While Australian journalists bonded and broke break in condemning national security legislation that some of them had previously supported, one figure was barely mentioned. Julian Assange was making his first public appearance since April for a case management hearing at the Westminster Magistrates Court. Those in attendance were disturbed. Craig […]
Global Surveillance
Normal Intrusions: Globalising AI Surveillance
They all do it: corporations, regimes, authorities. They all have the same reasons: efficiency, serviceability, profitability, all under the umbrella term of “security”. Call it surveillance, or call it monitoring the global citizenry; it all comes down to the same thing. You are being watched for your own good, and […]
Out Of Kilter: National Security And Press Freedoms In Australia
Australian society relishes secrecy and surveillance. Forget the laid-back, relaxed demeanour that remains the great fiction of a confected identity; like all such creations, the trace should not be mistaken as the tendency. The political culture of Australia remains shaped by penal paranoia and an indifference to transparency. The citizen […]
The Strange Case Of Chrystia Freeland And The Failure Of The “Super Elite”
Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland has become a bit of a living parody of everything wrong with the detached technocratic neo-liberal order which has driven the world through 50 years of post-industrial decay. Now, two years into the Trump presidency, and five years into the growth of a new system […]
The British Roots Of The Deep State: How The Round Table Infiltrated America
With the nearly weekly revelations that the British Foreign Office, MI6, and GCHQ have been behind the long standing agenda to undermine the Presidency of Donald Trump and undo the peaceful alliance between nationalist leaders in America, Russia, China and elsewhere, a new focus on the British hand in undermining the […]
Facebook, Funny Money And Libra
Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency generated more than a smattering of interest last month when its early-access code made its way to GitHub. By the end of the month, it had been “saved” by some 10,000 users, while a 1,000 clones of the codebase were also generated, very much in a playful effort to test its reliability.
Raging Against The Algorithm: Google And Persuasive Technology
The rage against the algorithm, and the belief that no behavioural pushing is taking place in search technology, is misplaced on a few fronts. On a certain level, all accept how such modes of retrieving information work. Disagreement arises as to their consequences, a concession, effectively, to the Google user as imbecile.
Violent Voyeurism: Surveillance, Spyware and Human Rights
Surveillance is merely a variant of violent voyeurism, the human behind the camera or visual apparatus observing behaviour in a setting, often private. Its premise is privacy’s violation; its working assumption is privacy’s irrelevance; officially tolerated such a concept is unofficially repudiated. Studies on surveillance do as much to reveal […]
Whistleblowers Say NSA Still Spies On American Phones In Hidden Program
Don’t believe the chorus of headlines implying that the NSA is shutting down its bulk surveillance program. Far from it. The agency is merely evolving and recalibrating, and as usual, very few in the press, Congress and US government are asking the awkward questions that urgently need to be asked.
Is Microsoft Trying To Drive A Wedge Between Amazon And The Pentagon?
It’s difficult to imagine the government cracking down on these firms by breaking up their monopolies in advance of the public interest if they’re so dependent on their current internal organizational model for carrying out military-related tasks.
Is China Really More “Dystopian” Than The UK?
While the European country insincerely pretends to be a “democracy”, the East Asian one makes no such pretenses and is proud of having a different organizational model, which should be doubly disturbing for any British citizen because it means that their “democratically elected government” is actually less forthcoming about its nationwide surveillance strategy than comparatively more centralized China’s is.
China’s “Social Credit” System: Dystopia By Design Or Successful Social Engineering?
It’ll remain to be seen whether the questions surrounding China’s “social credit” system are answered in the coming future, but what’s known for sure is that the world’s largest country is entering an unprecedented era of “algorithmic governance”.
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