On Weather Modification

Posted on June 13, 2019 by marcia

June 11, 2019 8 Comments

THE ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATION CONVENTION OF 1976

As you might have guessed, I’ve been much focused upon the subject of geoengineering lately, given that much of America’s breadbasket has been so under water this season that many crops did not even get planted, and many farmers are facing ruin. But not to worry, disaster capitalism is alive and well, and various journals of crony c(r)apitalism are urging people to buy up farmland, on the cheap. It was a predictable move given the strangeness of the last cycle of storms, which set a record for the number of tornadoes for the year, and they all occurred within a week and a half. Geoengineering has reached such a fever pitch of insanity that yesterday I blogged about people talking about moving the Earth’s orbit in case the Sun decides to go nova, which we’re reassured won’t happen for billions of years (that’s without all that high-tech stuff perhaps inducing unknown resonance effects).

It’s that technological angle that has me exercised today, for a number of regular readers of this website have been sending in various articles on the subject, and V.T. sent an article that sent me looking at the 1976 Environmental Modification Convention, and that in turn brought me to this valuable website which those of you concerned about this technology might want to bookmark:

The Environmental Modification Convention (ENMOD) Weather Warfare Ban

Weaponizing the weather has been an idea that’s been around for a long time,but it received a huge kick during the Second World War, when there were actually serious proposals for producing tsunamis ahead of Allied invasion forces invading Japanese held islands in the Pacific. The efforts continued after World War Two, particularly in the USA and the Soviet Union, and, as this site actually notes, the USSR engaged in heavy weather modification after the Chernobyl disaster to force rains to “bleed” out radioactivity prior to it reaching Moscow. But it is this convention that tells a whole story, for as V.T. put it in the email that accompanied this article, why bother having a convention if the technologies did not exist?

What caught my eye in the text of this convention were the first three articles:

The States Parties to this Convention,Guided by the interest of consolidating peace, and wishing to contribute to the cause of halting the arms race, and of bringing about general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and of saving mankind from the danger of using new means of warfare…

Have agreed as follows:

Article I. 1. Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to engage in military or any other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as the means of destruction, damage or injury to any other State Party.

2. Each State Party to this Convention undertakes not to assist, encourage or induce any State, group of States or international organization to engage in activities contrary to the provisions of paragraph 1 of this article.

Article II. As used in article I, the term “environmental modification techniques” refers to any technique for changing-through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes-the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.

Article III. 1. The provisions of this Convention shall not hinder the use of environmental modification techniques for peaceful purposes and shall be without prejudice to the generally recognized principles and applicable rules of international law concerning such use.

There’s a couple of glaring omissions here, and I’m sure you caught both of them. Firstly, no corporation – to my knowledge – is a signatory to this convention. Consequently, any state or group of states (to use the language of the convention), wishing to observe the letter but not the spirit of the convention could conceivably use corporate “cut outs” to conduct such geophysical warfare. Indeed, reading the convention one discovers that the development of such technologies and their use for “peaceful purposes” is entirely “ok.” One can almost hear the technocrat narrative: “oh…! We’re sorry! We were trying to relieve our drought. We didn’t realize it would result in massive flooding in your (country, state, region) and wipe out your current crop planting season.” Indeed, as far as I can tell, the wording is so ambiguous that one reading of the convention would not prohibit the high contracting parties from utilizing the technologies in such a way within their own jurisdictions, that if it were so used by those parties against another party or parties, would be taken as geophysical warfare.

Secondly, there’s a complete lack of any detail as to how such geophysical warfare is to be detected and determined. While the convention has undergone clarifications since its original signing, those clarifications are still vague enough to drive a truck through. What is interesting is that any complaint or suspicion of such actions can be lodged with the UN Security Council, which will “investigate” and presumably could provide “punitive action” against the offender, provided of course that any such action were not vetoed by the five permanent members, which, interestingly enough, are the very same powers that have access to the technologies in the first place.

Finally, human diplomatic history and international relations are replete with broken treaties and conventions. And I strongly suspect this convention has already been broken.

But at least it does one thing: it affirmed that even in the 1970s there was a fear of technologies designed to weaponize geophysical processes, from the lithosphere(earthquake weapons), the hydrosphere(tsunami creators), atmosphere(chemtrails), and outer space(ionspheric heaters). And of course, we’ve developed all of them.

(Indeed, Nikola Tesla took out a patent in 1893 for an mechanical oscillator which he claimed produced “earthquakes”, decades before the convention was even a gleam in the UN’s eye, long before there was even a UN. Tesla made lots of strange claims in his life, and the problem is, Tesla was Tesla, and it’s always hazardous to second guess him. Interestingly enough, the television show “Myth Busters” built a version of this oscillator, and tested it. It didn’t produce any earthquakes, leading them to claim the myth was busted, but it did cause oscillations that could be felt hundreds of feet away. I have my own suspicions about that episode, and I’ll keep them to myself, but as one might guess, they involve “resonance” and the possibility that it was ignored, meaning that the “busted myth” may itself need to be busted.)

In any case, given the recent strange weather, it seems as if the technologies and techniques might have been perfected to a degree only dreamed of when the convention was originally signed. If so, we might not have to bother about moving the Earth out of its current orbit…

See you on the slip side..

from: https://gizadeathstar.com/2019/06/the-environmental-modification-convention-of-1976/

A New Look at UFO’s

Posted on June 11, 2019 by marcia

ALTERNATIVE NEWS

And Just Like That, UFOs Are Real In The Mainstream

By. Joe Martino

IN BRIEF

The Facts:The mainstream media recently ran a news cycle admitting that UFOs are real and that government agencies have known about it for a very long time.
Reflect On:This admission brings up many nuances and discussions that are important for reflection. One thing is clear however, we are living in inspiring and changing times, but we must also continue to nurture our intuition and critical thinking.

A sign of change? Feelings of frustration? Ulterior motives? These are all ideas that have been coming to the mind of those who have been well aware of the factual reality that UFOs are in fact real, verifiable for at least the last 3 or 4 decades. Denied, ridiculed and made out to be crazy, those who knew now see the mainstream media talking in the plenty about UFOs and are wondering why.

People’s newsfeed have been exploding with UFO headlines for the past 3 or 4 days. I’m not talking about one or two articles here and there, I’m talking about seeing headline after headline to the point where you can’t ignore the fact that someone is going to come up to you and finally say “hey did you see that thing about how UFOs are now real?”

Have a look at just a few I got, all published 3 days ago, from one quick Google search:

UFOs Are Real, But Don’t Assume They’re Alien Spaceships – Space.com

Former US Defense official: We know UFOs are real – here’s why that’s concerning – Fox News

UFOs Exist And Everyone Needs To Adjust To That Fact – Washington Post

When Two Navy Pilots Saw a UFO Shaped ‘Like a Giant Tic Tac’ – The Daily Beast

I don’t think anyone will complain about these admissions, in fact, I feel most welcome it, but there is some nuance to this discussion that is very helpful to understand, especially for those that might be a bit newer to the subject.

Feelings of Frustration

Some people in the UFO community who have been well aware that UFOs are real for the last 20 or 30 years are perhaps going to feel frustrated as now the public decides to listen and take the subject seriously because the mainstream media, who has given no reason for people to trust them, has finally admitted this to be true. This comes after years of denial and making fun of the subject. This is an understandable feeling, and one worthy of processing, but there is something to be inspired about here and getting stuck in this feeling simply won’t serve us for too long.

Ulterior Motives

As Space.com puts it, “Aliens shouldn’t be the default explanation for weird stuff in the sky.” And this is true, the conversation truly is about asking who is manning these craft? They have been around, studied and have been widely documented by government and intelligence agencies for years, but all this hidden from the public.

Why now? Why is there finally admission? Perhaps it’s time humanity finally hears the truth… en masse. Perhaps this is about controlling a narrative that has slowly been getting ‘out of control’ due to the rise of independent media. Millions of people tune into the truth and insight of independent media like us here at Collective Evolution, perhaps those who kept such a tight seal on the UFO/ET subject are now attempting to once again gain the upper hand on how the UFO/ET narrative is told.

Why is that important? Think of it this way, for years and years now, the truth has already been out there in media, just not in the mainstream. Thousands and thousands of declassified government documents have evidently shown UFOs are real, and that has been very clear. But there is one other thing to consider: many documents, military and government whistleblowers also have disclosed that they know some of these craft are manned by ETs. In fact, they are aware that multiple races have been interacting with humanity.

“…with absolute certainty, that four species, four different species, at least, have been visiting this planet for thousands of years. . . . There’s been a lot more activity in the last few decades, since we invented the atomic bomb, and they are very concerned about that, and the fact that we might use it again, because the whole cosmos is a unity and it affects not just us but other people in the cosmos,” – Paul Hellyer, Former Canadian Minister of Defense (source)

For this knowledge to come out would mean not only would there be UFO admission but an admission of ETs. This, however, isn’t happening. Instead, we have been given only a tiny piece to the puzzle, thus controlling the narrative, controlling the disclosure of something everyone has the right to know. Why?

Well, the implications of this knowledge go deep and leave no aspect of humanity untouched. We’re talking changes to core belief systems, religions, and so forth. We’re talking changes to the very robotic nature by which we go about daily life. Not to mention getting into the technological questions that come when we begin to ask how these crafts move and do the maneuvers they do. Can you say free energy? Kicking fossil fuel, wind and solar industries out the window for technology the government has known exists for many decades now.

There is no other way but to say this bluntly: admission of intelligence behind these crafts is too big a threat to the enslaving infrastructures we have, and thus it’s important to control the narrative.

A Sign of Change

Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of this conversation is that we truly can be saying to ourselves “things are changing, perceptions are changing, our minds are opening up.” Which is a good thing.

I have long discussed that the importance of the ET conversation truly lies in consciousness. The fact that humanity’s curiosity about ETs has grown immensely in recent years has an underlying conversation about consciousness that cannot be avoided. I wrote about this in detail in an article titled Why Humanity Is So Obsessed With Finding Aliens Right Now.

To summarize it, we are in a deep search for what we know to be true within ourselves, and that search will expand our way of being and living immensely. It will also help evolve us out of this destructive state we are collectively in.

The core to this conversation is that yes, things are changing enough to the point where the mainstream media and authoritative aspects of our societal infrastructures, like government and mainstream media, must begin to widely admit the reality of subjects like this, but also we must be critical in our thinking about how narratives are trying to be controlled here.

The conversation does not have to stop at UFOs however. Some feel recent admissions are to pave the way for revealing the US’ space force that has already been created, this may be partly true, but we must also look at the discussion of ETs and what we ALREADY know about them.

To learn more about what we do know, check out the following:

The CE Show Ep. 6 – WikiLeaks Document Discusses Base On Moon

Multiple Investigations Reveal Secrets About Where US Tax Dollars Are Really Going

Aerospace Insider on Aliens: ‘We Don’t Have To Go Anywhere To Find Them, They’re Already Here’

The Takeaway

Once again, it’s an inspiring time. A time where we are opening up to greater conversations and nothing can slow them down. The question is, will we actively, presently and with awareness learn from our past of trusting mainstream media and government to give us the truth they have hidden for years? Or will we seek to become self-responsible and find this information on our own as independent communities?

I highly recommend checking out the video below as I discuss why this is a conversation of consciousness and breaking through the limits of our society and being more than anything else.

from: https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/06/01/and-just-like-that-ufos-are-real-in-the-mainstream/

Enjoy the Show!

Posted on June 11, 2019 by marcia

This Circus Replaced Live Animals With 3D Holograms — and Audiences Love It

Elias Marat

(TMU) — The circus, once considered to be The Greatest Show on Earth, has been faced with rough times in recent years. Gone are the days when the circus train is synonymous with magic and entertainment for the whole family—these days, people are much more likely to associate the big top show with brutal animal abuse and animals lashing out at trainers or even members of the audience.

But now, Germany’s Circus Roncalli has devised a way to keep the circus alive along with the animal magic it invokes. They have phased out the use of live animals almost entirely, instead using a dazzling of array of three-dimensional holographic projections for its one-of-a-kind show.

From wild horses that gallop within the circus ring to gigantic floating fishes and elephants standing on their two front feet, the show has amazed audiences with holograms that measure about 105 ft. (32 meters) wide to 16 ft. (five meters) tall—large enough to fill the circus tent.

The move has been greeted as a brilliant alternative to the controversial use of wild animals in traditional circus acts, not only because it employs the modern wonders of computer-generated imagery in a spectacular manner, but because no actual living beings are at risk of facing inhumane treatment in the run-up to the show.

Circus Roncalli had already done away with wild animals in the mid-1990s, but kept its horses and ponies until last year. Now, the show is entirely free of live animals—a choice that was made as much due to logistics as it was over concerns for the animals’ wellbeing.

from: https://themindunleashed.com/2019/06/circus-animals-cruelty-free-3d-holograms.html

Gold & Silver as Money

Posted on May 23, 2019 by marcia

Signed as Law: Kansas Removes Barrier to the Use of Gold and Silver as Money

May 22, 2019

By Michael Maharrey

TOPEKA, Kan. (May 22, 2019) – Last week, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed a bill exempting gold and silver bullion, and other precious metals, from the state sales tax. Passage of this legislation eliminates one barrier to using gold and silver in everyday transactions, a foundational step for people to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money.

Rep. Jim Kelly (R-Independence) introduced House Bill 2140 (HB2140) on Feb. 5. The new law exempts the sale of gold or silver coins and gold, silver, platinum, or palladium bullion from the state sales tax. Under the law, “bullion” means bars, ingots or commemorative medallions of gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or a combination thereof, for which the value of the metal depends on its content and not the form.

The sales tax exemption on gold and silver was amended into a bill authorizing various county sales tax increases. It was the one positive provision in a bill otherwise unfriendly to Kansas taxpayers. With Gov. Kelly’s signature, the law will go into effect July 1.

IN PRACTICE

With the passage of HB2140, Kansas takes a step toward treating gold, silver, platinum and palladium as money instead of commodities. As Sound Money Defense League Policy Director Jp Cortez testified during a committee hearing on a similar bill in Wyoming last year, charging taxes on money itself is beyond the pale.

In effect, states that collect taxes on purchases of precious metals are inherently saying gold and silver are not money at all.

Imagine if you asked a grocery clerk to break a $5 bill and he charged you a 35 cent tax. Silly, right? After all, you were only exchanging one form of money for another. But that’s essentially what Kansas’ sales tax on gold and silver bullion did. By removing the sales tax on the exchange of gold and silver, Kansas will treat specie as money instead of a commodity. This represents a small step toward reestablishing gold and silver as legal tender and breaking down the Fed’s monopoly on money.

“We ought not to tax money – and that’s a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money,” former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul said during testimony in support an Arizona bill that repealed capital gains taxes on gold and silver in that state. “Paper is not money, it’s fraud,” he continued.

The new law’s impact would go beyond mere tax policy. During an event after his Senate committee testimony, Paul pointed out that it’s really about the size and scope of government.

If you’re for less government, you want sound money. The people who want big government, they don’t want sound money. They want to deceive you and commit fraud. They want to print the money. They want a monopoly. They want to get you conditioned, as our schools have conditioned us, to the point where deficits don’t matter.

Practically speaking, eliminating taxes on the sale of gold and silver cracks open the door for people to begin using specie in regular business transactions. This marks an important small step toward currency competition. If sound money gains a foothold in the marketplace against Federal Reserve notes, the people will be able to choose the time-tested stability of gold and silver over the central bank’s rapidly-depreciating paper currency.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

The United States Constitution states in Article I, Section 10, “No State shall…make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.” States have simply ignored this constitutional provision for years. It’s impossible for a state to return to a constitutional sound money system when it taxes gold and silver as a commodity.

HB2140 takes a step toward establishing gold and silver as legal tender in the state and that constitutional requirement, ignored for decades in every state. This sets the stage to undermine the monopoly of the Federal Reserve by introducing competition into the monetary system.

Constitutional tender expert Professor William Greene said when people in multiple states actually start using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve Notes, it could create a “reverse Gresham’s effect,” drive out bad money, effectively nullify the Federal Reserve, and end the federal government’s monopoly on money.

Over time, as residents of the state use both Federal Reserve notes and silver and gold coins, the fact that the coins hold their value more than Federal Reserve notes do will lead to a “reverse Gresham’s Law” effect, where good money (gold and silver coins) will drive out bad money (Federal Reserve notes). As this happens, a cascade of events can begin to occur, including the flow of real wealth toward the state’s treasury, an influx of banking business from outside of the state – as people in other states carry out their desire to bank with sound money – and an eventual outcry against the use of Federal Reserve notes for any transactions.

Once things get to that point, Federal Reserve notes would become largely unwanted and irrelevant for ordinary people. Nullifying the Fed on a state by state level is what will get us there.

Michael Maharrey [send him email] is the Communications Director for the Tenth Amendment Center, where this article first appeared. He proudly resides in the original home of the Principles of ’98 – Kentucky. See his blog archive here and his article archive here. He is the author of the book, Our Last Hope: Rediscovering the Lost Path to Liberty. You can visit his personal website at MichaelMaharrey.com

from: https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/signed-as-law-kansas-removes-barrier-to-the-use-of-gold-and-silver-as-money.html

Who’s Ticketing You?

Posted on May 16, 2019 by marcia

Cash-Strapped Cities Are Turning Citizens Into Ticket Vigilantes

Washington, D.C. plans to join a growing list of cash-strapped cities that turn citizens into ticket vigilantes.

According to a Fox5 News article, Bill B23-0288 would allow 80 citizens, ten in each of D.C.’s eight wards to print out parking tickets and citations.

These government shills will be tasked with spying on motorists and ticketing them if they park too long or violate parking rules.

Reason.com warns, “these new citizen parking enforcers would be accountable to no one.”

If you think you had problems with your neighbor(s) before, just wait until they have the power to ticket anyone.

Apparently, turning your neighbor into spies (See Something, Say Something) is not enough for our government. Because now they want to turn your neighbor into a ticket vigilante, whose sole purpose is to collect money from everyone.

A couple of centuries ago, Bostonians tarred and feathered tax collectors because they were fed up with being overtaxed (ticketed) to fill government coffers.

What is happening in cities like Washington, D.C., Houston, Texas and Portland, Oregon should be enough to bring back tar and feathering; if nothing else it would make politicians think twice about creating ticket vigilantes.

Seven years ago, the Oregonian reported that they became the first state in the union to encourage citizens to tickets motorists.

credit: The Oregonian

The race to turn citizens into revenue collectors, extends to private parking companies who are also issuing tickets to motorists.

A 2015 Vice article explains how parking lot attendants across the country have been issuing parking tickets to motorists.

“In Portland, for example, a private lot can issue tickets if the company issuing them is a registered operator and the parking facility is registered with the city. Fines are set and private lot attendants function as deputized meter maids.”

Turning parking lot attendants into deputized meter maids? Turning your neighbor into Judge Dredd is this some kind of twisted joke?

Giving citizens the power to ticket people, shows how desperate cash-strapped cities and towns are becoming.

Americans already pay 30% of their income towards taxes, so the last thing we need is a Neighborhood Meter Maid Watch group, whose sole mission is to collect more revenue from us.

Posted 4 hours ago by mapi

from: https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2019/05/cash-strapped-cities-are-turning.html

Trackin’ Baby’s Poop

Posted on May 7, 2019 by marcia

Huggies Now Selling Smart Diapers With Bluetooth Sensors Even Though Radiation Exposure From Them Isn’t Safe for Babies

May 7, 2019

By B.N. Frank

The idea of “Smart Diapers” for babies dates back a few years. As noted in a recent Vox article, Huggies is now selling them in Korea and Japan and the U.S. and Mexico may be getting them next.

More companies are interested in creating and marketing these diapers as well as other “Smart” personal care products. Besides being expensive, Bluetooth technology emits harmful wireless radiation and there is currently no safe level of wireless radiation exposure that has been determined for children or pregnant women. In fact, 250 scientists have signed a petition which warns against numerous devices that emit Radio Frequency (RF) Radiation, which is used in WiFi and Bluetooth.

“Smart” Diapers also qualify as another source of “Surveillance Capitalism” since companies freely admit that they are able to gather data and track their customer use from the diaper sensors.

Regardless, companies are hoping that there is much money to be made especially since “Smart Diapers” for adults seems to already be a thriving market. Poor grandma and grandpa…

That long march toward making smart diapers happen has been driven more by fears of slipping market shares than by any kind of real demand from consumers. The furious pace of innovation belies the fact that the US diaper market is in trouble. As the birthrate declines for the seventh year in a row, there are fewer and fewer new parents to buy diapers, and almost all major diaper brands have taken hits. After Kimberly-Clark, which manufactures Huggies, laid off 13 percent of its workers in January 2018, the CEO told investors, “You can’t encourage moms to use more diapers in a developed market where the babies aren’t being born in those markets.”

Last summer, to counter wilting sales, Pampers raised the price of its signature diaper by 4 percent. Huggies is making a bet different bet: By selling upscale diapers, it hopes to recoup the profits lost to a rapidly shrinking baby diaper market.

“The fact that the birthrates are quite low in the US has stirred a lot of interest in trying to get the consumer to spend more,” said Ali Dibadj, who tracks the personal products industry for the investment management group Sanford C. Bernstein. “The only way they can increase their business is to bring better products to the market. Their whole hope is to create products that the consumer base will pay more for.”

That puts Huggies squarely in line with other companies advocating seemingly unnecessary tech infusions into ordinary hygiene products on the bet that it will widen their profit margins. The brands behind the major US diapers have already flooded the market with “smart” toothbrushes, razors, and skin care wands, all of which they hope will entice wealthier consumers who can be convinced to drop the extra money.

Later this year, Procter & Gamble, which manufactures Pampers, is launching an AI toothbrush that claims to improve brushing. While typical electric toothbrushes cost around $30, P&G is planning to start its AI brush at $279, a massive price jump that foreshadows the future of the smart diaper. Kimberly-Clark, for its part, promised more “meaningful innovation” of its personal hygiene products, although the company already boasts everything from smart toilet paper to smart restrooms equipped with sensors that relay data about soap and toilet paper use.

[…]

There is not a lot to a smart diaper — the removable Bluetooth sensor, which resembles an orange disk, can be attached to the outside of any regular diaper. That sensor syncs to a Huggies smartphone app, where it relays information about the temperature and air quality, and — in addition to individual alerts about baby poop or pee — tracks the overall frequency of a baby’s bowel movements and calculates the times of day the diaper tends to need changing. No more than five people can register as guardians on the app. (Source: Vox)

Justification for purchasing this product is offered by Tony Park who developed the Bluetooth sensor used in Huggies’ smart diapers:

Park told Vox that the design is personal for him. Some babies, like his daughter, don’t cry when their diapers need changing, and figuring out when to switch diapers before a rash develops is a challenging guessing game. His target customers are millennial first-time parents who don’t have the time to constantly check diapers. “They are quite busy working two jobs,” he said. “They want to get involved in parenting, but they don’t have enough time to share with their baby. With our Monit device, they can get a notification whenever and wherever.”

Oh Tony. Just because you can – doesn’t mean you should.

from: https://www.activistpost.com/2019/05/huggies-smart-diapers-bluetooth-sensors-radiation-exposure.html

Privacy Matters

Posted on May 7, 2019 by marcia

Did Cambridge Analytica Help to Create ‘Digital Wokeness’?

Manoush Zomorodi

April 22, 2019

Kids born in 2019 will be the most tracked humans in history. It’s predicted that by the time they turn eighteen, 70,000 posts about them will be in the internet ether. How and what you post about your child is a personal choice, but trusting that tech companies aren’t building dossiers on our children, starting with that first birth announcement, is a modern-day digital civil right we need to demand. As a mother myself, I want my children’s privacy to be a priority for tech makers.

I used to feel pretty lonely in that endeavor but over the last 12 months, I’ve noticed a trend: more and more people are talking about privacy. They’re calling out the companies that don’t take people’s online privacy seriously enough. They’re sharing articles detailing cover-ups and breaches. They’ve told me they want more privacy online and yet, feel trapped by the Terms of Service of the big platforms they need to use.

I think of this frustration as ‘digital wokeness’. And it’s the one good thing that came out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Though we’ve heard the reporting numerous times, let’s recall that from one personality quiz taken by 270,000 people, 87 million Facebook accounts were accessed. Tens of millions of people (maybe you) did not knowingly give permission for their information to be shared or manipulated by political operatives with questionable ethics.

We still don’t know exactly how this data collection and subsequent microtargeting of political content influenced our democratic process. But Cambridge Analytica is just one example. Everyday we hear about another undisclosed data breach. Private information being collected, sometimes sold, and given away without our knowledge or consent. CEOs sit before Congress saying they will “do better” while stories continue to break about negligence and wrong-doing.

Just what exactly is happening?

Breaches are just a symptom of the problem. The fundamentals of the relationship between customers and these companies are broken. I recently took the helm of the podcast IRL: Online Life is Real Life and spoke to Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism who explained further how most tech companies have built their businesses on the data they collect by tracking their users’ behavior. “We all need to better grasp what the trade offs really are, because once you learn how to modify human behavior at scale, we’re talking about a kind of power now invested in these private companies,” she told me. I know. The situation is messed up and it makes you want to put your head in the sand and give up on digital privacy.

Please don’t do that. Fixing our online privacy problem requires both individual and collective action. Support organizations pressuring Congress and Silicon Valley to begin to claw back our digital civil rights and take some simple steps right now to protect your families and send a message to tech companies.

Listen to IRL: The Surveillance Economy

Yes, doing these things is annoying and tedious but it does matter:

Be more choosy about your technology. There’s no need to go “off the grid,” but choosing products and companies that respect you and your data – like the Firefox browser and DuckDuckGo search engine – sends an important message to big companies that largely prioritize their shareholders over their customers. These smaller, user-focused apps and services have put ethics at the heart of their businesses and deserve to be downloaded.

Become a privacy settings ninja. Most sites and apps have privacy settings you can access, but they tuck them away several tabs deep. In a user-centric world, the default settings would take your privacy preferences into account and make them easier to update. Right now, as you’ve likely experienced, finding and adjusting your privacy settings is just hard enough that most of us give up or get distracted midway through trying to figure out what to click where. Gird yourself and press on! Try a data detox and reset your privacy options, step-by-step.

Listen to IRL: Your Password is the Worst

Educate yourself on how your data is accessed. Easier said than done, I know. That’s why I created a five-part bootcamp. The Privacy Paradox Challenge (from my Note to Self days) is a week of mini-podcasts and personal challenges that can help you get insight into how vast the issue is and how to get your privacy game on point.

On a recent episode of IRL, I spoke to Ellen Silver, VP of Operations at Facebook regarding the ever louder conversation about Facebook’s ethics. She assured me that Facebook is working to be more transparent. A few weeks later her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, made his 2019 New Year’s Resolution to “host a series of public discussions about the future of technology in society.” But we’ve heard promises from Facebook and other tech companies before. Let’s make sure they talk about privacy. Let’s continue asking all of the tech companies harder questions. And let’s start using our spending power to support companies that take our data as seriously as we do. Those are the next steps in this growing conversation about privacy. And that is indeed progress.

Firefox keeps your data safe. Never Sold.

Download Firefox

Manoush Zomorodi is co-founder of Stable Genius Productions, a media company with a mission to help people navigate personal and global change. In addition to hosting Firefox’s IRL podcast, Manoush hosts Zig Zag, a podcast about changing the course of capitalism, journalism, and women’s lives. Investigating how technology is transforming humanity is Manoush’s passion and expertise. In 2017, she wrote a book, “Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Creative Self” and gave a TED Talk about surviving information overload and the “Attention Economy.” She was named one of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2018.

from: https://blog.mozilla.org/internetcitizen/2019/04/22/did-cambridge-analytica-help-to-create-digital-wokeness/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=2019fxnews-en&utm_content=05032019

Navy Quietly hacking Out UFO’s

Posted on May 6, 2019 by marcia

Navy Plans to Document UFO Sightings, But Keep Them Confidential

By Laura Geggel, Associate Editor | May 2, 2019

Extraterrestrials, take note: The U.S. Navy plans to set up an official reporting and investigative system that will monitor reports from its pilots about unidentified flying objects.

But while this “X-Files”-worthy operation sounds newsy, don’t expect to hear details about it anytime soon. The Navy doesn’t intend to make the data public, citing the privileged and classified information that these reports usually include, according to The Washington Post.

“Military aviation safety organizations always retain reporting of hazards to aviation as privileged information in order to preserve the free and honest prioritization and discussion of safety among aircrew,” Joe Gradisher, a spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, told The Washington Post.

In fact, beyond the announcement that the Navy is setting up this UFO-reporting procedure, “no release of information to the general public is expected,” Gradisher said.

The upcoming procedure comes in the wake of other government-related UFO news. In late 2017, word came out that the Pentagon had a secret “UFO” office that spent $22 million over five years to study strange and threatening aeronautical events. Although funding for the venture, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), ended in 2012, the program didn’t entirely stop, according to those reports.

When news of AATIP became public in 2017, the Defense Department released two declassified videos, which showed pilots talking about a bizarre aircraft that appeared to accelerate quickly, even though it had no recognizable means of propulsion. These aircraft, which looked like blobs on the video, could allegedly drive thousands of feet in an instant.

By creating this new program, the Navy hopes to destigmatize any reporting associated with incidents that involve UFOs, which could, after all, be militarized aircraft from other parts of the world.

“There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the Navy told Politico, which broke the story. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.”

The public may get a whiff of these incidents eventually, although the details may be scarce. For instance, perhaps unclassified parts, broad overviews or statistics about the number of sightings could be released, Luis Elizondo, an intelligence officer who ran AATIP before leaving the Pentagon, told The Washington Post.

“If it remains strictly within classified channels, then the ‘right person’ may not actually get the information,” Elizondo said. “The right person doesn’t necessarily mean a military leader. It can be a lawmaker. It can be a whole host of different individuals.”

The government is making a smart move by announcing its intentions to formally document and analyze these UFOs, said Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute in Mountain View, California.

“It will make everybody happy because it sounds like a move toward transparency,” Shostak told Live Science.

With this announcement, the Navy benefits not only because it will formally investigate these strange sightings, which may well be reconnaissance or enemy aircraft from other nations; the Navy is also winning a nod from the roughly two-thirds of Americans who think that the government isn’t divulging everything it knows about extraterrestrials and UFOs, said Shostak, citing a 2002 study on attitudes about aliens.

That said, the government probably isn’t formalizing this program because it’s looking for E.T.

“The military is interested in this stuff not because they think that Klingons are sailing in the skies, but i think because maybe they think the Chinese or the Russians are sailing through the skies,” Shostak said.

from: https://www.livescience.com/65387-navy-ufo-sightings.html

Some Options for Private Messaging

Posted on April 25, 2019 by marcia

The best messaging apps with end-to-end encryption

If you want to keep prying eyes away from your conversations, then these are the apps that you need to get.

By Derek Walter

Greenbot | November 09, 2016 09:49 AM PT

There is a growing consciousness about the desire to keep one’s messages private. Some are concerned about hackers, or worry about foreign or domestic government surveillance, but most people just agree with the general principle that what you say in your chat conversations ought to stay between you and the people you chat with.

It’s not a pleasant idea to think that your messages could be archived for perpetuity on a large company’s server or analyzed by some algorithm. The quest for privacy has birthed a whole generation of apps that promise to give you exactly that. Services like Telegram and Signal have turned the phrase “end-to-end encryption” into a popular discussion. We’re here to help you figure out what this is all about and which apps to try.

A little background on encryption

Before we look at some specific apps, here’s a very brief explainer. Essentially, end-to-end encryption means that only the sender and the recipient can read the message. The message is encrypted on your phone, send to the recipient, and then decrypted. This prevents prying eyes from the telecom providers, government agencies, and even the company that hosts the service itself from being able to read your messages. This means they wouldn’t have the ability to hand over messages even if they were subpoenaed to by a government agency. And if a hacker broke into the messaging service’s servers, they couldn’t get at your conversations.

The desire for end-to-end (E2E) encryption isn’t just about those who don’t want the NSA to spy on them. In practice, it’s just about a basic sense that messages should be private. With that in mind, you have to be aware that just because something has the word “encrypted” doesn’t mean it is end-to-end encrypted. Some services will encrypt the message between the endpoints of transmission; your conversations are stored encrypted on the messaging service’s servers, but since they encrypted them, they can decrypt them.

The services we’re looking at here all feature end-to-end encryption.

One of the most popular apps in this space is Telegram. It’s been a pretty hot app for a couple of years, which is like 20 years in app time.

The most painstaking part is you need to invite all of your contacts into your new, secret chat world through the app’s navigation menu. It’s the biggest problem with using over-the-top services, as it doesn’t have the ubiquity of SMS messaging.

Once you’ve done this, you can message people individually or create group channels for talking with an unlimited number of other users. The upside here is you can escape the limitations of MMS messaging that usually caps you at a particular number of people. Your group can even be public, giving you a mini social network without all the trolls that plague the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

The interface is a little barren, but Telegram makes the list for its robust privacy and offering native apps for iOS, Mac, Windows, the web, and of course Android.

Signal

Signal’s claim to fame is that it’s the preferred messaging application of Edward Snowden. It’s among the easiest to set up, as it automatically authenticates your number and can even be used as your default SMS app.

As with Whisper, you can create a group for private banter with an unlimited number of other users. Signal also makes phone calls, which I found to be very clear when testing it out in a couple of different cases.

Signal isn’t optimized for tablets, but the company says that’s on the product roadmap. The design is no-frills with color variation for different contacts to help you from sending the wrong chat to an incorrect contact.

Wire

Another good option is Wire. It offers some fun messaging tricks, like the ability to doodle, share your location, send images, or record a video. The app also includes a chat bot, Anna, which offers somewhat useful answers to various questions about how to use the app.

You can optionally create an account with your phone number, which makes setup and account deletion easy. Wire is great for one-on-one chats if you would prefer conversations with someone be off the record. But it doesn’t have the same type of social or group features found with some of the other offerings here.

You also can’t forget about the uber-popular WhatsApp. Like the others on this list, it promises end-to-end encryption so your messages stay private. The biggest advantage is that the service, which is owned by Facebook, has over a billion users. There’s a very good chance you won’t have to convince all your friends and family to download the app.

whatsapp material design — WhatsApp is a popular messaging app throughout the world.

That shouldn’t be discounted, as one of the pains of moving to a messaging service is convincing everybody to jump aboard. However, WhatsApp is now owned by Facebook, a connection that could make some wary, especially since the social network recently announced it’d be using some account information, including phone numbers, from WhatsApp. If your goal is a high threshold of privacy, then it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Dust

If you want to see messages disappear before your eyes, then Dust (formerly Cyber Dust) is the way to go. The brainchild of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, the messages can disappear in 24 hours or as soon as they’re read, based on your preferences.

The company spells out its encryption policy, and includes a couple other features to ease your mind like chats that don’t show usernames, so even if someone took a screenshot it couldn’t necessarily be attributed to you.

The best app for you is going to depend upon your needs. Secure messaging is a huge and growing area of consumer interest, but it’s worth the effort if staying secure is what you’re after.

Derek Walter is a freelance technology writer based in Northern California. He is the author of Learning MIT App Inventor, a hands-on guide to building your own Android apps.

from: https://www.greenbot.com/article/3119449/the-best-messaging-apps-with-end-to-end-encryption.html

Monsanto Taken to Task

Posted on April 14, 2019 by marcia

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