’s Political Gabfest (i.e. podcast) from this past Saturday, titled “The Wahoo Edition.” The Gabfest’s three regulars, David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and John Dickerson go after Julian Assange as if they were three college dormitory RAs dissecting the character of an unpopular freshman.

Plotz kicked it off by introducing Mr. Assange as “the eminence greasy of Wikileaks,” a cute twist on the French phrase éminence grise (gray eminence, i.e. an elder statesman, pronounced eminence greez, and he knows it). Bazelon offered her explanation for Ecuador’s eagerness to be rid of Mr. Assange: “He was acting like a big jerk. They were tired of him skateboarding all over the residence and scuffing up the walls and not cleaning his bathroom. He wore out his welcome on hospitality grounds.” Note: Emily Bazelon is a lawyer. No one mentioned the fact that Ecuador was promised debt relief from the US-controlled International Monetary Fund within hours of expelling Mr. Assange.

Plotz quickly added: “He didn’t clean up after his cat, which, as a cat owner, that is grounds for expulsion.”

Dickerson weighed in: “The big problem is he’s not an appealing man… he’s clearly a narcissist. He’s unpleasant. In addition to messing with our election, he’s basically on Team Russia.”

Plotz said of Wikileaks: “It’s acting as an agent for a foreign governments, as it has with Russia.”

Some people in this sore beset republic get hooked on opiates or crystal meth. Wokesters get hooked on The Narrative: That Russia “stole” the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton by hacking the Democratic National Committee’s emails, with the collusion of the Trump campaign. The latter point has been authoritatively invalidated by Mr. Mueller, of course, but the Wokester’s cling to their hope that some as-yet-concealed mischief in the Mueller Report will somehow contradict Mr. Mueller’s own conclusions.

As for the alleged hacking per se, you realize of course that neither the FBI nor Mr. Mueller’s “team,” nor anyone in the DOJ before the retirement of Jeff Sessions made any effort to secure and examine the very DNC computer servers at issue. Rather, they relied on a private company called CrowdStrike, hired by Hillary and the DNC itself, to analyze the alleged hacking. Can you imagine anything more arrantly dishonest or more legally irregular?

The Slate Gabfest crew never engages in these dark issues…

There is probably a good reason that US government authorities did not essay to make Mr. Assange a witness on-the-record: because his testimony would have prevented Mr. Mueller from bringing his bullshit charges against the Russian internet trolls he indicted — who will never have to come to trial in the USA in any case, and thus never refute The Narrative so earnestly promoted by the Mueller team — until it all fell apart on March 24.

But these are not terms that the Slate Political Gabfest chose to follow in their analysis of Julian Assange and his activities. Rather we got the following, transcribed verbatim:

Bazelon: “Assange is so detestable it’s really tempting to get as far away from him as possible. One look at him and I feel that way about him.”

Plotz: “Do you think Joe Biden would get a little handsy with him?”

Bazelon: “He’s far creepier.”

Dickerson: “You don’t find that Dickensian beard alluring?”

Bazelon: “It’s awful. But I always thought he was clean-shaven yucky.”

Such are the Deep Thoughts of America’s leading Wokester political analysts…

Imagine them subjecting Daniel Ellsberg to such a hazing.

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The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Julian Assange: Political Prisoner

Posted by M. C. on April 16, 2019

Repressive governments do not want their citizens to know that they are up to so they insist on controlling the media.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/april/15/julian-assange-political-prisoner/

Written by Ron Paul

Last week’s arrest of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange by the British government on a US extradition order is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the US Constitution. It is an attack on the free press. It is an attack on free speech. It is an attack on our right to know what our government is doing with our money in our name. Julian Assange is every bit as much a political prisoner as was Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary or Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

They, and so many more, were imprisoned because they told the truth about their governments.

Repressive governments do not want their citizens to know that they are up to so they insist on controlling the media. We are taught, at the same time, that we have a free press whose job it is to uncover the corruption in our system so that we can demand our political leaders make some changes or face unemployment. That, we are told, is what makes us different from the totalitarian.

The arrest of Assange is a canary in a coal mine to warn us that something is very wrong with our system.

What’s wrong? The US mainstream media always seems to do the bidding of the US government. That is why they rushed to confirm Washington’s claim that the Assange indictment was not in any way about journalism. It was only about hacking government computers!

As the New York Times said in an editorial, sounding like a mouthpiece of the US government, Julian Assange committed “an indisputable crime.” But was it?… Read the rest of this entry »

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Income Theft

Posted by M. C. on April 15, 2019

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Guess who ends up paying those taxes meant only for the rich… | The Daily Bell

Posted by M. C. on April 15, 2019

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/guess-who-ends-up-paying-those-taxes-meant-only-for-the-rich/

By Joe Jarvis

Imagine starting a small business in the USA in 1875.

Imagine working for yourself, or building a company from scratch. With no corporate taxes, and no income taxes, you kept the full rewards of your risk and labor.

It’s not surprising that in about 100 years the United States went from non-existent, to having the largest economy in the world.

Unparalleled economic freedom helped create the industrial revolution which spurred legendary economic growth from 1870 through the turn of the century.

For most of the 19th century, the main source of tax revenue for the federal government was tariffs—taxes on imported goods.

But in 1913, everything changed.

Around the world, communist and socialist philosophies were spreading. Marx was a hero. The Bolsheviks would come to power in Russia in just a few years. And America was caught up in the same craze.

There were all these rich people in America now, and the politicians wanted them to pay their fair share…

In 1913, the 16th Amendment was added to Constitution, which allowed Congress to replace tariffs with an income tax as the main source of US federal revenue.

The first income tax code was just four pages long. And the top tax rate was 7% on income over $500,000—worth around $12 million today.

Plus, in today’s money, anyone earning under $76,000 per—most people—paid no income taxes at all. That’s how nice the tax code was…

But it didn’t take long for things to change. Tax rates went up, the exemption fell, and debts from the Great War mounted.

By 1918 the top earners handed over 77% of their income.

The top tax rate made it all the way to 94% by 1944 to pay for World War Two.

(Two years earlier, President Roosevelt proposed a 100% tax rate to fund the war, arguing “no American citizen ought to have a net income, after he has paid his taxes, of more than $25,000 a year.” – about $300k in today’s dollars.)

At the same time, the exemption fell to $500 (from $3,000) and the lowest tax rate spiked to 23% (a 23x increase) – meaning you coughed up 23% of your income over $7,000 in today’s dollars.

In just a few decades, the income tax went from barely skimming from the richest of the rich, to confiscating a quarter of the poorest people’s income…

They start off only targeting the rich. But inevitably, rates go up, and everyone pays.

The Alternative Minimum Tax is another great example. The AMT originally targeted 155 people who were making over what today would be $1.1 million per year, but weren’t paying any federal income taxes because of loopholes and deductions.

But the tax was never adjusted for inflation.

But by 2017, five million taxpayers were paying extra taxes because of the AMT, and more than half of them made less than $200,000 per year.

Same story with self-employment taxes…

Today, people who are self-employed pay double the payroll taxes as typical workers. The government forces them to cover both the employee and employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare…

Do you think if the people from 1913 could see America now, would they still vote for the income tax?

Probably not if they saw which people ended up with the burden…

Be seeing you

tax crime

 

 

 

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Capitalism Isn’t the Problem Here – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on April 15, 2019

If a company is creating value, it is rewarded with profits. If it is destroying value, it is punished by losses.

The Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the monetary system short-circuits this process. You end up with a misallocation of recourses and all kinds of asset bubbles — not to mention piles of debt.

The only joy I would receive from the War Street Journal was in the comments section after Janet Yellen would repeat the state of the economy address (which was always the same as the last). The Journal would bloviate on what a great job Yellen was doing. The commenters would mostly all agree she didn’t have a clue and was worthless.

It made me wonder why all these commenters read the journal to begin with.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/04/no_author/peter-schiff-capitalism-isnt-the-problem-here/

SchiffGold.com

How are all of these unprofitable companies staying afloat and even making big splashes with media-hyped IPOs?

Peter Schiff addressed this question, along with the supposed “failure” of capitalism in his most recent podcast.

The rideshare company Lyft had its lowest close since going public yesterday (April 9). In fact, the company has only closed above its IPO price twice – the day it went public and last Friday. This probably shouldn’t shock anybody, given that the company has never turned a profit. The

Meanwhile, social media company Pinterest is gearing up for its IPO with a lot of media hype. The company has been around since 2010. It’s never made any money either.

Peter asked a poignant question. What makes people think these companies will ever make any money?

[Pinterest] has been around for 10 years. If they haven’t figured out how to make a profit yet, are they ever going to do it? Because at least in the frenzy of the dot-com mania, people were saying, ‘Look, the company hasn’t made a profit yet because it’s only been around for a year. But don’t worry because it’s got all of this explosive growth.’ You know, ‘We’re grabbing eyeballs,’ or whatever it was. But people were willing to bet the companies would eventually be profitable, and they didn’t have a lot of data to go on because the companies hadn’t even been in existence for very long before they were going public. It was a rush to the market. But now that you’ve got these companies that have been going on for 10 years — I mean, they’ve had 10 years at Pinterest to try to figure out how to make a profit and they haven’t done it.”

But as Peter pointed out, because of the easy-money policies of the Federal Reserve and the resulting availability of cheap capital, companies have been able to continue to operate even though they don’t make any money.

A lot of companies are able to attract funding and stay in business that under a normal free market system – a capitalist system – they would have gone bankrupt.”

This is one of the unseen impacts of central bank monetary policy. It distorts the market.

Consider Pinterest. The company has a lot of employees. It consumes a lot of resources to operate its website – land, labor and capital. These are resources that could be put to some other use if they weren’t being consumed by Pinterest. So, how do you know whether these resources being put to their best use? In a capitalist system, profits provide that information. Profits signal that resources are being well-used. The lack of a profit tells us these resources are not being put to good use. If the lack of profit persists, the company goes under and frees up those resources for better uses.

As Peter put it, if a company can combine resources to produce a product and then sell it at a higher price then the resources that it consumed, it is adding value to the economy. The consumer gets more enjoyment out of that product then the resources consumed in producing it.

You see, resources are scarce, but demand is unlimited. And the idea behind an economy is how to satisfy unlimited demand with limited resources. And resources that are utilized for one purpose are not available for another purpose. And if a company though is losing money, then the market is basically saying, ‘Hey, you’re destroying value. You’re creating products, but your customers don’t even value those products as much as the resources were worth that you used to make them.’”

If a company is creating value, it is rewarded with profits. If it is destroying value, it is punished by losses.

The Federal Reserve and its manipulation of the monetary system short-circuits this process. You end up with a misallocation of recourses and all kinds of asset bubbles — not to mention piles of debt…

Be seeing you

Bernie

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A Sorry State – Taki’s Magazine – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on April 15, 2019

Oscar Wilde said that a sentimentalist is someone who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it, and a modern apologist is someone who wants the aura of sanctity of making an apology without the need to feel any personal guilt.

https://www.takimag.com/article/a-sorry-state/print

by Theodore Dalrymple

During a visit of the Spanish prime minister to Mexico, the president of that country wanted Spain to apologize for the abuses committed half a millennium ago by the conquistadores. This made about as much sense as the British prime minister asking Italy to apologize for the Roman conquest, or for that matter Denmark or France, for the same reason.

It also makes about as much sense as that Spain should demand the thanks of every Mexican each time he travels in a wheeled vehicle, or even uses a wheelbarrow, since before the arrival of the Spanish the wheel was unknown in Mesoamerica. Those who want to call nations to account should remember that double-entry bookkeeping has been in existence for a long time.

When calls for apology come, can claims for compensation be far behind? Thereby is raised that greatest hope of humanity, namely the dream of living, or becoming rich, at someone else’s expense. I can’t say that this hope has never occurred to me, and I doubt that there are many people to whom it has never occurred; but it is rarely realized, this hope, and even more rarely does it do any good when it is realized.

If there is an economically sadistic desire of leaders to make other countries pay compensation to their own, there is also a pseudo-masochistic desire of leaders of other countries to apologize for the supposed past misdeeds of their countries, and thus open themselves, or rather the people they represent, to claims for compensation. If the hoped-for compensation is not forthcoming or if it is deemed insufficient, the result is more bitterness than if the apology had never been offered in the first place. This explains one of the many reasons for never going to law: the bitterness the whole procedure provokes. I doubt that one out of twenty actions for compensation ends in full satisfaction for anyone (except the lawyers, for whom it is more or less guaranteed)…

The mania for apology by people very distantly connected, if at all, to what they are supposed to be apologizing for is an aspect of the shallow emotional exhibitionism and dishonesty of our times. It permits the person who offers such an apology to imagine that he is doing something rather fine and generous while actually requiring nothing of him but the utterance of a few words. He does not even have to vow not to repeat the crime or do better himself because it goes without saying that someone as good as he, the apologist, would never even dream of doing anything remotely similar or as bad as that for which he is apologizing. Oscar Wilde said that a sentimentalist is someone who wants to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it, and a modern apologist is someone who wants the aura of sanctity of making an apology without the need to feel any personal guilt. But he doesn’t mind in the slightest if his apology creates endless problems for others…

Be seeing you

offended

Citizen: “What are you protesting against” Johnny: “What have you got?” The Wild One

 

 

 

 

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