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by Charles Hugh Smith
July 11,
2019
from
CharlesHughSmith Website
YouTube
Are citizens required to passively sit by while
the manacles of scientific dictatorship are
clamped around their necks? More people
recognize the encroachment, but not enough to
slow or stop it.
Source
Convenience is the sales pitch,
but the real
goal is control
in service of maximizing
profits
and extending
state power...
"Alexa - How do
We Subvert Big Tech's Orwellian Internet-of-Things Surveillance?"
When every device in your life is connected to the Internet (the
Internet of Things), your refrigerator will schedule an oil change
for your car - or something like that - and it will be amazingly
wunnerful.
You'll be able to lower
the temperature of your home office while you're stuck in a traffic
jam, while your fridge orders another jar of pickles delivered to
your door.
It's all in service of convenience, the god all Americans are
brainwashed to worship. Imagine the convenience of turning on the
light while seated on your sofa!
Mind-boggling convenience
at your fingertips - and since you're already clutching your smart
phone 24/7, convenience is indeed at your fingertips.
It's also about control, and as we lose control of everything that's
actually important in our lives, the illusion of agency/control is a
compelling pitch. Imagine being able to program your fridge to order
a quart of milk delivered when it gets low but not order another jar
of pickles when that gets low!
Wow! That's control,
yowzah...
The Internet of Things is indeed about control - not your control,
but control over you - control of what's marketed to you, and
control of your behaviors via control of the incentives,
distractions and micro-decisions that shape behavior.
I Used Google Ads for
Social Engineering. It Worked.
via
Mark J.
The control enabled by
the Internet of Things starts with persuasion and quickly slides
into coercion.
Since corporations and
government agencies will have a complete map of your movements,
purchases, consumption, communications, etc., then behavior flagged
as "non-beneficial" will be flagged for "nudging nags", while
"unsanctioned" behavior will be directed to the proper authorities.
Say you're visiting a fast-food outlet for the fourth time in a
week.
Your health insurance
corporation has set three visits a week as a maximum, lest your poor
lifestyle choices start costing them money for treatments, so you
get a friendly "reminder" to lay off the fast food or make
"healthier" choices off the fast food menu.
Failure to heed the "nudges" will result in higher premiums or
cancelled coverage.
Sorry, pal, it's just business. Your "freedom"
doesn't extend to costing us money.
Domestic corporate versions of China's
social credit score will
proliferate.
Here is evidence that such scores already exist:
Everyone's Got a
"Surveillance Score" and It Can Cost You Big Money.
Zero
Hedge
Then there's the
surveillance.
The Internet of Things
isn't just monitoring energy use and the quantity of milk in a
fridge; it's monitoring you - not just in your house, car and
wherever you take your Personal Surveillance Device, i.e.
your smart phone, but everywhere you go.
If you are a lookie-loo shopper - you browse the inventory
but rarely buy anything - expect to be put in Category Three - zero
customer service, and heightened surveillance in case your intent is
to boost some goodies (shoplift).
Heaven help you if you start spending time reading shadow-banned
websites like Of Two Minds:
your social credit
standing moves into the red zone, and your biometric scans at
airports, concerts, retail centers etc., will attract higher
scrutiny.
You just can't be too
sure about people who stray off the reservation of "approved"
corporate media.
Your impulses are easy to exploit: since every purchase is tracked,
your vulnerabilities to impulse buys will be visible with a bit of
routine Big Data analysis, and so the price of the treats you
succumb to will go up compared to the indifferent consumer next to
you.
Sorry, pal, it's just
business. Your vulnerabilities, insecurities and weaknesses are
profit centers. We'd be foolish not to exploit them to maximize
profits, because that is the sole mission of global corporations.
Governments access the trove of surveillance for their own purposes.
Monitoring phone
calls, texts and emails is only the first step.
Privacy as a concept
and a right has effectively ceased to exist other than as a
legal abstraction and useful fiction.
The Dawn of Robot
Surveillance: AI, Video Analytics and Privacy.
Source
Longtime correspondent
Simon H. recently submitted a video link on The
Internet of Things as well as a sobering and insightful
commentary.
Here is an overview by
James Corbett of the totalitarian reach of
the 5G, IoT and a
technocratic surveillance dictatorship. All delivered as an
unavoidable facet of inevitable tech progress:
The 5G Dragnet
There seems to be an idea that the only reason we have
historically had privacy, civil liberties and general freedoms
is because in the past we lacked the technology to eliminate
them.
The future does indeed seem to have globalist technocracy
written all over it which is to be presented as a simple matter
of embracing technological progress and celebrating new
technological wonders.
Don't think about the
total surveillance taking place just marvel at the speed of your
connections and the convenience of outsourcing all of your
troubling personal sovereignty to machine assistants to make all
of your decisions for you.
Anyone who resists this undemocratic future will be branded as a
nostalgically foolish, technological Luddite.
However, this new
form of tech is completely different in nature to all of those
that have preceded it. If we think in terms of macro and micro
economics, then we can also look at current developments in
terms of macro and micro sovereignties.
This phenomenon is
more pronounced in the UK than the US because of the sovereignty
issues of the EU and Brexit.
Not only is our democratic sovereignty being eroded by
supranational organization such as,
...if we take surveillance capitalism,
5G and the
Internet of Things (IoT) into consideration one can see that our
sovereignty it is also under direct dual attack at an extreme
and fundamentally personal level.
Against all of these things we are seeing extraordinary
coalitions of resistance:
Marxists,
Anti-Capitalists, Anarchists, Austrian Libertarians and
anyone of an old school left of right wing true liberalism
who believe in the principles of democracy and sovereignty,
freedom of speech, privacy and civil liberties.
The so called liberal
progressives who support globalism and the technocracy are
anything but liberal:
they are
imperialist totalitarians no better or less dangerous than
the Nazis.
We desperately need
to strip them of their fake liberal and moderate claims and show
them for what they truly are - sociopaths...
Thank you, Simon H...
Resistance can take many forms.
One approach is to minimize surveillance by stripping out apps
from your smart phone, leaving it in a drawer most of the time,
and disabling
Wi-Fi in all appliances and devices you buy/own.
This approach isn't
perfect, as surveillance is far beyond our control, despite Big
Tech claims of transparency, privacy controls, etc., but
nonetheless any reduction in data collection is meaningful.
More than 1,000
Android apps harvest data even after you deny permissions.
via Mark J.
Buy with cash and buy
the absolute minimum.
If you only buy real
food - meats, vegetables, grains, fruit, etc. - you've
effectively stripped out all the profit potential of our
corporate overlords.
Who is going to make a big profit offering
you a discount on raw carrots? No one...
If your impulse buys are paid with cash, they can't be tracked.
Whatever you buy in person with cash can't be tracked.
Limit your Personal Surveillance Device, i.e.
your smart phone:
disable its "always listening" and other capabilities; leave it
in the drawer, etc.
How to Turn an
Android Phone into a Dumbphone in 8 Steps.
Source
Understand you're
being played and gamed 24/7:
Ignore all the marketing, pitches
and propaganda.
Make it a habit to
ignore all marketing pitches, discounts, coupons, etc.
Become an
anti-consumer, minimizing trackable purchases and pursuing a
DeGrowth lifestyle of repairing existing items and making
everything you own last rather than replace it with a new item
(this is the Landfill Economy I've discussed many times, with
thanks to correspondent Bart D. who coined the phrase to the
best of my knowledge).
Don't buy Wi-Fi-enabled devices, and disable Wi-Fi if there are
no non-Wi-Fi options available.
This subverts the value of the data
Facebook,
Google, et al.
collect on you and sell to the highest bidder. If the data isn't
useful in selling you something, then the buyers of the data
will at a minimum weed the non-controllable consumers out of the
data pool.
Since any deviance outside "normal" attracts scrutiny, game the
system by logging a baseline of "normal" purchases and
activities. Appearing minimally ordinary has its advantages.
Trying too hard to
leave no digital footprint is itself highly suspicious.
Advocate for digital privacy/Freedom from Surveillance and
AI
Bill of Rights. There is still a narrow window in the U.S. for
protecting and expanding civil liberties and privacy.
Here is an example of
a proposed Algorithmic Bill of Rights:
Full report
Convenience is the
sales pitch, but the real goal is control in service of
maximizing profits and extending state power.
"To serve humans"
takes on new meanings in Big Tech/ Big Government's
Orwellian the Internet of Things.
To Serve Man - The Twilight Zone
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