MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘tracking’

Once People See the Cage, They’ll Stop Mistaking It for Safety

Posted by M. C. on November 11, 2025

How to Break Free from Tracking and Take Back Your Digital Freedom

Digital IDs: While convenient, government-issued Digital IDs must be scrutinized for their architecture. If they centralize too much data, they create a single point of failure and a powerful tool for monitoring citizens’ activities. Remember, if it’s digital it can and will be hacked.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs): A CBDC could potentially program money, allowing a central authority to track, control, or even place expiration dates on your funds. The shift from anonymous cash to fully traceable digital currency is a massive concern for financial freedom.

NBTV Media

This is guest post by NBTV community member Incognito Cat.

The internet promised us a borderless world of connection, but what it often delivers is surveillance. This isn’t a future threat, it’s the present reality. Governments and Big Tech are building a digital cage, luring us in with convenience while tightening the bars of control.

Every click, post, photo, search, and setting on our devices is designed to treat your personal life not as private, but as a resource to be harvested.

The good news is, you can leave the cage. Digital privacy isn’t about being paranoid; it’s about being sovereign. Control over your data is fundamental to a free life, and thanks to the growing number of easy-to-use, privacy-preserving tools like the ones in our Toolbox, there has never been a better time to choose that freedom.

Here is a practical, step-by-step framework for reclaiming your privacy and securing your digital existence.

1. Break Free: Embracing Privacy-Preserving Alternatives

Most people use the software that comes pre-installed on their computers and phones simply because it’s the default. Yet, these defaults are often the very mechanisms designed to maximize data collection.

The Action: Don’t just accept the software giants’ offerings. Seek out alternatives built with privacy as a foundational principle.

  • Browsers: Move from data-hungry browsers to options like Brave or Mullvad, which block trackers by default.
  • Search Engines: Ditch Google search for Brave Search or StartPage, which do not track your search history.
  • Email: Use end-to-end encrypted services like Proton Mail or Tuta Mail instead of standard free services.
  • Operating Systems: Investigate Linux distributions for desktops and more privacy-focused alternatives, like GrapheneOS, for mobile devices to minimize telemetry and data collection from the core operating system itself.

2. The Future of Security: Embracing Passkeys

For years, passwords have been the weakest link in digital security. They are susceptible to phishing, weak guessing, and data breaches. Passkeys, developed by the FIDO Alliance are the modern, phishing-resistant solution.

The Action: Where available, move to Passkeys immediately.

A Passkey is a digital credential stored securely on your device (like your phone or computer) and uses biometric verification (fingerprint, face scan) to log you in. They are based on cryptographic public-key technology, making them virtually immune to the common attacks that plague traditional passwords. They are more secure and significantly more convenient. Learn more about them here.

3. Foundational Defense: Passwords, Managers, and MFA

While more services are moving to support Passkeys, they are not yet universal. For every service that hasn’t made the switch, you need an impenetrable defense.

The Action: Establish an unshakeable security foundation:

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Public Service Announcement

Posted by M. C. on July 9, 2022

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

The Rutherford Institute :: You’d Better Watch Out: The Surveillance State Has a Naughty List, and You’re On It | By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on December 8, 2021

Tracking you based on your health status. Tracking you based on your face. Tracking you based on your behavior. Tracking you based on your spending and consumer activities. Tracking you based on your public activities. Tracking you based on your social media activities. Tracking you based on your phone and online activities. Tracking you based on your social network. Tracking you based on your car. Tracking you based on your mail.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/have_you_been_naughty_or_nice_the_surveillance_state_has_a_list_and_youre_on_it

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“He sees you when you’re sleeping

He knows when you’re awake

He knows when you’ve been bad or good

So be good for goodness’ sake!”

—“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

Santa’s got a new helper.

No longer does the all-knowing, all-seeing, jolly Old St. Nick need to rely on antiquated elves on shelves and other seasonal snitches in order to know when you’re sleeping or awake, and if you’ve been naughty or nice.

Thanks to the government’s almost limitless powers made possible by a domestic army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms, Santa can get real-time reports on who’s been good or bad this year. This creepy new era of government/corporate spying—in which we’re being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted—makes the NSA’s rudimentary phone and metadata surveillance appear almost antiquated in comparison.

Consider just a small sampling of the tools being used to track our movements, monitor our spending, and sniff out all the ways in which our thoughts, actions and social circles might land us on the government’s naughty list.

Tracking you based on your health status. In the age of COVID-19, digital health passports are gaining traction as gatekeepers of a sort, restricting access to travel, entertainment, etc., based on one’s vaccine status. Whether or not one has a vaccine passport, however, individuals may still have to prove themselves “healthy” enough to be part of society. For instance, in the wake of Supreme Court rulings that paved the way for police to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes,” government agencies are preparing to use virus-detecting canine squads to carry out mass screenings to detect individuals who may have COVID-19. Researchers claim the COVID-sniffing dogs have a 95% success rate of identifying individuals with the virus (except when they’re hungry, tired or distracted). These dogs are also being to trained to ferret out individuals suffering from other health ailments such as cancer.

Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition

See the rest here

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Leave a Comment »

The Rutherford Institute :: Digital Trails: How the FBI Is Identifying, Tracking and Rounding Up Dissidents by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead |

Posted by M. C. on March 19, 2021

According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/digital_trails_how_the_fbi_is_identifying_tracking_and_rounding_up_dissidents

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“Americans deserve the freedom to choose a life without surveillance and the government regulation that would make that possible. While we continue to believe the sentiment, we fear it may soon be obsolete or irrelevant. We deserve that freedom, but the window to achieve it narrows a little more each day. If we don’t act now, with great urgency, it may very well close for good.”—Charlie Warzel and Stuart A. Thompson, New York Times

Databit by databit, we are building our own electronic concentration camps.

With every new smart piece of smart technology we acquire, every new app we download, every new photo or post we share online, we are making it that much easier for the government and its corporate partners to identify, track and eventually round us up.

Saint or sinner, it doesn’t matter because we’re all being swept up into a massive digital data dragnet that does not distinguish between those who are innocent of wrongdoing, suspects, or criminals.

This is what it means to live in a suspect society.

The government’s efforts to round up those who took part in the Capitol riots shows exactly how vulnerable we all are to the menace of a surveillance state that aspires to a God-like awareness of our lives.

Relying on selfies, social media posts, location data, geotagged photos, facial recognition, surveillance cameras and crowdsourcing, government agents are compiling a massive data trove on anyone and everyone who may have been anywhere in the vicinity of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The amount of digital information is staggering: 15,000 hours of surveillance and body-worn camera footage; 1,600 electronic devices; 270,000 digital media tips; at least 140,000 photos and videos; and about 100,000 location pings for thousands of smartphones.

And that’s just what we know.

More than 300 individuals from 40 states have already been charged and another 280 arrested in connection with the events of January 6. As many as 500 others are still being hunted by government agents.

Also included in this data roundup are individuals who may have had nothing to do with the riots but whose cell phone location data identified them as being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Forget about being innocent until proven guilty.

In a suspect society such as ours, the burden of proof has been flipped: now, you start off guilty and have to prove your innocence.

For instance, you didn’t even have to be involved in the Capitol riots to qualify for a visit from the FBI: investigators have reportedly been tracking—and questioning—anyone whose cell phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the Capitol. One man, who had gone out for a walk with his daughters only to end up stranded near the Capitol crowds, actually had FBI agents show up at his door days later. Using Google Maps, agents were able to pinpoint exactly where they were standing and for how long.

All of the many creepy, calculating, invasive investigative and surveillance tools the government has acquired over the years are on full display right now in the FBI’s ongoing efforts to bring the rioters to “justice.”

FBI agents are matching photos with drivers’ license pictures; tracking movements by way of license plate toll readers; and zooming in on physical identifying marks such as moles, scars and tattoos, as well as brands, logos and symbols on clothing and backpacks. They’re poring over hours of security and body camera footage; scouring social media posts; triangulating data from cellphone towers and WiFi signals; layering facial recognition software on top of that; and then cross-referencing footage with public social media posts.

It’s not just the FBI on the hunt, however.

They’ve enlisted the help of volunteer posses of private citizens, such as Deep State Dogs, to collaborate on the grunt work. As Dinah Voyles Pulver reports, once Deep State Dogs locates a person and confirms their identity, they put a package together with the person’s name, address, phone number and several images and send it to the FBI.

According to USA Today, the FBI is relying on the American public and volunteer cybersleuths to help bolster its cases.

This takes See Something, Say Something snitching programs to a whole new level.

The lesson to be learned: Big Brother, Big Sister and all of their friends are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Simply liking or sharing this article on Facebook, retweeting it on Twitter, or merely reading it or any other articles related to government wrongdoing, surveillance, police misconduct or civil liberties might be enough to get you categorized as a particular kind of person with particular kinds of interests that reflect a particular kind of mindset that might just lead you to engage in a particular kinds of activities and, therefore, puts you in the crosshairs of a government investigation as a potential troublemaker a.k.a. domestic extremist.

Chances are, as the Washington Post reports, you have already been assigned a color-coded threat score—green, yellow or red—so police are forewarned about your potential inclination to be a troublemaker depending on whether you’ve had a career in the military, posted a comment perceived as threatening on Facebook, suffer from a particular medical condition, or know someone who knows someone who might have committed a crime.

In other words, you might already be flagged as potentially anti-government in a government database somewhere—Main Core, for example—that identifies and tracks individuals who aren’t inclined to march in lockstep to the police state’s dictates.

The government has the know-how.

See the rest here

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity : Coronavirus is the New ‘Terrorism’

Posted by M. C. on August 10, 2020

Pelosi’s plan will lead to either a federal mask mandate or federal funding of state and local mask mandate enforcement. Those who resist wearing masks could likely be reported to the authorities by government-funded mask monitors. We can label this the “Stasi” approach to health policy, after the infamous East German secret police force.

Supporters of expediting production and use of a vaccine should remember the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. The swine flu vaccine was rushed into production in response to political pressure to “do something.” The result was a vaccine that was more of a danger than the flu.

Unfortunately, those who raise legitimate concerns regarding the safety of vaccines are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” This is the equivalent of stating that anyone who dares criticize our interventionist foreign policy “hates freedom” and is probably a “terrorist sympathizer.”

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2020/august/10/coronavirus-is-the-new-terrorism/?mc_cid=60edae2c90&mc_eid=4e0de347c8

Written by Ron Paul

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed the next multi-trillion dollar “coronavirus relief” spending bill that will support testing, tracing, treatment, isolation, and mask policies that have been part of a “national strategic plan” she has been advocating. The Trump administration is not opposing Pelosi’s plan on principle. Instead, it is haggling over the price.

But, even if the strategic plan could be implemented at little or no monetary cost, it would still impose an unacceptable cost in lost liberty.

Pelosi’s plan will lead to either a federal mask mandate or federal funding of state and local mask mandate enforcement. Those who resist wearing masks could likely be reported to the authorities by government-funded mask monitors. We can label this the “Stasi” approach to health policy, after the infamous East German secret police force.

Contact tracing could lead to forcing individuals to download a tracing app. The app would record where an individual goes and alert authorities that an individual has been near someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

The strategic plan could eventually include Bill Gates’ and Anthony Fauci’s suggestion that individuals receive “digital certificates” indicating they are vaccinated for or immune to coronavirus. A certificate would be required before an individual can go to work, to school, or even to the grocery store. The need to demonstrate vaccination for or immunity to coronavirus in order to resume normal life would cause many people to “voluntarily” receive a potentially dangerous coronavirus vaccine.

The Trump administration has already spent billions of dollars to support efforts of companies to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Policymakers have stated that once a vaccine is developed it will be rushed into production and onto the market. Supporters of expediting production and use of a vaccine should remember the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. The swine flu vaccine was rushed into production in response to political pressure to “do something.” The result was a vaccine that was more of a danger than the flu.

Unfortunately, those who raise legitimate concerns regarding the safety of vaccines are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” This is the equivalent of stating that anyone who dares criticize our interventionist foreign policy “hates freedom” and is probably a “terrorist sympathizer.”

The coronavirus panic has given new life to the push for a unique patient identifier. The unique patient identifier was authorized in 1996, but appropriations bills since 1998 have contained a provision forbidding the federal government from developing and implementing the identifier. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the ban. The unique patient identifier would aid government efforts to track and vaccinate every American, as well as to infringe in other ways on liberty in the name of “health.”

Politicians and bureaucrats cannot eliminate a virus any more than they can eliminate terrorism. What they can do is use terrorism, a virus, and other real, exaggerated, or manufactured crises to expand their power at the expense of our liberty.

Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power. Therefore, it is up to those of us who know the truth to spread the message of liberty and grow the liberty movement, A strong liberty movement is the only thing that can force the politicians to stop stealing our liberty while promising phantom security from terrorists and viruses.


Copyright © 2020 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.
Please donate to the Ron Paul Institute

 

Be seeing you

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

Medical Surveillance State: France Calls on Apple and Google to Ditch Privacy Protections During Pandemic

Posted by M. C. on April 22, 2020

Don’t worry. This will all go away after you have been received all your forced vaccinations.

Life will be very Kafkaesque for today’s youth.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/22/france-apple-google-ditch-privacy-protections-during-pandemic/

Kurt Zindulka

France has become the first country in the world to openly call on Silicon Valley tech giants to remove privacy protections during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic, in order to introduce a “sovereign European health solution” that would track the movements of citizens.

The French government is aiming to unveil a contact tracing app by May 11th, when the country is expected to ease national lockdown measures that were introduced in March.

France and the European Union as a whole have come out in favour of a centralised approach to the tracking of citizens, in which data would be stored in government servers and monitored by state health services.

Currently, Apple’s operating system would prevent such an approach, as its Bluetooth function prohibits constant background tracking if the data is to be moved off the device. France claims that this privacy protection would prevent the government from developing its contact tracing app.

“We’re asking Apple to lift the technical hurdle to allow us to develop a sovereign European health solution that will be tied our health system,” France’s digital minister, Cédric O, told Bloomberg News.

The system being developed by Google and Apple, which is set to be made available worldwide next month, will take a decentralised approach to tracking, with the data remaining on a user’s phone rather than being collected in a central server.

The European Union has maintained that contact tracing apps should be voluntary, protect individual privacy, and be taken apart after the pandemic restrictions are lifted. However, a group of nearly 300 privacy experts warn that the apps could be used to introduce a surveillance state.

“We are concerned that some ‘solutions’ to the crisis may, via mission creep, result in systems which would allow unprecedented surveillance of society at large,” the group wrote in an open letter.

“Some of the Bluetooth-based proposals respect the individual’s right to privacy, whilst others would enable a form of government or private sector surveillance that would catastrophically hamper trust in and acceptance of such an application by society at large,” the group added.

“We urge all countries to rely only on systems that are subject to public scrutiny and that are privacy-preserving by design (instead of there being an expectation that they will be managed by a trustworthy party), as a means to ensure that the citizen’s data protection rights are upheld,” the group concluded.

France’s parliament will debate the contact tracing app later this month, and European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services Thierry Breton told the French Senate that he would be taking up the matter with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Be seeing you

franz kafka | Sketches, Scratches and Scattered Thoughts

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

A Letter to the Future | Minds

Posted by M. C. on April 13, 2020

https://www.minds.com/CorbettReport/blog/a-letter-to-the-future-1095603499362070528

by James Corbett
corbettreport.com

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”

WWI conspirator Edward Grey

I do not write these words for my contemporaries. We are the damned. It is our lot now to watch as the lamp of liberty is extinguished, our burden to bear witness to the final flickering of the flame of freedom.

No, I don’t write these words for my peers; I write them for those yet to come. The inhabitants of that future dystopia whose birth pangs we are experiencing. The remnant of once-free humanity who might—through some miracle I can’t even imagine—come across this electronic message in a bottle.

I know that it’s almost hopeless. That the chance of these words surviving the coming internet purge are slim at best. That even if—against all odds—this message does wash up on your digital shores, that the chance of these words being understood by you is even slimmer. Not because you don’t understand English, but because you no longer use these words I’m writing: Freedom. Humanity. Individual.

Still, I am here to record the end of an era. So I will press on in the hope against hope that someone, somewhere in that future Digital Dark Age will have eyes to see and ears to hear.

The darkness is descending.

Let there be no mistake: We all know this.

We know what it means when 17 million Americans—a full 10% of the workforce—are added to the unemployment rolls in a mere three weeks. When they are joined by millions more newly unemployed ex-workers all around the globe. When modern-day bread lines stretch for miles in the heart of America’s once-proud cities. When the phony baloney fiat funny money debt rises over $24 trillion and the Fed’s Sovietization of the economy is complete.

We know what it means when police start shooting people dead for not wearing a mask. When drones police quarantines from the sky and robots police lockdowns on the ground. When governments admit to tracking every movement of every citizen and begin internal checkpoints where digital immunity passports determine who may pass and who must stay in their home.

We know what it means when billionaires start telling us that only their new experimental mRNA vaccines will be able to release us from this nightmare. When they threaten to mark us with invisible ink tattoos to ID the vaccinated. When they tell us that we will not be able to buy or sell or participate in the economy until we can prove our “immunity”.

It means that the Corona World Order has arrived.

Oh, sure, some still deny it. But they are only fooling themselves. They’re afraid to admit that it’s true. Many are still under the old conditioning that told them to bleat “conspiracy theorist” at anyone questioning authority.

We have a name for that kind: “sheep.” Or, sometimes, “sheeple.” The masses in our day are kept in the pen by the jackbooted sheepdogs of the police state and led along by the political puppets who act as their shepherds. Occasionally a wise old-timer in the flock cottons on to the game, but the shepherd has only ever fleeced the flock before, so he resigns himself to his fate. Why struggle? It’s mostly painless.

Never did the sheeple suspect that some day the shepherds would lead them to the slaughter.

It is a term of derision, of course. “Sheeple.” But I like to think that it doesn’t just speak to our stupidity. It speaks to a naivety, an innocence. We are trusting and gentle creatures by nature. Peaceable. Cooperative. That is nothing to be scorned. If it weren’t for the predators in our midst, our failings could even be counted as virtues.

But I am not here to say that. I am here to say this: Resist! Struggle! Fight!

You are not cogs in a machine, despite what the shepherds of your day may be telling you. You are free and beautiful human beings. You are not born under the authority of another. You choose how you live your life, not some bureaucrat, not some police robot, not some “immunity checkpoint” algorithm or QR code.

You do not need permission to buy or to sell or to assemble or to speak your mind or to leave your house. You are not an “asymptomatic carrier” of whatever virus your misleaders are telling you to be afraid of. You do not have to shelter in place because someone in a white lab coat told you to.

I want you to understand that, once upon a time, the government didn’t have the right to know where you were, who you were meeting with, what you were buying and what you were doing 24/7. Hell, the government didn’t even have the ability to do that.

I need you to know that there was a time when you could leave your house when you wanted. Travel where you wanted. Buy and sell as you saw fit. Meet your neighbors. Rally. Protest. Party.

Live. As free human beings are meant to live.

Oh, what am I saying? These words. This language. It makes no sense to you anymore, does it? These concepts don’t exist in your time, do they?

You go where you are told to go. You stay home when you are told to stay home. You shut up when you are told to shut up. You think what you are told to think.

I can’t blame you, after all. You’re trusting and naive and peaceful. Like a sheep.

But oh how I weep for what you have become. I tried to avert it. Please believe me. I really tried.

But the lamp of liberty is being extinguished. And I am bearing witness.

I don’t know if history is something you study anymore, but UK Foreign Secretary “Sir” Edward Grey made his observation about the lamps “going out all over Europe” at the end of the so-called “Twelve Days,” the period during the summer of 1914 in which the mainstream history books tell us that the British government was trying to avoid a World War. We are asked to believe that this prescient remark proved Grey to be a sage diplomat, wracked with grief over the pain and suffering that was about to be unleashed upon the world.

But this is history-by-the-winners of the worst kind. In truth, Grey was himself one of the conspirators that was actively working to bring the First World War about. What’s more, the source of this quotation is in fact Grey himself; it was first recorded in Grey’s own post-war memoir. Any tears shed by Grey over the extinguishing of those lamps were crocodile tears, to be sure.

One can well imagine that we will be told some years hence that Bill Gates made a similarly portentous remark at the onset of this corona crisis. Gazing out the window of his $147.5 million dollar, 66,000 square foot “Xanada 2.0” mansion at the then-epicenter of the US outbreak in Washington State, Gates’ post-coronavirus memoir will no doubt tell us that he remarked to an underling that “The lights are going out all across the globe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

But his memoir will no doubt fail to inform us that he was smirking as he said it.

To my children, or my children’s children, or whatever remnant of once-free humanity happens to unearth these words in that God-forsaken future we are goose-stepping into: I’m sorry. I failed you. We all failed you.

But remember this: As long as the blood of your forebears flow through your veins, the lamp of human freedom shall not be extinguished forever.

Let it shine, dear sheep. Let it shine.

Be seeing you

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on A Letter to the Future | Minds

Facebook says it can locate users who opt out of tracking

Posted by M. C. on December 18, 2019

IP addresses also help companies such as Facebook battle misinformation by showing the general origin of potentially nefarious activity, such as a stream of politically oriented posts which might be aimed at a particular country.

The question is who determines what is MISinformation? Facebook, Soros.

Who decides what is truth, who is guilty, who is innocent. Facebook (and Google and Microsoft, all of whom wear the mark of the beast – Soros).

If they want (to find, arrest, stop) you, they will find a way.

Whoa to those in the wrong time, at the wrong time, saying something, anything someone, somewhere doesn’t like.

This is pretty brazen. Facebook is saying opt-out is a joke and Zuckerberg doesn’t care if  you know.

https://news.yahoo.com/facebook-says-locate-users-opt-tracking-032431090.html

San Francisco (AFP) – Facebook can determine where users are even if they opt out of having their whereabouts tracked, the company revealed in a letter sent to US senators.

In the missive, which was widely shared on social media Tuesday, Facebook explained ways it can still figure out where people are after they have selected not to share precise location data with the company.

The social network, which was responding to a request for information by two senators, contended that knowing a user’s whereabouts has benefits ranging from showing ads for nearby shops to fighting hackers and battling misinformation.

“There is no opting out. No control over your personal information,” Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in a tweet.

“That’s Big Tech. And that’s why Congress needs to take action.”

Facebook said that clues for figuring out a user’s location include being tagged in a photo at a specific place or a check-in at a location such as at a restaurant during a dinner with friends.

People may share an address for purchases at a shopping section at Facebook, or simply include it in their profile information.

Along with location information shared in posts by users, devices connecting to the internet are given IP addresses and a user’s whereabouts can then be noted…

Be seeing you

zuckschumer-640x480

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

How Google Threatens Your Children

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2019

Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:…

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/08/06/google-and-data-privacy.aspx

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola

Story at-a-glance

  • More than half of American K-12 schools use Chromebooks and Google apps, allowing Google to build brand loyalty from an early age
  • Google’s primary business is tracking, compiling, storing and selling personal data. By capturing children at an early age, it will be able to build the most comprehensive personality profiles of the population ever conceived
  • By the time these children have grown into adulthood, every single preference, thought, belief and proclivity will be known about them, which will make them extremely vulnerable to manipulation
  • Google allows hundreds of third-party software developers to access the emails of Gmail users, and they’re not just using software to scan for keywords. In some cases, employees are actually reading the emails
  • By default, Google Chrome allows any and all tracker cookies to follow your every move online

Google is without a doubt the largest and clearest monopoly on the planet. It dominates online searches and advertising,1,2 which in and of itself leads to automatic bias. As noted by Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page in their 1998 paper,3 “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” “… [W]e expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of consumers.”

Google has also infiltrated many other areas of our day-to-day lives, having acquired dozens of other companies4 you might not realize belong to Google or its parent company, Alphabet.

Among the most well-known are YouTube, the largest video platform on the web, and Android, one of the most popular operating systems worldwide.5,6 Google also has significant influence over urban development,7 health care8,9 and childhood education.

Google has become ubiquitous in American classrooms

Google’s influence over young children has been a concern for years. As noted in a 2014 article10 in the International Business Times, “How Google Took Over the American Classroom and Is Creating a Gmail generation”:

“Google apps, services and increasingly, Chromebooks, have become ubiquitous in the American classroom and it’s not hard to understand why: they require no expensive hardware, they never need to be updated, and they’re free, an important consideration for cash-strapped districts …

South Carolina’s Richland School District 2 boasts 22,000 Chromebooks, which covers a student populace nearing 27,000, who also use Google Apps.

That makes for a sizeable student population that will become accustomed to utilizing Google services … ‘Education is at the core of Google’s mission — to remove the four walls of the classroom and make the world’s information accessible to all students,’ a Google spokeswoman said.”

Google will know everything about your child

However, for all its conveniences, Google poses a very real threat to all these children. As noted in a 2017 article11 in The New York Times — which details the strategic moves that allowed Google to take over the American classroom — “schools may be giving Google more than they are getting: generations of future customers.”

In 2012, less than 1% of the tablets and laptops used in the U.S. school system were Google Chromebooks. By 2015, more than half the devices sold to K-12 schools were Chromebooks, equipped with a free suite of Google apps and education-specific programs.12

When you consider Google’s primary business is tracking, compiling, storing and selling personal data, by capturing children at an early age, it will be able to build the most comprehensive personality profiles of the population ever conceived — and there’s no opt-out feature for this data gathering.13 As reported by The Washington Post in 2015:14

“… [I]n a filing with the Federal Trade Commission, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argued Google is tracking nearly everything students are doing when they are signed into their Google accounts and, in some cases, using that information to build profiles and serve them targeted ads in certain Google programs.”

By the time these children have grown into adulthood, every single preference, thought, belief and proclivity will be known about them, which will make them extremely vulnerable to manipulation, not only through targeted advertising15 but also through what might be called customized censorship or targeted social engineering — in essence, the strategy of tailoring the information any given individual can see in order to shape and mold their prejudices and ideas. The Washington Post writes:16

“Google makes $30 per device by selling management services for the millions of Chromebooks that ship to schools. But by habituating students to its offerings at a young age, Google obtains something much more valuable.

Every year, several million American students graduate from high school. And not only does Google make it easy for those who have school Google accounts to upload their trove of school Gmail, Docs and other files to regular Google consumer accounts — but schools encourage them to do so …

That doesn’t sit well with some parents. They warn that Google could profit by using personal details from their children’s school email to build more powerful marketing profiles of them as young adults …

Unlike Apple or Microsoft, which make money primarily by selling devices or software services, Google derives most of its revenue from online advertising — much of it targeted through sophisticated use of people’s data …

‘Unless we know what is collected, why it is collected, how it is used and a review of it is possible, we can never understand with certainty how this information could be used to help or hurt a kid,’ said Bill Fitzgerald of Common Sense Media, a children’s advocacy group, who vets the security and privacy of classroom apps.”

Google teaches children to trust the least trustworthy

While most adults are now at least somewhat aware that Google is spying on their every move and selling their personal data, children are simply too young to understand the long-term ramifications of this pervasive data gathering. (To get an idea of the kind of information tracked and stored, see “What Kind of Information Does Google and Facebook Have on You?”)

Children are extremely vulnerable to influence of all kinds, and Google is taking full advantage of this…

Boycott Google by avoiding any and all Google products:

Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo32 and Startpage33

Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices.34 From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy

If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service such as ProtonMail,35 an encrypted email service based in Switzerland

Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives36

If you’re a high school student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts.

Be seeing you

 

How Google and Amazon are 'spying' on you | Daily Mail Online

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

FBI Wants Tech to Track Social Media for Criminals and Terrorists Before They Act

Posted by M. C. on August 2, 2019

The FIB raking in the whole haystack to find that needle.

Say the wrong word and you may be on a list…if you aren’t already.

8 Ways We Regularly Commit Felonies Without Realizing It

https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/07/fbi-wants-tech-track-social-media-criminals-and-terrorists-they-act/158843/

By Brandi Vincent,

The Federal Bureau of Investigations aims to acquire access to a “social media early alerting tool” that will help insiders proactively and reactively monitor how terrorist groups, foreign intelligence services, criminal organizations and other domestic threats use networking platforms to further their illegal efforts, according to a request for proposal amended this week.

“With increased use of social media platforms by subjects of current FBI investigations and individuals that pose a threat to the United States, it is critical to obtain a service which will allow the FBI to identify relevant information from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other Social media platforms in a timely fashion,” the agency said in the RFP. “Consequently, the FBI needs near real-time access to a full range of social media exchanges in order to obtain the most current information available in furtherance of its law enforcement and intelligence missions.”

Though the request was initially released on July 8, the FBI amended it this week to extend the relevant dates: The agency’s answers to vendors moved from July 25 to Aug. 7, and the proposal due date shifted from Aug. 8 to Aug. 27. Though the original proposal listed the anticipated award date as Aug. 30, it could be pushed back due to these changes…

Be seeing you

Prism Cartoons and Comics - funny pictures from CartoonStock

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 3 Comments »