By Brandon Turbeville
Interestingly, a 2007 clip from NBC News has, for some reason, been making the rounds on the Internet once again as if it were being broadcast for the first time. This clip and the accompanying commentary has served to galvanize those reading and listening to it into one of two camps: one that is subject to overhype, “clickbait” titles and panic; and another that is firmly entrenched in the American sheep class for whom no bad news or reports of malfeasance is real or anything other than a conspiracy theory.
This is because the NBC clip is an issue that would affect each and every individual in the country on a deeply personal level. Entitled, “The Year 2017,” the report predicts a near future in which every American will be microchipped by the year 2017.
Aaron Dykes
Despite appearances, the “smart” society was never based on saving energy, saving money or saving the environment.
The real aim has been to control the population and conduct absolute surveillance on the larger herd and even every individual.
Thanks to smart phones, smart meters, smart grids, smart TVs, smart cars and smart appliances, the places you go, the people you contact and all the things you interact with are logged, tracked and analyzed by advanced computer algorithms. Thanks to search engines, the technocrats even believe they know what you’re thinking and what you’ll do next.
Now, the “smart” street lights that record conversations and broadcast government propaganda are actually being rolled out on city streets across the America.
Joshua Krause
When Cody Wilson unveiled the first 3D printed firearm in 2012, it was earth-shattering news. Even though the gun had limited practical applications in the real world, it was still an incredibly novel concept with huge implications for the future. Since that time, several additional homemade firearm designs have caused both outrage and adoration from the public, especially in regards to 3D printed AR lowers.
However, it seems like the whole 3D printing scene has cooled off a bit. It’s a little under the radar now. People are getting used to the concept, and as the technology continues to make progress you’d be hard pressed to find as many sensationalist headlines as you could before. But rest assured that the movement to manufacture firearms at home is still making waves, as it paves the way for a future where no firearm is out of the reach of a 3D printer.
Melissa Melton
For the record, Google has recently patented a wearable “nanoparticle phoresis” device with the World Intellectual Property Organization. The official patent was published just a few weeks ago.
The device is described in the patent as follows:
Functionalized particles in the blood are able to selectively bind to targets in the blood that have adverse health effects. The binding of the particles to the targets allows the targets to be selectively modified or destroyed by energy from outside the body such that the adverse health effects are reduced or eliminated. The energy is generated by a wearable device which is able to direct the energy into the subsurface vasculature of the wearer of the wearable device. Further, one or more of the functionalized particles may be magnetic, allowing a magnetic field generated by the wearable device and directed into the subsurface vasculature to concentrate the bound targets in a lumen of the subsurface vasculature proximate to the wearable device.
Brings a whole new meaning to the clip of Google CEO and Bilderberger Eric Schmidt (seen in the video below) chortling over the fact that Google likes to step right up to the creepy line and not cross it when he told The Atlantic that, ” I would argue that implanting things in your brain is beyond the creepy line. At least for the moment until the technology gets better.”
That was back in 2010.
Nicholas West
Advancements in genetics and neuroscience are undoubtedly leading toward direct methods of mind control, albeit only with good intentions ... if government and establishment science can be believed. However, an array of hi-tech methods have been announced which show clear potential for negative manipulation.
Bold claims have been made by scientists that they now can use "neural dust," high-powered lasers, and light beamed from outside the skull to alter brain function and even turn off consciousness altogether.
But it is memory research that might be among the most troubling.
Mac Slavo
If you think the jobs market and larger economy are bad now, just wait for the future.
In the future, virtually everyone you know may be on the dole.
There are a lots of projections and scenarios about what to expect as technology advances to practically unimaginable heights.
Already many human jobs are being displaced by computers, and most trends point to a rise of automated assembly lines, computer-run logistics and services and robots to do jobs humans did before that.
China has already ushered in a workforce of robots, with less and less reliance on humans for anything.
What does this mean for the average American?
In a word: dependence.
Jake Anderson
The next time you take a trip to the mall, make sure you give those mannequins a big smile. The surveillance industry’s latest recruit—joining the ranks of the Statue of Liberty, vending machines, Kinect, and a litany of other seemingly innocuous retail products—is store mannequins. The $245 billion dollar luxury goods industry currently avails itself of five companies in Europe and the U.S. that use the EyeSee polystyrene frame mannequins, whose eyes are equipped with police grade face-recognition cameras.
Italian mannequin maker Almax SpA supplies these bionic oddities, offering companies the holy grail of retail: “personalizing” their sales offerings.
More than just surveillance cameras
Most shoppers think store cameras are just used to detect and deter shoplifters, but now some stores are tracking shoppers to gather information about target markets, and what products shoppers like and don’t like.
Melissa Melton
No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.
Perhaps smart meters aren’t the safest, nor the “smartest” idea to put on people’s homes after all.
Despite the fact that these meters have been known to burst into flames from time-to-time, and aside from the fact that they continuously expose occupants to electromagnetic radiation, and despite the fact that they can be used to continually collect data on everyone who lives in a home (the newer versions can send signals from individual outlets in a home every 15 seconds to be later broken down with disaggregation algorithms)… now this.
Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton
This video is just a drive through an average, moderately sized American city.
Things are way beyond just traffic cameras… The average city intersection is jammed with so much surveillance technology, that it would be difficult to even sort out what is what.
During a couple of intersections we observed, there were not only eye-in-the-sky cameras, but angles of every direction of traffic, plus several antennas relaying data to the authorities, a red light camera photographing license plates and generating revenue, and what else?
Michael Snyder
The average American spends more than 10 hours a day using an electronic device. And most of that activity is not even interactive. The vast majority of the time we are just passively absorbing content that someone else has created. This very much reminds me of the movie The Matrix, but with a twist. Instead of humans being forcefully connected to “the Matrix”, we are all willingly connecting ourselves to it.
There is a giant system that defines our reality for us, and the length of time that the average American spends connected to it just continues to keep growing. In fact, there are millions upon millions of us that simply do not “feel right” unless there is at least something on in the background. Just think about it. How much time do you spend each day with all electronic devices completely turned off?
Nicholas West
After several years of consumer complaints, Microsoft Windows 10 has been getting a lot of attention as of late for many upgrades slated for their new version of the popular operating system.
However, it appears that one feature being added to supposedly consumer-friendly applications is a suite of biometrics called Windows Hello and Windows Passport.
It's all a part of the move toward a full-fledged Smart World where YOU become the password in a matrix of online and real-world activity.
By Josh Paniagua
In November 2012, Pakistani officials announced their plans for mandatory biometric registration for all mobile devices. Now, after a lengthy delay, the policy is now being enforced on all 136 million mobile subscribers in Pakistan.
In what appears to be the hastiest gathering of biometric verification in history, millions of Pakistanis are forming massive lines outside of their mobile provider outlets waiting to register their fingerprints with their SIM card.
Alex Pietrowski
Our smartphones are like a wealth of information at our fingertips. They help us find directions to new restaurants, offer information about the places we want to visit, and can instantly answer any question about whatever inquiry fills the mind. But are we getting lazy and avoiding thinking about things that we might already know?
A team of researchers at the University of Waterloo asked just that same question and conducted three studies with a total of 600 participants. The study categorized the subjects by measuring their cognitive style, ranging from intuitive to analytical, and it also evaluated verbal and numerical skills. The study also analyzed the participants’ device usage habits.
Cassius Methyl
DARPA is quite possibly the most dangerous and unpredictable limb of the US Government.
Frequently dubbed the “mad science agency”, they are responsible for the creation of the Internet (originally the ArpaNet, *not invented by Al Gore), countless robotic remotely controlled weapons of war, TOR (the onion router), and many more incredible and often dangerous technologies.
This week we learned that a paralyzed woman was used to simulate the flight of an F-35 fighter jet using nothing but her mind.
Tony Cartalucci
People will inevitably 3D print guns and there is nothing you can do to stop them except prepare society to be mature and responsible enough to handle this new power.
Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And the sort of people that kill range from the mentally unstable and/or the medicated, to political extremists, to criminals, and of course the biggest killer in human history, the government. Unfortunately, a shortage of weapons or the legal inaccessibility of weaponry never seems to be enough to stop such people from harming or killing others - and levels of violence appear more linked to social and economic issues rather than access to weaponry.
Take the United Kingdom and Japan for example, two nations with populations that are for all intents and purposes "disarmed." Despite the UK having a population almost twice as small as Japan's it still has more total murders per year then their Japanese counterparts. The problem is socioeconomic, and so too is the solution. Here, we can see that access to weapons has little correlation to violence.
In fact, one could easily overlay a map of global poverty on top a map of global homicides and see the obvious correlation. And despite America's love-affair with firearms, it is by far not the most violent nation on Earth - not even close.
Nicholas West
Worldwide neuroscience research conducted under Obama's BRAIN project, as well as similar research sponsored by the European Union exceeds $1 billion combined. The goal is nothing short of decoding the human brain. While there are many embedded initiatives associated with this type of research, the production of artificial intelligence that can rival or even surpass humans is at the forefront.
One recent development aims to move beyond mere computational horsepower and incorporate the principles of Darwinian evolution in order to naturalize the process of robot evolution.
Jon Rappoport
“…if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.” (1984, George Orwell)
The New Scientist has the stunning story (2/28/15, “Google wants to rank websites based on facts not links,” by Hal Hodson):
“THE internet is stuffed with garbage. Anti-vaccination websites make the front page of Google, and fact-free ‘news’ stories spread like wildfire. Google has devised a fix – rank websites according to their truthfulness.”
Great idea, right?
Sure it is.
The author of the article lets the cat out of the bag right away with his comment about “anti-vaccination” websites.
Joshua Krause
It seems like every week, there is a trending story about some new leap forward in robotic technology. It’s often a cool new prosthesis, or perhaps a unique military drone. This week, it was the Marine Corps’ new GuardBot, which is basically a rolling sphere with cameras. It can travel 3 mph in the water, and 6 mph on land, where it can tread over a wide variety of terrains.
When it’s ready to be deployed, it’ll be able to use sonar, detect radiation, and sense bomb-making materials. Supposedly, this will give the Marines a significant advantage during any amphibious invasion (though they haven’t taken a single beachhead since World War Two, but that’s a story for another day).
However, given the rapid advance of robotic technology, drones like the GuardBot may look quaint in the next few years. We’re on the cusp of a new age of warfare that will be unlike anything we’ve seen before. In the future, the superpowers of the world will fight their wars with autonomous robots and, unfortunately, most people are completely unaware of what this might mean for their children’s generation.
Cassius Methyl
Between 2015 and 2017, the Pentagon will have the ability to decipher human voices in surveillance audio even if background noise makes the covertly recorded conversations inaudible.
This may bring to mind the surveillance audio secretly recorded through our smartphones when they are in our pockets. On or off, we know now that our conversations are being recorded by a wide array of electronic devices, and our conversations we used to consider private are actually being stored in data collection facilities like the one in Utah aptly titled the ‘Utah Data Center’.
With this multimillion dollar technology, our seemingly private conversations can be stored and analyzed by government officials even if the background noise is too much for a normal audio recording.
Newly released documents from DARPA show that they are in the third phase of their ‘RATS’ program (Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech). This information indicates that they are going to great lengths to make sure that secretly recorded conversations can be analyzed by the government.
Vladimir Platov
Stolen encryption keys are just the beginning. US NSA appears to have compromised big telecom, IT manufacturers, online banking, and even passports, starting on the factory floor.
Recent days have been marked by a record number of news stories regarding the US and its allies trying to establish total control over Internet users.
On February 16, researchers at the Moscow-based security group Kaspersky Lab announced the discovery of the ultimate virus which has virtually infected all spheres of military and civilian computing in more than 40 countries around the world. They’ve managed to discover a piece of malware that must have been installed on hard disks while they were still being manufactured, and due to its complexity and a certain number of features that it shares with Stuxnet, it’s safe to assume that it was created by US secret services.
