Tag: mass surveillance

The EARN IT Act, an attack on encrypted communications, to be reintroduced next week

Those behind the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act must be hoping that third time’s a charm for this previously widely-opposed piece of legislation, that is set to be reintroduced next week.

The previous two attempts to make EARN IT into law failed amid outcry from opponents who said that while designed to protect children, the bill would fail to do that – but would still damage online privacy.

Now here’s the third, bipartisan attempt sponsored by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Richard Blumenthal to bring changes to the Communication Decency Act (CDA) Section 230.

Critics say that the amendment as envisaged by EARN IT would harm internet users by removing legal protections Section 230 gives tech companies for third party content.

The consequence would be those companies protecting themselves by engaging in (even more) censorship, and “working” with the government to this end – even more than we are aware they already do.

At the core of EARN IT is to target platforms for violations related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM) rules that exist at the federal and state level.

But allegedly, these platforms are reluctant to “moderate” i.e., censor content in a heavy-handed manner, and for that reason oppose the legislation.

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Here’s FBI Glossary for Flagging ‘Violent Extremism’

The FBI uses a “glossary of terms” to look for online that could indicate someone is involved with “violent extremism,” according to documents obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. 

The flagged terms include “redpilled,” first popularized by the 1999 film “The Matrix,” “based,” “looksmaxxing,” and the names “Chad” and “Stacey.”

The FBI also flags phrases that include “it’s over” and “just be first.” 

The documents were obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through a Freedom of Information Act request. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Such words and phrases have come to be code for certain extremists who communicate online with others like them, according to the FBI’s glossary of words indicating “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism” and a list of “key terms” about “involuntary celibate violent extremism.”

According to the FBI document, the word “cell” is short for incel, which in turn is short for “involuntary celibate,” or an online community of men who  think they can’t attract women even though they want to be in a relationship. 

“Docs we obtained show how @FBI equates protected online speech to violence,” the Oversight Project says in a tweet. “According to @FBI using the terms ‘based’ or ‘red pilled’ are signs of ‘Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism.’”

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Critics Warn of ‘a Dragnet of Surveillance’ as U.S. Pushes Ahead With Plans for More ‘Smart’ Cities

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week announced $94 million in grant awards to fund 59 smart city technology projects across the country.

Despite widespread and mounting pushback against biometric surveillance and control systems associated with smart city technologies and the failure of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (DOT) previous attempt to grant-fund smart city transformation in Columbus, Ohio, Buttigieg told The Verge he thinks “smart city technologies matter more than ever.”

Cities just need to take a different approach — experimenting with and testing out different technologies first, rather than implementing a “grand unified system” all at once, Buttigieg said.

The new grants, part of the Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program, are the first round of $500 million in funding that will be awarded for smaller smart mobility projects over the next five years, authorized under the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

In this funding round, DOT awarded smart grants for a range of projects, including drone surveillance or delivery, smart traffic signals, connected vehicles, autonomous vehicles, smart grid development, intelligent sensors and other Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure. Some cities, including Los Angeles (LA), received multiple grants.

Smart city development typically focuses on the implementation of technologies like the IoT, 5G, cloud and edge computing, and biometric surveillance to track, manage, control and extract profit from an array of urban processes.

Whitney Webb, an investigative journalist and smart cities critic, said the smart city infrastructure is meant to facilitate the development of cities “micromanaged by technocrats via an all-encompassing system of mass surveillance and a vast array of ‘internet of things’ devices that provide a constant and massive stream of data that is analyzed by artificial intelligence (AI).”

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Could the RESTRICT Act Criminalize the Use of VPNs?

Would the RESTRICT Act—a.k.a. the TikTok ban bill—criminalize the use of VPNs? That’s the rumor floating around about the legislation, which was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Mark Warner (D–Va.) earlier this month. Warner’s office has said his bill wouldn‘t do this… but its broad language leaves room for doubt. And the act is still insanely far-reaching and could have a huge range of deleterious effects, even if it doesn’t criminalize people using a VPN to access TikTok.

VPN stands for virtual private network, and there are several different kinds, but their general aim is the same: keeping your digital activities and location private. Using a VPN with your computer, phone, or another internet-enabled device can do things like mask your I.P. address and encrypt your internet connection. It’s a great way to get around location-based firewalls (a.k.a. geoblocking) and other forms of internet censorship.

For this reason, VPNs are popular in countries that exercise authoritarian control over what their citizens can access online. It’s sad that this contingent could soon include U.S. citizens, but include us it does, as both Republicans and Democrats get more and more gung-ho about banning the popular video platform TikTok.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) introduced one TikTok ban bill back in January. Hawley’s bill would direct the president to use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to specifically “block and prohibit all transactions” and to “prevent commercial operation of” TikTok parent company ByteDance in the U.S.

The latest legislation is more extensive—and even more invasive.

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Here is the FBI’s Contract to Buy Mass Internet Data

The Federal Bureau of Investigation paid tens of thousands of dollars on internet data, known as “netflow” data, collected in bulk by a private company, according to internal FBI documents obtained by Motherboard.

The documents provide more insight into the often overlooked trade of internet data. Motherboard has previously reported the U.S. Army’s and FBI’s purchase of such data. These new documents show the purchase was for the FBI’s Cyber Division, which investigates hackers in the worlds of cybercrime and national security.

“Commercially provided net flow information/data—2 months of service,” the internal document reads. Motherboard obtained the file through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI.

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The Patriot Act on steroids: D.C. Uniparty wants to use anti-TikTok legislation as Trojan horse for censorship and surveillance

TikTok is indeed a pestilence upon our society.

But there are right ways to go about minimizing this “digital opium” and its impact on our lives, and other means that will allow the American government to leverage the situation to further curtail our individual rights.

And unsurprisingly, the latter idea is making lawmakers in the beltway beyond giddy this week.

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology (RESTRICT) Act (S.686), which was introduced in the Senate earlier this month, would do much more than just ban TikTok.

This bill is no mere “TikTok ban,” it is a mechanism for a massive, sweeping surveillance and censorship overhaul.  

The RESTRICT Act goes far, far beyond potentially banning TikTok. It gives the government virtual unchecked authority over the U.S. communications infrastructure. The incredibly broad language includes the ability to “enforce any mitigation measure to address any risk” to “national security” today and in any “potential future transaction.”

The Senate legislation currently has 19 cosponsors, all of whom are Uniparty members in good standing. It is fully “bipartisan,” consisting of 9 democrats and 10 republicans. 

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Geofence Surveillance: First, They Spied on Protesters. Then Churches. You’re Next.

“I know the capability that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”—Senator Frank Church on Meet The Press, 1975

If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile.

This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts.

Martin Niemöller’s warning about the widening net that ensnares us all, a warning issued in response to the threat posed by Nazi Germany’s fascist regime, still applies.

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time.

First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene.

Then the FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

It wasn’t long before government officials in California used cell phone and geofence data to track the number and movements of churchgoers on church grounds during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

If we’ve already reached the point where people praying and gathering on church grounds merits this level of government scrutiny and sanctions, we’re not too far from free-falling into a total surveillance state.

Dragnet geofence surveillance sweeps can and eventually will be used to target as a suspect every person in any given place at any given time and sweep them up into a never-ending virtual line-up in the hopes of matching a criminal to every crime.

There really can be no overstating the danger.

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CDC Bought Phone Data to Monitor Americans’ Compliance With Lockdowns, Contracts Show

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) purchased data from tracking companies to monitor compliance with lockdowns, according to contracts with the firms.

The CDC paid one firm $420,000 and another $208,000. That bought access to location data from at least 55 million cellphone users.

The contracts, approved under emergency review due to the COVID-19 pandemic, were aimed at providing the CDC “with the necessary data to continue critical emergency response functions elated to evaluating the impact of visits to key points of interest, stay at home orders, closures, re-openings and other public heath communications related to mask mandate, and other merging research areas on community transmission of SARS-CoV-2,” the contracts, obtained by The Epoch Times, state.

The CDC said it would be using the tracking data to “assess home-by-hour behaviors (i.e. curfew analysis) by exploring the percentage of mobile devices at home during specific period of time.” The data could also be integrated with other information “to provide a comprehensive picture of movement/travel of persons during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand mandatory stay-at-home orders, business closure, school re-openings, and other non-pharmaceutical interventions in states and cities.”

Under a heading labeled “potential use cases” for the data, the CDC said it could be used to try to connect the forced closures of bars and restaurants with COVID-19 infections and death rates, as well as try to assess the impact of state restrictions on close contact between people outside of their home.

The data could also be used to monitor adherence to mandated or recommended quarantines after arrival from another state and to examine the correlation of mobility patterns and spikes in COVID-19 cases at facilities such as churches, concerts, and grocery stores. It would also enable examining movement restrictions such as curfews to show “patterns” and “compliance,” the contracts state.

The contracts were previously reported on by Vice News, but the outlet only released a screenshot of a single page. Together, the contracts run 71 pages. Both were signed in 2021.

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Homeland Security Department Caught Hiding Evidence of ‘Domestic Censorship Activities’

By now, it should not surprise you to learn that a federal intelligence agency is trying to cover up evidence showing that they are working to censor free speech. The past decade has shown us that the federal government has no qualms with trying to use its power to shape public opinion – especially through censorship.

This time, it is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that was reportedly caught trying to conceal its role in squashing certain political views on Big Tech platforms. Fox News reported:

A federal agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that’s been scrutinized for what critics argue is suppression of dissenting political views under the guise of combating disinformation now appears to be “burying” evidence of its alleged censorship, experts and watchdog groups say.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, has come under fire for working with Big Tech companies to flag and take down social media posts related to elections, COVID vaccines, and a range of other issues that were deemed mis-, dis-, and malinformation (MDM).

Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, told Fox News his research found that CISA has attempted to hide its involvement in suppressing opinions posted on social media by Americans. The agency’s MDM webpage discusses “foreign influence operations and disinformation … targeting election infrastructure.” It says nothing of focusing on domestic activity.

But this particular page is new and “has a short web archive history” according to the Fox News report, which also noted that it only existed “since late last month.”

However, the old CISA page related to MDM addresses both “foreign and domestic threat actors [using] MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division.” It also gives a much wider definition of CISA’s mission as working “in close coordination with interagency and private sector partners, social media companies, academia, and international partners on a variety of projects to build resilience against malicious information activities.”

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