Taking Stock

Most of us just don't want to know.  Most of the rest are coming to feel the same way a lot of the time.

Interesting op-ed by Quincy Saul, "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."  It deserves a read.

Ecology: The global climate is officially destabilized. Major tipping points have passed, and while the struggle to remain within others must continue, we have already lost the battle to preserve life on earth as we know it. Rising seas will reshape continents and spreading deserts will drive mass migrations. Climate change will redraw the world map and will literally shake the earth.

...We are in the middle of a mass extinction, which all accounts and reports indicate will continue to accelerate. If current rates of extinction continue, by the middle of this century, between one- and two-thirds of all living species on the planet may disappear. While superstorms and melting ice caps may be more dramatic, this accelerating loss of biological diversity in the long run is even more catastrophic. In the early 1980s, biologist E.O. Wilson compared this threat to others facing the world at that time;

"Energy depletion, economic collapse, limited nuclear war or conquest by a totalitarian government. . . . As terrible as those catastrophes would be for us, they could be repaired within a few generations. The one process ongoing in the 1980s that will take millions of years to correct is the loss of genetic and species diversity by the destruction of natural habitats. This is the folly that our descendants are least likely to forgive us."

If we live in times of prophecy, then ecological catastrophe is the black horseman of the apocalypse, carrying the scales of a radically unbalanced earth system, leaving famine in its wake.

Economy: The world economic system is in a structural crisis from which it will not recover. The morbid symptoms of its demise are increasingly evident. It is now mainstream knowledge that the major banks of the world routinely launder moneyfor the drug and arms trade.

Furthermore, the so-called middle class is at an end, even if the working class has not yet stepped up to replace it. Inequality is at an all-time high, with rates of poverty and affluence, malnutrition and obesity, reaching ever more epidemic proportions.

One-third of all food is wasted. Women own only 1 percent of the world's property. The absurdities of our economic system are increasingly well known and recognized. An article by Matt Taibbi in the Rolling Stone had a comprehensive title: "Everything is Rigged:"


"Conspiracy theorists of the world, believers in the hidden hands of the Rothschilds and the Masons and the Illuminati, we skeptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. . . . Forget the Illuminati - this is the real thing, and it's no secret. . . . The idea that prices in a $379 trillion market could be dependent on a desk of about 20 guys in New Jersey should tell you a lot about the absurdity of our financial infrastructure."

The economy is the white horseman of the apocalypse, representing both evil and righteousness, wearing a crown and armed for conquest.

War: Former US Vice President Dick Cheney promised the world "a war that will not end in our lifetimes," and we are now beginning to see the form it will take. Resource wars in the Middle East and North Africa are now joined by wars born of political turmoil. Global military expenditure is currently soaring at $1.6 trillion per year, an increase of 53 percent over 14 years ago.

Today in Egypt and Syria, we witness the seeds of a bloody and tangled future, where mass social movements for national liberation and self-determination are converted into proxy wars between the global potentates. Collapsing ecosystems and economies together fan the flames of war higher. In these geopolitical nightmares, carried to a fevered pitch by the society of the spectacle, nothing is true and everything is permitted.

War rides the red horse of the apocalypse.

Surveillance States: 1984 has arrived, only 30 years after Orwell predicted. The revelations brought to us by Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden show us a world in which everything is under surveillance. Julian Assange has written with great eloquence about the death of civil society overseen by the surveillance state. (1) Today in the United States alone there are more than 5 million people working under security clearances - more than the population of Norway. The mirror image of this army of spies is the enormous number of people in prison, including more African Americans under state control than there were slaves prior to the Civil War.

This is the last stage of the state, the totalitarianism that is the last gasp of every totality. The surveillance state has the capacity for not only genocide, but also extinction: It is capable of repressing and destroying the revolutionary movements that still have hope to fight for life.

The surveillance state rides the pale horse of the apocalypse, representing death.
It's at this point that Saul offers us a glimmer of hope.

...in the ancient Greek, apocalypse and revelation are the same word. What is the tipping point between the end of the world and the beginning of the world?

You are. We are. It's time to realize it. Time to seize the day and never let go.

Shhh - Not In Front of the TV, George.

Be careful what you say in front of your smart TV.  According to Samsung, you never know who might be listening to your every word.

The warning applies to TV viewers who control their Samsung Smart TV using its voice activation feature.

When the feature is active, such TV sets "listen" to what is said and may share what they hear with Samsung or third parties, it said.

Privacy campaigners said the technology smacked of the telescreens, in George Orwell's 1984, which spied on citizens.

Now there's a comforting thought.  You live under the rule of a guy like Steve Harper turning your country into a surveillance/police state and you've got a TV that can rat you out.  Hmm, what possibly could go wrong?

This is the latest in an ongoing saga of home electronics from gaming consoles to smart TVs that can be mined for the user's personal information.  In 2013, manufacturer LG apologized for collecting customer's viewing habit data via its smart TV.  From your laptop to your gaming console to your freaking car, we're immersed in technology that could be used to track us and spy on us by someone with the know-how say like your government's electronic surveillance services.

The Relentless Advance of the Surveillance/Security State

I'm not sure how this can be abused but I expect clever minds will be exploiting it very soon.

How about a smartphone app that allows cops to zero in on a specific area and see what everyone's up to?  It's called Geofeedia.

By tuning in to social media, police can see what’s happening in their community in real time with live surveillance of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Picasa and Viddy and with location-based monitoring platforms like Geofeedia, a subscription-based service now used by Chicago police and 200 other departments as well as corporations and the news media, according to Ted Motley, Geofeedia’s account executive.

Police can zero in on a geographic area and see what people are talking about on social media, find out exactly where they are and who their friends are. They can find witnesses, establish timelines, identify suspects and monitor specific sites for potential threats.

“It’s a fast, easy way to see what is happening in a specific location,” Geofeedia office manager Geneva Malagutti said.

And it seems there's no need for a warrant either.  You put it out there, Geofeedia vacuums it up and hands it over to those interested in learning a lot more about you.

If We're Already Seen as the Government's Enemies, Why Do We Think They Might Listen to Us?

Of the many dark farces of the Harper government, the best one is that there'll be a full and fair environmental assessment of the Northern Gateway pipeline initiative and the claim that the government remains open-minded.   The Victoria Time Colonist pundit, Jack Knox, writes that's sheer bollocks:

Emails released this week show a cosy relationship in which CSIS, a section of the RCMP, our pro-pipeline federal government, the National Energy Board and energy companies are inside the club, while those who oppose Enbridge’s proposal are treated like woolly headed radicals working against the national interest.

Which leads to the obvious question: If that’s what Ottawa thinks of British Columbians who worry about oil tankers doing an Exxon Valdez in the tricky inside waters of our coast, how seriously will it listen to them?

The emails came to light through an access to information filing initially reported in the online Vancouver Observer. They showed communications between the RCMP, CSIS, the National Energy Board and its security chief before and during the regulatory hearings into Enbridge’s proposal to pipe Alberta bitumen to a tanker terminal at Kitimat.

The messages talk of using social media and other sources to monitor everything from the Idle No More movement to the Victoria-based Dogwood Initiative to the annual all-native basketball tourney in Prince Rupert. One of the emails, a security summary prior to January’s hearings in Kelowna, refers to a gathering at which Elizabeth May — the Saanich-Gulf Islands MP and Green Party leader — and Victoria-Swan Lake MLA Rob Fleming were to speak.

Those revelations follow a series of stories in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which reported that the Canadian government has an extensive spying program aimed at domestic environmental organizations. Since 2005, twice-a-year meetings involving energy companies, police, CSIS and other federal agencies have been convened to discuss threats to the energy sector, including challenges from green groups. The Guardian produced the agenda for one such meeting in May: sponsored by Natural Resources Canada, it was held at CSIS headquarters in Ottawa, with breakfast, lunch and coffee provided by Enbridge and a networking mixer paid for by Bruce Power and Brookfield Renewable Energy Partners.

...security arrangements bordered on the absurd when the regulatory road show came to the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe for eight days in January. Hotel doors were guarded by a contingent of Victoria police officers working on overtime (the bill was ultimately paid by Enbridge, as the applicant was responsible for all costs related to the pipeline review). Members of the public could only watch online or on a big screen at the Ramada three kilometres away. Even the people scheduled to testify (they had to wait at least 15 months for the privilege) were herded into a holding room down the hall from the hearing room. Never mind that they looked less like wild-eyed anarchists than a United Church prayer circle, a bunch of grey-haired retirees in fleece vests and Gore-Tex.

That betrays a troubling mindset by a federal government that starts with the assumption that anyone who disagrees with the Northern Gateway plan is by definition a kook, a fringe character hiding behind a balaclava or one of those moustachioed Occupy Everything masks. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver infamously ranted about “environmental and other radical groups” blocking pipeline proposals. The feds poured $8 million into a witch hunt targeting environmental charities that it blamed for bogging down the approval process. In Ottawa, green is the new black.

Here's the thing.  When your government treats you as an enemy of the state, no good will come from ignoring that warning.  That's when you have to start asking if the state hasn't become your enemy.

Mother Jones' Modest Proposal

Like me, you probably share that sinking feeling that privacy is gone for good, dead without so much as a fight.  If you want a reasonable degree of privacy any more you have to live self-sustainably in a cabin on a lake deep in the forest and hope you're not outside when the satellite passes overhead snapping pictures.  If, on the other hand, you're reading this, somewhere that's being noted and added to everything else that has been noted about you including your utility bills, medical records and that last credit card statement.

 At times it seems our kids couldn't care less.  Theirs is the world of disconnected connectivity where social networking, texting and instant messaging offer acceptable substitutes for real facetime interaction.  I'm sure there's an algorithm somewhere that predicts, with remarkable accuracy, what colour shirts they'll be wearing a week next Saturday; and whom they'll text first, second and third and by when.   A total loss of privacy equals the revelation of predictability. 

So, if we've lost the war without so much as a fight, what are we to do?  Kevin Drum of Mother Jones argues we must accept that surveillance is inevitable but demand that all data be transparent - and public.

Government eavesdropping isn't the only thing we have to worry about. We're also subjected to steadily increasing data collection from private actors. It's true that, unlike a government, a corporation can't put you on a no-fly list or throw you in jail. But there are at least a couple of reasons that corporate surveillance can be every bit as intrusive as the government variety—and possibly every bit as dangerous too.

First, if Target can analyze your shopping habits to figure out if you're pregnant—and it can—another company might figure out that you're in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and then start badgering you to buy worthless insurance policies. Multiply that by a thousand and "targeted advertising" doesn't seem quite so benign anymore.

Second, there's nothing that prevents the government from buying up all this information and combining it with its programs into an even bigger surveillance octopus. That was the goal of the Orwellian-named Bush-era program known as Total Information Awareness. It was officially killed after a public outcry, but as we now know, it never really went away. It just got split apart, renamed, and dumped into black budgets.

Even the NSA itself is in on the action: The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the agency collects more than just phone records and data packets. Via internet service providers and financial institutions, it also gathers web search records, credit card transactions, and who knows what else. In addition, the NSA has long maintained a deep collaboration with the leading-edge data mining companies of Silicon Valley. And why not? As the New York Times put it, both sides realize that "they are now in the same business."

Can we save privacy?

 I call this the "David Brin question," after the science fiction writer who argued in 1996 that the issue isn't whether surveillance will become ubiquitous—given technological advances, it will—but how we choose to live with it. Sure, he argued, we may pass laws to protect our privacy, but they'll do little except ensure that surveillance is hidden ever more deeply and is available only to governments and powerful corporations. Instead, Brin suggests, we should all tolerate less privacy, but insist on less of it for everyone. With the exception of a small sphere within our homes, we should accept that our neighbors will know pretty much everything about us and vice versa. And we should demand that all surveillance data be public, with none restricted to governments or data brokers. Give everyone access to the NSA's records. Give everyone access to all the video cameras that dot our cities. Give everyone access to corporate databases.

This is, needless to say, easier said than done, and Brin acknowledges plenty of problems. Nonetheless, his provocation is worth thinking about. If privacy in the traditional sense is impossible in a modern society, our best bet might be to make the inevitable surveillance more available, not less. It might, in the end, be the only way to keep governments honest.

Interesting points except that governments today are not in the business of being honest - or open.  As our own Shifty Steve's former and future BFF, Tom Flanagan, pointed out, Shifty is a sneak thief, making change incrementally so that no one notices until it's too late.   Flanagan also expounded on Shifty's habit of proposing change and then doing absolutely nothing or saying one thing and then doing whatever in hell suits him.

And, while governments don't respect your privacy, they fully value what they take from you.   It's useful to them and it can be very useful against you should they perceive that need.  Likewise, made public, all that data could be even more useful against them.  Remember these are the people who made us realize the need for Freedom of Information legislation and, even then, they resist.

The Face of Corporate Feudalism

Democracy is reeling.  Corporatist authoritarianism is quietly ascendant.  Rights and freedoms are now being issued with price tags and, if you can't afford them, you don't get them.

Zoe Williams, writing in The Guardian asks, "When did being lowly become a criminal offence?"

It's a new world order that you probably have not seen and yet it is setting in all around us.  It's the very sort of order that appeals to soulless authoritarians like our own Steve Harper.

Please, follow the link, read the article, and then try to think about how we stop this because, if we don't, it will get worse and that could become our children's "normal".

Update - If The Guardian piece isn't enough to make you think twice about Amazon, check out this report from The Independent an anonymous commenter here brought up.

You're Toast. Raytheon's RIOT Has Your Number

Leading U.S. defence contractor, Raytheon, has developed RIOT, the  Rapid Overlay Information Technology software programme that can gather, sort, digest and analyze all your social media telltales.  It can even predict where you'll be and what you'll be doing in the future.

The Guardian recently got their hands on a copy of this Raytheon video describing RIOT



Notice what the reviewer talked about?  RIOT let him know this fellow would be working out in the gym every morning from 6 till 7.   And with that he quipped what better time to get the fellow's laptop or at least access it.  Raytheon's own guy can't talk about RIOT for more than 3-minutes without contemplating how it could be used for a criminal purpose.

The most disturbing aspect to RIOT is how few people are likely to find it disturbing.  If the majority acquiesce to the wholesale surrender of their privacy without a fight, and events of the past decade give no reason to conclude otherwise, then those who wish to protect their privacy will have to fight for it and become ever more vigilant in its defence.

Imagine if a company or a political party or a rival of any sort finds you troublesome, they can track you, analyze you, find out where you go, when and where you're likely to be, identify those whom you contact, their numbers and names and what makes you vulnerable even if you don't know it.

Because I probably haven't said it clearly or eloquently enough, James Ball adds his two shillings worth.

It's easy to believe those with nothing to hide have nothing to fear – and most of us are essentially decent people, with frankly boring social network profiles. But, of course, to (say) a petty official with a grudge, almost anything is enough: a skive from work, using the wrong bins, anything. Everyone's got something someone could use against them, even if only for a series of annoyances.

It's also tempting to believe that with good privacy settings and tech savvy, we can protect ourselves. Other people might be caught, but we're far too self-aware for that. But stop and think. Do you trust every friend you have to lock their privacy settings down? Your mum? Your grandad? Do they know to strip location data from photos? Not to tag you in public posts? Our privacy relies on the weakest point of each of our networks – and that won't hold.

Surveillance is getting cheaper and easier by the day, which in turn proves almost irresistible – for those with good and bad intentions – to make more use of it.

The only way to prevent such a shift is to group together, raise funds, and lobby hard for real legal safeguards, fast, before the culture shift is irreversible. Anything less is acquiescence.