Tag: mass surveillance

License Plate Readers Are Creating a US-Wide Database of More Than Just Cars

At 8:22 am on December 4 last year, a car traveling down a small residential road in Alabama used its license-plate-reading cameras to take photos of vehicles it passed. One image, which does not contain a vehicle or a license plate, shows a bright red “Trump” campaign sign placed in front of someone’s garage. In the background is a banner referencing Israel, a holly wreath, and a festive inflatable snowman.

Another image taken on a different day by a different vehicle shows a “Steelworkers for Harris-Walz” sign stuck in the lawn in front of someone’s home. A construction worker, with his face unblurred, is pictured near another Harris sign. Other photos show Trump and Biden (including “Fuck Biden”) bumper stickers on the back of trucks and cars across America. One photo, taken in November 2023, shows a partially torn bumper sticker supporting the Obama-Biden lineup.

These images were generated by AI-powered cameras mounted on cars and trucks, initially designed to capture license plates, but which are now photographing political lawn signs outside private homes, individuals wearing T-shirts with text, and vehicles displaying pro-abortion bumper stickers—all while recording the precise locations of these observations. Newly obtained data reviewed by WIRED shows how a tool originally intended for traffic enforcement has evolved into a system capable of monitoring speech protected by the US Constitution.

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Hidden Agendas: Beware of the Government’s Push for a Digital Currency

The government wants your money. It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.

The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security complex that continues to undermine our freedoms while failing to making us any safer.

Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill.

Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, tickets and penalties.

No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough (case in point: the endless stopgap funding deals and constant ratcheting up of the debt ceiling), so the government has to keep introducing new plans to empower its agents to seize Americans’ bank accounts.

Make way for the digital dollar.

Whether it’s the central bank digital currency favored by President Biden, or the cryptocurrency being hawked by former President Trump, the end result will still be a form of digital money that makes it easier to track, control and punish the citizenry.

For instance, weeks before the Biden Administration made headlines with its support for a government-issued digital currency, the FBI and the Justice Department quietly moved ahead with plans for a cryptocurrency enforcement team (translation: digital money cops), a virtual asset exploitation unit tasked with investigating crypto crimes and seizing virtual assets, and a crypto czar to oversee it all.

No surprises here, of course.

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FBI Seeks Options for “Clearview AI” Type Facial Recognition Searches

The FBI has put out a request for information regarding (RFI) open-source facial recognition capabilities which it hopes to acquire in the future. The technology they are desiring would function similar to what is offered through companies like Clearview AI and PimEyes, both of which have been heavily scrutinized and sued for privacy violations.

Biometric Update reports that:

The agency explains the motivation behind its RFI as relating to major criminal, counterintelligence and counterterrorism investigations: “Investigative leads are often derived from open-source images posted on social media profiles, Internet sites, and the dark web; for example, individuals often use social media to communicate, coordinate, and conduct criminal activity.”

Criminals wanted by the FBI and its partners are not always American residents with driver’s licenses, passports or criminal histories that would make their face biometrics available for searching.

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G20 Embraces Digital ID Dream While Critics Warn of Surveillance Nightmare

The G20 organization, currently chaired by Brazil and recently holding a ministerial meeting there, is wasting no time falling in line with all the key policies advanced by many governments, and globalist elites.

After promising to do its bit in the “war on disinformation” (to the delight of the host, Brazil, whose present government is accused of censorship), G20 member countries “pledged allegiance” to the digital ID and the overall scheme that incorporates it – namely, the digital public infrastructure (DPI).

Related: The 2024 Digital ID and Online Age Verification Agenda

DPI already counts the UN, the EU, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Gates Foundation as policy backers and vocal promoters. Now G20 ministers with digital economy portfolios have issued a joint declaration to express their “commitment” to both DPI and “combating disinformation”, and there is also inevitably the talk of “AI.”

On the digital ID/DPI front, the ministers speak of “inclusive” DPI, and the same attribute is attached to AI. The declaration “acknowledges” the importance of things like innovation and competition in a digital economy, among other things, at the same time “reaffirming” the importance of digital transformation based on DPI.

Boilerplate remarks are made about transparency and protection of privacy and personal data – but these are the major concerns cited by opponents of this type of scheme, along with the overall fear that they facilitate new, more dangerous forms of mass surveillance through centralization of personal information and tracking of people’s activities.

Referring to digital ID as “a basic DPI,” the declaration further speaks of the Sustainable Development Goals (a UN agenda) and one of its targets to be achieved by 2030 by using digital ID (as a tool of “inclusion”) to provide “legal identity for all.”

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Omnipresent AI cameras will ensure good behavior, says Larry Ellison

On Thursday, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison shared his vision for an AI-powered surveillance future during a company financial meeting, reports Business Insider. During an investor Q&A, Ellison described a world where artificial intelligence systems would constantly monitor citizens through an extensive network of cameras and drones, stating this would ensure both police and citizens don’t break the law.

Ellison, who briefly became the world’s second-wealthiest person last week when his net worth surpassed Jeff Bezos’ for a short time, outlined a scenario where AI models would analyze footage from security cameras, police body cams, doorbell cameras, and vehicle dash cams.

“Citizens will be on their best behavior because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on,” Ellison said, describing what he sees as the benefits from automated oversight from AI and automated alerts for when crime takes place. “We’re going to have supervision,” he continued. “Every police officer is going to be supervised at all times, and if there’s a problem, AI will report the problem and report it to the appropriate person.”

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CBDCs Will Allow Police To Collect, Store Personal Data For Surveillance State, IMF Paper Reveals

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a report recently that warns about the very serious privacy risks associated with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

According to the paper, entitled “Central Bank Digital Currency Data Use and Privacy Protection,” any central bank can use its CBDC system to collect all sorts of private information about users. It could then turn that private information over to the authorities for mass surveillance and possibly persecution reasons.

“CBDC data allows for commercial exploitation while also raising the possibility of state surveillance,” the IMF warns.

The way CBDCs work is that every time a transaction is made, all sorts of private information is transferred and uploaded into the blockchain as proof. That information is then open game for government authorities and anyone else to exploit it for ulterior purposes.

“Central bank digital currency (CBDC), as a digital form of central bank money, may allow for a ‘digital trail’ – data – to be collected and stored,” the paper explains.

“In contrast to cash, CBDC could be designed to potentially include a wealth of personal data, encapsulating transaction histories, user demographics, and behavioral patterns. Personal data could establish a link between counterparty identities and transactions.”

The paper goes on to explain that there is economic value in CBDCs due to the data trail it creates. Data is considered an “infrastructural resource that can be used by an unlimited number of users and for an unlimited number of purposes as an input to produce goods and services.”

“CBDC data could potentially be harvested by financial institutions that, in turn, could help develop data-driven businesses,” the paper continues.

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Digital ID And You

As the United Nations gears up for its Summit of the Future, to be held in September during the 79th General Assembly, I am offering a series on Agenda 2030, the agenda that the Summit is intended to advance. One of the outcome documents that the member states will sign is the Global Digital Compact. And one of the major elements of that agreement is the establishment of digital identity for every single person on the planet.

You’ve probably read about digital identity but you may not know what the entirety of the project entails and signifies. And you may be contributing to your own digital identity without knowing it. For reasons that will become clear, this is not something that you want to do. Read to the end to find out how you can elude the clutches of this globalist, totalitarian surveillance system.

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How Will the Techno Elite Get Us To Vote for Mass Surveillance? The Bad-Cop/Good Cop Scheme

George Orwell once stated: ‘to see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.”

What we are being led to turn a blind eye to today is a bizarre choreographed media drama of a presidential election race between an incumbent, but perhaps fake senile president Joe Biden, who is incoherent during debate but verbally skillful at a follow up speech the next day, and his replacement on the ballot by Kamela Harris, a hand-picked incompetent female vice president who had gained no primary election votes; and in Trump an opponent who has been portrayed as a victim of a series of kangaroo courts and a seemingly real assassination attempt which has garnered public sympathy, but who is competent and coherent.  We have been led to believe Trump willingly bankrupted his billion-dollar real estate fortune by fighting court judgments for tax evasion.

The ongoing election spectacle is an old trick called the Bad Cop-Good Cop routine, the Mutt and Jeff technique, or the forced choice between a Carrot and a Stick. We should not fall for the script or plot of opposing political parties and candidates as a contest between “hostility versus indifference” to working class values or the lesser of two evils currently being piped into our TV’s and cell phones. The election is being framed as a referendum on for adoption of mass AI surveillance and information integration, including medical records, that the technocrats have been unable to get from congress or the courts.

At the experiential level, where this will lead is the TSA will be able to bounce you from an airplane flight if you do not have the requisite vaccinations, regardless of what both candidates and their apparatchiks say otherwise. AI would mark the end of a pluralistic economy of public and private sectors, the gig job subeconomy and independent contractors.

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Gabbard Episode Shows the Surveillance State Strong and Stupid as Ever

The former Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is apparently the latest Biden critic to be targeted for federal surveillance and harassment. Gabbard, an outspoken opponent of America’s forever wars, is reportedly being stalked by Transportation Security Administration’s air marshals, part of the agency’s Quiet Skies covert operation targeting suspected threats to aviation.

After TSA whistleblowers were quoted confirming the surveillance, Gabbard declared that placing her on the TSA Quiet Skies target list was “clearly an act of political retaliation. It’s no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about… why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President.” Gabbard lamented that, despite serving in the U.S. Army for 21 years, “now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist.” She groused about “the stress of forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I’m on, and having no transparency or due process.” As one Twitter wag quipped, “The only thing Tulsi Gabbard blew up was Kamala’s earlier presidential run. That’s why she’s on a list.” 

On Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) sent a letter to TSA chief David Pekoske complaining that the Gabbard surveillance appeared to be “part of a broader pattern in which TSA has repurposed Quiet Skies to surveil individuals based on their political activities, even when there is no evidence of wrongdoing.” Paul requested that TSA speedily turn over “unredacted copies of all current guidelines, criteria, standard operating procedures, and related documents governing the selection of individuals for TSA-managed lists and programs, including the Quiet Skies program.” Paul himself had epic airport clashes with TSA officials in 2012, and the agency has been paying the price ever since. 

In response to an inquiry by journalist Matt Taibbi on the Gabbard controversy, TSA issued a formal statement refusing to confirm or deny the targeting of Gabbard: “TSA’s Quiet Skies program uses a risk-based approach to identify passengers and apply enhanced security measures on some domestic and outbound international flights. To safeguard sensitive national security measures, TSA does not confirm or deny whether any individual has matched to a risk-based rule… Simply matching to a risk-based rule does not constitute derogatory information about an individual.”

In fact, a primary purpose of Quiet Skies is to entitle federal agents to stockpile derogatory information on their targets. 

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Big Brother Goes Digital: The Feds’ Race to Integrate Mobile IDs in America

The push to develop digital ID and expand its use in the US is receiving a boost as the country’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is launching a new project.

NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has teamed up with 15 large financial and state institutions, as well as tech companies, to research and develop a way of integrating Mobile Driver’s License (mDL) into financial services. But according to NIST, this is just the start and the initial focus of the program.

The agreement represents an effort to tie in yet more areas of people’s lives in their digital ID (“customer identification program requirements” is how NIST’s announcement describes the focus of this particular initiative). These schemes are often criticized by rights advocates for their potential to be used as mass surveillance tools.

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