Electronic surveillance, spying on citizens, social media and manipulations with the public opinion

Why You Should Oppose The Censorship Of David Icke (Hint: It’s Got Nothing To Do With Icke)

"Within 48 hours both Facebook and then Youtube have deleted the accounts of David Icke for posting “content that disputes the existence and transmission of Covid-19 as described by the WHO and the NHS.” Other platforms may soon fall in suit, as they did with Alex Jones in 2018.

This article is not about David Icke. I will say it again in italics for the especially dense: this article is not about David Icke. This article is about why we shouldn’t be okay with monopolistic billionaire-owned Silicon Valley tech giants with extensive ties to US government agencies controlling human communication."

More here:

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/why-you-should-oppose-the-censorship-of-david-icke-hint-its-got-nothing-to-do-with-icke-4cb72d19481c

“The people who want to add a censorship regime to a health crisis are more dangerous and more stupid by leaps and bounds than a president who tells people to inject disinfectant.” https://t.co/KFA8jC6XiY

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 30, 2020

Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
·
29m
It is a known fact that Silicon Valley tech giants have extensive ties to the US government. Like, it's not a secret. At all. Yet whenever you object to internet censorship you always get people babbling about how it's a "private company" so it's okay.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/05/03/why-you-should-oppose-the-censorship-of-david-icke-hint-its-got-nothing-to-do-with-icke/



Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
·
25m
If a company is intertwined with government power in myriad ways, how is its deplatforming meaningfully distinct from state censorship? Especially when its willingness to collaborate with the government protects it from antitrust cases, thereby killing any potential competition?

Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
·
20m
"Free market" types say "If you don't like it you can go on another platform!" No you can't. There's no competition. If you don't like Twitter you can leave a platform of hundreds of millions for a platform like Gab, which is like ten people and nine of them are Nazis.

They've herded everyone onto a few select monopolistic platforms, and now they're censoring those platforms with an increasingly authoritarian fist. There's no "free market" solution to this problem, because it's not happening in a free market.https://t.co/FsOIoowftM

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 3, 2020

https://t.co/D2ahvmwMpu

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 3, 2020

https://t.co/yZ4CBOzrBf

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) May 3, 2020

There's nothing private about such companies. It's just disguise for the PTB to impose its will over the people. Companies as Facebook or AT&T literally carry out political agenda of selfproclaimed elites.https://t.co/kAlToSOJqp pic.twitter.com/99euTsrH6Z

— KneelB4Zod! (@Whoossain49th) May 3, 2020

Facebook Removes Accounts Linked to QAnon Conspiracy Theory

https://time.com/5832497/facebook-removes-qanon-conspiracy-theory/

It's over. pic.twitter.com/gHBxqJ8hQ0

— London Real (@LondonRealTV) May 16, 2020

The Intercept
@theintercept
·
38m
Unbeknownst to most people, Microsoft has a “Public Safety and Justice” division with staff who formerly worked in law enforcement. This is the true heart of the company’s policing services, though it has operated for years away from public view.

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/14/microsoft-police-state-mass-surveillance-facial-recognition/?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=theintercept

Zuckerberg: Facebook censors 89% of ‘hate speech’ BEFORE it’s seen by anyone

MORE: https://t.co/0dCQkuCRMZ pic.twitter.com/80uWD6xjvS

— RT (@RT_com) July 31, 2020

And, of course, hate speech is defined by the globalist agenda in attempt to mute any opposition to their one world government...

The Intercept
@theintercept
·
1m
Stingrays, which may have been used at protests, can inject spying software onto specific phones or direct the browser of a phone to a website where malware can be loaded, though it’s not clear if law enforcement agencies have used them for this purpose.



https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/?utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

HOW COPS CAN SECRETLY TRACK YOUR PHONE

A guide to stingray surveillance technology, which may have been deployed at recent protests.

What is a stingray?

Stingray is the generic name for an electronic surveillance tool that simulates a cell phone tower in order to force mobile phones and other devices to connect to it instead of to a legitimate cell tower. In doing so, the phone or other device reveals information about itself and its user to the operator of the stingray. Other common names for the tool are “cell-site simulator” and “IMSI catcher.”


What is a dirtbox?

A dirtbox is the common name for specific models of an IMSI catcher that are made by a Boeing subsidiary, Maryland-based Digital Receiver Technology — hence the name “DRT box.” They are reportedly used by the DEA and Marshals Service from airplanes to intercept data from mobile phones. A 2014 Wall Street Journal article revealed that the Marshals Service began using dirtboxes in Cessna airplanes in 2007. An airborne dirtbox has the ability to collect data on many more phones than a ground-based stingray; it can also move more easily and quickly over wide areas. According to the 2006 catalog of surveillance technologies leaked in 2015, models of dirtboxes described in that document can be configured to track up to 10,000 targeted IMSI numbers or phones.


Much more in the article:

https://theintercept.com/2020/07/31/protests-surveillance-stingrays-dirtboxes-phone-tracking/?utm_campaign=theintercept&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

More globalist censorship:

BREAKING: Starting today, Twitter is labelling accounts "belonging to state-affiliated media entities, their editors-in-chief, and/or their senior staff".
Just checked the accounts of China's Xinhua and People's Daily, and also Russia's RT and Sputnik; and the labels are there pic.twitter.com/ED51yfvUBr

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 6, 2020

There are some interesting things. For example US DoD's Twitter account was not labeled as US state account. Also this is important:

This, to me, is the most interesting paragraph in Twitter's announcement. From today, tweets by RT, Sputnik, People's Daily, Xinhua, CGTN, CCTV, and all the other "state-affiliated" accounts will no longer be promoted on home timeline, notifications and search. A huge change pic.twitter.com/semtHM4MQC

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 6, 2020

As all the western msm are "privately owned", and all of them use same talking points and rhetoric regarding ongoing events, the opposing voices and alternative informations were effectively removed from notifications or timelines...

Facebook "now officially bans content that references “Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government.”https://t.co/QKtO4DNBW6

— Kevin MacDonald (@TOOEdit) August 13, 2020

Unbeknownst to most people, Microsoft has a “Public Safety and Justice” division with staff who formerly worked in law enforcement. This is the true heart of the company’s policing services, though it has operated for years away from public view. https://t.co/Kr8lWFcZHN

— The Intercept (@theintercept) August 19, 2020

guest2 wrote:Twitter announced they would start banning QAnon accounts some weeks ago, (here: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/twitter-removing-qanon-content-ban-accounts-conspiracy-theory.html)  and today it appears they've started to implement the search blacklist too.

When you search for QAnon affiliated phrases/terms in the Twitter search tool either very few or zero results turn up. So it does seem people could be posting the phrases but they are being blacklisted soon after doing so.

Some of the banned phrases include, #WWG1WGA  #QSentMe #QSentUS #deepstate #Pedowood #Adrenochrome

I copied this from the main thread. Am interested in your opinion if possible, Zod, and thought it would be appropriate to ask it in this thread.

I wanted to ask you this since you seem to be a strong proponent of anti-censorship/free speech. But what about situations such as above with QAnon or similar situations? The QAnon psy-op and propaganda distracts people from focusing their attention on holding the power in government to account, ensures they pushing unconstructive ire towards their fellow countrymen, radicalizes certain segments of the population to actively undermine their own country without realizing it that therefore allows those in power to continue to run roughshod over all. Would you not agree that in this situation that by not implementing censorship you are actually allowing a form of social media manipulation that works to the disadvantage of the average citizen and to the benefit of criminals/wrongdoers in government?

The way I see it, censorship in this instance is a necessary evil in order to prevent a greater evil from being allowed to flourish- that of helping to radicalize millions of Trumptown loonies, and create even more, who unwittingly aid 'the powers that be' in carrying out their objectives.

Breaking; State Department to release memos detailing illegal social media monitoring of Americans | Just The News https://t.co/otemXn3rTq

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) September 1, 2020

Patrick Toomey
@PatrickCToomey
·
10h
Breaking: In a long-awaited decision, the 9th Circuit has ruled that the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' call records was illegal.

The court held that the mass surveillance program violated Section 215—and very likely violated the 4th Amendment too.

https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/united-states-v-moalin-ninth-circuit-opinion?redirect=legal-document/us-v-moalin-ninth-circuit-opinion

This ruling affirms our constitutional freedoms. We cannot stand by as our civil liberties are undermined, even by entities within our own government. We must hold those who abuse their power accountable & protect the brave whistleblowers who expose them. https://t.co/VHduxkmatS

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) September 4, 2020

zerohedge
@zerohedge
·
1m
Amazon's In-Home Security Drone Is Company's "Most Chilling Surveillance Product" Yet



https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/amazons-security-drone-companys-most-chilling-home-surveillance-product-yet

Bean
@SomersetBean
·
7h
New move by YouTube is a major escalation in the continually escalating rollout of internet censorship protocols by US government-tied Silicon Valley megacorporations:



https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/yet-another-major-escalation-in-establishment


Yet Another Major Escalation In Establishment Internet Censorship


YouTube, whose corporate owner Google is arguably the most powerful company on earth, is now deleting user videos which claim the US election was fraudulent.

YouTube's official statement on its decision to do this is very revealing, not so much for what it says as for what it does not say.

At no point does the video publishing platform attempt to argue that it is removing these videos because they jeopardize anyone's health or safety, as it did when it began deleting videos deemed to be spreading misinformation about Covid-19.

At no point does it attempt to argue that these videos are inciting violence, as it did when it began deleting QAnon videos.

At no point does it claim that these videos are misleading voters, as it initially began collaborating with the US government to prevent, since all the voting is over and done with.

It's simply deleting the videos because they are believed to be wrong. This is an important distinction, because it’s a marked deviation from the previous policy of content deletion used by YouTube and other new media platforms.

2/ Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline. Now that enough states certified their Presidential election results, we’ll remove any content published today (or anytime after) that alleges widespread fraud or errors changed the 2020 U.S. Presidential election outcome.

— YouTubeInsider (@YouTubeInsider) December 9, 2020

"Yesterday was the safe harbor deadline for the U.S. Presidential election and enough states have certified their election results to determine a President-elect," YouTube writes. "Given that, we will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, in line with our approach towards historical U.S. Presidential elections. For example, we will remove videos claiming that a Presidential candidate won the election due to widespread software glitches or counting errors. We will begin enforcing this policy today, and will ramp up in the weeks to come."

I neither know nor care whether the sort of election fraud alleged to have taken place in the contest between Joe Biden or Donald Trump actually happened; I know the processes by which candidates are elevated to run in a US general election are corrupt and rigged from top to bottom, so the question of whether additional manipulation took place between two establishment-approved imperialist oligarch lackeys in a pretend election is not particularly interesting to me. But this new move by YouTube is a major escalation in the continually escalating rollout of internet censorship protocols by US government-tied Silicon Valley megacorporations.

Even if America did not have the single most flawed election system in the entire western world (and it does), and even if it had been conclusively proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that no election fraud of any sort took place (and it hasn't), it would still be a massive escalation beyond previous online censorship protocols to begin censoring people simply because they are wrong. People are allowed to be wrong. A free society allows people the right to voice wrong beliefs because the only alternative is creating a monolithic Ministry of Truth which has authority over what the right and wrong beliefs are.

Those of us who've been warning of the dangers of government-aligned plutocratic corporations lowering their standards for silencing speech further and further were not committing a slippery slope fallacy; it's not fallacious to warn of a slippery slope when the slope is demonstrably real. The fact that we've been methodically paced from accepting the cross-platform deletion of Alex Jones a couple of years ago to random internet users being silenced for no other reason than expressing wrongthink today shows us the slope is very real and very consequential, and our slide into information totalitarianism will continue if something major does not change.

"Do I believe the 2020 election was stolen? No. But I also didn’t believe the election was stolen from Hillary Clinton in 2016, when the Internet was overrun with conspiracy theories nearly identical to the ones now being propagated by Trump fans." https://t.co/nvH0isGvaN

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 11, 2020

Matt Taibbi has written a solid article condemning YouTube's latest ramp-up and highlighting the double standard in the way Democrats have been pushing narratives about Trump colluding with Russia to fraudulently steal the 2016 election for four years with no consequences whatsoever while Trump supporters are banned from doing essentially the exact same thing. I would add that the primary source of this double standard is not ideological bias (though that's surely a factor as well) but the coziness these Silicon Valley tech giants have formed with US government agencies who signed off on Russiagate but not on Trump's claims. It's not so much a liberal bias as it is a US intelligence cartel bias.

In reality, there was never any more evidence for liberal claims of Russia interfering with the US election in any meaningful way than there is for election fraud in 2020. Actual journalists and impartial social media platforms would have recognized the indisputable fact that the Russian hacking narrative was extremely porous and remains completely unproven, and the narrative about Russian memes swaying the election is a complete joke. The only thing giving the Democrats' claims more narrative weight than those of the Republicans today is that one was endorsed by the US intelligence cartel (the same US intelligence cartel which just so happened to wind up advancing multiple preexisting agendas using Russiagate) and the other was not. That's it.

Those who understood that whoever controls the narrative controls the world and that plutocrat-controlled mass media is the linchpin of the oligarchic status quo were very excited about the arrival of the internet, because they understood its information-democratizing potential. Now we're all watching those hopes slowly eroded into nothing as the same power structures which control and influence the mainstream media now work to take full control over online information.

But Not Videos Claiming Donald Trump is a Russian Agent, Because That's the Acceptable Election Conspiracy Theory https://t.co/gtfz4WZTlX

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) December 9, 2020

"On average 88% of the videos in top 10 search results related to elections came from authoritative news sources (amongst the rest are things like newsy late-night shows, creator videos and commentary)," YouTube boasts in the aforementioned statement on its deletion of wrongthink election videos. "And the most viewed channels and videos are from news channels like NBC and CBS."

As though rigging your algorithms to give users results which link to the same plutocratic media outlets who've helped deceive the public about every war and continuously manipulate them into believing status quo politics totally work is something to be proud of.

If information which isn't approved by the powerful continues to be squeezed into smaller and smaller fringe circles, the information-democratizing potential which once gave revolutionary thinkers so much hope will be completely nullified, and all that will remain is a network which allows establishment power structures to distribute propaganda much faster than they could back in the days of the old media. Here's hoping our rulers fail in their attempts to do this, and that we succeed in our desire to stop them.

Parler CEO Says Service Dropped By “Every Vendor” And Could End His Business

"Parler CEO John Matze said today that his social media company has been dropped by virtually all of its business alliances after Amazon, Apple and Google ended their agreements with the social media service.

“Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,” Matze said today on Fox News."

https://deadline.com/2021/01/parler-ceo-says-service-dropped-by-every-vendor-and-could-end-the-company-1234670607/

(March 24, 2021) Amazon sends thousands of US drivers biometric monitoring consent forms, says sign it or lose job
Drivers for Amazon across the United States are being given consent forms
to be monitored with face biometrics within their delivery trucks,
and told they must sign them or lose their jobs, according to Vice Motherboard.
The biometric data collection consent forms have been sent to approximately 75,000 drivers.

Images collected by the “on-board safety camera” will confirm the driver’s identity,
and the ecommerce giant will also collect vehicle location and movement data.
The deployment of the cameras from fleet management technology provider Netradyne
was announced by Amazon in February. The software running on the cameras can detect distracted or drowsy driving.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation said the threat of job termination makes consent meaningless.
Five senators wrote a letter to Amazon last month raising concerns about the program, asking for a response by March 24.
biometricupdate.com/202103/amazon-sends-thousands-of-us-drivers-biometric-monitoring-consent-forms-says-sign-it-or-lose-job