Manufactured 'Cascades' on Social Media Can Direct Behavior and Decisions

Heather Callaghan

And how the 'cascade' can be directed...

Was the Internet or Social Media created for your benefit? The current set-up allows for some exposure of new ideas and online connection between friends and family. However, it is also a major surveillance tool and a boon to behavioral psychological researchers observing in secret.

It turns out, human behavior (the most highly studied topic of all time) is so pathetically predictable - especially on social media - that its direction and influence can be cracked using a mathematical algorithm. Information cascades - off or online - are useful for mass behavior modification as they prompt people to do what they normally wouldn't.

A press release asks:

How do people in a social network behave? How are opinions, decisions and behaviors of individuals influenced by their online networks? Can the application of math help answer these questions?

Feds creating database to track hate speech on Twitter

Truth is Treason in an Empire of Lies

The federal government is spending nearly $1 million to create an online database that will track “misinformation” and hate speech on Twitter. Those behind the grant say: “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.” 

George Orwell was right all along. #doublespeak

This caged bird will be told what to sing.

The National Science Foundation is financing the creation of a web service that will monitor “suspicious memes” and what it considers “false and misleading ideas,” with a major focus on political activity online.

The “Truthy” database, created by researchers at Indiana University, is designed to “detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution.”

One G-man’s “social pollution” is another free man’s First Amendment right. The very term sounds like something out of a 1920s Italian fascist tract. And why is the federal government even deciding which ideas are “false and misleading,” let alone tracking them?

According to the project’s grant, the service “could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.”

In 2004, dissent was “the highest form of patriotism.” A decade later, it’s called “subversive propaganda” and categorized as the lowest form of treason. Truthy would add a button to Twitter so that people could report their neighbors and family members for Thoughtcrime against the State.

Filippo Menczer (who sounds like an author of that 1920s Italian fascist tract) is Truthy’s lead investigator and closely affiliated with “non-partisan” groups like President Obama’s Organizing for Action, Moveon.org and Greenpeace. The software’s very name comes from ardent conservative hater Stephen Colbert.

It’s hard to denounce the more paranoid allegations of Obama’s opponents when his administration routinely goes beyond their wildest imaginings.  We are definitely living in George Orwell's 1984.

These guys know their Orwell. Only a government inspired by the Ministry of Truth would quash “subversive propaganda” in the name of “open debate.”

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5 Big Brother Technologies for Tracking and Surveilling Children

Terrence Newton

Without much of a mentionable public debate about the implementation of police state surveillance and tracking technologies in our society, we are quickly moving into an era where personal liberty and privacy do not exist.

For those of us who grew up without being monitored and tracked everywhere we went, watching the high-tech infrastructure of a super-funded police state emerge is both alarming and intolerable. For today’s children, however, ubiquitous surveillance and zero-expectation of privacy is the standard in a culture dependent on smartphones, Wi-Fi, constant connectivity and intrusive government. 

Ostensibly for safety purposes, we are seeing a host of child tracking and monitoring devices being rolled out for use by parents, schools and other public institutions. Here are some of the main technologies that are available and in use today to track, monitor, surveil, watch, record, listen, protect and spy on children.

Greenwald Reveals American Targets of NSA Snooping

Glenn Greenwald promised he had at least one more major story originating from the documents leaked by Edward Snowden. He has now provided what he had pretty much promised: the names of a handful of Americans who were under surveillance by the FBI and National Security Agency (NSA). He and Murtaza Hussain detail five targets at The Intercept:

• Faisal Gill, a longtime Republican Party operative and one-time candidate for public office who held a top-secret security clearance and served in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush;

• Asim Ghafoor, a prominent attorney who has represented clients in terrorism-related cases;

• Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor of international relations at Rutgers University;

• Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights;

• Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country.

Read much, much more here. There are also video interviews with three of the targets.

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1974 PSA Warned of High Tech Surveillance State for Behavior Control

A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality. - Elias Canetti, Nobel Laureate in literature

Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton

As more and more information is released via National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden, many Americans drifting through each day blissfully unaware of what country they really live in have had the curtain pulled back just enough to be fed their first spoonful of reality…it’s a bitter taste.

The clip below is of a public service message warning the public on the growing use of technology and surveillance by government and corporations (though who can really tell the difference these days) to control our lives.

Sure, you say. We know all about that. Snowden has conclusively shown us with leaked documentation what our government is doing to us.

Ah. But the film was not made last week or even last decade; it was filmed in 1974.

Prism-break.org Opt Out of Global Data Surveillance Programs

Prism-break.org is a great website that everyone should check out for a list of alternatives to the NSA connected programs and applications that most of us use every day. Please share the word about this website so more people can be informed about the ways to opt-out!

Opt out of global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora.Stop governments from spying on you by encrypting your communications and ending your reliance on proprietary services.

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America's Surveillance Society

Image

Stephen Lendman

It's not new. It's longstanding. State-of-the-art technology makes it easy. It's more intrusive than ever. It's lawlessly out-of-control. 

On July 6, The New York Times Times headlined "In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of NSA," saying:

More than a dozen Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) 'classified rulings created a secret body of law giving the (NSA) power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while (allegedly) pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage, and cyberattacks, officials say.'

More on this below. Spying is the national pastime. Legal standards no longer apply. Anything goes is policy. America's a total surveillance society. Big Brother more than ever is real.

It's "time to rein in the surveillance state," said ACLU. It "strikes at the core of our right to free speech, association and privacy."

Stasi's New Incarnation

image source

Stephen Lendman


Stasi was East Germany's secret police. It suppressed opposition to Stalinist power. It was one of the most repressive state apparatuses in modern times.

When East Germany collapsed in 1989, Stasi had over 90,000 full-time employees. Another 300,000 were paid informants. They spied on East German citizens. Thousands of West German collaborators did so on theirs.

Stasi infiltrated NATO headquarters. Legendary spymaster Markus (Mischa) Wolf ran things. He did so for 34 years. He had Jewish roots. In the early 1930s, his family fled Germany. It did so to escape nazi persecution.

Wolf was educated at Moscow's Comintern Academy. He worked as a journalist. He observed Nuremberg trial proceedings. Post-WW II, he returned to Germany. He was part of a communist Berlin delegation.

He showed leadership qualities. He rose rapidly in the ranks. Stalinists trusted him. In 1953, he was among others in charge of foreign intelligence.

Scottish Councils Abusing Snooping Powers

Mick Meaney

Councils in Scotland have been accused of abusing the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Scotland Act (RIPSA) to secretly monitor and spy on thousands of unsuspecting citizens without court order, for a range of bizarre reasons including using the legislation to hide CCTV cameras at a primary school and in a bowling club.

A Freedom of Information Act Request has found that Scottish councils have have launched 1,500 spying operations in the past five years, resulting in only 32 convictions.

RISPA was initially designed to help authorities to combat terrorism and serious crime, but councils have been using the legislation to investigate mundane cases including complaints of televisions being too loud, the dragging of furniture, doors being slammed, people running up and down stairs too loudly and even complaints of washing lines being vandalised.

Lawless NSA Global Spying

Stephen Lendman

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NSA is one of 16 known US spy agencies. Perhaps others operate secretly. Black budgets conceal what's spent. Amounts are enormous. They're unconscionable. 

Used responsibly, they'd relieve hunger, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, and educate young people hungry for knowledge.

Out-of-control, unregulated, unmonitored practices operate lawlessly. Enormous harm results. Rogue states operate that way. 

On June 1, 1952, Harry Truman authorized NSA. On October 24, revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9 followed. On November 4, 1952, NSA was established.

In 1957, its existence was briefly mentioned in the US Government Organization Manual. It called NSA:

a separately organized agency within the Department of Defense under the direction, authority, and control of the Secretary of Defense for the performance of highly specialized technical functions in support of the intelligence activities of the United States.

It's headquartered at Fort Meade, MD. It's operations are highly classified. General Keith Alexander heads them. Spies "R" Us, defines them. 

‘Big Data’: Bilderberg Firm Palantir Works for NSA Spy Agenda

Aaron Dykes

“Paypal Mafia Don” Peter Thiel brings technocratic control of “big data” to the forefront of Bilderberg’s 2013 agenda via Silicon Valley’s partnership with the NSA and CIA.

The age of “big data” is reluctantly upon us, and it affects almost everything, as Bilderberg’s 2013 talking point suggests. Their secretive closed door discussion on massive stores of data, collected from the biggest portals on the Internet and analyzed in the pursuit of NSA objectives, is being led by Dr. Alexander Karp, the co-founder of Palantir Technologies.



The firm has admittedly been set-up with $2 million in seed money from In-Q-Tel, the private funding arm of the CIA, and the aid of Peter Thiel, Silicon Valley’s so-called “PayPal Mafia” Don who helps direct Bilderberg’s agenda and invitees as a member of its Steering Committee.

Mass Surveillance in America

Stephen Lendman

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It shouldn't surprise. It's longstanding policy. Post-9/11, it escalated. Previous articles said Big Brother is real. It's no longer fiction.

Mass surveillance is official US policy. It's not for national security. It's not about discovering terror or other threats. None whatever exist. Claiming otherwise doesn't wash. Big Lies substitute for vital truths.

What's ongoing reflects unchecked power. It's for unchallenged global dominance. It's secret with no oversight for good reason. It's unconstitutional. Societies governed this way are lawless. People living in them aren't free.

America never was a democracy. It wasn't created to be one. It's not one now. Freedom is verboten. It's vanishing in plain sight. Wealth, power and privilege alone matter. Police state terror targets non-believers. 

Money power runs America. Powerful interests alone matter. What they say goes. What they want they get. Obama's their nominal front man. Complicit congressional and judicial officials are involved. So are media scoundrels.

A Tale of Two Countries: New Zealand Apologizes For Illegal Wiretapping; U.S. Continues NSA Surveillance

Trevor Timm
EFF

Imagine this: A government, faced with public evidence that its foreign spy service was conducting domestic surveillance on its residents—instead of claiming the information is somehow secret and the people responsible are above the reach of the law—admits in public and in the courtroom that it violated basic rights.

That is exactly what happened last week in New Zealand in the controversial copyright infringement case surrounding Megaupload and its founder Kim Dotcom. At the same time in the US, the government is faced a very similar scenario:overwhelming evidence the National Security Agency (NSA) has illegally spied on Americans. However, not only has the government refused to admit any wrongdoing, it is actively trying to prevent courts from coming to any conclusions.

As EFF has previously reported, the case against Megaupload and Dotcom has been controversial from the start. Dotcom was arrested in New Zealand, while the U.S. government seized Megaupload’s property and executed search warrants on its leased servers based on claims of alleged copyright infringement the day after SOPA was declared dead by Congress. The military-style raid by the New Zealand police was criticized as over-excessive. And the loss of access to the servers has left many innocent users without access to their lawful data.

ACLU of Michigan exposes police surveillance cameras being used in residential neighborhoods

Image: MI ACLU

Madison Ruppert, Contributor

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan recently put out a fascinating report (PDF) on the use of surveillance cameras in residential Lansing, Michigan which seems to be congruent with the ongoing rise of the use of surveillance cameras and associated technologies.

The growth in the use of surveillance cameras coincides with the increasingly common use of armored surveillance vehicles as well as expansion of the American surveillance state as a whole.

Remember, as a recent Senate panel discovered, invasive surveillance techniques such as those employed by fusion centers across the nation actually don’t stop terrorism but instead produce “a bunch of crap.”

While this type of surveillance technology is more commonly associated with large metropolises like New York City, the ACLU of Michigan’s report shows that the use has expanded into residential areas as well.

Feds’ warrantless surveillance targeted more people in past two years than entire previous decade

Madison Ruppert, Contributor

Disturbing new documents from the United States Department of Justice reveal that federal agents are increasingly being given real-time access to the social networking accounts and e-mails of Americans without having to obtain a search warrant.

Unfortunately, this is hardly surprising given that the Obama administration has fought to maintain their warrantless wiretapping powers and similarly declared that cellphone location data is not constitutionally protected.

Given that former employees of the National Security Agency (NSA) have exposed the massive illegal surveillance program going on in our nation, is it really all that surprising to learn of this type of widespread real-time surveillance? I think not.

That being said, the dramatic rise in the numbers is hardly easy to brush aside.

The reports made available by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) were only handed over by the government after the ACLU was forced to sue the Department of Justice and enter into months of litigation.

19 Signs That America Is Being Systematically Transformed Into A Giant Surveillance Grid

Michael Snyder, Contributor

You are being watched. The control freaks that hold power in the United States have become absolutely obsessed with surveillance. They are constantly attempting to convince the American people that we are all "safer" when virtually everything that we do is watched, monitored, tracked and recorded. Our country is being systematically transformed into a giant surveillance grid far more comprehensive than anything George Orwell ever dreamed of. If you still believe that there is such a thing as "privacy" in this day and age, you are being delusional.

Every single piece of electronic communication is monitored and stored. In fact, they know that you are reading this article right now. But even if you got rid of all of your electronic devices, you would still be constantly monitored. As you will read about below, a rapidly growing nationwide network of facial recognition cameras, "pre-crime" surveillance devices, voice recorders, mobile backscatter vans, aerial drones and automated license plate readers are constantly feeding data about us back to the government.

In addition, private companies involved in "data mining" are gathering literally trillions upon trillions of data points about individual Americans each year. So there is no escape from this surveillance grid. In fact, it has become just about impossible to keep it from growing. The surveillance grid is expanding in thousands of different ways, so even if you stopped one form of surveillance you would hardly make a dent in the astounding growth of this system.

What Facebook Knows

The company's social scientists are hunting for insights about human behavior. What they find could give Facebook new ways to cash in on our data—and remake our view of society.

TOM SIMONITE

July/August 2012

Cameron Marlow calls himself Facebook's "in-house sociologist." He and his team can analyze essentially all the information the site gathers.

Few Privacy Regulations Inhibit Facebook 
Laws haven't kept up with the company's ability to mine its users' data.

Photographs by Leah Fasten

If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world.

It would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Private conversations, family photos, and records of road trips, births, marriages, and deaths all stream into the company's servers and lodge there. Facebook has collected the most extensive data set ever assembled on human social behavior. Some of your personal information is probably part of it.

And yet, even as Facebook has embedded itself into modern life, it hasn't actually done that much with what it knows about us. Now that the company has gone public, the pressure to develop new sources of profit (see "The Facebook Fallacy") is likely to force it to do more with its hoard of information. That stash of data looms like an oversize shadow over what today is a modest online advertising business, worrying privacy-conscious Web users (see "Few Privacy Regulations Inhibit Facebook") and rivals such as Google. Everyone has a feeling that this unprecedented resource will yield something big, but nobody knows quite what.

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