Smile, you’re on camera… Facebook is rating your trustworthiness… Have you “gone dark” yet? In the mailbag: “You are so full of crap it’s hard to believe…”
Here at The Daily Cut, we’ve been warning you about the rise of a global Surveillance State (catch up here and here)… and the danger it poses to your personal freedom.
What’s happening today in China should serve as a warning.
As you read this, CCTV cameras armed with artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology are trawling through the faces millions of Chinese citizens.
They’re searching for folks wanted by the cops. And they’re finding them.
As Britain’s BBC reported…
Chinese police have used facial recognition technology to locate and arrest a man who was among a crowd of 60,000 concert goers.
The suspect, who has been identified only as Mr. Ao, was attending a concert by pop star Jacky Cheung in Nanchang city last weekend when he was caught.
Police said the 31-year-old was wanted for an “economic crime” – whatever that means.
In Shandong province – about 650 miles north of where Mr. Ao was picked up – police arrested 25 suspects at a beer festival using facial recognition.
In Wuhu, about 400 miles south of Shandong, police caught a fugitive murder suspect when cameras picked him out of a crowd at a street market.
And in the west of the country, the main surveillance targets are Uyghurs – a Muslim ethnic minority the Chinese government is cracking down on.
According to Bloomberg, these facial recognition cameras alert the authorities when Uyghurs venture more than 1,000 feet beyond designated “safe areas.”
To catch you up real quick… in dozens of pilot programs across China, the government gives citizens a “social credit” score.
Get caught breaking too many rules, and the feds will dock your score. Get a low enough score, and the feds will put you on a “restricted” list.
No more taking flights and getting on trains. The government will even bar you from staying at certain hotels and sending your kids to certain schools.
In 1944, at the height of Hitler’s rule, there were about 16,000 active Gestapo officers policing a population of 66 million. That’s about one for every 4,100 people.
For the same level of surveillance in the U.S. today, the feds would need about 80,000 agents. That’s more than twice the number of agents the FBI employs today.
That’s why the Deep State has been in bed with Silicon Valley since the start.
As the internet started to gain popularity in the 1990s, it became clear to the intelligence community that Google and other Silicon Valley firms could do what teams of agents sitting at NSA desks could never do…
They could gather and process huge amounts of data to keep track of people and groups in cyberspace. (It’s why, as we told you, the NSA seed-funded Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.)
Here’s Legacy Research co-founder Bill Bonner. He’s been tracking the rise of the Surveillance State in his monthly publication, The Bill Bonner Letter…
Algorithms can now do what used to require squads of spooks, snitches, and sinister agents.
To keep 1.4 billion citizens in line, China’s spooks know they can’t rely on human-powered surveillance. They need high-tech kits and cutting-edge algorithms to reach their goal of total information awareness.
And that’s exactly what the Chinese feds are doing with the more than 170 million high-tech CCTV cameras around the country.
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that Facebook is a surveillance company disguised as a social media company.
But did you know that Facebook is also taking a leaf out of China’s book and scoring you based on how trustworthy it thinks you are?
Here’s The Washington Post with the report…
Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from 0 to 1.
The previously unreported ratings system, which Facebook has developed over the past year, shows that the fight against the gaming of tech systems has evolved to include measuring the credibility of users to help identify malicious actors.
Facebook has pushed back against the resemblance between its reputation score and China’s Social Credit System.
Facebook is in the business of monetizing your data.
Right now, its biggest clients are advertisers. They want to know as much about you as possible so they can modify your behavior – to buy something, or vote for someone.
But Facebook could start selling its reputation score to credit rating agencies and insurance companies. It could even sell your reputation score to employers.
That’s less of a leap than you may think…
Last year, online recruiter CareerBuilder.com carried out a survey in the U.S. The survey revealed that 70% of employers use social media to screen candidates before hiring.
Instead of snooping around a prospective hire’s Facebook profile, why not just buy the reputation score from Facebook?
And who knows, maybe the feds would also be interested to know who’s trustworthy and who’s not…
When we left off last week, we shared with you four simple steps you can take to shore up your online privacy.
We urge you to take those steps now. Once you do, you’ll disappear from the radar of Facebook, Google, and other Silicon Valley snoops.
We’ll have more for you on this important story tomorrow. We’ll be talking with Bill’s fellow co-founder at Legacy Research, Teeka Tiwari, about another corporate threat to your online privacy… and the extra step Teeka takes to make sure his data stays safe.
After last Wednesday’s Daily Cut, “We’re ALL Alex Jones Now,” the debate is on: How far should freedom of speech really go?
Some of your fellow readers think Facebook, Apple, YouTube, and Spotify were right in banning “shock jock” Jones from their platforms…
You are so full of crap it’s hard to believe. You equate hate speech and lies with free speech so really uneducated, prejudiced people feel their hateful opinions are okay. After all, it’s a free country, free to be ignorant if you choose. You probably call yourself a journalist. What a pathetic lie.
– Tim P.
No, most of us are not nearly as psychopathic and sociopathic as Alex Jones. He stirs hate and paranoia for a living. He deserves to be cut off from expressing his toxic bullcrap.
– Todd N.
Chris, we’re not all Alex Jones. And if you can’t see the need to cart someone like him off the stage of public information, then you are truly part of the problem. He and his ilk aren’t just promoting “out there theories,” as you put it.
If you and Alex think he’s being treated unfairly, then help him start his own social media platform. It’s a free country – get your butt out there and get funded. But that won’t and can’t happen because the Alex Joneses of the world are lying, thieving, miscreants doing real and lasting damage, and every rational human being knows it.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that words don’t have power. They do. Use them wisely. And get all the Alex Joneses of the world off the stage.
– Steve C.
But not everyone agrees…
Great discussions, excellent observations. I appreciate the raising of awareness of what is happening. I look forward to further thoughts on solutions to the ongoing attacks on privacy.
The actions of these social media giants affect not only the citizens of the USA, but potentially (or even actually, as some of your examples regarding Turkey, etc., illustrate) also give oppressive powers to governments in other countries. Please keep up the good work on behalf of all freedom-loving people.
– Martin B.
“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” A famous quote from John Dalberg-Acton. Beware that those in power will do anything to keep it. They view the masses as uneducated, impressionable inhabitants of a world that needs not only their guidance but also their superior intellectual ideation on how all things in life should function. They then become the “thought police,” to control your every action. They need to be revealed and stopped.
– Gene S.
The alleged event at Sandy Hook wasn’t a “hoax” – it was an utterly diabolical (yet transparent) false flag event, plain and simple. The only thing that’s “out there” is the official narrative.
The team at Legacy is an amazing group of people – smart, principled and on target with most of its insights and commentary. But it’s time to dig much deeper to understand the true, unvarnished state of things. Keep fighting the good fight!
– John D.
Some cry foul when private company Facebook refuses to post hateful speech, but support the baker who refuses to supply a cake to a gay wedding. The legal difference is whether the company is acting against a legally protected group. Hate speech mongers are not legally protected. The better solution however is a compromise, talking across the aisle if you will. Catholic hospitals should not be compelled to offer birth control options to their employees, but should refer them to others who do so.
– Peter A.
Thank you for being another voice on this topic! The water has been heating up so slowly and without mention by the mainstream media that most people aren’t aware that it is happening and/or won’t believe it. We must protest now before this assault on our liberties goes any further.
– Nancy N.
You are right and it is not overblown. The Deep State has a mission and it’s deeper and more pervasive than we think. When speech is cut off, so are other freedoms. That is the goal; silence every alternate voice and promote only theirs in order to control the thoughts of the masses.
Control is the goal. Once certain propaganda is peppered in the collective minds long enough, minds are steered in the direction desired by the Deep State. As a result of this propaganda blitzing, people sit like frogs in a pot of cool water until it’s too late to recover from as they boil until they’re dead.
– Edyth R.
Slowly the mainstream media feeds us liberal thoughts until suddenly we will have forgotten things like the First Amendment, our heritage, and the rules of law. Maybe we are there now. The FBI has a history of arresting criminals. Now FBI leadership criminally conspires to take down the legally elected president. Everything is upside down.
– James B.
Never stop going after them if you value your freedom, if you stop they will take every freedom you hold dear. The above statement goes out to all of humanity that can see through the matrix of total lies and manipulation that we live in, take strong action now before all is lost.
Every action taken, no matter the size, adds up to huge cumulative effect to tip the balance in favor of humanity worldwide. We are all ONE in this battle against the Deep State/elite that wants to enslave all of us.
– Brian F.
Is there a line between free speech and hate speech? Should the feds step in when that line is crossed? Write to us at [email protected].
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
September 3, 2018
Lisbon, Portugal