Tag Archives: spying

Jeff Epstein: Cosmo Man and Int’l Intelligence Asset

29 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

By “a cute Texas girl,” he really meant a literal girl (preferably under 18). Cosmo isn’t the real indicator though.

The Mail described Epstein as an enigmatic figure, rumored to be a concert pianist, a math teacher at an elite girls’ school, and connected to the CIA and Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. “The most intriguing rumor is that he was a corporate spy hired by big businesses to uncover money that had been embezzled,” the article stated.

In 1993, the Washington Times depicted Epstein as a “maverick investor and Clinton supporter” and “president of the Limited clothing-store empire.” (The New York Times, in a 1991 blurb, identified Epstein as “president of Wexner Investment Company.”)

Going where the prey is? Check.

Dual loyalties? Check.

Birds of a feather? Check.

Rope?

What Goes Around, Euro Style

15 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Galileo is down, God help the EU. The spy “navigation” system is offline, has been, and questions abound. A cyber attack?

Galileo, the EU’s global navigation satellite system, has been down for four days, since July 11, following a mysterious outage. All Galileo satellites are still non-operational, at the time of writing.

According to a service status page, 24 of the 26 Galileo satellites are listed as “not usable,” while the other two are listing a status of “testing,” which also means they’re not ready for real-world usage.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA), the organization in charge of Galileo, has not published any information in regards to the root of the outage, which began four days ago, on Thursday, July 11.

On that day, the GSA published an advisory on its website alerting companies and government agencies employing the Galileo system that satellite signals have degraded and they “may not be available nor meet the minimum performance levels.”

The agency warned that the Galileo system “should be employed at users’ own risk.”

That admonishment sounds par for the standard operating course. Most haven’t heard of this system before, nor do they care now. I first learned of it nearly 20 years ago, at a Federalist Society luncheon in DC. A friend from Germany, a then-JD candidate already possessed of a Ph.D. is computer science something, wouldn’t stop talking about it. We all have our issues. He warned me bluntly that the EU was setting up something far beyond GPS and that they were intent on maintaining secrecy. He said, and I believed him, that his attempts to access information about the then-fledgling project, resulted in his computer being “zapped” repeatedly. They did it to him. Someone has done it to them. And, the world turns…

Woz Sayz “Get Off Facebook”

09 Tuesday Jul 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Seriously, now you have no excuses. TMZ asked,

And according to Wozniak, the answer is yes.

‘I’m worried about everything,’ Wozniak said. ‘I don’t think you can stop it, though.

‘Who knows if my cell phone is listening right now? Alexa has already been in the news a lot.’

The prevalence of connected devices today means your conversations might not be as private as you think they are, Wozniak said.

‘There’s almost no way to stop it,’ he added. ‘People think they have a level of privacy that they don’t.

For the post-literate:

Seriously, Abandon Facebook

18 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

More on the coming Farcebook “currency.” Even the Sun gets it.

Experts have branded the move a dangerous power grab that marks Facebook’s “most invasive” form of surveillance yet.

So far, Facebook has enlisted 28 firms, including Spotify and Uber, who each had to invest a minimum of £8million to be a founding member of the Libra Association, an independent not-for-profit membership organisation.

It wants to attract 100 businesses in time for launch, which it is aiming for the first half of 2020.

Libra is supported by a reserve of the world’s best assets and the world’s most trusted central banks, who gave the cryptocurrency “general cautious support”, according to David Marcus, who started exploring blockchain at Facebook a year ago.

Most trusted central banks. What more do you need to know?

In Facebook We Trust

14 Friday Jun 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

If we are completely stupid, that is.

FB is ALWAYS watching, on and off the platform, for narrative violations by its slaves users.

Facebook monitors the offline behavior of its users to determine if they should be categorized as a “Hate Agent,” according to a document provided exclusively to Breitbart News by a source within the social media giant.

The document, titled “Hate Agent Policy Review” outlines a series of “signals” that Facebook uses to determine if someone ought to be categorized as a “hate agent” and banned from the platform.

Those signals include a wide range of on- and off-platform behavior. If you praise the wrong individual, interview them, or appear at events alongside them, Facebook may categorize you as a “hate agent.”

Sooner or later, everyone may become an agent of “hate.” So, how better to celebrate said blessed event than to give all your wealth to FB!

Facebook Inc. FB 1.39% has signed up more than a dozen companies including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., MA -1.00% PayPal Holdings Inc. PYPL 1.07% and Uber Technologies Inc. UBER 5.07% to back a new cryptocurrency it plans to unveil next week and launch next year.

The financial and e-commerce companies, venture capitalists and telecommunications firms will invest around $10 million each in a consortium that will govern the digital coin, called Libra, according to people familiar with the matter. The money would be used to fund the creation of the coin, which will be pegged to a basket of government-issued currencies to avoid the wild swings that have dogged other cryptocurrencies, they said.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Facebook was recruiting backers to help start the crypto-based payments system and was seeking to raise as much as around $1 billion for the effort.

In the works for more than a year, the secretive project revolves around a digital coin that its users could send to each other and use to make purchases both on Facebook and across the internet.

Names you can trust, that don’t trust you, in a secret project to convert your money. What could go wrong?

5,400 Reasons to Rethink the “Smart” Phone

28 Tuesday May 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Keep in mind, this resulted from a scan of a single man’s iPhone:

Monitoring software used by The Washington Post on an ordinary iPhone found that no fewer than 5,400 app trackers were sending data from the phone – in some cases including sensitive data like location and phone number.

It wasn’t too long ago that people paid a little extra for an unlisted phone number. You know, for a little more privacy. What a 180. If this concerns you – and why I bother with stories like this, I really don’t know – then consider a Faraday cage, some other signal blocker, or a dumb phone (no phone if you can manage and don’t mind). Or not.

Big Social Spying on Children

09 Thursday May 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns, News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

It’s hardly a surprise. Neither is the utter inaction from “your” elected officials. Nor is the insouciance of the American Sheeple. But, spy they do.

A coalition of 19 consumer and privacy groups plans to file a complaint Thursday alleging that Amazon’s Echo Dot Kids Edition is illegally collecting voice recordings and other identifying information on users under 13 and that the system’s parental controls are flawed.

The complaint says that the Echo Dot Kids Edition – a colorful, youth-oriented version of Amazon’s popular “smart speaker” systems that allow users to ask questions, play music or control thermostats with voice commands – violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, known as COPPA. The 1998 law sharply limits what data companies can collect without permission from parents.

The 98-page complaint is the latest in a series by consumer and privacy groups urging the Federal Trade Commission to intensify its enforcement of how leading technology companies treat children and their personal data. The Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University Law Center served as counsel to the groups on the complaint.

“It is incredibly important not only that Amazon fix these problems but that the FTC enforce COPPA,” said Josh Golin, executive director of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, an advocacy group based in Boston and the lead complainant. “What we need is a COPPA cop on the beat.”

Mea COPPA. Waiting for that government beat cop is going to be a long wait. Take matters into your own hands; get your kids off the social dragnets.

Quote

BIG! – NSA Recommends Dropping Phone Surveillance Program…. — The Last Refuge

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

This will be a Trump sanity test. Why on earth would he reauthorize a program that spies(d) on all Americans in general and him in particular?

Perhaps the weaponization of the NSA database was the biggest research project we ever took on. That said, CTH prudence requires a lack of commentary. For a background on this story see the [“SIDE NOTE“] previously presented HERE. “The candle is not worth the flame.” (WASHINGTON DC) The National Security Agency has recommended that the […]

via BIG! – NSA Recommends Dropping Phone Surveillance Program…. — The Last Refuge

Why Would Anyone Want a New Car?

12 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by in News and Notes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Or, more accurately, a spy computer on wheels.

If you’re driving a late model car or truck, chances are that the vehicle is mostly computers on wheels, collecting and wirelessly transmitting vast quantities of data to the car manufacturer not just on vehicle performance but personal information, too, such as your weight, the restaurants you visit, your music tastes and places you go.

A car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour and as much as 4,000 gigabytes a day, according to some estimates. The data trove in the hands of car makers could be worth as much as $750 billion by 2030, the consulting firm McKinsey has estimated. But consumer groups, aftermarket repair shops and privacy advocates say the data belongs to the car’s owners and the information should be subject to data privacy laws.

And, Congress fails to act for the people. Surprise, surprise.

It has been some time but I have covered this topic before. That was over four years ago. Things have changed; it’s worse now.  The alternatives are slim. One can get a used car as an end-around. But, one has to go back 20 years or so for a guarantee. Why do you think they did cash for clunkers?

Another possibility is for someone in tech to design a blocker or a patch that masks the car’s multiple computers. This is probably illegal. Congress, never quick to act for us, has acted for “them;” the car companies have proprietary software. You either take it to their dealership or to an independent who pays a fee for access. And, the way these things work, masking or shutting off the CPU may well totally disable the car.

We’ve been backed into a corner for a reason – total control. They will soon try to mandate automated bot cars that you can’t control and which log your every move. Goodbye, last shreds of freedom.

The only other possibility I can think of is a reverse EM shield that stops outward wireless transmissions. They’ll probably make that illegal too.

Drive on.

A Big Deal

10 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by in Legal/Political Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

Yeah. Yeah, spying on a political campaign just might be a big deal.

Attorney General William Barr said on Wednesday U.S. intelligence agencies engaged in spying directed at the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and that he would look at whether the surveillance was undertaken legally.

“I think spying did occur,” Barr told a Senate hearing. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I am not suggesting that it wasn’t adequately predicated. … I am not suggesting those rules were violated, but I think it is important to look at that. And I am not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal – it’s a big deal.”

If it wasn’t adequately predicated (and, on what did they have for the predicate, anyway?), then when do the treason trials/drone strikes start? Maybe about the same time as the wall?