In the latest Twitter Files report published on Friday, journalist and author Matt Taibbi revealed that Twitter partnered with the Virality Project, which warned the social media platform that “true stories that could fuel hesitancy,” complained that “anti-vaccine” accounts were retweeting the CDC, and ironically ran searches for the term “surveillance state” while looking for more information to censor.
“The NSA’s surveillance network “has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic”… the NSA, working with the FBI, engaged in the bulk collection of phone records of U.S. citizens’ phone records. Other programs may allow for data collection from Google, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms. These are the alleged capabilities that have been leaked to the media and government watchdog groups. One can only imagine what the federal government’s more secretive and advanced programs might be capable of collecting.”
In early February, I spent $171.59 to see the Rangers play the Canucks at Madison Square Garden. I had no plans to watch the hockey game. I just wanted to find out whether my guest, Tia Garcia, a personal injury lawyer, could get into the building.
We got in the security line and walked through the metal detector. Then, as Ms. Garcia turned to pick up her bag from the conveyor belt, a security guard asked her to step aside and show her driver’s license. “Am I in trouble?” she asked.
The guard told her that she would need to wait for management to come speak to her.
I am unfamiliar with the law in Canada and wonder if biometric info can still be collected willy nilly in the private sector as it was in the past.
If you enjoy watching YouTube videos or prefer on-demand streaming services, like Netflix or Disney, over cable or radio, Bill C-11 will have a big impact on you.
Through this piece of legislation, the government is about to give itself the authority to control what you watch. Instead of giving you more of what you want, YouTube will be instructed to give you more of what the government wants you to watch.
Google was scheduled to appear before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage yesterday to discuss Bill C-18 and its test of the removal of links to Canadian news services for a small percentage of its users, but the meeting was postponed due to technical difficulties. That ensured that the big Bill C-18 news of the day did not come from the hearing, but rather from an exceptional Ricochet Media article featuring comments from Senator Paula Simons that should heighten concern about the government’s intent with Bill C-18. Senator Simons, a longtime journalist and Trudeau appointee to the Senate, raises many concerns with the bill (and a great line that “honest to god, I feel that this is written by people who have never used the Internet”), but I think this is the key passage, which opens the door to targets beyond Google and Facebook …
This where the government is at with Bill C-18. A Canadian can post a quote from a news article on their Facebook page, but if they include a link to the source article, there would be a requirement for the platform to negotiate mandatory payment for linking. pic.twitter.com/8dt618rHaQ
— Michael Geist (@mgeist) November 29, 2022
Not entirely sure this would impact blogs like my own, but it seems likely.
Oh, I’ve been suspended from Twitter for calling Junior a China Whore.
I apologize to whores for the hurtful association with Trudeau and the CCP.
Chatbots pave the way for a surveillance state
Can anyone compete with China’s Artificial Intelligence super-system? Sleepy government bureaucracies the world over are finally waking up to the hard reality that they have virtually no chance. China is galloping ahead. Only last month, it unveiled its latest rival to San Francisco’s ChatGPT: the Moss bot, and this month it plans to release another. The UK lags far behind.
When I was a sparring partner for professional boxers many, many years ago, I was taught to be wary of the jab. It is a tactic used to distract an opponent while setting him up for a devastating power punch that takes him down for the count.
Biden is throwing jabs.
The power punch is a little noticed Executive Order with the innocuous number 14067 and its title, “Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets.”
An author should be pleased to see his thesis bolstered by events. Yet since writing The Coming of Neo-Feudalism in 2020, I have not found any joy in the continued growth of the West’s class divides, as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in ever fewer hands. The good news is that the working and middle classes are not yet out for the count, and are showing welcome signs of pushback against both state and corporate power.
All these projects to digitize the world are also programs to digitize you, to turn you into a virtual rather than real human being.
The most egregious act that brought the world’s attention to the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy was when Justin Trudeau ordered banks to freeze the accounts not only of peaceful protesters but also of their financial supporters and even some people related only by association, such as ex-spouses. This move inspired so much outrage that, in a somewhat unprecedented fashion, this feckless prime minister was later excoriated to his face by some members of the European Parliament. In a blistering speech that went viral, MEP Mislav Kolakušić of Croatia declaimed, “You block the bank accounts of single parents so that they can’t even pay their children’s education and medicine, that they can’t pay utilities, mortgages for their homes,” and so forth.
Croatian Member of European Parliament and former judge Mislav Kolakusic calls out Justin Trudeau during his visit to the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday:
“To you these may be liberal methods. For many citizens of the world, it is dictatorship of the worst kind.” pic.twitter.com/3HRXUrnErC
— James Melville (@JamesMelville) March 24, 2022
Beginning in April 2023, Discover will become the first credit card issuer to track gun purchases made by their cardholders.
On September 11, 2022, Breitbart News noted that Visa caved to pressure from gun control groups and New York Democrats, agreeing to flag gun and ammo purchases via a new sales categorization. The Associated Press observed that Mastercard and other major credit cards also agreed to flag gun sales.
A State Department-backed “disinformation” tracking group blacklisting conservative news outlets pressured advertising companies to punish websites boosting the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory, which a federal agency now says is the most likely origin of the virus.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British group with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit organizations, has continued to come under fire for feeding conservative news blacklists to advertising companies. This same government-funded entity repeatedly applied pressure on companies to cut ties with websites promoting the once alleged right-wing “conspiracy” that COVID-19 emerged from a lab — which the Energy Department recently concluded is probable based on intelligence.
A group of Stanford professors are fighting back against a woke tattle-tale tool that lets students anonymously report each other for discrimination.
More than 75 professors argue in a petition to school administrators that the online tool threatens free speech on campus, with one telling the Wall Street Journal it reminded him of systems in place in the Soviet Union and China.
The Maxient reporting system, employed at 1,300 institutions around the country, has already been challenged by free speech advocates in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Oklahoma.
Air Canada announced it has launched digital identification, becoming the first airline in Canada with approval to offer customers the safety and convenience of a new option using facial recognition technology to confirm identification. In a pilot project currently underway, Air Canada’s digital identification is now available for customers departing from Vancouver International Airport (YVR) when boarding select flights to Winnipeg, and for eligible customers entering the Air Canada Café at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Air Canada plans to expand digital identification options to select Canadian airports and Maple Leaf Lounges as part of its pilot project phase.
… Customers choosing to use digital identification will benefit from a simplified and seamless process at the gate and when entering our Maple Leaf Lounges,” said Craig Landry, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer at Air Canada.
Gee thanks Big Brother!
h/t XC
Central banks are creating their own surveillance state
Should we really be surprised that the Treasury and Bank of England are exploring whether to launch a state-issued digital pound? Sunak, after all, was the chancellor who first floated the idea of backing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) — already dubbed “Britcoin”. Nor was he alone: 11 countries, including China, Nigeria, The Bahamas and Jamaica, have already launched their own digital currencies, while more than 100 others, representing over 95% of global GDP, are deciding whether to follow suit. In the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has launched a pilot programme; the European Central Bank hopes to make a decision about the creation of a digital euro this autumn.
On February 8, 2023, while arguing on behalf of fired NYC workers who declined covid vaccination, attorney John Bursch stated in open court that unvaccinated teachers in New York City were flagged with problem codes in their personnel files, and when that occurred “their fingerprints are sent with that flag to the FBI and the New York Criminal Justice Services.”
h/t Mauser
