Anyone who uses Skype has consented to the company reading everything they write.
A reader informed heise Security that he had observed some unusual network traffic following a Skype instant messaging conversation. The server indicated a potential replay attack.
It turned out that an IP address which traced back to Microsoft had accessed the HTTPS URLs previously transmitted over Skype.
Heise Security then reproduced the events by sending two test HTTPS URLs, one containing login information and one pointing to a private cloud-based file-sharing service. A few hours after their Skype messages, they observed the following in the server log:
They too had received visits to each of the HTTPS URLs transmitted over Skype from an IP address registered to Microsoft in Redmond. URLs pointing to encrypted web pages frequently contain unique session data or other confidential information.
HTTP URLs, by contrast, were not accessed. In visiting these pages, Microsoft made use of both the login information and the specially created URL for a private cloud-based file-sharing service.
The United States government is investing tens of millions of dollars each year on offensive hacking operations in order to exploit vulnerabilities in the computers of its adversaries, Reuters reports.
According to an in-depth article published Friday by journalist Joseph Menn, the US and its Department of Defense contractors are increasingly pursuing efforts to hack the computers of foreign competitors, in turn exposing a rarely discussed aspect of the nation’s clandestine cyber operations.
In a time when the government continues to prosecute alleged domestic computer criminals — so much so that demands for technology law reform have been rampant as of late — Menn says the US is guilty of spending millions on discovering, identifying and exploiting previously unknown security flaws, often gaining unfettered access to the systems and networks of international targets.
As a result, the US has become one of the world’s top players in regards to wreaking havoc over the Internet — even as calls to investigate foreign hackers increase in Congress.
On Tuesday, a bipartisan supported proposal was introduced in Congress specifically to protect US commercial data from being compromised by foreign hackers. According to Menn, however, the American government is just as guilty of cybercrimes as the countries it warns against in introducing the “Deter Cyber Theft Act.”
“Even as the US government confronts rival powers over widespread Internet espionage, it has become the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray market where hackers and security firms sell tools for breaking into computers,” Menn wrote.
In his report, Menn explained that a large chunk of the country’s current cyber endeavors does not rely on defensive strategy as one might imagine, but instead involves offensive operations launched with the intent of causing harm on the computers of adversaries.
Menn wrote defense contractors “spend at least tens of millions of dollars a year” on simply researching exploits that, if pursued, could put the eyes and ears of the American intelligence company essentially anywhere in the world.
And although the US has not officially gone on the record to acknowledge these shadowy operations, Menn wrote that the nation’s most well-known cyber endeavor — the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iranian nuclear plants — is just one example of the budding attempts to attack foreign entities.
“Computer researchers in the public and private sectors say the US government, acting mainly through defense contractors, has become the dominant player in fostering the shadowy but large-scale commercial market for tools known as exploits, which burrow into hidden computer vulnerabilities,” he wrote.
“In their most common use, exploits are critical but interchangeable components inside bigger programs. Those programs can steal financial account passwords, turn an iPhone into a listening device or, in the case of Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”
Menn cited several defense contractors and government officials — many speaking on condition of anonymity — who admitted the increasingly dominant role the US government has in pursuing research on these exploits and using them to attack rival networks.
According to the report, “Reuters reviewed a product catalogue from one large contractor, which was made available on condition the vendor not be named.
Scores of programs were listed. Among them was a means to turn any iPhone into a room-wide eavesdropping device. Another was a system for installing spyware on a printer or other device and moving that malware to a nearby computer via radio waves, even when the machines aren’t connected to anything.”
These contractors, he wrote, spend upwards of $100,000 on licensing single operations to governments, including the US. The result has been the development of a thriving industry, largely underground, where exploits are bought and sold before patches are developed to protect against intrusions.
These “zero-day exploits”— labeled as such because developers are unaware of the flaw until it’s announced — fetch big bucks from contractors, governments and hackers.
And as the demand for these exploits increases, so do the players in the game. One example cited by Menn is Atlanta-based Endgame Inc., which recently brought in $23 million in funding courtesy of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. But as early as 2011, Endgame and similar entities have been on the radar of hacktivists hell-bent on exposing the largely unknown doings of defense contractors.
When the loose-knit hacking collective Anonymous investigated security consultants HBGary in 2011, they uncovered only the tip of an intricate iceberg made up of former federal employees and other intelligence workers being paid boatloads to give governments exploits that could be used to their advantage.
Project PM, the open-source online think tank started by former Anonymous collaborator Barrett Brown, discussed Endgame and its associates in great detail.
From a Business Week article cited by Brown:
“Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems. Endgame weaponry comes customized by region — the Middle East, Russia, Latin America and China — with manuals, testing software and ‘demo instructions.’ There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other US allies.”
Last year Brown was arrested on unrelated counts and remains in custody six months later with an eventual trial still a ways before him. The US government has since subpoenaed Internet host Cloudflare for records pertaining to Project PM, and has equated the website as a criminal enterprise.
“Project PM served as a forum through which defendant Brown and other individuals sought to discuss their joint and separate activities and engage in, encourage, or facilitate the commission of criminal conduct online,” the government alleged when it fought back attempts from the current Project PM administrator to quash that subpoena.
Brown fired back from prison: “It makes it much more obvious that this investigation and the charges against me has to do with our successful research into what may be criminal activities by firms close to the government.”
If convicted on all counts — more than one dozen including threatening a federal agent and sharinga hyperlink — Brown could be sentenced to 100 years in prison.
“It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism,” Glenn Greenwald wrote earlier this year for The Guardian.
Meanwhile, Menn admitted that other investigative computer work — specifically discovering exploits like the one Endgame thrives off of — is an endeavor that discourages people outside of the government and defense industry from entertaining.
“Most companies, including Microsoft, Apple Inc. and Adobe Systems Inc, on principle won’t pay researchers who report flaws, saying they don’t want to encourage hackers,” he wrote. “Those that do offer ‘bounties,’ including Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., say they are hard-pressed to compete financially with defense-industry spending.”
Andrew Auernheimer, a 26-year-old independent security researcher, was recently sentenced to 41 months in prison for identifying and disclosing a harmless exploit on the servers of AT&T that allowed anyone with the know-how to collect the email addresses of thousands of Apple iPad users. After he was convicted, Auernheimer wrote for Wired that the selective prosecution of some security researchers will deter future hackers from ever disclosing exploits, even critical ones that effect national security.
“In an age of rampant cyber espionage and crackdowns on dissidents, the only ethical place to take your zero-day is to someone who will use it in the interests of social justice. And that’s not the vendor, the governments, or the corporations — it’s the individuals,” he wrote. “In a few cases, that individual might be a journalist who can facilitate the public shaming of a web application operator. However, in many cases the harm of disclosure to the un-patched masses (and the loss of the exploit’s potential as a tool against oppressive governments) greatly outweighs any benefit that comes from shaming vendors. In these cases, the antisec philosophy shines as morally superior and you shouldn’t disclose to anyone.”
Last week President Obama said that his administration’s recent gun control push is merely “the first round,” suggesting that attempts to force Americans to submit to background checks, mental health screenings and gun registrations are only the beginning of a concerted effort designed to remove guns from the hands of as many people as possible. Executive actions taken at the end of April, which were designed to put an outright ban on the importation of gun accessories, magazine and ammunition, provide further evidence that gun control proponents will stop at nothing to limit access. Moreover, the President’s Homeland Security team, spearheaded by Secretary Janet Napolitano, is working overtly to indirectly disarm Americans by purchasing hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition in an attempt to dry up the retail ammunition supply market, a move Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) says is “intentional.”
The Second Amendment is under attack on all fronts through domestic regulation, foreign treaties, and legislative action on the federal, state and local level. Everywhere we turn, it seems, there are those who would supplant our fundamental right to defend our homes from predators and our freedom from oppressive government.
In Austin, Texas, however, there is a different kind of movement afoot. It’s one that promises to change the very landscape of gun ownership, and it’s got lawmakers around the world quaking in their boots.
After months of development and testing, Austin-based Defense Distributed has produced the first ever 3-D printed firearm, and has successfully tested it with live ammunition. The project’s lead developer Cody Wilson says the Defense Distributed collective of gun access advocates will release the blueprints for the printable gun to the public for free.
It’s a move that New York’s democrat Senator Chuck Schumer says is “stomach churning.”
It’s called the Liberator, and it’s been produced solely with the use of a 3D printer purchased on Ebay for about $8000.
While it looks like a child’s toy, be assured that this piece of plastic is designed to be a killing machine and is capable of firing a standard .380 caliber round. If you have a 3D printer and the plans to print it, you can do so with just sixteen easy-to-assemble pieces:
As you may have guessed, lawmakers are already working on legislation to ban the technology, though it is unclear if they intend to ban just the production of 3-D printed firearms, or the printers themselves, which are available starting at about $1000.
The Liberator may look like a toy, but “this gun can fire regular bullets,” Schumer said, calling for legislation outlawing the technology’s weapons potential.
“Security checkpoints, background checks and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print their own plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser,” Israel said in a statement.
To Schumer, the ramifications of make-your-own untraceable and undetectable weapons are “stomach-churning.”
“Now anyone, a terrorist, someone who is mentally ill, a spousal abuser, a felon, can essentially open a gun factory in their garage,” Schumer said. “It must be stopped.”
They can make all the laws they want. This technology has now been let out of the bag, and stomach churned gun control advocates can push as hard as they want. It will not stop the plans for The Liberator from being disseminated to anyone who wants them.
Defense Distributed and the many others working on open-source 3-D printing kits for firearms and accessories have changed the world. And there’s no going back.
You can download the blueprint for The Liberator at DefCad.org and learn more about the Wiki Weapons project at Defense Distributed.
When it hits the fan, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Mac Slavo is the editor of SHTFplan.com, a resource hub for alternative news, contrarian commentary and strategies that you can take to protect yourself from the coming global paradigm shift.
The Conquistadors were soldiers and explorers who conquered foreign lands and their people on behalf of the Spanish Empire between the 15th and 17th centuries. Highly organized, with the resources of an entire empire behind them and armed with superior technology, they easily swept aside entire civilizations, including the Aztec and Incan Empires.
There was an immense technological disparity between the Conquistadors and the empires they toppled. Paralyzing fear of these foreigners and their technology caused many to either flee or even side with their new overlords.
While the Conquistadors were far from the gods many may have perceived them to be, the ignorance of the natives coupled with their technological inferiority created conditions not unlike a god descending upon a world to devour it. Today, these natives still exist in many countries as second-rate citizens to the descendents of the Conquistadors, so many centuries later.
A similar scenario played out in North America with the coming of French and British colonialists. Both a technological disadvantage and infighting amongst native tribes allowed Europeans to swallow up an entire continent. Like their counterparts in South America, North American natives to this day exist in a state of perpetual subjugation.
With globalization, many believe such disparities are increasingly rare, and then, only in cases of Western nations leveraging their vast resources and technological advances against third world nations on the modern battlefields of imperial conquest.
This perception is held by people who only understand the world in terms of borders and nation-states, and fail to see the deep states that have existed and are indeed expanding within their midst.
Within the nations of the West, there exists a technocratic deep state, one that is not confined to the borders of any particular Western nation, but pervades the geopolitical boundaries of them all. It is driven by corporate-financier special interests, augmented with nearly inexhaustible resources, and operates under a number of dual pretenses to justify its activities if and when they attract public attention.
The technological, financial and tactical disparity that is growing between this deep state and the rest of humanity could be analogous to a native fisherman catching a glimpse of Spanish masts over the horizon. If left unchecked, these new “Conquistadors” will proverbially come ashore. If we are not properly prepared before that happens, we are lent by history a sobering warning of what’s to come.
The Technocratic Deep State
The technocratic deep state doesn’t have a president, an embassy or borders. It has neither a unified steering committee, nor a charter by which it is guided.
It is an abstract boundary around corporate and government research, development, and implementation that includes many different interests, some of which are complimentary, others competitive, and still others compartmentalized. And because it is a deep state – or a state within a state – undeclared and undefined in conventional terms, it is very difficult to sort out who is who.
What is clear, is that certain parties, such as the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), treat this deep state as a compartmentalized operation - manipulating and steering various aspects of it to suit its needs in ways that are not entirely understood by all involved.
For example, DARPA is actively involved in genetics and synthetic biological research. Wired reported in its Pentagon-friendly “Danger Room,” in an article titled, “Pentagon’s New Factory: Your DNA“:
Darpa is sick and tired of waiting around for Mother Nature. Instead, it wants to take the life-making business into its own hands — and manufacture new biological forms in a factory of mix-and-match bio-bits.
A recent call for research by the Pentagon’s mad science agency proposes a new program called “Living Foundries.” The idea is to use biology as a manufacturing platform to “enable on-demand production of new and high-value materials, devices and capabilities.”
In other words, let’s engineer life to make stuff we want.
The fields of bioengineering and synthetic biology have already produced some useful, scary and flat-out bizarre entities. Besides renewable petroleum or steel strong spider silk, there are all sorts of potential therapeutic, industrial and agricultural purposes for reorganized DNA.
Wired continues (emphasis added):
To jumpstart the process, Darpa wants to open the playing field to people from outside the biological sciences, recruiting designers, engineers, manufacturers, computer scientists, academics and anyone else who has an idea. By democratizing the biological design and manufacturing process, they hope to speed up the development of a reliable factory for all sorts of kind-of-living things.
One of the specifics they’re looking for? Modular genetic parts. Kind of like Legos for biology, a standardized system of bio-units capable of being assembled in any which way would explode the possibilities for producing new materials and systems.
While Wired offers readers only the most benign possibilities DARPA might use these “modular genetic parts” for, the very corporate-financier interests steering US policy and therefore DARPA’s research, have penned strategy papers indicating interest in the creation of genotype-specific biological weapons – weapons that could, for example, wipe out only the Chinese, Eastern Europeans, or people with genetic predispositions the ruling elite find unfavorable.
This interest in genotype-specific weapons was mentioned in the Neo-Conservative Project for a New American Century’s (PNAC) 2000 report titled, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (.pdf) which stated:
The proliferation of ballistic and cruise missiles and long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will make it much easier to project military power around the globe. Munitions themselves will become increasingly accurate, while new methods of attack – electronic, “non-lethal,” biological – will be more widely available. (p.71 of .pdf)
Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and “combat” likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, “cyber-space,” and perhaps the world of microbes. (p.72 of .pdf)
And advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool. (p.72 of .pdf)
Clearly then, the Pentagon is mostly likely not using this collection of “modular genetic parts” for new bullet-proof materials, but for the modern-day equivalent of small-pox infected blankets that can wipe out entire civilizations.
Other possibilities are even more startling – biological immortality.
The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.
Wired continued by reporting:
The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”
The mention of “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes” would be the exact area of focus necessary for achieving human biological immortality.
DARPA isn’t the only technocratic deep state “ministry” interested in biological immortality. On the front of a recent Wired issue, is Ray Kurzweil, representing “Singularity University.”
Under his picture is the title, “Live Forever! And Save the World.” Kurzweil is a proponent of what he refers to as the coming “singularity,” a transhumanist merging between man and machine resulting in unprecedented intellectual abilities and biological immortality.
The nature of Kurzweil’s interests and work all depends on whether he and his colleagues plan on sharing the benefits of singularity with the rest of humanity, or moving on without us, and at our cost.
Kurzweil and his Singularity University, like DARPA, is deeply entwined with the largest corporate-financier interests on Earth. Should a megalomaniac seek immortality to compliment the vast wealth and influence they have accumulated (as all megalomaniacs have attempted to do throughout human history), Singularity University would seem like a good first stop along the way.
History’s Take on Facing “Conquistadors”
The true goals of Singularity University, those promoting singularity itself, and DARPA can be debated. What cannot be debated is that currently, the development of super-science is still monopolized by special interests.
Even if advances and breakthroughs being made within this technocratic deep state were done mostly by benevolent servants of humanity – if there is capacity for abuse, it most certainly will take place.
In the case of the atom bomb, those seeking to employ it geopolitically held vastly different mindsets than the people who actually created it.
The amount of abuse or balance new technologies will exhibit across human civilization depends entirely on how many hands those said technologies find themselves in. In the case of the atom bomb, when America monopolized it, they immediately employed it against another nation … twice.
It was only when other nations began developing and deploying nuclear weapons as a credible deterrence that the US shifted its strategic doctrine. Likewise, should the Pentagon today develop and monopolize genotype-specific weapons, they will most likely be used, even if in the most subtle manner.
It will only be when other nations, and indeed, the people themselves, begin understanding and leveraging genetics, that a balance will be struck and both the likelihood of the weapons being used and their effectiveness will be diminished.
Imagine if a native fisherman, instead of spotting Spanish ships coming over the horizon only days away from the conquering of his land and his people, found himself in Spain, witnessing the fleet that would conquer him being assembled while plans of conquest were being drafted.
Could he warn his people years in advance, and ensure that when the Spanish landed, they were confronted with a proportional threat that would shift their conquest instead into diplomacy and compromise? History suggests, yes.
Asia faced a similar conquest by Europeans. The British held Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, while the French held Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. China was equally divided amongst several nations, while the Philippines were first held by the Spanish, then by the Americans. Japan watched this conquest and understood all too well the threat technological disparity posed.
During a period known as the Meiji Restoration, Japan underwent intense modernization in education, industry, infrastructure, and defense. It specifically drew on Western advances to “catch up.” The result was an environment entirely unfavorable to Western colonization, and in fact, left Japan poised to oust the West with its own campaign of extraterritorial invasion and subjugation.
While Japan’s decisions after modernization do not merit emulation, the concept of reducing technological disparity to avoid Conquistador-syle subjugation most certainly does. Japan didn’t just “modernize” by buying and recreating Western armaments. They got organized institutionally as well.
Conversely, Native Americans would eventually end up utilizing much of the technology brought over by European colonialists, however, infighting and disorder amongst their own ranks prevented them from posing the credible deterrence the Meiji Restoration lent Japan. Japan’s ability to both modernize in terms of technology and in terms of institutions, allowed it to compete directly with, and put in check European encroachment.
What We Can Do
Today, if we are to head-off modern day Conquistadors emboldened by a vast disparity in technology and organization, we likewise must reform ourselves.
Redesign Institutions to be Truly Ours: We must look at institutions like schools and universities, hospitals, and research organizations, designed to feed special interests while hindering our progress as individuals and communities, and redesign them by leveraging technology at the grassroots to truly empower people to both understand and meaningfully shape the world around them. We must create new local institutions to leverage technology to our advantage. Hackerspaces, FabLabs, and DIY bio labs are just such local “institutions” that enable ordinary people to get hands-on experience with cutting edge technology – both helping them understand shifting paradigms better, and helping them do the “shifting” themselves. Organizing locally is key – as is collaborating globally. Competing institutions that standardize curriculum for open-source education, or test and certify organic produce for voluntary participants could help project the collective interests of scattered local institutions.
Embrace Emerging Technology – Protest Abuses Of It: We must not protest emerging technology, but rather the abuse of it, while studying it and ensuring that it is put in as many hands as possible. Like information technology, regardless of how many nefarious individual or state actors there are, there are many more interested in the Internet working smoothly and will mobilize against any given threat. A similar paradigm will emerge regarding synthetic biology and 3D printing, provided growing numbers of people interested in a functional society understand the technology and are able to modify it to counteract criminals, terrorists, and monopolistic special interests.
Divest from Their System While Building Ours: We must divest from the current system, while systematically building up alternatives. Unlike the natives of the Americas, we are not waiting for ships to arrive on our shores. The new Conquistadors are already among us, building up their wealth and influence upon our daily patronage of their system. Imagine the Aztecs or Incans funding Spanish Conquistadors in tons of gold, while simultaneously attempting to fight them. Likewise, any attempt to break free from a system we are still entirely dependent on and fueling on a daily basis would be utterly futile.
More specifically, the areas people should focus on are exactly the areas DARPA and others amongst the technocratic deep state are – namely personal manufacturing, robotics (including drones), synthetic biology/genetics, and information technology.
Depending on who is holding the keys when these fields merge, we may see the start of post-scarcity, an elitist transhumanist “singularity,” or perhaps some combination of the two. The more people who understand, begin developing, and employ these fields of emerging technology, the greater our chances are that a “singularity” will benefit humanity, rather than a handful of “transhumanists” at our expense.
These technologies cannot be stopped. If they are possible, people will develop them. Biological immortality is already an evolutionary reality, and is being demonstrably advanced in experiments with species not naturally endowed with this remarkable ability.
Likewise, synthetic biology is already yielding new forms of life, created not by nature, but by human scientists. And certainly, if nature can produce intelligence, science will inevitably recreate it as “artificial intelligence.”
Pretending these technologies don’t exist, aren’t possible, or are somehow capable of being stopped is folly. Instead, we must work to democratize and balance the equations of power and technological disparity, or suffer in our ignorance and wishful thinking, another Conquista, Trail of Tears, Nagasaki, or Hiroshima.
Harvard’s tiny “RoboBee” flying robot is shown in flight in a new video released by the school, flapping its translucent wings 120 times per second, emitting a creepy persistent buzz.
This particular robot has been developed by Harvard researchers for a decade and while it actually flew last summer in a laboratory, the video (below) of the RoboBee in flight was only released by Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences today.
The development of the RoboBee – which is actually inspired by a fly’s biology, according to Danger Room – has taken so long because it can’t rely on conventional electromagnetic motors.
Instead, the scientists had to use piezoelectric actuators, tiny strips of ceramic that expand and contract when an electric field is applied, in order to get the wings to flap.
The same technique has been used on earlier versions of the robot, allowing each wing to be operated separately which enables complex maneuvers.
Interestingly, Spencer Ackerman, writing for Danger Room, states, “The idea is to use the teeny-tiny robot for missions like environmental monitoring, crop pollination or search-and-rescue operations, making the Bee a host body for teeny-tiny cameras. So far, the U.S. military isn’t involved in the project.”
While this is true and the military has their own “Micro-Aviary,” the Harvard RoboBee page specifically states that it can be used for “military surveillance.” It seems a bit strange to leave that out.
There are some quite major challenges that remain for the RoboBee project. The most significant is probably the lack of an internal power source.
As one can clearly see in the video, the current design requires an external power source, something which would not be practical for the applications mentioned above.
Maintaining the balance on such a tiny robot is quite difficult, but since the device only uses 19 milliwatts of electricity in flight, an on-board power source is not impossible.
The next phase of the RoboBee project will include a “computationally efficient brain” mounted on the robot that is inspired by the way fruit flies’ brains handle flying in the wind.
“Flies perform some of the most amazing aerobatics in nature using only tiny brains,” said Sawyer Fuller, a member of the Harvard research team, according to the Daily Mail. “Their capabilities exceed what we can do with our robot, so we would like to understand their biology better and apply it to our own work.”
According to Professor Robert Wood, the leader of the project, developments made under the RoboBee project could be used in other fields as well.
“This project provides a common motivation for scientists and engineers across the university to build smaller batteries, to design more efficient control systems, and to create stronger, more lightweight materials,” Wood said.
It will be quite fascinating to see how this technology moves forward and how it is eventually used. Hopefully the applications are positive but the fact that the project page at Harvard specifically states that it can be used for military surveillance isn’t all that comforting.
Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on UCY.TV from 7 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
Recently there have been many anti-drone demonstrations across the United States and around the world, with the latest at Boeing’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago.
This latest protest focused on the annual meeting at the Field Museum of Natural History and was made up of activists from the Anti-War Committee of Chicago, according to the Chicago Tribune.
While the Tribune makes a point of noting that military aircraft “accounted for 20 percent of [Boeing’s] revenue last year,” they don’t point out that Boeing brought in $81.7 billion in revenue in 2012, according to the company overview presentation.
In other words, Boeing’s military aircraft sales in 2012 brought in somewhere around $16,340,000,000 in revenue.
The activists protested both the development of drones and the tax incentives given to Boeing that pushed the company to move its headquarters to Chicago over a decade ago.
“As a Chicago public school parent, I resent the fact that Boeing reports record profits while the public schools are being defunded and closed,” said Sarah Simmons, a Boeing stockholder and protest organizer, according to the Tribune.
Others, including Lisa Angonese, a mother of two and daughter of a World War II pilot, emphasized the need for peaceful resolution of conflict instead of perpetual war.
“I don’t want Chicago to be known as the birthplace of a machine that kills people,” said Kait McIntyre, recent University of Illinois at Chicago graduate and anti-war activist.
Unsurprisingly, a Boeing spokesman declined to comment on the protest to the Tribune.
This protest was much smaller than other recent actions, attracting “about a dozen” demonstrators, according to the Tribune.
Around 250 activists recently attended the protest outside Hancock Field Air Force National Guard Base in New York, according to the Post-Standard, leading to the arrest of around 30 people.
The base is home to the 174th Attack Wing of the New York Air National Guard which operates armed drones thousands of miles away.
The youngest of those arrested on charges of misdemeanor obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct was 24-year-old Caithraoine Demott Grady and the oldest was 88-year-old Mary Snyder.
The arrests came after a series of rallies and workshops were held in Syracuse over the weekend, organized by the Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars.
Last fall, town judges in DeWitt, where the base is located, issued an order of protection against peace activists who were “showing up unannounced at the base and blocking its gate,” according to the Post-Standard.
“It is a flagrant effort to deny us our first amendment rights,” said Elliot Adams, one of the rally organizers, who also called the order of protection “absurd.”
DeWitt judges also recently sentenced five activists to 15 days in jail for trespassing during a protest. The activists blocked the main entrance of the base, according to the Post-Standard.
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Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on UCY.TV from 7 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
A mock “killer robot” is pictured in central London on April 23, 2013 during the launching of the Campaign to Stop “Killer Robots”. (AFP Photo / Carl Court)
A new forward-looking campaign is hoping to shape public perception in a bid to make sure that the concept of armed drones that attack targets without human input never become a reality.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch has announced the creation of an international coalition, which it hopes can push for a global treaty for a pre-emptive ban on artificially intelligent weapons before they can be fielded in battle.
These “killer robots,” as the group calls them, are not yet being operated by any army in the world, though the pace at which drone technology and robotics are advancing has led to speculation that they could be developed within the next few decades.
According to Humans Right Watch, which cites a report it co-authored with Harvard Law School in November of 2012, a fully autonomous machine that could select and fire upon a target selected of its own volition could be available within 20 years, if not sooner.
That report, entitled “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots,” outlines the legal, ethical and policy concerns surrounding the development of self-directed weaponry. While in certain contexts advanced weaponry already possesses some semblance of “intelligence,” such as guided missiles or drones capable of adapting to battlefield conditions, present technology still requires human input, and in that sense involves basic humanitarian law.
Leading the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is Jody William, a Nobel Peace laureate for her efforts to enact a ban on anti-personnel landmines. She believes that exposure of the issue will bring about public opposition.
“As people learn about our campaign, they will flock to it. The public conscience is horrified to learn about this possible advance in weapons systems. People don’t want killer robots out there,” William said in comments to the BBC.
“Normal human beings find it repulsive,” she added.
Already the use of semi-autonomous weapons, such as aerial drones, has led to mounting criticism over the legal processes behind both the selection of foreign targets, and also their unilateral use on foreign soil. More recently in the US, there’s been a heated debate over whether they should be used on American citizens at all.
Current semi-autonomous technology at least requires a human operator, and in theory does not kill without proper authorization. As Human Rights Watch points out, the development of artificial intelligence-equipped machines presents a number of issues circumventing conventional law, and might even lead to an international arms race not unlike the one currently happening within the field of drone tech.
For its part, a directive issued by the US Department of Defense in 2012 and quoted by the BBC has stated that weapons with a degree of autonomy “shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”
While in March of 2012, Lord Astor of Hever – the UK’s parliamentary undersecretary of state for defense – stated that the Ministry of Defence “currently has no intention of developing systems that operate without human intervention.”
According to a report produced by the Teal Group, in 2011 its market study estimated that in the coming decade worldwide spending on drones will reach $94 billion, with countries such as China looking to quickly close the gap with US technology.
Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on UCY.TV from 7 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
According to a new study presented at the Seismological Society of America’s conference in Salt Lake City this week, scientists may have found a new way to not only track storms, but predict their path using seismic waves.
The study found that as Superstorm Sandy approached the coast last October, seismic vibrations were detected across the lower 48 states.
Hurricane Sandy swept northward a few hundred kilometers off the East Coast, hooked left, and then slammed into the shore just northeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey. Long before the storm struck land, however, minuscule vibrations triggered in Earth’s crust could be picked up on instruments onshore, says Oner Sufri, a seismologist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. While some of the motions were produced by surf pounding beaches, a larger fraction came from large storm waves far offshore that smashed into each other.
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Storm-induced seismic vibes aren’t a newly recognized phenomenon. In 2005, ground motions triggered by Hurricane Katrina were picked up by seismometers in California. And even storms that remain far from land can trigger ground motions, Sufri and Koper note.
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Because the strongest ground motions are typically created at or near a storm, researchers can track its progress using seismic data alone. That offers opportunities for scientists to delve through old data sets—especially those from the presatellite era—to look for signs of storms that might have been missed by earthbound observers, or to better estimate their paths and intensities, Sufri says.
WordPress has been attacked by a botnet of “tens of thousands” of individual computers since last week, according to server hosters Cloudflare and Hostgator.
The botnet targets WordPress users with the username “admin”, trying thousands of possible passwords.
The attack began a week after WordPress beefed up its security with an optional two-step authentication log-in option.
The site currently powers 64m websites read by 371m people each month.
According to survey website W3Techs, around 17% of the world’s websites are powered by WordPress.
“Here’s what I would recommend: If you still use ‘admin’ as a username on your blog, change it, use a strong password,” wrote WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg on his blog.
He also advised adopting two-step authentication, which involves a personalised “secret number” allocated to users in addition to a username and password, and ensuring that the latest version of WordPress is installed.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) recently solicited for a “massive online data repository system” capable of accessing personal information, including relatives, connections and associates.
The request was submitted on March 28, 2013 at FedBizOpps.gov. It was later updated on April 5, 2013.
In providing background for the request, the ATF says that the Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information (OSII) “provides critical law enforcement resources in support of reducing violent crime and protecting the public. Staffed by a number of dedicated law-enforcement intelligence analysts, support professionals, and officials, the mission of OSII has always been to provide timely, accurate and focused intelligence through the collection and analysis of information of enhance decision-making Bureau-wide.”
The overview of the solicitation says that ATF has a vision to embrace and use leading-edge technology where appropriate. “OSII utilizes a number of internal databases as well as external sources to provide timely and relevant information and intelligence products to law enforcement agencies at the federal, state and local levels. Many of these tasks are performed manually, resulting in longer turnaround times on important information and intelligence research and analysis requests.”
According to the documents outlining the request, the “massive online data repository system that contains a wide variety of data sources both historically and current that can be utilized in support of investigations and backgrounds through the use of automated external systems containing public records and non-public/proprietary information that provides a means to rapidly check records across the country is necessary in assisting investigators, agents and analyst to find people, their assets, relatives, associates and more.”
Additionally, it will be “comprised of public and proprietary records that contains a variety of data sources” which will be utilized by “Intelligence Analyst, Special Agents, Inspectors, Financial Investigators and Law Enforcement support staff” in order to “provide rapid searches on various entities for example; names, telephone numbers, utility data and reverse phone look-ups, as a means to assist with investigations, and background research on people, assets and businesses.”
This system will also allow ATF to “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches such as, incomplete social security numbers, address, VIN numbers, etc.” It will also have the ability to “obtain exact matches from partial source data searches such as, incomplete social security numbers, address, VIN numbers, etc.”
First, as our own Publius Huldah has pointed out, any type of Federal laws or entities to restrict firearms, like the ATF, are unconstitutional. Second, what are we not being told about concerning this database. Already, we’ve been warned about background checks being expanded and a possible national gun registry. This would seem appropriate for this as well. This seems like this will be nothing more than to gain as much information on the public as possible.
During his first term, President Barack Obama declared October 2009 to be “National Information Literacy Awareness Month,” emphasizing that, for students, learning to navigate the online world is as important a skill as reading, writing and arithmetic. It was a move that echoed his predecessor’s strong support of global literacy—such as reading newspapers—most notably through First Lady Laura Bush’s advocacy.
Yet, disturbingly, the Departments of Justice (DOJ) of both the Bush and Obama administrations have embraced an expansive interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) that would literally make it a crime for many kids to read the news online. And it’s the main reason why the law must be reformed.
As we’ve explained previously, in multiple cases the DOJ has taken the position that a violation of a website’s Terms of Service or an employer’s Terms of Use policy can be treated as a criminal act. And the House Judiciary Committee has floated a proposal that largely adopts the DOJ’s position, making it possible to prosecute a user for accessing website for a purpose other than intended by the publisher. For a number of reasons, including the requirements of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, many news sites have terms of service that prohibit minors from using their interactive services and sometimes even visiting their websites.
Take, for example, the Hearst Corporation’s family of publications. If you read the terms of use for the Houston Chronicle, the San Francisco Chronicle, or Popular Mechanics websites, you’ll find this language, screamed in all-caps:
“YOU MAY NOT ACCESS OR USE THE COVERED SITES OR ACCEPT THE AGREEMENT IF YOU ARE NOT AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD.”
In the DOJ’s world, this means anyone under 18 who reads a Hearst newspaper online could hypothetically face jail time. But Hearst’s publications aren’t the only ones with overly restrictive usage terms. U-T San Diego and the Miami Heraldhave similar policies. Even NPR is guilty, saying teenagers can’t access their “services” (including the site, NPR podcasts and the media player) without a permission slip:
“If you are between the ages of 13 and 18, you may browse the NPR Services or register for email newsletters or other features of the NPR Services (excluding the NPR Community) with the consent of your parent(s) or guardian(s), so long as you do not submit any User Materials.”
Some sites must have recognized the problem and crafted their policies to only forbid users under the age of 13. These include the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Arizona Republic. NBCNews.com uses this wording:
“By using or attempting to use the Site or Services, you certify that you are at least 13 years of age or other required greater age for certain features and meet any other eligibility and residency requirements of the Site.”
This means that inquisitive 12-year-olds who visit NBCNews.com to learn about current events would be, by default, misrepresenting their ages. Again, this could be criminal under the DOJ’s interpretation of the CFAA.
We’d like to say that we’re being facetious, but, unfortunately, the Justice Department has already demonstrated its willingness to pursue CFAA to absurdextremes. Luckily, the Ninth Circuit rejected the government’s arguments, concluding that, under such an ruling, millions of unsuspecting citizens would suddenly find themselves on the wrong side of the law. As Judge Alex Kozinski so aptly wrote: “Under the government’s proposed interpretation of the CFAA…describing yourself as ‘tall, dark and handsome,’ when you’re actually short and homely, will earn you a handsome orange jumpsuit.”
And it’s no excuse to say that the vast majority of these cases will never be prosecuted. As the Ninth Circuit explained, “Ubiquitous, seldom-prosecuted crimes invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Instead of pursuing only suspects of actual crimes, it opens the door for prosecutors to go after people because the government doesn’t like them.
Unfortunately, there’s no sign the Justice Department has given up on this interpretation outside the Ninth and Fourth Circuits, which is why the Professor Tim Wu in the New Yorker recently called the CFAA “the most outrageous criminal law you’ve never heard of.”
The potential criminalization of terms of service is a prime reason that Congress needs to overhaul CFAA and it’s certainly why the House Judiciary Committee should abandon the seemingly DOJ-drafted bill it floated recently and instead sit down with Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Rep. Darrell Issa, and others to negotiate real reform.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s rhetoric over nuclear weapons and the possibility of war with the United States and its allies makes almost no plausible sense considering that their long range missile capabilities are lacking and their military hardware is reportedly outdated when compared to the militaries of developed western nations. While the communist regime does have millions of soldiers at their disposal, the notion that North Korea will start and win a war against the U.S. seems outlandish.
So, either Kim Jong Un’s recent actions are a part of internal posturing to keep the North Korean populace compliant through propaganda, or the young leader has been empowered by an ace up his sleeve that the North’s enemies do not yet fully understand.
The idea that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea may have a secret weapon of sorts may sound far-fetched, but not everyone considers it an impossibility. With the U.S. deploying naval assets to the region and Chinese troops mobilizing en masse at the border, there is a distinct possibility that a military clash of some type is in the works.
In December of last year, the DPRK launched an orbital satellite, which left many wondering about its payload. Could it be that this ‘space launch vehicle’ is carrying a star wars type nuclear weapons package?
U.S. officials quietly are expressing concern that North Korea could use its “space launch vehicle” to explode a high-altitude nuclear device over the United States, creating an electromagnetic pulse that would destroy major portions of the U.S. electrical grid system as well as the nation’s critical infrastructures.
The concern is so great that U.S. officials who watch North Korea closely are continually monitoring the status of the North Korean “space launch vehicle,” whose status could suggest a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States.
They are aware of the three-stage missile North Korea launched last December that also orbited a “package,” which experts say could be a test to orbit a nuclear weapon that then would be deorbited on command anywhere over the U.S. and exploded at a high altitude, creating an EMP effect.
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This concern recently has been reinforced by a little-publicized study by the U.S. Army War College that said a nuclear detonation at altitude above a U.S. city could wipe out the electrical grid for hundreds, possibly thousands of miles around.
The impact would be catastrophic.
“Preparing for months without a commercial source of clean water (city water pressure is often dependent on electric pumping to storage towers) and stoppage of sewage treatment facilities will require net methods of survival particularly in populated areas,” the military study said.
The May 2011 study, titled, “In the Dark: Military Planning for a Catastrophic Critical Infrastructure Event,” concluded that there is “very little” in the way of backup capability to the electric grid upon which the communications infrastructure is vitally dependent.
Two years ago the North Koreans detonated a nuclear weapon that experts claimed had such a low-yield it posed no significant threat. However, EMPact President Dr. Peter Vincent Pry has a different assessment. He suggests that, while the blast may have been weak, if detonated at high altitude over the United States, the gamma rays emitted are powerful enough to disable the national power grid across the lower 48 states.
According to experts, a blast of this nature detonated 300 miles above the state of Nebraska would be a life-as-we-know-it ending event:
“Within a year of that attack, nine out of 10 Americans would be dead, because we can’t support a population of the present size in urban centers and the like without electricity.”
This begs the question: Is it possible that the payload on North Korea’s ‘space launch vehicle’ was actually a Super EMP, or electro-magnetic pulse weapon, that is now awaiting a ‘go’ signal from Kim Jong Un?
His arrogance certainly suggests he knows something we don’t. And with fellow North Korean rogue ally Iran recently claiming that 2013 will be the fall of the American empire, maybe this time North Korea isn’t just talking.
Super EMP weapons exist, and in all likelihood North Korea has such a weapon. They also have a space-based delivery system that may be capable of deploying it directly over the central United States.
Such a scenario is an outlier, but certainly not an impossibility.
Nuclear attack and electro -magnetic pulse weapons are two of the most dangerous man-made threats we face. Preparing for such an event is possible, but should it come to pass it would render all of our technological advancements over the last hundred years useless and would leave the United States no better off than a third-world nation.
An expert panel that Congress created to study such an attack says it would halt banking, transportation, food, water and emergency services and “might result in defeat of our military forces.”
“The consequences would be catastrophic,” said Joseph McClelland, director of the energy commission’s Office of Electric Reliability.
“It would bring down the whole grid and cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion” to repair, said Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md. Full recovery could take up to 10 years, he said.
When it hits the fan, don’t say we didn’t warn you. Mac Slavo is the editor of SHTFplan.com, a resource hub for alternative news, contrarian commentary and strategies that you can take to protect yourself from the coming global paradigm shift.
While it may sound like complete science fiction, the Air Force is actually preparing to spend $49 million to research the biological effects of non-lethal directed energy weapons in hopes of creating future weaponry that manipulates the body on a biochemical or molecular level.
The Air Force Bioeffects Division recently announced a new program testing how “directed energy, riot control agents, broadband light, acoustic sounds, and blunt impact materials” change the body.
While many people may not be familiar with radio frequency (RF) and high power microwave (HPM) emitting devices, the US Air Force says they have “been at the forefront of research on the biological effects of RF/HPM radiation for more than 30 years.”
This latest round of research involves laboratory tests, studies and field experiments beginning in September of this year with tests in San Antonio, Texas expected to go on for seven years.
The Air Force announcement posted online points out that the discovery of new bioeffects could very well have “defensive or offensive” applications and thus contribute to the “development and deployment of future DE weapons.”
The Air Force will conduct “proteomic, genomic, and metabolomic studies that identify critical biochemical or molecular changes following exposure to DE prior to or during mission operations that assist in the prediction of health degradation.”
“That could mean looking at how concentrated blasts of radio frequency waves and high-power microwaves manipulate our proteins, DNA and metabolites,” Danger Room notes.
The announcement says that they seek to “investigate the basic mechanism(s) of interaction between biology and RF radiation” while also discovering “previously unknown bioeffects of RF exposure that may provide a defensive or offensive capability to the Air Force.”
Perhaps even greater than the amazingly creepy nature of this type of technology are the concerns surrounding the diplomatic problems this type of weaponry could create.
Robert Beckhusen, writing for Danger Room, points out that the military’s Active Denial System was recalled from Afghanistan at least in part due to the “propaganda value it would have given to the Taliban.”
Still, as Beckhusen points out, “in the aftermath of the assault on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi and the killing of the U.S. ambassador there, the State Department touted non-lethal energy weapons as one potential defense against embassy attacks.”
While it may not be all that helpful diplomatically, the US military is clearly pouring money into this type of research to build directed energy weapons with the intent to actually use them. One can only struggle imagine what the future of warfare will look like at this point.
Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on UCY.TV from 7 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
Since the theft of depositors in Cyprus, Bitcoin has reached amazing new heights in both popularity and value. Over a $1 billion of Bitcoins are now in circulation. People all over the world are beginning to realize the value of financial anonymity and the utility of using crypto-currencies.
Peer-to-peer digital currencies don’t require a central authority or a bank account, they have microscopic transaction fees, are quasi-anonymous and can be used to purchase a growing list of real-world goods and services.
However, there is a dilemma to the price of Bitcoin rising too fast. Some say it’s a bubble, yet as capital controls and the desire for financial anonymity continue to rise around the world, so will Bitcoin’s value. If it is a bubble, it’s not likely to burst anytime soon.
The real dilemma is why would anyone spend a currency that doubles in value every few months? Bitcoin, at this point, is a good investment but not a great medium of exchange.
The success of Bitcoin has spawned a few emerging competing digital currencies into the market that seek to correct some of Bitcoin’s shortcomings. Modeled after Bitcoin’s open-source, peer-to-peer format, these new currencies may not be riding Bitcoin’s coattails much longer as they gain steam in their own right.
For the past several months Bitcoin has been making headlines as its massive growth has outpaced any and all traditional investments. However, the big winner this week in the fledgling crypto currency market was not Bitcoin but the myriad of young crypto currencies that now appear poised for growth.
What are these young crypto currencies? Here are 5 new crypto currencies you’ve probably never heard of:
Litecoin
Litecoin (LTC) is quickly becoming the most popular competing digital currency. Litecoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency like Bitcoin but with a scrypt hashing system making it is easier to mine. It trades on multiple exchanges, and a new Silk Road-like free marketplace called Atlantis is being developed exclusively for Litecoin in Tor. Litecoin differs from Bitcoin in that its Scrypt is easier to mine and four times as many Litecoins will be produced (84 million) giving it more room for expansion and a more stable long-term value. Litecoin has risen from about $.25 to nearly $.70 in the last few weeks and is expected to continue climbing as the marketplace for buying goods with Litecoins expands. Get started with Litecoins here.
Namecoin
Namecoin (NMC) is the only other major competitor to Bitcoin besides Litecoin. Namecoin can be merged mined with BTC, but uses an alternative peer-to-peer domain system. Namecoin differs from Bitcoin in that it allows users to attach information to any given transaction, but is similar in that only 21 million coins will be produced. Namecoins are currently trading at around $.20, or .00226 of a Bitcoin. Get started with Namecoins here.
PPcoin
PPcoin (PPC) is a P2P digital currency compatible with Bitcoin mining, but it uses an innovative proof-of-stake system to provide most of the network security instead of proof-of-work like Bitcoin. “Security level of the network is not dependent on energy consumption in the long term thus providing an energy efficient and more cost-competitive peer-to-peer crypto-currency,” PPC’s white paper says. Up to 2 billion PPcoins are currently allowed to be created. PPcoins trade on a few exchanges where its current value is just shy of $.02 and Find out more about PPcoin here.
Terracoin
Launched in the fall of 2012, Terracoin (TRC) is one of the newest decentralized, person-to-person digital currencies, also modeled after Bitcoin’s protocol. Twice as many Terracoins (42 million) will be produced as Bitcoins which makes them easier to mine. With Terracoin, only the “longest” blockchain gets used by the network, thus preventing any malicious nodes making it even more secure. Terracoin trades on multiple exchanges and its current value is around $.092, or .001 Bitcoins. For more info on Terracoin, go here.
Devcoin
Devcoin (DVC) is a digital crypto-currency that seeks to spur jobs and innovation. It can be merge-mined with Bitcoins, but the reward for coin generation goes heavily to open-source developers who get 90%, leaving 10% of the bounty for the miner. Besides developers and programmers, Devcoin rewards artists and writers who can earn DVCs for their work innovating the currency. The concept is to provide jobs to anyone who wants to work, payable in Devcoins. “Devcoins provide an income for everyone who wants to work, even if they live in an area with more job seekers than jobs,” it says on their Wiki page. DVCs currently trade at a fraction of a penny. Find out more here.
There is a great deal of research going on in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) merging with the brain.
Exuberant cheerleaders like Roy Kurzweil are quite confident that we are approaching a moment when a computer will exhibit all the power of the human brain.
The definition of “power” in this context is fuzzy. But Kurzweil and others are sure we’re about to uncover the “algorithm” that underlies all brain activity.
They couldn’t be more wrong. Neuroscience has barely scratched the surface of understanding how the brain operates. Cracking the code is not on the horizon.
This fact reflects a much deeper problem. PR is not science. Predictions about what is imminent are not the same thing as verified research results.
PR is not information.
In exactly the same way, were a human-computer interface with awesome capability endowed with access to a hundred galaxies of stored data, it would run up against the problem of vast chronic misinformation in those cosmic warehouses.
This is not something that can be deleted with a program or a committee tasked with making corrective changes.
For example, and this is just one area, medical science is so rife with fraud, at so many levels, as I’ve demonstrated over and over again for the past 10 years, that it would take humans decades to expose a significant part of it. And AI wouldn’t even know where or how to begin looking, because…who would set the parameters of such an investigation?
There is an inherent self-limiting function in AI. It uses, accesses, collates, and calculates with, false information. Not just here and there or now and then, but on a continuous basis.
Think about all the entrenched institutions and monopolies in our society. Each one of them proliferates false information like a Niagara.
No machine can correct that. Indeed, AI machines are victims to it. They in turn emanate more falsities based on the information they are utilizing. I’m sure someone can make a little model of the exponential expansion of this disaster.
Each and every false datum generates a wider and wider stream of lies, and the streams, becoming rivers, overlap and produce exceptionally large numbers of contaminated eddies, polls, and rapids.
When personal computers entered the marketplace, people began a clamor about the Age of Information.
There were cultural reasons for this enthusiasm. They could all summed up by the fact that we are living in a technological society, and technology walks hand in glove with information.
But as the messianic postulations and predictions reached new heights, and the drive began to marry machine and human brain, the gaping holes and rips in the utopian fabric of dreams loomed up for any intelligent person to observe.
When a corporation or government expands to a certain size, it dedicates itself to survival, not of its principles, not of its original mission, but of Itself as an entity. Therefore, it spins lies.
As Dr. Peter Breggin and I discussed on his radio show yesterday, when it comes to the newly announced federal brain-mapping project (B.A.M.), the scientists will very rapidly begin drowning in their own ignorance about the very organ they are investigating.
But that won’t do. This billion-dollar project is supposed to produce results, and the project must survive. Therefore, the researchers will cook up models to demonstrate their progress. These models will make assertions which are patently false.
Pharmaceutical companies will develop new drugs based on the false assertions about the brain, knowing full well they are operating in swamp of deception, and caring not one whit about it.
It is the same with the vaunted AI-human brain interface. It will gobble up and deploy untold numbers of lies already told by other institutions to defend and protect their own survival.
The complexity, on various levels, of false information will make the heralded AI-brain collaboration resemble an intelligence agency:
It lies about other lies, and then it lies about that.
The mathematics are packed with functions that automatically spiral out realities even Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter would find frivolous and repellent.
The field of information theory is about handling quantity of data and making that data readable. It’s not about the quality of the data.
AI can work successfully in engineering projects, but when the human interface is added, we are no longer merely talking about engineering. The whole purpose of the interface is supposed to be about somehow making humans better.
How can that happen when the hugely expanded access to data runs into billions or trillions of bits of false information?
I’ve been making notes for my second, more advanced logic course. The purpose of the course is to provide better ways of handling the flood of information we deal with every day. The first challenge is going beyond the rules and principles of classical logic, in order to analyze the quality of the data we are digesting and using.
There is no pat system for doing that. Certainly, accepting data based on the notion that “recognized authorities” are reliable would be a disaster. But that is exactly where the human-AI interface is heading, like a team of horses being driven toward the edge of a cliff.
The human-AI engineers are already fatally compromised. In journalistic terms, they are the mainstream reporters obeying the parameters laid down by their editors and corporate owners. They write their stories inside a bubble of illusory context. They go back, again and again, to the same sources, and those sources are permanently biased against popping the bubble and journeying out to where the truth exists.
Actually, an AI machine could write most of the articles that appear on the front page of the NY Times every day. It would save time and cut expenses. But the result would be the same: absurdly limited context, false information, deception, fatuous presumption of authority.
If, instead, you want to look for a program that would discount such a presumption and would reject institutional secrecy, a program that would undertake a relentless investigation of the quality of data, there is a potential candidate.
It’s called a human being. And it’s not a program.
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
One thing is certain. He’ll say, “I thought I was in a movie.”
Either the judge will dismiss that excuse with a snort and huff, or he’ll create yet a new class of victims: the people who are brainwashed into believing the Real is merely a consequence-free artifact designed for them by Glass.
“Murder? It was merely virtual. Glass made me think so, Your Honor.”
A friend and I cooked up a Glass ad: “You’ll see exactly what you’re seeing now, only you’ll think you’re in a movie. And electromagnetic radiation will envelope your head and the NSA will see everything you’re seeing in real time.”
Entitled yuppie boomer spies for the national security State. Just what we need.
Then, up the road, we’ll have this. Suits filed by people whose lawyers insist their clients had a reasonable expectation of receiving information from Glass that didn’t, in fact, arrive:
when to take the next pill;
a quicker way to get to the airport to make their flight to a career-enhancing meeting in Macao (they missed the plane and the meeting);
a more accurate assessment of what the beautiful stranger sitting at a table in a restaurant is looking for in a prospective husband;
more convincing talking points transmitted before a conversation with a political adversary…
“My disappointment with Glass was so profound I spiraled down into a depression that ruined my life. After all, my Glass and I are One. When an intimate friend lets you down, it’s traumatic.”
Taking it further, the ontology of Glass and such future devices is: everything in the universe is connected. The way we say it is.
It’s the job of Glass to elucidate and demonstrate that by virtually hooking the wearer up to all of it. You’ll get the sizzle and dazzle. The life-path of giant redwoods, people shoveling snow in Mongolia, fish swimming around the Great Reef, pygmies dancing in Central Africa, new (fake) Arab Spring outbursts, moving stock prices, drug recalls, ice caps expanding and diminishing at the North Pole, sun spots, geothermal boil at the core of Earth, estimated germ-content in subsets of bodies walking around in Paris.
Now. In real time. Sequentially or all at once. In an ongoing Spiritual event of the highest order. (Sure it is.)
And this imparts to the Glass wearer a sense that he is a first-class citizen in the new Technocratic Paradise, as if he were part-human, part-machine.
“It’s amazing. When I put on Glass, I’m in satori. I’m plugged into the online bio-astro-neuro-meta-quantum orchestra called Universe. At least, that’s what they tell me.”
A human without Glass? Unthinkable.
Will the Pope wear Glass? Who will be the first president of the United States to wear it? You can be sure the police will. They’ll have access to the history of any citizen as if he were a Potential Suspect, and animated previews of any building or home as an assault target.
IRS agents in cars, on foot, sitting in restaurants will merely glance at another human, and immediately a complete tax history of that person will spring up before his eyes.
Staff psychiatrists will walk through office buildings and pick up instant psych evals on every worker.
And the military? “EVERYTHING is a battlefield. I finally figured that out when I started wearing Glass.”
Glass will inform any agriculture inspector anywhere on the globe that the GMO plant he is looking at is perfectly safe and equivalent in every way to conventionally-grown.
Doctors, relying on Glass-supplied medical images and data (all cooked and distorted, of course, by Big Pharma), will perform millions of unnecessary surgeries and dispense billions of useless and highly toxic pills to patients. Just like now, only worse.
But Glass is wonderful. How could we have lived without it?
You’ll meet somebody in a park and start a conversation. Suddenly, before your eyes, you’ll see: “His Twitter account temporarily suspended for providing questionable links; frequently employs terms like ‘freedom,’ ‘liberty.’ Belongs to no approved groups. Warning—you should consider this person dangerous.”
Or you’ll be shopping in a market and, as you pass down the aisle, a red light will go on in space in front of your face when you encounter a person whose approved vaccine status has lapsed. “Warning: herd immunity endangered.”
Two friends at a picnic:
“Hey, I just upgraded to the Glass C-16 program.”
“What’s that?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“It contains Homeland Security profiles on four million Americans. Invaluable.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Through our office. We have a contract with the DOJ. So we have special access.”
“How can I get it?”
“Heh-heh. You can’t, unless you go through a special clearance exam. It’s expensive.”
Any Glass wearer who eats at a restaurant in New York will immediately be plugged into a Bloomberg app that displays, before his eyes, along with a sub-vocal whisper: “The next bite of steak will elevate your cholesterol level above allowed limits. Put down the fork. Don’t order coffee. Move the dish of sugar envelopes away from you. I see you’re a registered gun owner in Utah. You have three hours to leave the City.”
The state of mind, in which Glass wearers view reality as virtual, is the big one. People aren’t already disconnected enough from life? We need more illusion?
From ancient times, and especially since Plato, the faculty of vision, beyond the other four physical senses, has been elevated to the highest position of in-sight. The metaphors have been about “seeing the higher reality.”
So now, Google goes to eyeGlass, which is all about giving wearers a sense of being in charge, by placing a grid over the real world, and enhancing Vision.
Glass is the cocaine of computing.
And superiority? Is it any different from the status owners experience when they slide down Main Street in a Ferrari? They’re automatically Somebody because of their car.
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, has famously said: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place…and it’s important, for example, that we are subject in the Unite States to the Patriot Act.”
As the NSA captures everything Glass wearers are seeing in real time, Schmidt’s statement will take on added meaning, won’t it? Glass is the Brave New World snitch of snitches.
Hidden behind all of this is the position and place of the individual. His creative power will be defined as the mere ability to receive “elite” information. That’s a passive formulation; precisely the opposite of what the creative life is.
The number-one guru of utopian technocracy, Ray Kurzweil, thinks human creativity, as a concept, is largely based on a misunderstanding about what computers can do. That’s all.
Because a computer beat a world champion chess player, because a computer can analyze the work of a poet and then spit out its own poems in that author’s style, because a computer can defeat two very good Jeopardy players on television, we know that human creativity is an illusion. Computers, machines can work the same “tricks” by simply accessing and collating information.
If you want an intellectual recipe for taking away the essence of what a human being is, you’ve just found it.
And Glass will help lead the way.
“I have so much information jumping in front of my eyes now, it’s amazing. What else do I need? I’m there.”
For centuries, artists and inventors proved that reality was only one (temporary) work of art. They proved it by creating something new and powerful, again and again and again. They committed body, mind, and soul to their work. They dynamically moved the human race ahead.
Now, the “new paradigm” is Instant Information. Tap in, and reality is yours.
Yes, but what reality?
The answer is: the one designed, not by you, but for you.
And by people who deserve your trust the way a wildebeest should trust a pack of lions.
The author of an explosive collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.
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