Brightspark

I FACEBOOK, THEREFORE I AM.

PRIVACY: 1. The right to be free from secret surveillance and to determine whether, when, how, and to whom, one’s personal or organizational information is to be revealed. 2. Someone’s right to keep their personal matters and relationships secret. 3. The state of being apart from other people or concealed from their view.

(UPDATED: OCT 2018) It’s been an interesting journey, not doing Facebook. At the end of 2014 when Facebook introduced their most obscene privacy violations to date, I could no longer justify being part of the massive social experiment – or as it is otherwise known, the massive FBI/NSA data grab and surveillance behemoth. I posted articles alerting my Facebook friends to the implications of these insidious privacy violations and a small number of them showed tentative concern. However, over three years later, they are all still hard at it.

I logged on to Facebook recently to determine if anyone else had woken up to the psyop, only to confirm that now more than ever friendships are primarily conducted on social media. In those 45 months of absence from the platform they are all still at it, more intensely than ever. Yet their contact with me has dwindled to zero. I no longer even get the obligatory token “Happy Birthday” message when they are prompted to send me one.

OK, so maybe they think I will not get the messages because I have left Facebook. Many of them have my email address and my mobile number, so a quick text or short email? Nope. Many of them have my postal address and could send me a birthday card like we did in the old days? Nope again. I’m one of the few people who still have a landline, so a quick “Hi, how’s things” maybe? That’s how we used to do friendship maintenance. Buuuuuuuuuut, nope. A big fat NOPE. Nothing. It’s like I no longer exist. Like I unknowingly stepped through a space/time portal that delivered me into another set of dimensions, but I’m somehow still on the same planet.

I DON’T FACEBOOK, THEREFORE I AM NOT.

It’s not a generational thing because nearly all of my (former) Facebook ‘friends’ are my age or older, so they certainly should remember how we did it in the past. In the BFB era. You know, Before FaceBook. But they’ve all been sucked in. Posting their entire lives and children’s development online, for all to see.

To give it some perspective, let’s go back a decade or two. You know, BFB……

The thought of putting one of my family photo albums in the local library for everyone to flick through is cringe-worthy to say the least. The words ‘strange’, ‘egotistical’, and ‘show-off’ come to mind. Sending photos of my dinner through the post to 157 friends makes me keel over in laughter. The act of taking a photo of my dinner in the first place is just utter nonsense. If I’d re-posted all the junk mail from my letterbox to everyone I know I’d have been locked up as a public nuisance. And as for asking me to give over my credit card number or banking details, you’d have been laughed out of town. These details were kept private – even from family and friends.

Back then we didn’t have to surrender all of our personal details just to buy a ticket to see a band or to catch the train. We just used to hand over the cash. Anonymously. We travelled anonymously. And associated with others, anonymously. Now, there’s a record of when and where you use the train; a record of what concerts you attend. And if you use Facebook the way most people do, there’s a record of your entire life. And this is the most insidious privacy breach of all because Facebook users are publishing it VOLUNTARILY.

So who do you blame when you voluntarily publish all your personal information and it goes pear-shaped? When your details are shared with people they shouldn’t be shared with, à la the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal? Mark Zuckerberg? Do you think you can get some justice by blaming Mark Zuckerberg??? Sure, Zuckerberg was grilled by Congress recently and he gave ten long hours of testimony. No mean feat for someone with his social skills. He got some tough questions. And he made US$3,000,000,000 (AUD$3,859,500,000) in the process, making him the world’s 7th richest person. Yes folks, in the time that he fronted Congress, Facebook’s total market value rose by US$23,000,000,000 (AUD$29,589,500,000). So much for justice. Do you really believe that Mark Zuckerberg gives a bugger about your personal details?

Meanwhile, as Zuckerberg ponders how he is going to spend the billions he has made at your expense, your personal details are still in the wrong hands. And so-called ‘privacy breaches’ are still going to happen. Privacy statements mean squat when there’s a hack or a security breach. After a hack or an ‘error of judgement’, your personal information will then be in the hands of people you never gave permission to have it. And there is nothing that you can do about it. The damage is done, and there can never be justice when the damage is already done. It’s like giving birth – you can’t change the result: blaming your partner isn’t going to change the result.

When you hand over your personal information, you are, by definition, losing control of it.

When you voluntarily serve up your personal details you have no-one to blame but yourself when it goes pear-shaped because you are the one breaching your own privacy by handing over your details in the first place.

The only solution is to maintain control over your personal details and to maintain your privacy in general. Like we did in days gone by. Forty months ago I realised that things had gone too far. I felt very uncomfortable with what I was routinely being asked to do even though other people seemed fine with it. So I decided to step out of the hive mind/collective slumber and to trust my own inner knowing: I decided to think for myself.

I stopped publishing my life on Facebook. I stopped handing out my personal details to strangers. I refused to agree to outrageous ‘Terms of Service’ and so-called ‘Privacy Statements’. I missed out on events and experiences. I started taking notice of the growth of mass surveillance, data mining and privacy breaches. I started taking notice of the general degradation of the concepts of privacy and the individual, and I made many enemies by refusing to comply with outrageously unnecessary requests for my personal information. For example, I recently had my bank account blocked because I refused to hand over insanely personal information that my bank DID NOT NEED to administer my account, yet they tried to coerce it out of me with frighteningly aggressive and intimidating methods. I can promise you that refusing to allow Westpac/St George to violate my privacy was one of the most satisfying things I have ever done. A mighty double middle finger salute to the “Compliance Department” at Westpac/St George! Have a nice day!!

So by-and-large I have maintained an ‘old fashioned’ level of privacy – albeit with less ‘friends’.

I think, therefore I am.

I think Descartes was on to something. Thinking and doubting. Logic and privacy. If I am not in control of my personal information, can I have privacy? By definition, the answer is no. So by even the most basic process of logic, the conclusion is –

“If I give up control of my personal information then I cannot have privacy.”

It’s that simple.

Or is it?

After logging on to Facebook and scrolling through my newsfeed – which I haven’t done for nearly four years – I started noticing posts from organisations that I do not recall “Following”. The reason that they caught my attention was because the organisations are quite familiar to me. They are organisations or businesses that I have made credit card transactions with recently, or even just sent an email to recently. Sometimes very recently. As in FOUR DAYS AGO. And they are NOT businesses that I normally do business with.

So here’s the facts –

I don’t use Facebook for nearly four years.
I use my credit card at a business or send an email to a business that I certainly do not remember “Following” and haven’t done business with for years, if ever.
As soon as four days later I log onto Facebook and their posts show up on my newsfeed.

You don’t have to be too bright to work out what’s going on here. The details of every digital transaction we make are being recorded and that information is available to any organisation for a fee. And it’s not just credit card purchases either – it’s search engine results, browsing history details, locations visited, even the contents of your text messages* and conversations captured by Alexa, Google home, etc. Your entire life is being recorded and passed on to third parties now that everything is becoming more and more technology-based and people are living their entire lives online. Next time you are faced with a “Privacy Policy” or “Terms of Use” document, don’t just tick the box. By law you must read a document before you sign it anyway. The contents should shock you. When Mark Zuckerberg originally realised that people would happily publish their personal information for all the world to see, he described them as “dumb fucks”. Doesn’t that make you stop and think? Not even for just a few seconds??? It seems that over time everyone has forgotten that mind-boggling insult. And everyone has been sucked into the vortex of surveillance and control.

Now we’re all brainwashed into believing that we “must have” the “latest” “convenience” items – mobile phone apps, iPads, Sat Navs, smart phones, smart TV, smart this, smart that. Brainwashed into believing that we need “connectivity” 24/7. And these days people literally ARE “connected” to their smartphones. But all it’s doing for us is de-skilling us and ENSLAVING us.

I’ve been very vocal about this issue for some years now. Most of my articles on this website are about surveillance and privacy. I just happened to be inquisitive enough to go down the rabbit hole long before most other people did. It’s heartening to see that some people are finally starting to wake up to the REALITY of what’s closing in on us. But most people are still stuck in the delusion: too scared to contemplate stepping out of the hive mind. Mostly totally oblivious to the fact that these methods of enslavement are destroying our privacy, freedom, and way of life.

Facebook, Google, Twitter, You Tube, Instagram, Paypal, etc. They are all just pawns in the game of the massive surveillance and control behemoth that is corralling us into the Brave New World of 1984. For some reason I am able to see the big picture: I see patterns in microcosms, and this creates the macrocosm for me. When I look at the world in 2018 I see the same pattern being played out in a variety of contexts. That pattern is –

The destruction of privacy, freedom and liberty.
More specifically, the destruction of individual sovereignty, of freedom of choice and of self-determination.
The encroachment of the state and powerful state-sanctioned monopolies into our lives.
The destruction of morals, ethics and the fabric of western democratic society in general.

In combination with pro-monopoly legislation and outrageous increases in bureaucracy and red tape, point 3 above is killing off small- and medium sized businesses. This in turn creates less competition and less choice for consumers as huge multinationals move in and take over the marketplace.

Tyranny is the new capitalism.

Some people call this totalitarianism. Others argue that we are actually teetering very closely on the edge of communism. In my previous articles I have called it “global socialist dictatorship”. The older I get the more I have realised that these political and economic terms are all interchangeable. Communism, socialism, fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, authoritarianism, corporate crony capitalism…… it’s all just smoke and mirrors. Semantics. In practice they are all just different forms of TYRANNY. They are all just versions of the same basic structure –

A small ruling elite, who enforce their rule by means of –
A powerful military and a militarised police force.
An unhealthy alliance between the state and the means of production.
An unhealthy alliance between the state and the media, which creates –
A largely misinformed and powerless population.

And this is now being played out on a global scale. Think NATO. Think “Global Governance” (the goal of the United Nations). Think so-called “fake news” and the fact that hundreds of accounts of respectable, well-researched journalists and writers are currently being purged from Facebook because they question authority. This is the “New World Order” as some have called it. Even good old George Bush senior referred to it many times in his speeches. Watch some of them here and here. And we only have ourselves to blame, because we just can’t get enough of that “must have” technology that gives us so much “convenience” and “connectivity”. That which saves us from being embarrassingly “old fashioned”.

Surveillance is not about catching “the terrorists”, folks. And it’s not about preventing “fake news” and “hate speech”. Surveillance is just one method being used to lead us all into global tyranny. And Facebook is just one type of surveillance being used to herd us into this slavery.

When are YOU going to Wake Up?

When are YOU going to take a stand to protect your children’s future???

For more information about surveillance, privacy and tyranny in general, please visit my Twitter page here where I regularly re-tweet articles that outline how this global agenda is being implemented.

*I recently texted a friend of mine about a power outage I was having. The next time I logged onto Twitter, tweets advertising generators for power outages appeared repeatedly on my feed all day. NEVER before had such tweets appeared on my feed. And I don’t do Twitter on my phone, only on my P.C. which is hard-wired into the wall and has no connection whatsoever to my phone.

“ALL TRANSACTIONS ARE RECORDED”: What is surveillance really all about?

In 2015 I wrote an article about surveillance, censorship and privacy because I had become quite alarmed about the blatant attack on privacy and freedom that was taking place. You can read that article here. Since then there has been a drastic escalation in both the amount and the types of surveillance being forced on the population – 99% of whom are innocent of any crime. In my own life I have experienced some deeply troubling developments and so I have been moved to write an update. I hope this article is helpful and informative and I trust that it helps to open people’s eyes about what the surveillance revolution is really all about. Hint – it’s not about catching “the terrorists”!

Today I was in a Woolworths supermarket in regional Australia. At the self-checkout I was confronted with a bold new sticker which literally yelled at me “ALL TRANSACTIONS ARE RECORDED”. Shocked, I looked around and saw that all of the self-checkout screens had the same offensive sticker. I asked the supervising attendant what the sticker meant. She replied “it means that all transactions are recorded”. Wow, that was so helpful. Trying my very best to be patient, I clarified “exactly what is recorded about the transaction?”. And then the propaganda began to gush… “everything is recorded”… “account details”… “personal information”… “it always has been”… “it’s required by law”… “those stickers have always been there”… “by choosing to use a credit card you give us your details by choice”… etc. I was utterly shocked by the intolerant and aggressive tone that accompanied the propaganda, not to mention the blatant lie that the sticker had “always been there”. When I raised this seemingly obvious point she became even more aggressive and asserted that the stickers had indeed always been there. Something in me said “No. No more”. And I refused to allow her to get away with this aggressive campaign of shameless lies.

The only reason I was at Woolworths in the first place is because I recently discovered that my local IGA is in fact not actually “I” (as in “Independent”), so I have reluctantly returned to Woolworths in protest. I discovered that what I knew as Independent Grocers Association (IGA) is in fact now called Independent Grocers of Australia (still IGA) and it is owned by Metcash. I discovered that by-and-large each supposedly “independent” IGA franchise has little control over the stock they carry. The vast majority of product lines they carry and the stock levels they carry are decided by the warehouse managers at Metcash. My recent email inquiry to Metcash about this contradiction in their advertising campaign remains unanswered.

But I digress. Back to the propaganda campaign.

The supervising attendant’s manager was called and promptly appeared. They could be related. In this town they probably are.

The supervising attendant’s manager’s manager was called. The store manager no less. A very decent man who, after initially taking the same line as his subordinates – “by law we must retain and store your information for seven years” – did a magnanimous job of getting the answers I was after. When I requested to view the Woolworths policy and procedure documents outlining the government legislation that necessitated such privacy breaches as well as the documents outlining how staff are to be trained to implement the program, Mr Manager disappeared into the bowels of the store. Several phone calls later and many searches of Woolworths policies later he conceded that they were in the wrong. Whilst ripping the offensive sticker off my self-checkout screen (where I had already paid for my shopping with CASH) he admitted that Woolworths had no right to store and retain my personal details. The store had apparently misinterpreted the initiative known as “Wave One”. The stickers were meant to be placed on staff-operated screens and to be seen by the checkout personnel only. “Wave One” is apparently a new Woolworths loss prevention program – to prevent cash being stolen from checkout tills by checkout staff.

Always been there, eh?

Stickers were ripped off screens.

The aggression vanished.

I was given a box of chocolates and a $20 gift voucher for the inconvenience.

But you know what? I don’t buy it. I can’t believe it. They were all so certain of the meaning of the stickers. That it was about storing the details of every transaction – credit card numbers; bank account details; items purchased. And they were so sure that “it has been government policy for twenty five years” to store the details of every transaction. The only thing that has changed is that “now we have to tell you that we are doing it”. This is the scary part: the aggressive totalitarian surveillance propaganda just spewed out of them automatically and it was only because I asked for evidence of their claims that they retreated and stopped snarling at me with salivating bared teeth.

What if I hadn’t protested? What if, like most people, I just accepted their surveillance propaganda? What if I just accepted that they had a right to record and store my personal information and there was nothing I could do about it? Clearly everyone around me was doing that. The looks, the headshakes and general embarrassment told me that I should just shut up and get on with my day. The level of aggression and intolerance and discomfort told me to stop “questioning”. Stop “making a scene”.

Stop… making sense.

I imagine I will be waiting a long time for the Woolworths “Wave One” documents I requested. They have my email address but I won’t be holding my breath. “Wave One” of what I wonder? Will “Wave Two” be the actual implementation of such an aggressive surveillance policy? Is “Wave One” just a trial run to see how people will react to it?

(UPDATE 19/10/2017: I was recently in another Woolworths supermarket in a different town in regional Australia and guess what? The same stickers were plastered on all of the self-checkout screens. Deja vu. What are the chances that two managers from two different stores have misinterpreted the “Wave One Loss Prevention Program” in exactly the same way? Pretty slim to none would be my answer. So I now have good reason to believe that my gut reaction was correct – “Wave One” is a trial run of an aggressive privacy-destroying surveillance program.)

Orwell. That’s what I keep coming back to these days. More and more. Orwell. 1984. It was no ordinary novel. Power. Control. Fear. And we are living it in Australia in 2017 even though we have had plenty of warning. Interviews like this one from 2014 are important tools for educating the public, so why do so few people get to see them?

Since I wrote that first article on surveillance in 2015 I have been the target of surveillance in my own home. My house has been broken into several times with nothing stolen. Locks have mysteriously broken. Electrical appliances have been interfered with. Text messages have been interfered with. My computer has been accessed remotely. My email files have been altered and a program has been installed that can re-direct my incoming messages, and reply to my messages before deleting them – possibly before I read them. I recently found a device that appeared to be a bug or transmitter of some sort. I didn’t have my glasses on at the time and I just presumed it was part of my son’s electronics project, so after handling it I left it in the box where I found it. It was a small white plastic device with two or three tiny aerials coming out of it, in a miniature zip-lock plastic bag. When I questioned my son about it later that day, he denied any knowledge of the device. I went looking for it to show him, only to discover that it had vanished. I turned the house upside down in a frenzy looking for it but I eventually had to concede that it was gone.

Therefore, I had to face the fact that someone had broken into my home and removed the device that afternoon when I went out to pick up my son from school.

Therefore, I had to face the fact that someone was watching my home and monitoring my movements.

Therefore, I had to face the fact that SOMEONE WAS MONITORING TRANSMISSIONS FROM THAT DEVICE IN REAL TIME.

So WTF am I supposed to do with this information? WTF can I do about it???

I called the police after the first time that my home was broken into. The lovely constable duly wrote down everything I told her about the gate latch not being as we left it, and the front door being unlocked when we came in. But when I got to the bit about our clocks having been interfered with, she seemed a little reluctant. When I told her that I could prove what time the clocks had been turned back on, and therefore what time the intruders had been in my home, she seemed even more uncomfortable. “Has anything been stolen….?”. “No”. When I said that each clock had been turned back on at a different time therefore it was not a power outage, she really started squirming. Facial expressions give a lot away about a person’s thoughts.

OK. I get it. It’s weird stuff. But it happened. I swear on my mother’s memory that it happened.

So the next time the house was broken into without anything being stolen, I kept my mouth shut. And so on.

As these incidents have mounted so has my dismay. Why me? Why am I such as threat? I’m such small fry. In the scheme of things I’m a nobody in the world of alternative journalism – or “fake news” as it is now called. There are so many other highly successful independent journalists and publications who reach hundreds of thousands of people with their work. I’ve written five articles (read them here) and I used to publish information on a Twitter account which hardly anyone read because of the restricted reach algorithm that was applied to it shortly after I started it (also known as “shadow-banning”). Ditto for the Facebook page I abandoned a few years ago.

Five articles. A largely inactive Twitter account and a totally inactive Facebook account. That’s it. And I’m being treated like a dangerous underworld criminal.

Maybe I’ve been targeted by an asshole with too much time on his hands who has worked out that I do not entirely practice what I preach when it comes to privacy and surveillance. He’s getting some sort of sick kick out of showing me how easy it is for him to access my home and my computer, making me look like a fraud for promoting privacy in this era of surveillance.

Recently I stumbled across this eye-opening interview by Abby Martin about the Deep Web which may explain why I have made myself a target. The Deep Web contains a small encrypted online communication network called the Dark Web or Dark Net. It is an encrypted space offering anonymised private communication. I wrote about the Dark Net, encryption and anonymising software in my 2015 article and made reference to them (and other methods for maintaining your privacy and freedom) in my very amateur unrehearsed one-take You Tube clip here. Martin’s interview outlines how so-called national security organisations such as the NSA are highly threatened by individuals who develop and promote such methods because firstly, it alerts the public to the ongoing attack on our privacy and freedom and secondly, it gives the innocent public avenues for maintaining their privacy and freedom. Outrageous precedent-setting prison sentences have been handed down to people like Barrett Brown and Ross Ulbricht who have developed and promoted methods for circumventing totalitarian anti-privacy and anti-freedom surveillance schemes imposed by the state. Aaron Schwartz took his own life after being targeted by the US government because he was a passionate advocate of freedom, specifically, freedom of access to information. He was a brilliant code writer who developed ways to circumvent the requirement to pay for downloading academic journal articles – for which he was indicted. He also developed ways to help people protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is probably the real reason why he was targeted. Because of his actions the anti-freedom SOPA bill was defeated, and the government eventually targeted him to “make an example” of him. The pressure was too much and on January 11th 2013 Aaron tragically took his own life. In contrast, in Australia the corresponding bill – the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Act 2015 – sailed through both houses of parliament on June 22nd 2015 without even a whimper of protest. Mostly, I suspect, because Australians were too busy checking their Facebook status and uploading selfies to Instagram.

So maybe that’s why someone seems to want to know what I’m up to – because I promote ways of maintaining privacy and freedom, and I give my readers the ability to access the truth. These are the things that are most threatening to the powers that be. In my original article on surveillance I showed my readers how to access methods to maintain their privacy and freedom, and on my Twitter page I gave my readers access to sources who disseminate truth. And because privacy and freedom and truth are antithetical to surveillance and to state-sponsored totalitarian control of the population, it appears that I am now a ‘problem’. If people knew the truth about surveillance they certainly would not be begging the government for more of it to protect them from ‘the terrorists’. As I stated in my 2015 article –

“Spying on innocent people is clearly a pretty lazy, unsophisticated and ineffective approach to national security. Clogging up security storage networks with vast amounts of information on innocent people only hinders an agency’s ability to focus on any actual terrorists due to the massive information management burden it creates. It’s obvious that the extent of surveillance we now deal with on a daily basis is not really about catching “the terrorists” at all. It’s increasingly about monitoring everyone’s movements. Monitoring what we do, where we go, who we associate with, and most disturbingly it’s about monitoring the flow of information. Recent changes to the policies of government minions Facebook and Google indicate that these corporations have actually taken the next step. They are now controlling the flow of information.”

Since I wrote this passage we have seen the rapid escalation of online surveillance and censorship to prevent so-called “fake news”. This is what I meant back then by “controlling the flow of information”. In other words, denying access to ‘unauthorised’ information; forcing a particular version of events on people; telling people what ‘the truth’ is; controlling what people can know; influencing what people believe.

It’s a form of mind control.

And that’s what surveillance is really all about. Control. Control of people. Their thinking. Their behaviour. Control of their entire lives. It’s 1984 in action. Surveillance is about keeping the public dumbed-down, fearful, powerless, too afraid to think for themselves, and unable to identify the truth. We used to call it ignorance or stupidity and it was a much-maligned state of being. But according to my former friends and the shoppers in the regional Woolworths store I was in today, it’s now highly encouraged. In the past we used to make up our own minds about issues. Now groupthink is forced upon us through fear-laden war porn and propaganda from monopolised media outlets, as well as through new phenomena such as social media, “political correctness”, targeted advertising and “advertorials”, and politicised school/university curricula. The intrusion of power-hungry corporations into our lives under the guise of “knowing what’s best for you” because “experts know best” and “the research proves it” is particularly insidious and confusing for most people. I spent many years in academic research and I know damn good and well how easy it is to conduct fraudulent research in order to get the results you want. The non-disclosure agreements that researchers must sign ensure that the public is never alerted to dodgy methodology or “inconvenient” outcomes.

So this is the sad and sorry state of affairs in 2017. As I have discovered, if you dare to step out of ignorance you will be ostracised, treated with suspicion, and potentially become the victim of covert surveillance and harassment. If you want to “fit in” and not draw attention to yourself then don’t think for yourself and always believe what “authorised” sources tell you to believe. Don’t rock the boat and don’t question authority. And above all, don’t engage in any behaviour that even remotely resembles the promotion of freedom and truth.

Is this really the future you want for your kids?

Understanding the Modern Panopticon

It’s been ten years since I first read Foucault. I was a lowly mature-age undergraduate who was blissfully unaware of any deeper geopolitical agendas operating across the planet. Back then Foucault was torturous reading. Highbrow academic-speak at it’s worst. However I’ve recently had the urge to re-visit this flowery Foucauldian philosophy. Since waking up to the real geopolitical agenda behind the surveillance state, Mr Foucault’s power/knowledge thesis has taken on a whole new dimension for me. It now smacks me over the back of my head with sirens screaming “Are you paying attention????“. In particular I’ve been drawn back to his book Discipline and Punish where he introduced me to the Panopticon. If you don’t know what the Panopticon is, it is a concept invented by 18th Century Philosopher Jeremy Bentham. It takes the form of a circular prison with cells arranged around a central observation tower, from which prisoners could at all times be seen. A further explanation can be found here. The most insidious aspect of this design is that each cell has a window on the outside creating a backlighting effect to the central observer, meaning that every movement in every cell is immediately discernible to the watcher. In Foucault’s words the Panopticon is “a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power” because “he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power.”

surveillance-cameras Clearly the important words here are “…and who knows it” because it suggests that it’s the knowledge of surveillance that leads to the self-regulation of behaviour.

Bentham’s Panopticon was not a real building. Some argue that Bentham devised the idea after seeing how his brother, Samuel, arranged his factory in Russia. However in Bentham’s writings the Panopticon was never meant to describe a real building. It was an intellectual concept; a metaphor. Again, in the words of Foucault, “…the Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is the diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form…it is in fact a figure of political technology that may and must be detached from any specific use“. In other words, what Bentham was describing was a method of enforcing prescribed behaviour in a population, as well as ensuring the absence of proscribed or prohibited behaviour by making the population believe that they are being watched. “The Panoptic schema makes any apparatus of power more intense” because the subject becomes their own enforcer. Bentham himself stated it clearly: that the Panopticon is a way of obtaining from power, “a great and new instrument of government“. Amazing awareness and insight from 225 years in the distant past. 1984 Most people today have nowhere near that level of insight. In fact most people today are falling for ever-increasing levels of Panopticism even though the writings of Bentham and Foucault, like George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, forewarned us of this impending tyranny.

A recent study conducted by Dr Elizabeth Stoycheff of Wayne State University in the US state of Michigan has shown that mass surveillance is indeed having a “chilling effect” by silencing dissent and minority opinions. See more here and here. The study had two main conclusions. Firstly, that mass surveillance silences minority opinions and therefore it “may enable a domineering, majority opinion to take control of online deliberative spaces, thus negating deliberation“. You’ve probably experienced this in online forums such as Facebook, Twitter and You Tube when paid “shills” and “trolls” hijack the comments section and are scathing of any opinions that are even remotely anti-establishment or pro-freedom. Censorship Those who are assertive about their dissenting beliefs are attacked and humiliated, with the obligatory ad hominem being a dead giveaway that you are being targeted by a paid troll. With most people self-censoring and afraid to voice their dissenting opinions, it becomes easy to manufacture majority opinions online in this way. The second major finding of the study was that those participants who shared the “nothing to hide” belief – those who tended to support mass surveillance as necessary for national security – were the most likely to silence their minority opinions. On this finding Stoycheff commented that “online privacy is much bigger than the mere lawfulness of one’s actions. It’s about a fundamental human right to have control over one’s self-presentation and image, in private, and now, [online]“.

Such self-censorship for the greater good has been a significant achievement of the surveillance state to the extent that people now subvert their true beliefs and routinely plead for more government intrusion. Freedom1 We’ve been brain-washed and bullied by concepts such as “political correctness” (also known as “Cultural Marxism” or “Linguistic Fascism”), the “War on Terror” and “Climate Change” into believing that we must concur with the so-called “majority opinion”. Most importantly, we’ve learned that we must not question the so-called “majority opinion” because there is a looming threat that is greater than any individual’s right to privacy, right to freedom of speech, and increasingly, their right to freedom of thought. If we have a dissenting opinion or, God forbid, an original thought on a topic, we must bury it or face a barrage of criticism from this manufactured “vocal majority”. The media have been complicit in this endeavour by bombarding us with fear-laden topics and imagery supporting the manufactured “majority opinion”, to the extent that we now plead for our freedoms to be taken in exchange for some “justice” or relief from the perceived threat. The Panama Papers scandal is a perfect example of this. People will soon agree for their financial freedom to be curtailed by, for example, the introduction of a global tax grid, in order to reduce the “threat” of tax evasion. See my article on this here.

Mr Bentham would turn in his grave. His metaphor is now writ large. Globally. Empowering the state to take your privacy and freedom carries a far greater risk than any actual threat to security. Handing over your liberty in exchange for perceived security is voluntarily adding an extra dimension to Bentham’s Panopticon. In the modern Panopticon not only are we obeying the rules of surveillance and accepting the accompanying loss of freedom, but by self-censoring for the “greater good” we are also saying “Take my individuality; my essence as a person. Take the unique gift I bring to this world because I am worthless. The collective is more important than me and my perspective“.

Freedom2

Well I beg to differ. It is the diversity of the collective that gives it depth and worth. Just as the variety of nationalities and cultures is what gives our planet such richness and beauty, it’s people who make the collective what it is. Yes, individuals. With their pesky tendency to have their own perspectives. The onslaught of political correctness, self-imposed censorship and enslavement to manufactured majority opinion is not a healthy future for individuality and freedom. Jeremy Bentham first alerted us to such threats in 1791. Aldous Huxley spoke of it in 1932, George Orwell in 1949 and Ray Bradbury in 1953. Michel Foucault continued to write about power and liberty in the 1970s and 80s. Currently many people from many sectors are screaming at the top of their voices about democracy, privacy, freedom of speech, surveillance, censorship and other issues central to liberty but their efforts are largely falling on deaf ears.

I truly hope more people wake up before it is too late.

More Information

For more on the Panopticon see clip here and article here.

For a humorous look at Facebook surveillance see this spoof here.

For more on encryption debate read articles here and here.

For more on surveillance see clip here and my article here.

The Panama Papers: The Bigger Picture

I could be wrong. But the current global tax evasion drama has all the markings of a manufactured Problem-Reaction-Solution ‘scandal’ used to manipulate the public for geopolitical gain. Whilst I’m not questioning the quality of the investigation or the facts contained in the leaks, I certainly am questioning important aspects of the leaks. Who leaked this information? What do they have to gain from leaking this information? And why now? After decades of tax-free foundations and offshore tax havens, why bother to alert the public now? As far as I’m concerned the globally-coordinated release of the Mossack Fonseca “Panama Papers” reeks of a well-timed strategic geopolitical manoeuvre.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that here in Australia we are currently in the middle of an emotional class-driven “debate” on tax reform? Do you believe it’s a coincidence that only recently the issue of corporate tax evasion was dangled in front of us by the government? And do you really believe that it’s just a coincidence that Four Corners aired their Panama Papers expose on the same day that the whole scandal hit the headlines globally? See the episode here. The journalists and politicians involved in the Four Corners expose have clearly known about these leaks for months and there has obviously been a planned program of “release” to the public, worldwide. The leaks occurred a year ago so this information has been circulating under the radar for a year, and suddenly they dump it on the public expecting us to believe it’s a fresh new scandal? I don’t buy it. Soros1 All throughout the hearings into tax avoidance last year and all throughout the current debate on tax reform, these leaks have been known about by our politicians. And the smoking gun that tells us there is another layer attached to this? Look closely at who is being singled out in the media coverage of the Mossack Fonseca leaks: Enemies of the Western elite. This comes as no surprise when one looks at who funds the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – the organisation handling the leaks. Open Society Foundations is a major financial backer of ICIJ. It is one of George Soros’ foundations. If you are unfamiliar with George Soros, he has evil flowing through his veins. Like Zbigniew Brzezinski, he can generally be found behind the scenes making strategic moves on the geopolitical chessboard. You can get an idea of Soros’ objectives here. Another backer is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – the agency supposedly responsible for administering civilian foreign aid. They’ve been linked to the CIA and you can get an idea of their agenda here. When you dig a bit deeper you find more members of the global elite funding the ICIJ – Ford Foundation, Carnegie Endowment, Rockefeller Family Fund, W K Kellogg Foundation. It’s a veritable who’s who of the global elite. It really does cast a grim shadow on any claims of ‘independence’ made by the ICIJ.

Unsurprisingly, not one prominent American or Israeli is mentioned in the release. However we keep hearing “Putin” and “Assad” over and over, Brzezinski but when you read the information closely the people involved are associates of Putin and Bashar-al-Assad’s cousin. Putin and Assad are not mentioned once in the release. Guilt by association doesn’t stand up in a court of law but it does stand up in the court of public opinion. And that’s all that matters these days. Mainstream media (MSM) have perfected the art of manipulating public opinion to blindly and unknowingly support global corporate and geopolitical agendas. Most people haven’t got a clue what’s really going on in the world but they certainly can repeat, parrot-fashion, the op-ed version of every current scandal.

Another example of the real intent behind this apparent “data dump” is that Iceland’s Prime Minister gets a prominent mention in the scandal. Why? Who cares about Iceland for heaven’s sake? Most people are unaware that Iceland recently fought and won against their corrupt central bankers. Most people don’t know this because the MSM failed to report on this significant development in sovereignty. The corrupt bankers were jailed for heaven’s sake but it wasn’t reported in the Western press. The international banking cartel and Western elite don’t want people to know about what happened in Iceland but they most certainly do want revenge on Iceland’s PM for what he did to them. As far as I’m concerned this latest manufactured scandal is a ramping up of the attack by Western elite on their enemies to further implement their totalitarian agenda. It’s just another in a long line of 9/11-style events designed to instil fear and hatred in people. Whenever there is an event like this always ask yourself, cui bono? Who benefits? And take note of the fallout. You’ll eventually see the pattern. It’s NEVER the people who benefit. It’s ALWAYS big government and big business who benefit, and the people ALWAYS lose more of their privacy, freedom and way of life.

RoundTable The two main avenues being used to achieve this totalitarian agenda are Terrorism and Climate Change/Climate Disruption/Global Warming. Terrorism is the method of choice of the Right, using surveillance and censorship to take our privacy and freedoms. Climate Change/Climate Disruption/Global Warming is the method of choice of the Left, taking our property rights and way of life in the name of Sustainable Development. So they suck all of us in, irrespective of political persuasion. In one way or another we have been primed into believing that we must surrender our rights for the “greater good”. And this latest scandal is a particularly disturbing ramping-up of the elite globalist agenda.

Most people are in debt. Quite a lot of debt. We are feeling the pinch of a contracted economy on the brink of collapse. We are stressed and ripe for emotionally-driven attacks on our already-precarious quality of life. Now that we in Australia have been primed to revile wealthy tax cheats by the recent government/media collaboration on tax evasion, we are now faced with the same problem on a global scale. It’s a bit overwhelming isn’t it? This is the reaction part of manufactured Problem-Reaction-Solution projects. The problem of greedy elitists cheating the good people of the world out of national revenue creates an emotional reaction. And if the last few years of my personal research serves me well, the solution will soon begin to appear in op-eds and talkback chatter all over the Western world.

There’s been rumblings for some time now about a United Nations (UN) global tax. It’s been touted as the solution to tax evasion, but to date there hasn’t been a loud enough cry for help from “global UNGlobalTax
citizens”. Well, hey presto! Here’s the “Pearl Harbour” of tax evasion, folks. Here’s the final straw for those of us in dire financial stress who are sickened by the greed and injustice evidenced by the Panama Papers. The call for global taxation will now have billions of supporters begging the UN to bring “equality” to the planet. Yes, in times of trouble we all turn to a Saviour to ease our worries. And mark my words, the UN is waiting in the wings to implement the final leg of their global Socialist dictatorship. A global tax grid is the final cog in the wheel of Global Governance. Complete control of the world’s people, land and money. Everything. See more here, here and here.

The UN already controls our way of life through planning policies implemented via our local governments. Have you tried to build anything recently? Are you a farmer? Have you tried to get a dangerous tree cut down, legally? Then you’ll know all about UN planning policies. These policies came out of the 1992 UN Earth Summit conference we know as “Rio”. The “Programme of Action” developed from the summit was called “Agenda 21” but it is known by various titles depending where you live. In the US it is generally known as “Local Agenda 21” or “Smart Growth” or “Smart Cities” but anything endorsed by Bill Clinton’s “President’s Council on Sustainable Development” (PCSD) is an implementation of Agenda 21. You can learn more about Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development here and here. Agenda21
In Australia we have lagged behind the US a little, so the tarnished reputation of Agenda 21 in the US has meant that we do not use that term here. In fact whenever the term Agenda 21 is used by anyone making inquiries about UN policies they are immediately ridiculed as being a “conspiracy theorist” and told “Agenda 21 does not exist“. Well folks, my 348 page printed hard copy certainly exists as does this digital copy here. Examples of Agenda 21 in Australia include “Urban Growth NSW” (more information here), the proposed “stack and pack” developments over Sydney railway stations (see more here) and the proliferation of high density housing along suburban railway lines. Our farmers know all about Agenda 21 through their battles over property rights and water rights. And with other policies such as the 1975 Lima Declaration the UN are progressively destroying strong western democracies in order to “equalise” the world, ie. enforced socialism. The Lima Declaration is a blueprint for the transfer of technology, tools and jobs to developing nations. As a result Australia has lost 90% of our agricultural and manufacturing industries. See more here and here.

So what does all this have to do with the Panama Papers? It shows how the UN quietly bullies its way into our lives in the name of justice and equality only to destroy our way of life for the “greater good”, and the Panama Papers scandal reeks of the type of geopolitical strategy used to justify such UN intervention. Gro Harlem Brundtland and Maurice Strong (dec), the two driving forces behind the creation of the UN “Sustainable Development” behemoth, have instilled a fierce Socialist agenda at the UN. Volumes could be written about these characters but to get to the point – Brundtland is the former Vice-President of the World Socialist Party (Socialist International) and Strong had close ties to the Canadian Socialist Party and Communist China. Their Socialist/Communist ideals permeate UN policies and practices. Global taxation is simply the feather in the UN cap of socialist Global Governance. The ultimate UN goal of transferring wealth from rich countries to poorer ones will be handed to them on a silver platter if we all call for global taxation.

Do not fall for this propaganda. Educate yourselves on how the media manipulates your beliefs and emotions. Educate yourselves on how forces behind the scenes manipulate world events and sovereign governments. And most of all, educate yourself on the United Nations and what they really stand for. Stop relying on MSM accounts of world events and start including some dedicated independent journalists in your research. Several relevant examples can be found here, here, here and here.

Truth6 The following books are highly recommended if you want some insight into the events being played out right in front of our eyes –

“The Rise of Global Governance” by Henry Lamb
“Technocracy Rising” by Patrick M Wood
“The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science” by Tim Ball
“The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken For The World’s Top Climate Expert: IPCC Expose” by Donna Laframboise
“Behind the Green Mask” by Rosa Koire
“Cloak of Green” by Elaine Dewar
“Classified Woman” by Sibel Edmonds
“Extreme Prejudice” by Susan Lindauer
“Media Control” by Noam Chomsky
“Propaganda” by Edward Bernays
“Crystallizing Public Opinion” by Edward Bernays
“Manufacturing Consent” by Edward S Herman and Noam Chomsky
“None Dare Call It A Conspiracy” by Gary Allen
“Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John Perkins
“The Creature from Jekyll Island” G Edward Griffin
“Silencing Dissent” by Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison
“Do Not Disturb” by Robert Manne (Ed)
Anything by Antony C Sutton

Global Governance is a stated goal of the UN. In short it is the dissolution of sovereign nations and their national borders, with the introduction of a global cashless currency and global taxation. And the emphasis is on cashless – see more here. The creation of the European Union (EU) and their currency, the Euro (€), was one of the first steps towards this goal. The proposed North American Union (NAU) and their currency, the Amero, is the next step. Last year the UN employed the Pope to push its climate change agenda in his Encyclical – see it here. You’ll remember that his solution to climate change was global governance; only a global government can “control” the corporations who are uncontrollably polluting the planet with CO2. Now we have a global tax evasion scandal and you can bet your bottom dollar that global taxation will be pushed as the only solution to “control” these individuals and corporations and their uncontrollable greed. What you need to remember is that tax minimisation in off-shore tax havens is completely legal. The only thing that global taxation will eradicate is the financial freedom of innocent good people like you and me. Just as it was planned to do.

For the sake of our children’s future, please, DON’T BUY IT.

The Silencing of Climate Change Dissent

(UPDATED: OCT 2018) The politics of climate change hit me square in the face last week. BOOM! Right between the eyes. And I really wasn’t expecting it.

I know that whenever I write about climate change it makes people uncomfortable and defensive. It’s a given. All those good people truly believing they are doing the right thing by eagerly repeating the global warming and sustainable development mantras. Truly good people. All without ever doing any actual reading of any literature themselves. Good, but sadly misled. I think the technical term for it is “groupthink”.

Anyways, there I was calmly having an exchange with a “believer” over an article he had written about one of those pesky “deniers”. As usual the article was nothing more than an ad hominem against an intelligent well informed man – this time it was Mark Steyn – who dares to question climate change/climate disruption/global warming propaganda. In the most extraordinary example of doublethink I have seen for a while the article managed to suggest that Steyn shares David Icke’s views on Reptilians whilst simultaneously printing Steyn’s own words that “David Icke is a weirdo“. And I do believe that the author actually got away with it. Sheer brilliance. I am familiar with Icke’s work and I came away from the article feeling that Steyn’s reputation had been tarnished and he was forever associated with Icke’s more radical ideas – ideas that require quite a sophisticated understanding of geopolitics in order to comprehend them accurately. Edward Bernays would be so proud. Give the man a medal. Pronto. A mind-blowing degree of deceptiveness heretofore unknown by this little chickadee.

But wait. There’s more. Much more. That wasn’t the thing that smacked me out of my naiveté. After a few exchanges I could feel the obligatory ad hominem on me begin to take form. So I calmly and very adult-like stated that “I don’t engage in back & forth personal attack. I just point people to the info which is confronting to read” (quoted verbatim). I had already supplied information on a couple of very good books which outline climate change fraud, presuming that the author and the online publication who published his article would want to investigate. Because that’s what journalists do. That’s what journalists without an agenda do, anyway. Not so for these people. I soon discovered that I had been blocked on Twitter by this publication. A so-called independent Australian news organisation who “supports quality investigative journalism, as well as citizen journalism and a diversity of voices. It believes Australians are short-changed by the mass media — and so it dedicates itself to seeking out the truth and informing the public” (quoted verbatim from their website). Hmmm. And the next day the same publication posted an article on freedom of speech. PROMOTING freedom of speech. Double hmmm.

These are the types of incidents along the path to wisdom that help us to understand what’s really going on. When you sit back and lazily believe the detritus that spews out every day from the TV and newspapers you don’t have a chance of working it out. But if you actively engage in searching for truth you open the door to epiphanies such as the one I had last week. It was truly a blessing in disguise as it helped me to further get a handle on the disturbing politics of climate change. It’s a subject I care about passionately. Because I’m passionate about the truth. As a child I learned to value the truth.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s. It was such a great time to be a kid. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) hadn’t yet decimated the education system in Australia so we were raised on a diet of tried-and-tested accurate information contained within a politically-neutral curriculum. We were taught critical thinking and useful life skills. We weren’t propagandised with politically-biased issues and told what to think about them. We were taught to gather the facts, analyse the issues for ourselves and make up our own minds. Freedom of thought was business-as-usual.
Genuine environmental issues such as pollution and deforestation were absolutely not part of the curriculum. Yet we Gen-Xers have been enthusiastically using our recycle bins for decades. How can that be? It can be because we were raised to be thinking individuals. Back then we were taught to have a grip on our sense of freedom and our own volition in the world. Even without guidance from the United Nations (UN) we could see for ourselves that filling the world with plastic was not viable.

But UNESCO has put an end to critical thinking and freedom of thought. Gen-Y (Millennials) and Gen-Z (iGen) have been raised on a diet of pro-climate change, pro-sustainable development and pro-humans-are-the-problem-not-the-solution. They are “global citizens” who go to UN-funded and run “Model United Nations” conferences where they are taught that the UN will save the world – with their help. And seeing as most kids are genuinely good-at-heart, they believe it. Because they have to believe it. To give themselves a sense of having a future worth living they have to believe the hype. They are the saviours who are going to fix the misdeeds of their parents. Because the UN said so.
And as time has marched on it appears that some of us Gen-Xers have fallen for this UN propaganda that holds us all responsible for the impending end of the earth. Some of us have been turned into automatons who just repeat, parrot-fashion, that the world is doomed and anyone who questions the “official version” is a traitor to be reviled. And silenced. Without even having a critical thought about the information we are being fed. What went wrong?

I had an appointment recently with an intelligent successful professional Gen-Xer. She apologised for being late, saying that she had a situation at home that needed to be dealt with. She had maggots in the kitchen and her partner told her it was “because of climate change”.

Intelligent and successful.

Maggots in the kitchen.

Climate change.

And apparently we now have climate-induced financial distress, climate-induced war and catastrophic conflicts, a climate-induced explosion in viruses, climate-this, climate-that……it just goes on and on. And on. And very few of us are questioning it. While Al Gore and his already-wealthy cronies are making gazillions out of carbon credits we are all being punished with higher power bills, less property rights, less democratic representation with mega-councils (the first step on the path to global governance) …. all because there is apparently more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere than before the Industrial Revolution. More of a substance that is essential for life on earth. Essential for the growth of trees. Yes, toxic CO2. The substance that is 4% of what we breathe out every few seconds. The substance that is currently 0.04% of the atmosphere. But they call it “carbon” so people don’t wake up to the fact that they are demonising a harmless, vital substance.

Scientists who have studied geological history know that current CO2 levels of 400ppm MedievalWarmPeriod are much lower than for most of the history of life on earth. Four hundred and fifty million years ago the earth went into an Ice Age when CO2 levels exceeded 4000ppm – more than TEN TIMES the current concentration. Just Google “Medieval Warm Period” and see what you find. Your eyes will be opened when you read some legitimate science.

And have you ever wondered why the media never mention any NATURAL causes of climate change/climate disruption/global warming ? It’s because the organisations tasked with “investigating” climate change/climate disruption/global warming are PREVENTED from finding out if there are any natural phenomena causing the purported disruptions in global climate patterns. Yes, in 1988 the United Nations set up an investigative body called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and their terms of reference SPECIFICALLY EXCLUDE the investigation of natural causes of climate variability. The IPCC publication “Principles Governing IPCC Work” states that the IPCC will assess –

the risk of human-induced climate change,
its potential impacts, and
possible options for prevention.

Using this limited framework of reference, the IPCC have published so-called “comprehensive” assessment reports in 1990 (with a supplementary report in 1992), 1995, 2001, 2007 and 2014. The sixth report is due in 2022. These incomplete reports are ClimateFraud used to determine global responses to climate variability and more disturbingly, they are used to enforce regulations and restrictions on the population. These so-called “comprehensive” reports determine our future quality of life even though none of the reports address naturally-induced causes of climate variability. This is not legitimate science. This is an agenda being imposed on the entire population. The IPCC have deliberately misled the world about the nature and cause of climate variability for a political agenda. And thankfully more and more scientists are waking up to these fundamental problems with “climate science” – see more here, here, here and here.

And guess what? Agenda-free scientists have discovered that global temperature patterns vary directly with SOLAR activity.

So temperature is dependent on…. wait for it…. THE SUN!

Who knew???

It’s heartbreaking for me to see good people sucked into this global deception. It’s heartbreaking for me to see intelligent people manipulated by greedy insiders and their bizarre global governance agenda. Whilst we good people suffer restrictive “sustainable development” plans and programs, these wealthy powerful global bureaucrats make even more restrictive decisions based on manipulated data and remain completely without oversight. I remain in awe at how mainstream media has been used to manipulate good people into hating those of us who dare to question the climate change/climate disruption/global warming agenda. The utter demonisation of individuals who dare to do a basic part of science – to question and test hypotheses – is a frightening step in the wrong direction.

That the media have managed to brainwash good people into devaluing an integral part of “doing science” – not to mention an integral part of a free and open society – is very troubling. That so-called “independent” media who claim to support a diversity of voices are also leading the way in demonising those of us who question climate change politics is indeed troubling. It’s an assault on freedom. It’s an assault on democracy. It shows just how powerful those behind climate change politics actually are. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 50 years on the planet, it’s that if a person or organisation refuses to openly debate and defend the agenda they are pushing, and they bully you into accepting their position by ridiculing you for questioning it, it certainly doesn’t pass the sniff test. In other words, something stinks.

But the buck stops with us. We are the only ones who can get off our reality-TV-addicted bottoms and actively search out the truth. Up until quite recently I was a “believer”. But in the course of my own personal research I came across more and more literature telling me that global warming was a hoax. Initially I was very uncomfortable that some of my favourite independent journalists were “deniers”. How could this be? How could he/she get this one so wrong? And then I read some more. And when I came across more information that made me more uncomfortable I read even more. And when the penny finally dropped it rocked my world.

It’s not easy to face the fact that, as George Carlin so eloquently taught us, “the government doesn’t give a f**k about you“. But it’s the truth. A f**k they certainly do not give. It is not a priority of our government to furnish us with accurate unbiased information. See more here. And based on the research I have done over the past few years, it’s even less of a priority for the UN to deliver agenda-free factual information to their “global citizens”.

The politics of climate change really are quite disturbing. My experience last week showed me just how deep the deception goes; how quickly the lid is put on someone trying to calmly, respectfully and intelligently share dissenting information. Those of us who have uncovered the truth really struggle for opportunities to distribute information to the wider community. We put all our efforts into social media and blogspots, struggling to retain followers. However, once Facebook, Twitter, You Tube or Google register that we are disseminating alternative views we have restricted-reach algorithms imposed on us (also known as “shadow-banning”) or we are accused of “fake news” and our accounts are deleted altogether. Some more seasoned and successful researchers manage to build a following of paid-up subscribers which allows them to produce high quality journalism. My hope is that people will start to wake up for themselves; that the outrageous claims now being made in the name of climate change will be enough for my fellow Gen-Xers’ critical thought to kick back in again. When a lie just keeps getting bigger and more outrageous, there comes a point when it becomes so implausible that we can no longer believe it without question. Maybe it’s not maggots in the kitchen, but maybe by the time we have travel restrictions imposed on us (using travel surveillance via your sat-nav) and power restrictions are a daily expectation (using power usage surveillance via your smart meter) whilst multinationals continue to profit from the manufacture of unnecessary planet-polluting products such as bottled water and coffee pods, maybe then people might start to question the reality of climate change.

Maybe then they’ll start to use what’s left of their

critical thought and democratic rights.

Data Retention, Surveillance and Censorship

Your digital footprint is tracking you…

Surveillance15

In August 2014 the Australian Federal Government claimed that existing surveillance legislation needed to be updated. The reason given? To “combat home-grown terrorism and Australians who participate in terrorist activities overseas”. The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 has since been updated and the Bill that was proposed – the highly intrusive Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2015 – passed through both houses of Federal Parliament on March 26th 2015. Digital privacy for Australians legally ended on October 13th 2015 when mandatory data retention began. See more here. In the Senate, the Australian Greens and a small number of cross-benchers were the only politicians who fought against this Bill. Both major parties voted unanimously for this gross violation of our privacy and civil rights.

– “Surveillance in a democracy should be targeted, proportionate and levelled at serious criminals, organised crime and national security threats. This Bill entrenches the opposite.”

(Video used with permission from Senator Scott Ludlam)

WHAT IS “METADATA”?

There are several problems with this legislation, not least of which is the use of the word “metadata”. Most concerningly, the Attorney-General Senator George Brandis has refused to give a clear and concise definition of what metadata actually is. What this means for you is that there is a very blurry line between what is considered to be “content” and what is considered to be just metadata or “information that allows communications to occur”. So there is a very real possibility that the content of your communications will be accessed and stored. Information such as your browsing history, your pin numbers, your passwords, and the actual content of your messages and phone calls can be stored – so be very careful what you share on Skype! Furthermore it is well known from previous experience in Australia, Europe and the U.S. that metadata and other surveillance data are used primarily for non-terrorism criminal cases such as insider trading. Rob Sims from the ACCC publicly supported the new legislation by claiming that it is “absolutely essential” for fighting white collar crime. But why this new focus on white collar crime when the legislation was supposed to be about catching “the terrorists”? Surveillance14 Considering that the Attorney-General has reserved the right to use metadata for civil cases, this legislation can now also be used to catch and prosecute people for doing relatively harmless things like illegal downloading. Furthermore, legislation introduced to Federal Parliament the very same day that the Data Retention Bill was passed – the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) 2015 Bill – will now give media corporations extraordinary powers to block websites they deem “harmful” and to prosecute illegal downloaders using, surprise surprise, the new data retention laws. The Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 swiftly passed through both houses of Federal Parliament on June 22nd 2015. It begs the question of why the Australian public has been told that they are giving up their privacy and civil rights to catch “the terrorists” when it seems that everyday Australians are the real target of this legislation. See more here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

EVERYDAY TRACKING DEVICES

Surveillance methods that are already part of your everyday life include your credit card and customer loyalty cards and apps; your local library and DVD hire cards; Pay Pal and anything you purchase or book online; your Opal Card and e-Tag; licence plate readers, CCTV and GPS – basically anything that has a digital or electronic aspect to it. Whenever any one of these everyday tracking devices is activated a permanent digital record is created of the transaction – what you bought/borrowed or what you did, when you did it and where it happened.

Licence plate recognition and ticketless “smart parking”.

So what do they do with all this information? Take Amazon for example. Amazon has built a multi-million dollar intelligence cloud for national security agencies to use. This gives the agencies access to all purchases made at Amazon – purchases that in reality are nobody else’s business. Yet all of Amazon’s transaction details are fed into this cloud. The security agencies then analyse it and based on the subject matter of each purchase, the buyer is assigned a “risk rating”. Your browsing history is also recorded. So even if you only view a book or DVD on a controversial topic, you are flagged as a potential risk.

Happy reading!

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…

In early 2015 European Union (EU) border control authorities planned to harass travellers from March 2015 through September 2015 to give up their biometric data. The capture included fingerprint scans, iris scans and facial recognition scans for all forms of travel – road, train, sea and air – for all non-EU nationals who entered Europe. This biometric dragnet was a trial run for the EU’s new “Smart Borders” program.

Mobile Iris Scan — Mobile facial scanning.

In early 2015 this was the plan – Arlanda, Charles de Gaulle and Madrid airports would be capturing your facial image. At Lisbon airport you would be subjected to facial and iris pattern scans. Moving trains from Gare du Nord in Paris and Lasi in Romania would have taken your fingerprint scans; your facial image would also have been taken in Lasi. If you planned to drive on the roads leading into the border town of Udvar you would have been iris-scanned. If you were caught driving near Sculeni you would have been subjected to both iris and facial scanning. Border control officials on roads leading into Kipoi Evrou in Greece and Vaalimaa in Finland Fingerprint Scan would have compelled you for your fingerprints. Helsinki, Port of Piraeus, Cherbourg and Genoa were the seaports and shipping areas participating in the data collection, so your personal biometric data would have been taken from you in those locations too. Although this program was a trial it was clearly a practice run for a global data acquisition program. Problems with Europe’s Schengen agreement have been used to justify this gross invasion of privacy and imposition of a global totalitarian surveillance state. However as we have all seen it is clearly not stopping “terrorism”. If you don’t already have an e-passport you certainly soon will. If you ever wish to travel overseas again it will soon be mandatory to have all of your biometric data on file and encoded in your e-passport. Welcome to the new global surveillance state. Where billions of innocent citizens are groped, spied-on and treated like criminals while “the terrorists” continue to rape, murder and prosper.

And just a word of advice – if you haven’t already worked it out – anything with the word “smart” in front of it is just another term for surveillance. Smart phone, smart meter, smart watch, smart TV, smart borders, smart parking, smart travel – these are all methods for collecting your data and tracking you. And all for the purpose of catching “the terrorists”. And don’t even get me started on Ancestry.com!

Surveillance8 — Facial recognition and GPS tracking.

For more on facial recognition and GPS tracking see here and here.

MONITORING AND CONTROLLING YOU TO CATCH “THE TERRORISTS”?

Spying on innocent people is clearly a pretty lazy, unsophisticated and ineffective approach to national security. Clogging up security storage networks with vast amounts of information on innocent people only hinders an agency’s ability to focus on any actual terrorists due to the massive information management burden it creates. It’s obvious that the extent of surveillance we now deal with on a daily basis is not really about catching “the terrorists” at all. It’s increasingly about monitoring everyone’s movements. Monitoring what we do, where we go, who we associate with, and most disturbingly it’s about monitoring the flow of information. Recent changes to the policies of government minions Facebook and Google indicate that these corporations have actually taken the next step. They are now controlling the flow of information.

Facebook now not only monitors your messages (see more here and here) and spies on you in general (see more here, here, here, here, here, here and here), it imposes algorithms on every user’s posts. These algorithms determine how much exposure each post gets. Posts from individuals and organisations who circulate information that is considered to be in any way subversive, or contrary to government (or Facebook board members’) interests, have restricted-reach algorithms imposed on them such that their posts are rarely if ever seen by anyone. See more here.

Similarly, Google – the biggest data miner on the planet – is changing the way its search results are calculated. Search rankings will now be based on an Orwellian artificial intelligence-based “level of acceptableness”, rather than the previous popularity-based system. Google’s AI method analyses data associated with sites related to the user’s search words. The further that this data deviates from state propaganda, the further down in the search results they appear – if they appear at all. And because search engine results are vital to the business model of many organisations, the deployment o Surveillance11 f this “knowledge vault” by Google will gravely impact the public’s access to information and services – especially from sites such as alternative news sources. See more about Google here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. So just like Facebook, Google is now controlling the flow of information by obscuring and withholding information that the government does not wish to be circulated. That folks, is censorship. Welcome to 1984.

TEN THINGS YOU CAN DO ABOUT SURVEILLANCE

Firstly, for protection when not online, disconnect all hardware when you are not using it (ie. modem, webcam, dongle, etc). Make sure you are completely disconnected from any possible remote access. FBI Director James Comey covers his webcam so you should too! See more here.

For protection when online, various types of software can be used –

1. One option is to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) such as Tunnel Bear. This will hide your online identity. If you have a Mac Book Pro use Firefox as your browser and Duck Duck Go as your search engine. This will give you anonymous online searching.*

2. Use software such as Disconnect or Ghostery to protect you from cookies and 3^rd party trackers but be aware that these tools have problems associated with them.* See more here.

3. Use encryption for messaging. The Dark Net or Deep Web is also worth looking into. It uses various anonymising networks such as Tor. See more here.

4. Use spyware such as Spybot. In this new surveillance and data mining age anti-virus software on it’s own is no longer adequate protection against cyber-attack.

5. Most computers have the capacity for remote desktop access. Disable it. For early versions of Windows go to “Control Panel” then “Device Manager” then “System Devices” and you may see a device called “Remote Desktop” or something similar. Disable it. For Windows 10 go to “Search” in the StartUp menu. Type “Services” in the search bar. Click on “Services Desktop App”. Scroll down to “Remote Access Auto Connect”. There will be eight entries related to remote access. Disable all of them. For each one – double click on it for “Properties”; in the “General” tab go to “Startup Type”; change it to “Disabled”; click “OK”. Do this for each entry. While you are in this directory you might like to search through and see of there is anything else you wish to disable. They can always be enabled if it is absolutely required. If your provider or anyone else you trust requires you to install remote access software so they can work on your computer remotely, ALWAYS delete the software immediately after they have finished working on your computer.

6. The Windows application “HomeGroup” is highly suspect. It quietly appears on your computer without your request or permission. You simply boot up as usual one morning and there it is – an icon that wasn’t there yesterday. It is a file sharing application that allows your data to be shared with others. It also contains a “Listening” application which is a HUGE red flag. Disable both of them. You’ll find information on how to do this here.

In your everyday life there are many options to avoid being tracked –

7. Get rid of those customer loyalty cards and apps. Sure, you may lose your discount, but what Everyday Rewards Card is your privacy worth to you? They record everything you buy, and your health insurer may not like the fact that you have regularly purchased chocolate, soft drinks, ice cream and biscuits when you want to claim for diabetes treatment in the future. Don’t believe it? See more here.

8. Support local shops rather than buying online. Not only will you keep a hard working Australian in business and their employees in a job, but you won’t be able to be tracked by your online credit card activity when you USE CASH! Remember good old cash? No-one can track you when you USE CASH!

9. Use a pre-paid Opal Card and pre-paid access for your mobile phone/device – both paid for WITH CASH!

10. Finally, the most important thing you can do is to JUST SAY NO! Get educated and get involved. Write to your local Federal member. Better still, make an appointment to SEE your local Federal member. Tell them that you strongly oppose these infringements of your civil rights and freedoms. Find out what’s going on in regards to legislative changes and make submissions to the committees involved. Start the conversations “Who owns my personal data?” and “Where is the oversight on surveillance?”. Australia is still a democracy and you have the right to voice your opposition to any proposed changes to legislation. The level of surveillance currently being rolled out is outrageous – it is totally unnecessary and unjustifiable. The only way to change this dark progression into a surveillance state is to speak up.

Parliament House — “I strongly oppose the surveillance overreach and privacy violations in the current Bill.”

*Suggestions from Cullen Hoback, maker of the documentary “Terms and Conditions May Apply” about online user agreements (see trailer here and an interview about the movie here).

FURTHER INFORMATION

For more general information about surveillance go here, here, here, here and here.

For more information about internet censorship and how it is affecting the public’s access to unbiased and propaganda-free information, and how the alternative media are responding to this go here.

For interviews with NSA whistleblowers about surveillance go here, here and here. These clips are time consuming but well worth the investment in order to understand the full ramifications of what is being forced upon us.

Laura Poitras’ documentary CitizenFour is a brilliant, highly informative yet truly chilling account of the Edward Snowden leaks as they happened. It is a very sobering wake up call for all those people who naively claim “I have done nothing wrong so I have nothing to hide”. However questions have been raised about how the leaks have been handled by the journalist involved – Glenn Greenwald. See more here about how Glenn Greenwald has censored the release of the Snowden documents and made deals with the corporate media over the publication of the documents. The BFP Roundtable interview is well worth watching.

“Educated people are as much superior to uneducated people

as the living are to the dead.”