Digital Freedom

In Project Veritas vs Schmidt, the organization argued it had a right to engage in undercover journalism and record people without their consent.

It always ends like this, doesn’t it? The initial boondoggle funds haven’t even been disbursed, and already the calls for more free federal bucks have begun. And it won’t end with Washington, or Mississippi. The floodgates are once more open. And this is the result:

The lawsuit takes an interesting turn, as it further alleges that MSG utilized the facial recognition technology as a strategic tool to keep out attorneys representing individuals or entities that might have conflicting interests with MSG or its affiliates.

“The Attorney Ban, which was adopted in July 2022, states in summary that MSG and any of its venues reserves the right to exclude any litigation counsel who represents parties adverse to MSG and its related companies,” the complaint states.

M. Ross Arnel, who took legal action in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, shared his personal encounter, recounting how his face was scanned and matched against images in the company’s database during his attendance at a Madison Square Garden concert in October 2022.

Free speech is one of the cornerstones of a free society. Yet, the notion of a government agency engaging in “prebunking” is eerily reminiscent of information policing. This collusion with media outlets further blurs the line between independent journalism and government propaganda.

The stark political partisanship that enveloped Walensky’s term was highlighted by a KFF study that revealed political affiliation as a significant predictor of Covid-19 vaccination. She pointed out that public health shouldn’t be politicized. Yet, it is worrisome that the agency, under her watch, arguably engaged in its own form of information politicking.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should not be renewed under any circumstances.

There is not any control that Congress could put in place that would not eventually be captured and corrupted.

The Treasury is reportedly set to publish requirements demanding banks uphold principles of freedom of speech, in addition to mandates that lenders reveal their reasoning for closing an account. Should they fail to abide by such rules, regulators will be able to take punitive action against the banks.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/170363

Could the Trump phone call being leaked to CNN be an AI fake? Some say yes, and today’s AI technology would make it easy to do. Remember all the evil Deep State made up on Trump and the so-called Russian collusion? There was the fake “Dossier,” fraudulent spy warrants and FBI and DOJ lying at every turn. Pulling off an AI fake audio recording of Trump admitting guilt is outrageous and should be investigated thoroughly. I want to see and hear the original recording playing on the original recording device that was used. I think they are just making it all up—again.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/170143

Very important - watch the video to understand how important this Twitter restriction is to our fight for freedom.

The outfitting of America’s cities with 5G technology, which took place largely with federal funding appropriated under the Trump administration, set the stage for our cities to be converted into “smart cities.”

That’s a cleverly deceptive term for “surveillance cities,” in which no human activity takes place outside the watchful eye of Big Brother. Because these cameras, speakers, facial-recognition scanners, etc., are all connected and available for monitoring online, some have referred to 5G smart-grid technology as the “Internet of Eyes.”

State records show that a staggering sum approaching $250 million has been allocated to IBM, Deloitte, and Boston Consulting Group to manage the program.

Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group have billed New York taxpayers approximately $200 million for “marketing” and “buildout” costs associated with the program since its inception. Simultaneously, IBM has billed around $40 million plus an additional $200,000 a month in “data storage” fees.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/166844

“That could really affect the integrity of central bank money and the integrity and independence of central banks,” Prasad stated. “So, there are wonderful notions of things that can be done with digital money, but again I fear the technology could take us to a better place, but equally has the potential to take us to a pretty dark place.”

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/166722

“I think we have to take the possibility seriously that if they get smarter than us, which seems quite likely, and they have goals of their own, which seems quite likely, they may well develop the goal of taking control,” Hinton said during a June 28 talk at the Collision tech conference in Toronto, Canada.

“If they do that, we’re in trouble.”

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/165563

Why won't the Liftoff mobile app allow me to add exploding-heads.com as an instance? It will allow me to add other instances, e.g. infosec.pub.

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/165127

Tom Fitton's Weekly Update Podcast: June 30, 2023 - FBI Cover-Up for Joe!

Episode webpage: http://www.judicialwatch.org

Media file: https://www.buzzsprout.com/177983/13141258-june-30-2023-fbi-cover-up-for-joe.mp3

Twitter has yet to make a public announcement, so it’s currently unclear if this is an intentional update or another technical mishap. If Twitter stands by the changes, however, they both contradict and support other actions that owner Elon Musk has taken in the past year.

In 2022, Musk hired noted iPhone hacker George Hotz to fix its search feature and get rid of the login prompt that prevents unregistered users from browsing the website. Hotz resigned less than halfway through his 12-week internship with the company, claiming he “didn’t think there was any real impact I could make there.” In April this year, Twitter then eliminated the platform’s search feature for unregistered users entirely.

I would like to keep some notes on research I do in my free time on nostr. So i've made a new community.

The side bar has the main problems I think nostr can solve in regards to the lemmy software.

I'll post about what I do and learn along the way of retro fitting nostr to fit the community oriented social media format.

Having a bank account is necessary to interact with modern society in a basic way and being deprived of that facility is tantamount to becoming a “non-person”, a downcast Nigel Farage said Thursday as he revealed he and close members of his family are being prevented from holding an account in the United Kingdom. Warning viewers on Thursday night, he reflected: “This is going on in our country. It’s happening to plenty of people, I just happen to be one of them.

“But do you know what? Unless this rot is stopped in time to come you at home may say things on Facebook or Twitter that may result in you losing your bank accounts too. That, I think, is how scary this whole thing is.”

Farage had banked with the same banking group since the 1980s for both personal and business, he said, and that no reason was given for his longstanding relationship with the unnamed bank being terminated.

They emphasized the need for more comprehensive answers and authentic discussions in search results. Users don’t want “blue links” but want “more comprehensive answers,” Pichai said. That’s why they add the name of forum sites like Reddit to their searches Pichai said.

Senate Bill 680 prohibits a social media platform from using a design, algorithm, or feature that the platform knows, or should know, causes children to harm themselves or others, develop an eating disorder, or experience addiction to the social media platform. The bill also requires the platform to conduct quarterly audits to ensure compliance and if needed, correction within 30 days.

Facebook and Instagram users in Canada may need more pictures of babies, pets, and food, because in less than six months they won't be able to share news links on those platforms.

Meta said it will impose that ban after Canada’s Parliament passed legislation(Opens in a new window) that will require large online platforms to compensate Canadian news sites in the next six months.

“Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act (Bill C-18(Opens in a new window)) taking effect,” Meta says(Opens in a new window).

The Online News Act(Opens in a new window) sets up a system of mandatory arbitration between every “digital news intermediary” (defined as “an online communications platform, including a search engine or social media service” that makes news content available in Canada) and news outlets designated by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission(Opens in a new window) if “a significant bargaining power imbalance” exists between the intermediary and those outlets.

The bill defines making news available broadly enough to include just linking to it: reproducing “the news content, or any portion of it” or enabling access to it “by any means, including an index, aggregation, or ranking of news content.” It also defines “news outlet” broadly to cover any general-interest newsroom that employs at least two journalists in Canada and operates along recognized codes of journalistic ethics.

C-18 additionally imposes non-discrimination requirements on online platforms, to be enforced by the commission. The language there doesn’t address actions taken against news sites that spread misinformation, although it does let the commission consider whether a platform’s conduct matched its “normal course of business.”

What could possibly go wrong

cross-posted from: https://exploding-heads.com/post/159345

With financial transactions now tied to a person’s Aadhaar number, which is linked to biometrics, critics argue that this opens the door to government surveillance. It provides the government with an unprecedented ability to monitor the financial activities of individuals in real-time. The threat of this data being used for political or discriminatory purposes cannot be ruled out.

As the UPI system stores colossal amounts of sensitive data, it becomes an attractive target for hackers and malicious entities. Data breaches in such a system can have catastrophic effects on individuals whose financial and biometric data could be compromised.

The forced adoption of digital payments tied to biometric data can also be seen as an infringement on the right to autonomy and freedom of choice. People should have the option to engage in financial transactions without necessarily tying these to their biometrics.

Compared to the commercially released OS above, Linux is completely free to download and use, and is the largest open-source software project in the world. Although the OS is only used in about 3% of desktop computers, it was also the basis of Android and ChromeOS, and is the most-used OS on devices with embedded software—routers, smart home devices, cars, and even a few spacecraft (The SpaceX Falcon 9, for example).