Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?
In 2016, if you don’t automatically answer, “Yes, of course,” then you’re not paying attention. Between police surveillance and body cams, traffic light and CCTV cameras, and mobile phones in almost every hand, we are basically living in a giant fish tank. We know we’re being watched, but who’s doing the watching?
As I wrote yesterday, the world feels turned upside down these days, like “dogs and cats living together,” specifically in the way that Russia is giving more support to whistleblowers and truthtellers than the good ol’ U.S. of A. Just look at Hillary Clinton’s paranoid obsession with “Russian hackers” trying to “influence our election” (hey, I thought only right-wing nuts worried about “rigged elections”).
Obama is EXPOSED
Americans see through the lies of the insiders!
They will say ANYTHING to stay in Power
SPREAD!pic.twitter.com/HS6mVzDaoN
— Donald J. Trump (@P0TUSTrump) October 27, 2016
“We will never fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.” — Donald J. Trump
In the third presidential debate, Clinton immediately deflected all criticism from her emails exposed by Wikileaks by saying that “seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies” have confirmed “it was the Russians.” Facts are stubborn things, however, and Hillary’s accusations of Russia are just as hollow as her track record as a force for American interests. As The Counter Jihad Report reports:
First of all, only two intelligence entities – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – have weighed in on this issue, not 17 intelligence agencies. And what they said was ambiguous about Russian involvement. …
Clinton tried to defend the DNI/DHS statement by repeating the myth that U.S. intelligence officers are completely insulated from politics. She must think Americans will forget how the CIA crafted the politicized Benghazi talking points in 2011 and how SOUTHCOM intelligence analysts were pressured to distort their analysis of ISIS and Syria to support Obama foreign policy.
How do you know when Hillary Clinton is lying? When her lips are moving and the cameras are rolling. Behind the scenes, though, in the halls of power and espionage, I assume she speaks much more freely. And if she were honest, she’d admit that it’s not the Russians that Americans should worry about invading our privacy–it’s our own government.
The Liberty Blitzkrieg blog explains:
Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study. …
“Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there’s really no case law either,” Clare Garvie, an associate at the CPT, told Vocativ. “So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in.” That so many American adults are in at least one facial recognition database is largely due to the fact that at least 26 states, and likely more, share their Department of Motor Vehicles databases with the FBI, state police, or other law enforcement agencies, the study found. Compounded with that, police often have access to mugshot databases. …
“These systems are used on law-abiding Americans without their knowledge or consent in most cases,” Garvie said.
“It’s important to understand,” the blogger continues, “that the above is just one piece of a much larger puzzle.” Today in the U.S., for example, there’s a massive but invisible industry that records the movements of cars around the country. The companies that engage in this business routinely share that data with the police, giving the police a steady stream of surveillance information on innocent people that they could not legally collect on their own.
When you expect one arm of the government to rein in another one–i.e., to turn of the spigot of federal funding–you can expect nothing much to get done. Hence:
Last year, the US Department of Commerce tried to prevail upon industry representatives and privacy organizations to write a voluntary code of conduct for companies using facial recognition technologies. After 16 months of negotiations, all of the consumer-focused privacy organizations pulled out of the process because industry representatives were unable to agree on any limitations on something as basic as non-consensual facial recognition.
“As you can see,” the Liberty Blitzkrieg blogger concludes, “one of the key aspects of an increasingly pervasive use of facial recognition technology is the total lack of regulation or informed consent that goes along with the collection and use of this intimate personal information. It’s a total wild, wild west environment where both corporations and government basically think they can do whatever they want. Indeed, they will continue to do exactly that until we the people make enough of a stink about it.”
Here’s the great irony, though: for all the effort branches of the government are expending to track and monitor us American citizens, there is just a tiny fraction of effort going to vetting the flood of immigrants and refugees entering our borders. Why, it’s almost like the globalist elites in America care more about cheap labor, Middle Eastern kickbacks, and politically exploitable social instability than they do about American safety, law, prosperity and freedom.
The blogger above is right that nothing will change, really, until We The People “make enough of a stink” about this violation of our privacy. The good news is that we are going to have the biggest stink-making opportunity we can enjoy every four years. On November 8, let your voice be heard–let your stick be smelled!–and vote for Donald Trump to Drain The Swamp in D.C.!
