China’s Social Credit System: Millions Banned from Taking Flights, Trains
February 20th, 2019Via: South China Morning Post:
Millions of Chinese individuals and businesses have been labelled as untrustworthy on an official blacklist banning them from any number of activities, including accessing financial markets or travelling by air or train, as the use of the government’s social credit system accelerates.
The annual blacklist is part of a broader effort to boost “trustworthiness” in Chinese society and is an extension of China’s social credit system, which is expected to give each of its 1.4 billion citizens a personal score.
The social credit system assigns both positive and negative scores for individual or corporate behaviour in an attempt to pressure citizens into behaving.
Uncle Sam Wants Your DNA: The FBI’s Diabolical Plan to Create a Nation of Suspects
February 20th, 2019Via: The Rutherford Institute:
Uncle Sam wants you.
Correction: Uncle Sam wants your DNA.
Actually, if the government gets its hands on your DNA, they as good as have you in their clutches.
Get ready, folks, because the government— helped along by Congress (which adopted legislation allowing police to collect and test DNA immediately following arrests), President Trump (who signed the Rapid DNA Act into law), the courts (which have ruled that police can routinely take DNA samples from people who are arrested but not yet convicted of a crime), and local police agencies (which are chomping at the bit to acquire this new crime-fighting gadget)—is embarking on a diabolical campaign to create a nation of suspects predicated on a massive national DNA database.
As the New York Times reports:
“The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived. In 2017, President Trump signed into law the Rapid DNA Act, which, starting this year, will enable approved police booking stations in several states to connect their Rapid DNA machines to Codis, the national DNA database. Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”
Referred to as “magic boxes,” these Rapid DNA machines—portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours—allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.
Journalist Heather Murphy explains: “As police agencies build out their local DNA databases, they are collecting DNA not only from people who have been charged with major crimes but also, increasingly, from people who are merely deemed suspicious, permanently linking their genetic identities to criminal databases.”
Suspect Society, meet the American police state.
Airplane Seat Cameras Could Be Your New Spy in the Sky
February 20th, 2019Don’t worry, the cameras are disabled.
*chortle*
In other news: Google says the built-in microphone it never told Nest users about was ‘never supposed to be a secret’
Via: Cnet:
Twitter user Vitaly Kamluk shared a photo of what looked like a camera installed directly beneath the inflight entertainment screen on a Singapore Airlines aircraft.
Singapore Airlines replied that it was indeed a camera, embedded into the seat back by the original equipment manufacturers of the plane, but said the cameras had been disabled on its aircraft and “there are no plans to develop any features” using them.
…
And I think we can all agree, if a camera is built into a device, it will always remain unused, always remain secure, and will never be used to capture footage.
U.S. Steps Up Winter-Warfare Training
February 20th, 2019‘Cause I was looking for war in all the cold places
Lookin’ for war in too many places
Via: AP:
After 17 years of war against Taliban and al-Qaida-linked insurgents, Marines are going through advanced cold-weather training to prepare for future wars against foes such as Russian and North Korea.
Arizona: Jobs Requiring Fingerprinting by State Will Now Require DNA Sample
February 19th, 2019Via: AZ Central:
Arizona could soon be one of the first states to maintain a massive statewide DNA database.
And if the proposed legislation passes, many people — from parent school volunteers and teachers to real estate agents and foster parents — will have no choice but to give up their DNA.
Under Senate Bill 1475, which Rep. David Livingston, R-Peoria, introduced, DNA must be collected from anyone who has to be fingerprinted by the state for a job, to volunteer in certain positions or for a myriad of other reasons.
The bill would even authorize the medical examiner’s office in each county to take DNA from any bodies that come into their possession.
The Department of Public Safety would maintain the collected DNA alongside the person’s name, Social Security number, date of birth and last known address.
Any DNA in the database could be accessed and used by law enforcement in a criminal investigation. It could also be shared with other government agencies across the country for licensing, death registration, to identify a missing person or to determine someone’s real name.
It could also be provided to someone conducting “legitimate research.”
A $250 fee could be collected from a person who submits biological samples, according to the bill. It’s not clear who would foot the cost for the dead.
Calling Your Bank? Be Prepared to Have Your Voice Biometrics Collected
February 19th, 2019Via: FastCompany:
In Chase’s case, the biometric program was announced back in April, but there’s a good chance many customers missed the announcement. (I missed it, and I actually write about these topics for a living.) Now, when you call Chase, an automated recording informs you that your voice is being used to identify you in the hopes of preventing fraud. Pick up the phone and you’re being recorded to make a “voice print,” which, according to Chase’s website, “is created from more than 100 different physical and behavioral characteristics such as pitch, accent, shape of your mouth, and vocal tract as you speak with a customer service representative.” (What happens if some identity-thieving criminal calls first is still TBD.) Once your voiceprint is created, Chase will use it the next time you call to “quickly verify it’s you.”
“Stop the Online Conspiracy Theorists Before They Break Democracy”
February 19th, 2019The conspiracy theorists are coming. Run for your lives!!!
Via: Guardian:
Organised conspiracy theorist networks have launched an all-out information war across Europe. At the heart of this is the QAnon movement. It expanded from the US to Europe and the UK at rapid speed, hijacking political debates on social media as well as mass protests in the streets in recent months. Our new analysis at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows that European conspiracy theorists run increasingly sophisticated campaigns around critical junctions in national, regional and global politics. They even carried out social media operations to influence voters in German state elections, including the 2018 election in Bavaria.
The QAnon community, which began on the message-board site 4chan, strongly overlaps with the support networks of far-right movements such as the EDL and Pegida. Most recently, it co-opted yellow vest demonstrations and boosted hardline Brexit campaigns and Tommy Robinson protests. By injecting conspiratorial narratives into these movements, its members can leverage existing networks and alter their political direction. A commonly used tactic is to combine conspiricist hashtags with those of viral campaigns and trending topics. The scale this generates is disproportional enough to distort public perception: In 2018, ISD identified close to 30m uses of the word “QAnon” across Twitter, YouTube and forums such as Reddit and 4chan.
Americans Among Group Arrested in Haiti with Guns, Satellite Phones, Drones
February 19th, 2019Via: Reuters:
Haitian police arrested a group of foreign nationals, including five Americans, armed with semi-automatic weapons, Haitian newspapers reported on Monday, adding to uncertainty in the impoverished Caribbean country after days of anti-government protests.
The U.S. State Department was aware that Haitian police arrested a group that included U.S. citizens, an official at the department said on Monday. Haitian police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste reported that seven foreigners and a Haitian were in the group picked up by police on Sunday night. Police found rifles, pistols, drones and satellite phones in their two vehicles, the newspaper said.
Other media said several of the men were U.S. citizens, one was Serbian and another from Russia.
Haitian newspapers printed names that corresponded to social media profiles of U.S. citizens claiming military backgrounds.
The Utterly Unbelievable Scale of U.S. Debt Right Now
February 18th, 2019Via: National Post:
This week, the United States national debt ticked above US$22 trillion for the first time, an amount equivalent to $67,000 per U.S. citizen.
The U.S. federal government owes more money than any other institution in the history of human civilization. And it’s just getting worse. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in only 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will be higher than any point since the Second World War.
…
Holding a $22 trillion pile of debt is not cheap. Although the United States benefits from ludicrously cheap interest rates on its treasury bills, in 2019 it will spend $383 billion just to service its debt. By 2023, interest payments are expected to be larger even than the U.S. defence budget. Even now, $383 billion dwarfs the entire federal budget of Canada.
…
Throughout U.S. history, periods of massive debt accumulation have usually coincided with bad times: The Great Depression, the Civil War, etc. By any economic measure, however, the United States is currently doing fantastic. Major foreign wars have been stepped down. The jobless rate is at a 49-year low. Economic growth has been topping four per cent. The last time the U.S. economy was this good, the federal government was running budget surpluses to pay down the debt, rather than piling up debt faster than ever. The implication is that when the boom inevitably ends, U.S. deficits are set to explode even faster. “The economy is going well and we are looking at deficits that are four per cent of GDP going forward,” Congressional Budget Office director Keith Hall said in late January. “That is an unusual thing.”
Neuroscientists Say They’ve Found an Entirely New Form of Neural Communication
February 18th, 2019Make sure everyone is bathed in directed energy weapon beams 5G network signals.
Via: ScienceAlert:
What they found was that slow periodic activity can generate electric fields which in turn activate neighbouring cells, constituting a form of neural communication without chemical synaptic transmission or gap junctions.
“We’ve known about these waves for a long time, but no one knows their exact function and no one believed they could spontaneously propagate,” Durand says.
“I’ve been studying the hippocampus, itself just one small part of the brain, for 40 years and it keeps surprising me.”
This neural activity can actually be modulated – strengthened or blocked – by applying weak electrical fields and could be an analogue form of another cell communication method, called ephaptic coupling.
The team’s most radical finding was that these electrical fields can activate neurons through a complete gap in severed brain tissue, when the two pieces remain in close physical proximity.
“To ensure that the slice was completely cut, the two pieces of tissue were separated and then rejoined while a clear gap was observed under the surgical microscope,” the authors explain in their paper.
“The slow hippocampal periodic activity could indeed generate an event on the other side of a complete cut through the whole slice.”
If you think that sounds freaky, you’re not the only one. The review committee at The Journal of Physiology – in which the research has been published – insisted the experiments be completed again before agreeing to print the study.
Durand et al. dutifully complied, but sound pretty understanding of the cautiousness, all things considered, given the unprecedented weirdness of the observation they’re reporting.
“It was a jaw-dropping moment,” Durand says, “for us and for every scientist we told about this so far.”
“But every experiment we’ve done since to test it has confirmed it so far.”
