Sex sells… America has a new J. Edgar Hoover… Meet the digital secret-keeper of the Deep State… In the mailbag: “Government is like cancer – its growth is uncontrollable”…
Attentive readers will have picked up on the spat between Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, and David Pecker, the publisher of supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer.
Last month, the Enquirer published intimate messages Bezos sent to his mistress, Lauren Sanchez, from his iPhone.
And last week, news broke that Pecker had gotten his hands on something even more intimate – a below-the-belt selfie Bezos sent Sanchez.
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As they say in the business, “Sex sells.”
And Bezos – one of the richest and most powerful men in the world – is a logical target for tabloid drama.
What caught our attention here at The Daily Cut wasn’t Bezos’ love life. (We couldn’t care less what consenting adults get up to in the bedroom.)
Rather, it’s a claim by Bezos’ security team that a “government entity” may have gotten hold of his iPhone messages.
As we’ve been showing you, Silicon Valley has been colluding with the Deep State to build a surveillance state in America.
And Amazon – along with fellow Silicon Valley giants Google and Facebook – is at the heart of this alliance.
In fact, Bill Bonner Letter coauthor Dan Denning believes Amazon could pose the biggest threat of all three…
Amazon has become the single most dangerous company in American history. It’s on the verge of becoming the digital secret-keeper of the Deep State – the modern equivalent of J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, with personal files and dirty secrets on thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, or perhaps even ALL Americans.
You see, the company is trying to make itself an indispensable cog in the surveillance machinery of the Deep State.
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As we showed you in the September 18, 2018 issue of The Daily Cut, Bezos’ firm has developed advanced face-recognition software called Rekognition.
It’s helping the Orlando Police Department track, identify, and analyze Americans in real time using CCTV cameras and officer body cameras.
That’s a frightening prospect. But it’s not the only way Bezos is making Amazon essential to the U.S. surveillance state.
In 2014, Amazon inked a secret deal with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for cloud-computing services.
The deal, worth $600 million, saw the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) upload the sensitive data they collect to an Amazon data center built on CIA premises.
This allows all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies to seamlessly share information with each other. (Yes… there are 17.)
And in April, the Pentagon will likely award Amazon $10 billion to contract out its data centers to the U.S. military.
That’s short for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure. Here’s Dan with more…
The aim of JEDI, according to public documents, is to “unlock the power of data and analytics“ for America’s warfighters… or to use technology to generate more “operational” information and give the U.S. military an edge in its war against everything and everyone.
Think about it… The U.S. government is outsourcing its secret-keeping and intelligence databases to a single company.
And it makes Amazon a key partner in building and maintaining a Police State in America.
In addition to Amazon, Bezos heads up his own space company, Blue Origin.
And last October, it announced a deal with the U.S. Air Force to build a rocket to take military satellites into space.
Bezos later tweeted that he was “proud to serve the national security space community.”
Ask the ordinary Joe what the Deep State is… and he’ll likely tell you that it’s a creature of government.
But regular readers know the Deep State is really a public-private partnership – a hybrid between key areas of government and the private sector. Dan again…
The Deep State is not a tightly run conspiracy. It’s a cartel of interests brought together for the sake of wealth, power, privilege, and self-preservation.
The Deep State is self-serving, in other words. And that, again, runs counter to mainstream perception.
For a long time, Americans accepted the existence of a Deep State – the NSA, the CIA, along with their surveillance programs – as long as it was in the service of fighting foreign enemies.
You may even argue that Amazon is just doing its patriotic duty in aiding the Intelligence Community. But what if it were to train its sights on folks at home who don’t toe the line?
Here’s Dan again…
Think about the future… If your data is being warehoused for all of time, who’s to say that you won’t be found guilty of a new crime 10 years from now?
Maybe it’ll be a thought crime. Or maybe it’ll be some pattern detected in your data that shows you’re on the path to some “radical” action.
Either way, neither the state, nor private companies such as Amazon, have any business watching us all the time – at least, not in what’s supposed to be a free country.
It’s why we’ve been urging you to check out the steps Dan outlined in the August 30, 2018 issue of The Daily Cut – “Your Guide to ‘Going Dark’ Online.”
If you haven’t yet, make sure to catch up here on the four steps you can take to maintain your right to privacy… and your freedom… today.
As Dan says, the time to take back your privacy is now.
The feds already keep tabs on you. But Dan believes they’re working on taking it a step further – and building the ultimate tool of social control.
What’s coming will be a privacy crisis so deep… so intrusive… and so Orwellian that it threatens to change what it means to be a citizen in a democracy.
Get the details straight from Dan in this video presentation.
Last Tuesday, we drew your attention to two essays on rising Democratic Socialist star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from Legacy Research cofounders Bill Bonner and Doug Casey. (Read Bill’s essay here and Doug’s here.)
And opinions were flying in the mailbag all week about socialism… and whether it’s already taken root in the U.S.
Today, the debate continues…
Socialism works extremely well for small groups: the family, the tribe, the clan, small labor unions, the Amish. But it does not scale well.
Large unions are corrupt (teamsters? Jimmy Hoffa?). Large governments are corrupt. Those in power are corrupted by the power to rob Peter to pay whoever will vote for them. That’s why countries that adopt socialism fail. Heck, even the Chinese have abandoned it and adopted one-party capitalism!
– Mark B.
Government is like cancer; its growth is uncontrollable. The two major parties are all led by power mongers in a back room where they have control of all the money. Since no one can finance his own campaign the power brokers can control who runs, which leaves me voting against someone rather than for someone.
[Benjamin] Franklin is spot on. When we allowed government to tax us, we became slaves to it. It takes our money, and then, to get it back in the form of roads, etc., we have to give up our freedom and liberty. Plus, being the middleman, the government scrapes off a sizeable chunk for itself.
– Roger K.
The world of beneficial solutions is rarely clear cut. For example, there is always a price to pay in dealing with the most needy in society. Conservatives want to pay one way and socialists want to pay another – but all do pay! The key is trying to get the balance right – philosophically, morally, and economically – so that the cost of any solution results in a net-lasting benefit to the whole community.
– Richard F.
Socialism simply does not work. While it sounds good to have government pass out all the free stuff, it can’t be financially supported for an extended period of time. Most recent example is the financial collapse in Venezuela.
Unfortunately, the socialists have primary control over our media and education system and are teaching our children otherwise. This generation has been given all that it asks for and will expect the same from its government. It will be difficult to break the cycle.
– Wayne R.
Which is more frightening – the growth of the surveillance state or the growth of socialism in America? Write us at [email protected].
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
February 11, 2019
Lisbon, Portugal