Fight for the Future director Evan Greer argued Wednesday that the battle over whether former President Donald Trump should be banned from major social media platforms like Facebook is “a huge distraction” from broader Big Tech conversations that are urgently needed.
“Discussions about online content moderation and what policies are needed to ensure human rights, free expression, and safety are some of the most important and consequential societal debates in human history,” Greer said in a statement. “When we center these debates about specific moderation decisions, especially ones involving high-profile, wealthy, politically powerful individuals like Donald Trump, we are utterly missing the point.”
Greer’s comments came as free speech advocates and Trump critics faced off over Meta’s decision to allow the twice-impeached former president back on Facebook and Instagram. Trump, who is now seeking the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, was suspended from both platforms—and others—after his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol attack on January 6, 2021.
“We need to… instead focus on putting in place transformative policies based in human rights, and regulations that strike at the root of Big Tech giants’ harm.”
Meta global affairs president explained Wednesday that his accounts will be reinstated in the coming weeks “with new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.” The move was blasted by groups including Common Cause, Free Press, Media Matters for America, and the NAACP, while others—including some Trump adversaries—agreed with the ACLU that “this is the right call. Like it or not, President Trump is one of the country’s leading political figures and the public has a strong interest in hearing his speech.”
Greer, meanwhile, echoed some of the warnings from Big Tech experts two years ago, when tech giants began banning Trump—a serial liar who ultimately launched his own platform called Truth Social, which strongly resembles Twitter.
The digital rights advocate pointed out that Trump “doesn’t need social media to spread his hateful ideas. He has access to the mainstream press, who religiously cover his every move. And he can afford to hire public relations firms, pay for advertising, and leverage his notoriety and influence to gain attention, something he has shown himself to be uniquely good at.”
“The Donald Trumps of the world are not the people most impacted by deplatforming, censorship, and overreaching moderation,” Greer stressed. “It is the most marginalized who are the most censored online. Arab and Muslim folks living outside the U.S. routinely have their posts erroneously censored and their accounts unjustly banned by hamfisted ‘anti-terrorism’ filters used by most of the largest platforms.”
“LGBTQ content creators, sex workers, and sexual health educators face constant deplatforming, debanking, and demonetization,” she continued. “Abortion rights organizations consistently encounter obstacles placing online ads, and have seen an uptick in unjust account suspensions and post removals in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.”
According to Greer:
By allowing the former president to remain the center of attention in world-changing debates about content regulation, free speech, and the harms of Big Tech, we’re helping him accomplish his vile goals of silencing and oppressing the most vulnerable. We need to move past circular discussions over specific moderation decisions impacting high-profile elites, and instead focus on putting in place transformative policies based in human rights, and regulations that strike at the root of Big Tech giants’ harm. Passing a privacy law would do way more to slow the viral spread of hateful content and disinformation than keeping Trump off of any specific platform. Enacting antitrust reforms would do far more to protect our democracy from Trump and his ilk than banning any one account.
Let’s refuse to let Trump derail the conversations we need to have. Let’s keep fighting for policies that lead not just to the type of internet we want to have, but the type of world we want to live in: a world where everyone has a voice, and decisions that impact our lives are made transparently and democratically, rather than in closed-door corporate meetings.
However, even modest legislation to rein in Big Tech seems unlikely in the second half of President Joe Biden’s first term, with the U.S. House of Representatives now narrowly held by Republicans and after two years of Democrats controlling Congress but failing to advance relevant bills—which many critics largely blame on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Twenty-three minutes. That’s how long it takes for your brain to refocus after shifting from one task to the next. Check your email, glance at a text, and you’ll pay for what’s called a “switch cost effect.”
“We’ve fallen for a mass delusion that our brains can multitask. They can’t,” author Johann Hari found out in researching his latest book. We’re paying a price for our stolen ability to focus and maybe that’s one of the reasons we’re falling for autocrats and punting on solving the world’s grievous problems.
Hari’s book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again” raises all sorts of good questions like this. The book is just out in paperback. Talk about technology, though, and inevitably some smart Alec will bring up the Luddites. “You don’t want to stand against progress,” that person will say. “You don’t want to be a Luddite.”
The Luddites … didn’t start by breaking machines. They started by making demands of the factory owners to phase in the technology slowly.
Can we spare a few minutes to focus on Luddites? Read people’s historian Peter Linebaugh, or Jacobin writer, Peter Frase; check out a Smithsonian Magazine’s feature by Clive Thompson—and you’ll find that Luddites weren’t backward-thinking thugs, but rather, skilled craftspeople whose lives were about to be wrecked.
Textile cutters, spinners and weavers—before factories came along, those British textile workers enjoyed a pretty good life. Working from home, they had a certain amount of autonomy over their lives. The price for their products was set and published. They could work as much or as little as they liked. Come the early 1800s—war and recession—and machines and factories threatened all of that. The Luddites—a made-up name—didn’t start by breaking machines. They started by making demands of the factory owners to phase in the technology slowly. Some proposed a tax on textiles to fund worker pensions. They called for government regulation. Relief from the harms and a fair share of the profits from progress. It was only when they were denied all of that that they started breaking stuff up.
Today, big U.S. social media companies are facing lawsuits. On January 6th, Seattle Public Schools sued TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and YouTube for their negative impact on students’ mental and emotional health. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next month over the protections the tech industry enjoys under the law when their algorithms intentionally push potentially harmful content for profit.
What would breaking the machines look like in our time? I don’t know. But if Hari’s right, it’s not just the quality of our lives that’s in danger. It’s the state of our minds that’s at stake.
You can hear my full uncut conversation with Johann Hari about Noam Chomsky, the subject of his next book—a man with no problem with focus it seems—through a subscription to our free podcast, and watch my scary conversation with Hari at lauraflanders.org.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
Whether it’s scrolling on your smartphone, sharing content on social media, or using facial scanners at travel points, every digital interaction generates data. What many don’t realize is that data — which can include information about your location, relationships, and even physical features — is turned over to private companies and the government without their knowledge.
“Big Tech” can use this data to profit off our private information or make us vulnerable to manipulation, exploitation, or abuse. Citing these vulnerabilities, President Biden called for Congress to take action in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Wednesday.
“We’ve heard a lot of talk about creating committees. It’s time to walk the walk and get something done,” he wrote.
It’s true, the time for regulation to prevent exploitation by “Big Tech” is overdue — but it’s not just “Big Tech” in and of itself we should be concerned about, but also its applications. It’s crucial to consider how law enforcement and the government also can use our data without our consent in ways that can increase the risk of wrongful accusations, arrests, and convictions.
The Problem With Big Data Technologies
Big data technologies can create serious risk of wrongful conviction when applied as surveillance tools in criminal investigations. These technologies are often deployed before being fully tested and have already been proven to have disparate impacts on people of color. For example, the use of facial recognition technology has been increasing, despite being known to misidentify people of color at higher rates. Such technology has led to the wrongful arrests of at least four innocent Black people.
Surveillance technology that uses algorithmic tools may weaponize information about a person’s identity, behavior, and relationships against them — even when that information is inaccurate. Cristian Diaz Ortiz, an El Salvadorian teenager awaiting asylum, was arrested and slated for deportation after he was wrongly labeled a member of the international criminal gang MS-13 and included in a gang database. Law enforcement categorized him as a gang member based on algorithmic inferences because he had been “hanging out with friends around his neighborhood.”
Even if a surveillance technology is accurate, it can still increase the risk of wrongful arrest by distorting suspect development. By their nature, big data-driven tools cast a wide net and can generate a pool of potential suspects that includes innocent people.
In doing so, they can lead law enforcement to focus their investigations on innocent people. In 2018, Jorge Molina was arrested for a murder he did not commit after a new technology described as a “Google dragnet” found that Mr. Molina had been logged into his email on a device near the location of the murder. The device belonged to someone else and had been near the murder location, though Mr. Molina never was.
Once an innocent person is singled out and becomes a person of interest,tunnel vision can set in to the point where even powerful exculpatory evidence won’t shake an investigator’s belief in an innocent person’s guilt. The day after Mr. Molina’s arrest, a detective told the district attorney’s office that it was “highly unlikely” that he had committed the murder, yet Mr. Molina was not released for several more days.
This kind of investigatory tunnel vision has serious real world implications. For example, exoneration data shows that pre-trial exculpatory DNA results were explained away or dismissed in nearly 9% of the 325 DNA exonerations in the United States between 1989 and 2014.
Investigative technologies like these are still unregulated in the United States. Not only are there no requirements for how rigorously they must be tested before being deployed, there also are no rules ensuring full disclosure around them.
This means that people charged with a crime might not be told what technologies police used to identify them. And even if they do know which technologies were used, they may not have access to the information about how the tool works or what data was used in their case. Because so many of these technologies are proprietary, defendants are not allowed access to the source code and even basic information about the data usage and processing while mounting their legal defense.
Congress Must Take Action
We agree with President Biden that it’s time to set limits. And while the president emphasized the need for “clear limits on how companies can collect, use and share highly personal data — your internet history, your personal communications, your location, and your health, genetic and biometric data,” we believe Congress must go a step further.
Congress must make explicit in its anticipated bill that it will regulate how investigative tools are used in criminal investigations to protect people’s data and prevent wrongful convictions, including how data may or may not be collected, used, or stored in those investigations. Doing so would ensure the just application of algorithmic technologies far more efficiently than piecemeal regulation of individual technologies — especially given the constant proliferation of new tools.
Once a company or a government agency extracts data about your physical traits, location, or identity, that information is theirs forever and can be used by them in perpetuity. Without regulation, we can’t fully protect people — and in particular, vulnerable communities and historically criminalized communities — from data harms.
President Biden is right about this: We must take action to protect our data. And we look forward to working with Congress to advance equity in data privacy and protections in the criminal legal system to ensure their simultaneous contributions to public safety, strengthening communities, and the just and equitable administration of justice.
In May, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer promised an early-summer vote on bipartisan antitrust legislation that, while relatively modest, would take concrete steps to curb the vast power of Big Tech. But with the end of the year approaching, Schumer has yet to deliver on his pledge, angering supporters of the bills who say the Democratic leader is caving to Apple, Google, Amazon…
Right-wing billionaire Elon Musk has given prominent conservative figures access to Twitter’s internal systems this week to create and publicize the so-called Twitter Files — a trove of information that Musk is using to “expose” the social media platform’s supposed left-wing bias under its previous management but that, in reality, only serves to spread far right conspiracy theories and propaganda.
In one of the most aggressive antitrust moves taken against Big Tech in recent history, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced on Thursday that it is moving to block Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video games company Activision Blizzard. The agency is suing over concerns that the acquisition would give Microsoft, which makes game console Xbox, too much power over the gaming industry…
Australian lawmakers will consider a new regulator, rules for algorithms and a light touch approach to the metaverse while “mapping” Big Tech over the next year. The focus is squarely on the so-called ‘Big Five’ US firms and their growing market power and influence. The five companies – Google (Alphabet), Apple, Facebook (Meta), Amazon and…
Australia’s competition and consumer regulator has called for sweeping changes to the regulation of digital platforms after warning for years about anti-competitive behaviour and a lack of user protections from tech giants. On Friday, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) publicly released the recommendations it gave the Treasurer in September, outlining its plan for…
Twitter employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company over CEO Elon Musk’s recently-announced plan to lay off half of the staff, or about 3,700 workers, with little to no notice.
The lawsuit was filed in San Francisco federal court on Thursday by five current or former employees, who say that the company was in violation of a federal law, known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, that requires employers to give workers advance notice of 60 days before carrying out mass layoffs.
Workers had already begun receiving notice that they were fired on Thursday — the same day that workers received notice of the layoffs in a company-wide email. The email informed employees that, on Friday, those who were keeping their jobs would be notified via their company emails, while those who were laid off would be notified through their personal emails. This is likely because, on Thursday night, workers reported losing access to their company emails and logins.
The lawsuit seeks a court order forcing Twitter to obey the WARN Act.
“We filed this lawsuit tonight in an attempt to make sure that employees are aware that they should not sign away their rights and that they have an avenue for pursuing their rights,” Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney who filed the lawsuit, told Bloomberg. Liss-Riordan has also sued Tesla over a similar circumstance in which Musk laid off about 10 percent of its staff.
“We will now see if he is going to continue to thumb his nose at the laws of this country that protect employees,” Liss-Riordan said. “It appears that he’s repeating the same playbook of what he did at Tesla.”
Rumors of layoffs had begun circulating this week among Twitter employees. One employee created a program that would help coworkers hold onto important documents and emails, The New York Times reported, and was later fired. Musk also made a sweeping change to employee benefits this week by removing the company’s monthly days off, known as “days of rest,” from their calendars.
If Musk’s layoffs are found to be in violation of the WARN Act, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s been in violation of federal labor laws. Tesla has been the subject of multiple lawsuits by workers who say that the company’s California warehouse is a site of constant harassment for Black and female workers, who say they face horrific racism and sexual harassment, respectively, at work.
Meanwhile, media experts have raised concerns over Musks’s plans for Twitter, especially in regard to his plans to unleash a deluge of posts from racists, anti-semites, and other members with far right ideologies onto the platform with little to no oversight, in the supposed name of free speech. The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply to private companies in this way, as private companies can moderate speech on their platforms, but Musk and the right seem to have no regard for that fact.
Musk also fired top executives at Twitter earlier this week “for cause,” seemingly in an attempt to avoid paying out severance packages — but this move may also backfire on Musk, as the executives are considering their legal options to receive compensation.
Few products create the kind of excitement and anticipation of the iPhone. So when Apple recently announced the 14th generation of this product (along with new versions of its iconic Airpods Pro and Apple Watch wearable accessories), many enthusiasts and tech-focused media outlets were giddy with anticipation. One particularly excited tech columnist described it as “the world’s most iconic product.” This excitement is why some have termed this time of year to be “Techtober” — when the iPhone and other tech products are released in time for the holiday spending rush.
Apple, the world’s first $3 trillion company, is a global behemoth. Still, the adoration Americans have for the iPhone remains something of an outlier. Globally, Apple has about 18 percent of the smartphone market share, trailing Samsung and facing stiff competition from companies like Xiaomi. In the United States, however, Apple has more than 50 percent of the market share, despite iPhones starting at a higher price point than its competition.
Most notable is Apple’s domination of younger demographics. Among U.S. teenagers, according to a 2021 report, 88 percent use an iPhone and 90 percent plan to buy one as their next phone. This was up from 17 percent ownership a decade earlier. For American teenagers, the iPhone is to mobile phones what Google is to search engines or Kleenex is to tissue paper. It has become so trendy that, according to a Wall Street Journalreport, non-iPhone users are being bullied and isolated in U.S. schools for having the dreaded “green bubbles” that denote an Android user on group messages. (Android is an open-source operating system, developed by Google and used by most of the world’s smartphone manufacturers.)
This kind of domination of the market share — as well as of the culture more broadly — gives companies tremendous leverage to engage in conduct that, while profitable, can be destructive. Apple has contributed to declines in consumer rights and repairability of products, electronic waste (e-waste) and environmental degradation (an especially acute problem when it comes to Airpod headsets), privacy concerns, the use of forced labor across the world, and a culture of bullying and elitism in schools.
Apple’s Dubious Environmental Claims
In 2020, Apple made headlines by announcing it was going to remove the charger from the box of all new iPhones, undermining many decades of the expectation that when you spent a considerable amount of money on a piece of consumer electronics, it would come with all the necessary parts to actually use it.
This decision saved Apple over $6.5 billion over the next 18 months. Yet, Apple executives alleged they were not doing this out of self-interest. Rather, they claimed, it was a benevolent policy aimed at preserving the environment.
Naturally, many were suspicious of Apple’s claims or frustrated as consumers. Some governments, including France and Brazil, have passed laws forcing Apple to include such accessories. By not including the charger, the company would punt its carbon footprint onto consumers, who would have to buy chargers as an add-on from Apple or third parties — using much more packaging. Conveniently, at this time Apple introduced its own proprietary solution for charging their phones using a magnetic adaptor called Magsafe, which iPhone users can add to their purchase for a fee.
Still, many Apple enthusiasts and friendly tech media outlets, some of which benefit financially when consumption of these products is high, parroted this claim with little skepticism. This group of “Apple sheep” as they are sometimes called (meant as a pejorative initially, but often worn as a badge of honor) were quick to defend the company.
While Apple was initially ridiculed by competitors for these practices, many — including Samsung, Google and Microsoft — quickly adopted the policy of selling phones without chargers. This further shows how Apple’s controversial decisions become industry-wide trends.
Apple made a similarly provocative decision four years prior, when the company announced it would be removing the 3.5 mm headphone jack from iPhones. Apple claimed it took “courage” to remove this port, which has been a low-cost universal standard for decades. Similar to the charger, other manufacturers removed this port in due course.
The same year Apple introduced its own proprietary headset called Airpods. The product soon became a symbol of social status, wealth and fandom. Apple has since sold more than 150 million units of this product (or newer variants).
“They’re physical manifestations of a global economic system that allows some people to buy and easily lose $160 headphones, and leaves other people at risk of death to produce those products,” wrote Caroline Haskins in 2019.
These two case studies are telling. They show that Apple not only causes harm to the environment when there is profit to be made, but will also do so under the mantle of “green” corporate behavior, when convenient. And because so much of the U.S. tech media infrastructure is dependent on the growth and goodwill of loyal Apple fans, much of it is overlooked or explained away.
“Buy Your Mom an iPhone”: Apple vs. Universal Standards
As with the 3.5 headphone jack, there are many benefits for consumers and the environment when companies widely adopt universal standards. In recent years, there has been near-universal adoption of USB-C as the primary port for electronic devices and smartphones. This is why a consumer can use the same charger to power up a laptop, phone, controller, tablet and so on. In addition to saving consumers money and time, this also leads to a significant reduction in electronic waste.
Apple was vigorous in opposing this effort for years and continued to use the slower, proprietary charging port called the lightning cable on every iPhone, and some other Apple accessories. This gave Apple a cut from any accessories sold from third parties that use the port.
The European Union was tired of waiting for Apple to voluntarily adopt USB-C. In June 2022, the EU passed a bill making USB-C a “common charger.” On October 4, this deal was finalized. This means by 2024, every consumer electronic device, including iPhones, must include a USB-C port, avoiding potentially thousands of tons of e-waste.
That is a huge market Apple will not want to abandon. While it’s possible different iPhones could be manufactured for Europe, this would hurt Apple’s manufacturing efficiency. Reports from supply chain analysts suggest Apple is preparing to make the switch globally, possibly in 2023, for the iPhone 15.
Another example of Apple refusing to adopt universal standards is with messaging apps and communication between Apple and non-Apple devices. Apple’s critics point out that any message between Apple and Android devices default to the dated and less secure SMS standard. There are universal solutions, such as RCS (Rich Communication Services), which would allow for more secure, modern messaging between iPhones and other platforms, but Apple has refused to adopt them.
On September 7, a reporter asked Apple CEO Tim Cook why he can’t send a reasonable picture to his mom, an Android user. Cook flippantly gave him the expensive advice to go “buy your mom an iPhone.”
This problem is also uniquely American, as in the rest of the world, most users communicate through third-party messaging apps, such as WhatsApp or Messenger.
The “Least Repairable” Flagship Phone: Apple vs. Repairability
Shortly after the release of the iPhone 14, Hugh Jeffreys, a repair-shop owner and YouTube content creator, made a video of himself taking apart the phone and replacing some of the parts to test its repairability. Repairability is not only important for consumers, but is also an important way to eliminate e-waste. Reports show there was an estimated 57.4 million metric tons of e-waste globally in 2021 alone.
Jeffreys’s frustration mounted as he learned that when he tried to replace one iPhone camera or battery with the official Apple part from the other identical iPhone, it would result in many of the phones primary features breaking. The Face-ID unlock mechanism was gone, the front-facing camera no longer worked, and a host of other features were either absent or ineffective. Jeffreys noticed many other obstacles to self- or third-party repair, but even these obstacles were unpredictably applied and could change radically from a software update.
Apple, he deduced, has effectively made fixing these devices so difficult that no one would reasonably even try to do it themselves.
Apple has (once again) built the “least repair-friendly flagship smartphone” on the market, Jeffreys said in his video. “I might have spent $3,000 on these phones, but I feel as though they are not really mine.” These are not new issues. Jeffreys made a similar video about the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13, which had similar restrictions. And many others who have tried to make a career in repairing consumer electronics have bemoaned Apple’s increasing hostility to repair. Louis Rossmann of the Rossmann Repair Group has garnered more than 1.5 million subscribers and built an organization called the “Repair Preservation Group” due to his advocacy of the issue over the years.
This effort has spearheaded the growth of a movement that has come to be called the “right to repair” or “right to own,” which has gained traction in the public consciousness. Large tech channels on YouTube have come out in favor of the movement. The Biden administration issued an executive order on the issue in July 2021. This was in response to a Federal Trade Commission report on the subject which said the excuses of manufacturers limitations on repair “are not supported by the record.”
Similar movements are fighting anti-repair policies in the automotive, medical device and agricultural industries. In Massachusetts, a ballot referendum on automotive right to repair passed overwhelmingly in 2020. But other efforts to push legislation against anti-repair policies have largely been delayed, destroyed or weakened considerably in the face of the massive lobbying arm of Big Tech like Apple.
Additionally, winning these battles can be a challenge when huge swatches of the younger generations deify a company like Apple. “I tried pointing this out for a decade,” Rossmann said in a response to Jeffreys’s video. “It’s sad, but nobody cares.”
iPhone and the Future of Online Media and Software
Apple’s serious issues regarding consumer rights, the environment, repairability and more are worrying in 2022. But there is genuine concern that if its dominance continues, things could become much worse in the coming decades, especially as society transitions away from more traditional computers (which, unlike Apple’s operating systems on iPhone and iPad, allow for sideloading of software and apps that aren’t officially approved by Apple or Microsoft) and rely more on Apple’s closed mobile operating systems.
The good news is some progress to try and force Apple and other tech manufacturers to change their most anti-consumer tactics. The European Union has passed the Digital Markets Act, which could force Apple to allow consumers to download non-Apple approved software, and support functionality between messaging apps, among other consumer rights protections. There is also a vibrant open-source software community dedicated to making software that is open to the public and not controlled by corporations.
In the United States, however, there is much less progress for these kinds of reforms. As a younger generation of American activists and thinkers start holding elected offices, and creating new media outlets, services, businesses or software, they may find themselves limited by a proprietary, corporate walled garden they inadvertently helped create.
One of the most interesting facets of the freedom of speech debate is the fact there is almost no argument as to whether a limit to this freedom should exist. It’s purely a matter of where the line sits and who draws it. One of the immutable cornerstones of our democracy is the belief in…
A new Senate inquiry will examine the nature and extent of the influence of foreign-owned Big Tech companies Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon have on the Australian market and public debate. Senator Andrew Bragg secured the “overdue” inquiry unopposed in the Senate on Monday, successfully having the matter referred to the Economics References Committee…
Hundreds of community members and workers across four cities gathered to protestProject Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government and military, on Thursday.
“There can be no tech for war. No tech for apartheid,” Alex Hanna, director of research at the Distributed AI Research Institute, expressed to a crowd of demonstrators led by Amazon and Google tech workers.
While the cloud-computing project has been hailed as a “game changer” for Israel, activists have feared that it will lead to data privacy issues, especially if utilized by the Israeli military to further the surveillance and data collection of Palestinians.
Google’s owninternal documentssuggest that Project Nimbus would allow the Israeli government and military to use “facial detection, automated image categorization, [and] object tracking” that workers believe will be used tofuel Israeli apartheid. According toa reportfromThe Intercept,Project Nimbus provides Israel, including the Israel Defense Forces, with advanced artificial intelligence technology that could be used for the digital surveillance of occupied Palestine territories.
Google has beenexpanding its defense contracts, despite objections from its workers. In theGuardian, Google workers stated that “These contracts are part of a disturbing pattern of militarization, lack of transparency and avoidance of oversight … We cannot look the other way, as the products we build are used to deny Palestinians their basic rights, force Palestinians out of their homes and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
Rallying around the slogan #NoTechForApartheid, tech workers, led by ex-Google worker Ariel Koren, organized the collective Workers Against Nimbus to oppose the project. Koren, who resigned from Google because of analleged pattern of retaliationand silencing of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and anti-Zionist Jewish people, has publicly criticized Project Nimbus because of her concern that the technology will be used to surveil and harm Palestinians.
Earlier this year, hundreds of employees signedan internal petitiondemanding that Google end its alleged retaliation against Koren. In response to Koren’s resignation, 15 workers against the project, who remained anonymous in fear of retaliation,told their storiesabout their experiences working at Google and its alleged culture of fear and repression.
In response to Koren’s forced resignation, tech workers organized a national day of action to escalate pressure on their companies to drop the contract. The protesting tech workers were joined by Jewish Voice for Peace, the Athena Coalition, the Adalah Justice Project, AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, ACRE Action Center on Race and the Economy, and the Alphabet Workers Union.
The workplace protests are just the latest action by Google workers since the company announced the contract in 2021 in the midst of some of theworst violencein the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2014. The contract itself was signed the same week that the Israeli military attacked Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,killing nearly 250 people. Workers have circulated petitions, spoken to media and sentan internal letter, signed by more than 250 people, to Google CEO Sundar Pichai demanding that he put out a statement condemning the Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people.
Bathool Syed, an Amazon worker, stated in a press release from Google & Amazon Workers Against Project Nimbus that, “There is no way for Amazon and Google to justify a contract with a government that has violated numerous human rights and continues to oppress Palestinian lives. As workers, we are powerful and are sending a clear message that we do not want our labor to power violence.”
Organizers are hopeful that the #NoTechforApartheid protests will push their companiesto drop the computing contractandagree to the demandssent to Google’s executive team to reject future defense contracts, fund relief for Palestinians, protect their worker’s freedom of speech, and affirm the companies’ commitment to human rights principles.
State and territory governments and the national science agency are urging the federal government to explore data localisation requirements for both government and critical infrastructure providers, putting themselves at odds with Big Tech. Global tech companies and their industry associations have come out in force against any prospect of being forced to house the data…
In a speech on the Senate floor Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) denounced Republican senators for saying that the U.S. should follow the lead of other countries on subsidizing the computer chips manufacturing industry, instead of on measures like universal health care.
As Sanders highlighted in his speech, recent reporting from The Associated Press found that Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and other Republicans believe that the U.S. should join other countries in giving large subsidies to chip manufacturers like Intel by passing the Senate’s $76 billion chips bill. The Vermont senator pointed out that these same lawmakers don’t believe that the U.S. should follow the lead of other countries when it comes to expanding the social safety net.
“Now I find the position of Senator Romney and others to be really quite interesting because I personally have been on this floor many many times urging the Senate to look to other countries around the world and learn from those countries,” Sanders said. “And what I have said is that it is a bit absurd that, here in the United States, we are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all of their people.”
He said that the U.S. should join countries like Germany, where higher education is largely free. The U.S. should also join every other wealthy country in the world in guaranteeing its workers paid family and medical leave, Sanders said — measures that he and Democratic lawmakers tried to pass in last year’s Build Back Better Act.
“Let’s join the club!” he exclaimed several times.
Republicans and conservative Democrats were uniformly opposed to provisions for paid family leave during last year’s Build Back Better Act negotiations, claiming that the federal deficit and excess government spending justified their opposition to the bill. But these same lawmakers seem to have no problem spending billions funding the corporate oligarchy in the U.S., Sanders said.
The real reason that lawmakers are so eager to pass the bill, the senator went on, is because computer chip manufacturers and lobbyists are compelling them to do so. “But I gather the problem is that to join those clubs — in terms of universal health care, in terms of paid family and medical leave, in terms of free tuition at public colleges and universities — we’re going to have to take on powerful special interests and they make campaign contributions, so that’s not what the Senate does,” he said.
He concluded by saying that, in addition to his concerns about corporate welfare, he is worried that the bill will set a precedent for companies to operate however they want without consequence. “What the precedent is is that any company who is prepared to go abroad, who has ignored the needs of the American people, will then say to Congress, ‘hey, if you want us to stay here, you better give us a handout,’” he said.
Sanders has continually spoken out against the Senate’s bill to provide $52 billion to chips manufacturers, which he says is tantamount to corporate welfare for major manufacturers. These manufacturers have made huge profits during the pandemic and paid their CEOs millions of dollars in compensation, profiting from a global chips shortage that has allowed companies to majorly hike their prices.
The bill cleared a key procedural hurdle in the Senate on Tuesday, setting it up for passage soon.
Last week, Sanders introduced an amendment to the legislation that would restrict the funds, ensuring that a company that accepts the subsidies cannot use the funds on stock buybacks, outsourcing jobs to other countries or union busting.
Digital transparency, the examination of algorithms and their impact, and increased collaboration between agencies have been identified as 2022-23 priorities for the Digital Platform Regulators Forum, a collective of Australia’s online, privacy, media, and competition and consumer regulators . The Forum members, which are the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), Australian Media and Communications…
After Apple employees in Maryland voted Saturday to form the tech giant’s first retail store union in the United States, workers’ rights advocates across the country celebrated the “pathbreaking win for labor.”
Workers at the store in Towson recently organized into the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (CORE) and have decided to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM).
“We did it!” IAM declared on Twitter, welcoming the Towson workers.
IAM international president Robert Martinez Jr. in a statement that “I applaud the courage displayed by CORE members at the Apple store in Towson for achieving this historic victory. They made a huge sacrifice for thousands of Apple employees across the nation who had all eyes on this election.”
“I ask Apple CEO Tim Cook to respect the election results and fast-track a first contract for the dedicated IAM CORE Apple employees in Towson,” Martinez added. “This victory shows the growing demand for unions at Apple stores and different industries across our nation.”
That feeling when you form the first union at Apple in America. Congrats, @acoreunion!
The win in Maryland comes as Amazon and Starbucks workers across the nation are also pushing for unions — and the companies are fighting back.
Apple is no different, according to More Perfect Union and The Washington Post, which reported that “Saturday evening’s initial tally was 65-33, and the official count was pending.”
While an Apple representative declined to comment, Towson worker Billy Jarboe told the newspaper that the company’s campaign to undermine the union drive “definitely shook people,” but most supporters of the effort weren’t swayed.
“It just feels good to go into a new era of this kind of work, hopefully it creates a spark [and] the other stores can use this momentum,” Jarboe said.
Eric Brown, another employee in Towson, told the Post that organizers of an unsuccessful unionization campaign at an Atlanta store “let us know what some of the talking points and tactics were going to be, and we were able to let people know some of the things they may try.”
Tyra Reeder similarly toldThe New York Times that “we kind of got some insight from the Atlanta store on things that were coming,” pointing to the company’s claims that a contract negitation process could lead to workers losing some benefits.
“For that to happen, a majority of us have to agree,” Reeder said. “I don’t think any of us would agree to lose something we love dearly, that benefits us.”
As for being an Apple employee, Reeder said: “We love our jobs. We just want to see them do better.”
The most valuable companies in the stock market today can be found in the technology sector. The first publicly traded company in history to reach a $1 trillion valuation was Apple in 2018. While it took the company more than 40 years to reach that milestone, less than four years later its valuation has increased by a further two trillion, reaching another record breaking $3 trillion. The “trillion dollar club” has also since expanded to include three more companies – all of them in the technology sector.
However, the markets appear to be falling out of love with the big tech . Earlier in 2022 Facebook lost $230bn in value in the biggest one-day stock plunge in history. It has since been overshadowed by several similar collapses that have (as of today) erased more than $2.6 trillion from the value of the five largest tech companies since the start of the year.
As the federal election looms, the final bursts of campaign fervor, news coverage and election chatter spreads nationally. For many people, this information is disseminated on online platforms and social media, yet technology policy is noticeably absent from the election campaigns of many candidates. As we continue to live our lives in a digitally mediated…
Sweeping reforms proposed by the Australian competition watchdog would “fundamentally change” the iPhone and App Store and lead to “significant consumer detriment”, Apple has said in a submission to government. A number of the biggest tech companies in the world have made submissions to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) fifth interim report, raising…
Initially, not only had PayPal banned Consortium News from receiving new donations, but it had informed Lauria that PayPal may keep the nearly $10,000 in the news site’s account as “damages.” After this interview was recorded, PayPal relented on keeping those funds, while, as of this writing, it is still banning new donations. To Lauria and Scheer, these chilling decisions on behalf of inordinately powerful tech companies are ushering a dangerous era of censorship that is even more alarming than the McCarthy period. Listen to the full discussion between Lauria and Scheer to understand why the two journalists have come to this harrowing conclusion about Big Tech, dissent, and the future of journalism as we know it.
As the bloody conflict in Ukraine continues to escalate, so does the online propaganda war between Russia and the West. A prime example of this is the White House directly briefing influencers on popular social media app TikTok about the war and how to cover it. As the crisis spirals out of control, Americans have turned to TikTok to view real time videos and analysis of the invasion. With the app estimated to have around 70 million U.S. users, the White House is keenly aware of its impact. “We recognize this is a critically important avenue in the way the American public is finding out about the latest … so we wanted to make sure you had the latest information from an authoritative source,” President Joe Biden’s director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, told 30 top TikTok influencers. Since 2020, there has been a wave of former spooks, spies and mandarins appointed to influential positions within TikTok, particularly around content and policy – some of whom, on paper at least, appear unqualified for such roles.
From Activision to Amazon, historic union elections are changing the way that Americans think about work. Now, Apple is the next tech giant to reckon with an employee-driven labor movement. Calling themselves the Fruit Stand Workers United (FSWU), employees at Apple’s Grand Central Terminal retail location launched a website designed to educate their fellow workers about why they want to unionize their store. “Year over year, the cost of living in New York City has not kept pace with our wages,” the FSWU’s mission statement reads. “Meanwhile, Apple has grown to be the most valuable company in the world. Why should its retail workers live precariously?”
In the space of a few years, the debate on how to rein in Big Tech has become mainstream, discussed across the political spectrum. Yet, so far the proposals to regulate largely fail to address the capitalist, imperialist and environmental dimensions of digital power, which together are deepening global inequality and pushing the planet closer to collapse. We urgently need to build a ecosocialist digital ecosystem, but what would that look like and how can we get there?
Interesting Teach-in, well, discussion, with the speakers below. You will hear Scott Ritter divert from some of these speakers saying that the actions by Russia in Ukraine are legal, ethical and necessary.
Here is Ritter, just interviewed, Strategic Culture. Note that Ritter is called a traitor (for looking at the Russian military and political angles) and a Putin Stooge (this is it for Western Woke Culture) and he’s been banned on Twitter for a day, and then back up, and the seesaw of social media continues (more McCarthy: The New Democratic Opperative). You do not have to agree with militarism, but here we are, so the Western Woke Fascist Media and the Mendacious Political Class want nothing to do with, well, military minds looking at Russia (Ritter studied Russia big-time, and studied their military big time, both Soviet Union and Russia). He also is married to a Georgian. But again, this is it for the Western Intellect (sic).
Like we can’t watch Graham Phillips work, without being called, well, Russian Stooges. The Mainlining Mendacious Media calls him a Russian Sympathizer. Imagine that. For years,, he’s been a sympathizer (he is British, speaks Russian and goes to the actual places with camera in hand. Look at the one on Ossetia, the breakaway republic of Georgia. It is delightful (note the dinner he is served by the typical family):
Here, from, “The Ukrainian Conflict Is a U.S./NATO Proxy War, but One Which Russia Is Poised to Win Decisively – Scott Ritter” by Finian Cunningham, April 9, 2022
Question: Do you think that Russia has a just cause in launching its “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24?
Scott Ritter: I believe Russia has articulated a cognizable claim of preemptive collective self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter. The threat posed by NATO expansion, and Ukraine’s eight-year bombardment of the civilians of the Donbass fall under this umbrella.
Question: Do you think Russia has legitimate concerns about the Pentagon sponsoring biological weapons programs in laboratories in Ukraine?
Scott Ritter: The Pentagon denies any biological weapons program, but admits biological research programs on Ukrainian soil. Documents captured by Russia have allegedly uncovered the existence of programs the components of which could be construed as having offensive biological warfare applications. The U.S. should be required to explain the purpose of these programs.
Question: What do you make of allegations in Western media that Russian troops committed war crimes in Bucha and other Ukrainian cities? It is claimed that Russian forces summarily executed civilians.
Scott Ritter: All claims of war crimes must be thoroughly investigated, including Ukrainian allegations that Russia killed Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. However, the data available about the Bucha incident does not sustain the Ukrainian claims, and as such, the media should refrain from echoing these claims as fact until a proper investigation of the evidence is conducted, either by the media, or unbiased authorities.
While one may be able to mount a legal challenge to Russia’s contention that its joint operation with Russia’s newly recognized independent nations of Lugansk and Donetsk constitutes a “regional security or self-defense organization” as regards “anticipatory collective self-defense actions” under Article 51, there can be no doubt as to the legitimacy of Russia’s contention that the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass had been subjected to a brutal eight-year-long bombardment that had killed thousands of people.
Moreover, Russia claims to have documentary proof that the Ukrainian Army was preparing for a massive military incursion into the Donbass which was pre-empted by the Russian-led “special military operation.” [OSCE figures show an increase of government shelling of the area in the days before Russia moved in.]
Finally, Russia has articulated claims about Ukraine’s intent regarding nuclear weapons, and in particular efforts to manufacture a so-called “dirty bomb”, which have yet to be proven or disproven. [Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a reference to seeking a nuclear weapon in February at the Munich Security Conference.]
The bottom line is that Russia has set forth a cognizable claim under the doctrine of anticipatory collective self defense, devised originally by the U.S. and NATO, as it applies to Article 51 which is predicated on fact, not fiction. (Ritter, Russia, Ukraine & the Law of War: Crime of Aggression)
[Nuremberg Trials. 1st row: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Heß, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel. 2nd row: Karl Dönitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel. (Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality/Still Picture Records LICON, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S)]
All the speakers, except maybe excluding John Kiriakou, have great points to make: Andrei Martyanov, expert on Russian military affairs, author The Real Revolution in Military Affairs; Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, author Ukraine in the Crossfire; James Carden, Adviser U.S.-Russia bilateral commission during the Obama administration & Ex. Editor of The American Committee for East-West accord; Scott Ritter, former U.S. Marine Intelligence officer, UN Arms Inspector, exposed WMD lie in U.S. push to invade Iraq; John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower and Radio Sputnik host; Ron Ridenour, peace activist, author The Russian Peace Threat; Gerald Horne, historian, author, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston; Jeremy Kuzmarov, CAM Managing Editor and author of The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce.
Imagine, the provocations.
The US government invoked self-defense as a legal justification for its invasion of Panama. Several scholars and observers have opined that the invasion was illegal under international law.
Oh, those Freedom Fighters, the back-shooting, civilian-killing, village-burning Contras:
Appendix A: Background on United States Funding of the Contras
In examining the allegations in the Mercury News and elsewhere, it is important to understand the timing of funding of the Contras by the United States. The following dates explain the periods during which the United States government provided funding to the Contras or cut off such funding.
Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the leader of Nicaragua from 1967 until July 1979, when he was overthrown by the Sandinistas. When President Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981, he promptly canceled the final $15 million payment of a $75 million aid package to Nicaragua, reversing the Carter administration’s policy towards Nicaragua. On November 17, 1981, President Reagan signed National Security Directive 17, authorizing provision of covert support to anti-Sandinista forces. On December 1, 1981, Reagan signed a document intending to conceal the November 17 authorization of anti-Sandinista operations. The document characterized the United States’ goal in Nicaragua as that of interdicting the flow of arms from Nicaragua to El Salvador, where leftist guerrillas were receiving aid from Sandinista forces.
In late 1982, Edward P. Boland, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced an amendment to the Fiscal Year 1983 Defense Appropriations bill that prohibited the CIA, the principal conduit of covert American support for the Contras, from spending funds “for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.” However, the CIA could continue to support the Contras if it claimed that the purpose was something other than to overthrow the government. In December 1983, a compromise was reached and Congress passed a funding cap for fiscal year 1984 of $24 million for aid to the Contras, an amount significantly lower than what the Reagan administration wanted, with the possibility that the Administration could seek supplemental funds later.
This funding was insufficient to support the Administration’s “Contra program” and the decision was made to approach other countries for monetary support. In April 1984, Robert McFarlane convinced Saudi Arabia to contribute $1 million per month to the Contras through a secret bank account set up by Lt. Col. Oliver North.
In October 1984, the second Boland amendment took effect. It prohibited any military or paramilitary support for the Contras from October 3, 1984, through December 19, 1985. As a result, the CIA and Department of Defense (DOD) began withdrawing personnel from Central America. During this time, however, the National Security Council continued to provide support to the Contras.
In August 1985, Congress approved $25 million in humanitarian aid to the Contras, with the proviso that the State Department, and not the CIA or the DOD, administer the aid. President Reagan created the Nicaraguan Humanitarian Assistance Office (NHAO) to supply the humanitarian aid. In September 1985, Oliver North began using the Salvadoran air base at Ilopango for Contra resupply efforts.
On October 5, 1986, a plane loaded with supplies for the Contras, financed by private benefactors, was shot down by Nicaraguan soldiers. On board were weapons and other lethal supplies and three Americans. One American, Eugene Hasenfus, claimed while in custody that he worked for the CIA. The Reagan Administration denied any knowledge of the private resupply efforts.
On October 17, 1986, Congress approved $100 million in funds for the Contras. In 1987, after the discovery of private resupply efforts orchestrated by the National Security Council and Oliver North, Congress ceased all but “non-lethal” aid in 1987. The war between the Sandinistas and the Contras ended with a cease-fire in 1990.
Although the Contras were often referred to as one group, several distinct factions made up the Contras.
In August 1980, Colonel Enrique Bermudez, a former Colonel in Somoza’s National Guard, united other former National Guard officers and anti-Sandinista civilians to form the Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN). This group was known as the Northern Front because it was based in Honduras. In February 1983, Adolfo Calero became the head of the FDN.
In April 1982, Eden Pastora split from the Sandinista regime and organized the Democratic Revolutionary Alliance (ARDE) and the Sandinista Revolutionary Front (FRS), which declared war on the Sandinista regime. Pastora’s group was based in Costa Rica and along the southern border of Nicaragua, and therefore became known as the Southern Front. Pastora refused to work with Bermudez, claiming that Bermudez, as a member of the former Somoza regime, was politically tainted. The CIA decided to support the FDN and generally declined to support the ARDE.
Again, let’s think about what is actually happening in Ukraine, and where the country is, and what the Russians in that country are facing, and, gulp, where is Ukraine? Thousands of miles away, like Panama and Nicaragua are from USA?
As the war in Ukraine rages on, I visited the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as an embedded reporter with the Russian army.
Both of the republics are the trigger of the current conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin declared their independence on February 24, 2022, something a lot of people were waiting for since the CIA backed coup in Ukraine of February 2014. That coup had resulted in the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and new laws forcing the Ukrainian language on Russian-speaking residents. Luhansk and Donetsk consequently voted on their independence and Ukraine attacked them, precipitating the war.
European support for the so-called Maidan coup was considerable: the Dutch MP Hans van Baalen from the ruling Dutch VVD party (Mark Rutte), for example, was at the protests that helped trigger the coup, as was the former Prime Minister of Belgium Guy Verhofstadt. Both were seen cheering on the crowds, surrounded by right-extremists on the stage, shouting “democracy.”
So what is preemptive defense? Right to Protect? What is big ugly history of Nazi’s in Poland and Ukraine? What is that all about, uh, Americanum?
So, plans by ZioLensky for Dirty Bombs from the wasteland of Chernobyl, not a provocation?
How many were immolated in Waco? Why? Mount Carmel Center became engulfed in flames. The fire resulted in the deaths of 76 Branch Davidians, including 25 children, two pregnant women, and David Koresh himself.
Oh, the impatience of the USA, FBI, ATF, Attorney General, Bill Clinton, the lot of them.
Or, dropping bombs on Philly, to kill, well, black people:
How many died, and what happened to the city block? Bombs dropped on our own people, again! Police dropped a bomb on a West Philly house in 1985. The fire caused by the explosion killed 11 people, an atrocity that Philadelphia still grapples with today.
Oh, the irony.
Black Lives Do Not Matter, here, or in Ukraine. Below, representation of those lives killed by cops, of all races, in one year. Many of these in a year, 60 percent, did not involve a person with a gun, and a huge number, 40 percent, involved people going throug mental health crises.
[Foreign students trying to reach the Ukrainian border said they were thrown off trains, not allowed on buses, and made to wait hours in the cold before crossing over.]
Yes, the first casualty of war is truth, and with the USA as the Empire of Lies and Hate, the casualty is now a larger framework of a Zombie Nation of virtue signalers and those who want the fake news to be real, please!
So far as I know, this is the first war in modern history with no objective, principled coverage in mainstream media of day-to-day events and their context. None. It is morn-to-night propaganda, disinformation and lies of omission — most of it fashioned by the Nazi-infested Zelensky regime in Kiev and repeated uncritically as fact.
There is one thing worse than this degenerate state of affairs. It is the extent to which the media’s malpractice is perfectly fine to most Americans. Tell us what to think and believe no matter if it is true, they say, and we will think and believe it. Show us some pictures, for images are all.
There are larger implications to consider here. Critical as it is that we understand this conflict, Ukraine is a mirror in which we see ourselves as we have become. For more Americans than I wish were so, reality forms only in images. These Americans are no longer occupants of their own lives. Risking a paradox, what they take to be reality is detached from reality.
This majority — and it is almost certainly a majority — has no thoughts or views except those first verified through the machinery of manufactured images and “facts.” Television screens, the pages of purportedly authoritative newspapers, the air waves of government-funded radio stations — NPR, the BBC — serve to certify realities that do not have to be real, truths that do not have to be true.
Before proceeding to Bucha, the outrage of the moment, I must reproduce a quotation from that propaganda-is-O.K. piece The Times published in its March 3 editions. It is from a Twitter user who was distressed that it became public that the Ghost of Kiev turned out to be a ghost and the Snake Island heroes didn’t do much by way of holding the fort.
‘Why can’t we just let people believe some things?’ this thoughtful man or woman wanted to know. What is wrong, in other words, if thinking and believing nice things that aren’t true makes people feel better? (Patrick Lawrence, Special to Consortium News)
Daniel Boorstin’s The Image: A Guide to Pseudo- Events in America, has been cited by yours truly several times. It is a completely amazing work, sixty years ahead of its time, and it is almost completely ignored!.
I describe the world of our making, how we have used our wealth, our literacy, our technology, and our progress to create the thicket of unreality which stands between us and the facts of life. …. The reporter’s task is to find a way to weave these threads of unreality into a fabric the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal. (Boorstin)
Here’s how corporate-controlled Wikipedia describes In-Q-Tel: “An American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in high-tech companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.”
While you gossiped about Will Smith or waved a Ukrainian flag, did you have any clue that the CIA has had its own venture capital firm since 1998?
On the In-Q-Tel (IQT) website, they openly explain their mission: “To invest in cutting-edge technologies to enhance the national security of the United States.” (See some of the companies they’ve invested in here.)
Jeffrey Smith, the former general counsel of the CIA, was one of a small group of intelligence community insiders who helped set up In-Q-Tel. He explains the firm’s name as such: “We really needed something that also had appeal to a wider audience and, frankly, had some sex to it.”
Thus, In-Q-Tel is named after Q, the fictional character who makes gadgets for James Bond. Those murderous spies are so damn clever, aren’t they?
“Much of the touch-screen technology used now in iPads and other things came out of various companies that In-Q-Tel identified,” Smith told NPR in 2012. IQT also bonded very early with an obscure little company you may have heard of: Google. The collaboration started when IQT funded a company that connected satellite images and maps. That company was later bought up by Google and became Google Earth.
“The U.S. Department of Defense’s bloated budget, along with CIA venture capital, helped to create tech giants, including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and PayPal,” explains T. J. Coles, director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research. “The government then contracts those companies to help its military and intelligence operations. In doing so, it makes the tech giants even bigger.”
Coles adds: “The companies that many of us take for granted — including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and PayPal — are connected indirectly and sometimes very directly to the U.S. military-intelligence complex.”
According to a detailed report by Open the Government, Jeff Bezos and Amazon were favorites of the U.S. intelligence “community” from Day One and they still enjoy a rather cozy and lucrative relationship. Currently, more than half of the former government employees hired by Amazon have been from the Defense Department.
Amazon also provides cloud services to the CIA — at a cost of billions. Also, in 2013, Amazon signed a Pentagon IT contract for $10 billion to create the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program (JEDI). According to the Pentagon, Amazon technology supports their “lethality and enhanced operational efficiency.”
After a more recent CIA-Amazon deal in November 2020, a company spokesperson explained that Amazon is “honored to continue to support the intelligence community as they expand their transformational use of cloud computing.”
Another company/product directly funded by the CIA and In-Q-Tel is the data visualization tool, Palantir. IQT invested in the early 2000s and Palantir is now worth roughly $38 billion. Palantir was the brainchild of Peter Thiel — a co-founder of PayPal, the first outside investor in Facebook, and a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders indoctrination camp, I mean… program.
“Palantir and its ability to make sense of a disordered mass of data are highly valued by spies,” explains journalist, Thibault Henneton. Palantir consultants include former CIA director George Tenet and former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice.
Do you get it yet?
Our lives are currently being manipulated and controlled by a shadow government that transcends national borders or loyalty. This corporate-state nexus coerces you into focusing on trivialities like Hollywood, party politics, etc. Meanwhile, the clowns you vote for, the media you watch, and the social media you obsess over are all owned and operated by (mostly) faceless psychopaths that move effortlessly between the “public” and “private” sectors.
Unless and until we say no to the monopoly capitalists, ruthless spies, and sociopathic transhumanists, we remain willing slaves to a lethal and immoral system. They manufacture our opinions, our desires, our dreams. But their power is so, so tenuous.
If it’s true freedom and autonomy you seek, all you have to do is stop conforming and stop fearing the wrath of the hive mind. Sure, it’s never easy to buck the system but if you don’t, you are living a life of delusion, submission, and fear.
The media regulator will be handed new powers to enforce social media misinformation codes, nearly three years after this recommendation was first made and almost a year since a report on it was provided to the federal government. The announcement represents a significant change in approach from the federal government, after its previous reliance on…
On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to probe whether or not Amazon illegally impeded the committee’s antitrust investigation into the company.
During the committee’s 16-month long probe that ended in 2020, the company engaged in “potentially criminal conduct,” the representatives said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland. That top Amazon executives lied to the committee suggests that the company was attempting to “influence, obstruct, or impede” the investigation, the committee continued.
Throughout the investigation, “Amazon repeatedly endeavored to thwart the Committee’s efforts to uncover the truth about Amazon’s business practices,” the lawmakers wrote. “For this, it must be held accountable.”
Impeding on a congressional inquiry or investigation amounts to an obstruction of Congress, which is a federal crime. Amazon has denied that it lied during the investigation.
Lawmakers, including committee chair Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and antitrust subcommittee vice chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), say that executives have painted a rosy picture of its internal practices regarding data collection. The company’s testimony describing its internal policies was “ever shifting,” the lawmakers said.
While Amazon executives denied that the company was using data from third-party sellers to compete with them, testimony from Amazon employees and reporting has revealed that the company has in fact done exactly that, in order to create products that would compete with other sellers.
Amazon employees regularly violated the company’s supposed “Seller Data Protection Policy,” making a distinction between individual data on sellers versus aggregated data for the company to use. Lawmakers said that company officials were aware that employees were violating the policy.
Reporters have found that Amazon prioritized its own products in customer search queries, the committee said, despite the company claiming that it didn’t do so.
Lawmakers gave the company the opportunity to correct its previous misleading statements, but the company doubled down. “After Amazon was caught in a lie and repeated misrepresentations, it stonewalled the Committee’s efforts to uncover the truth,” the letter says.
“The Committee gave Amazon a final opportunity to provide evidence either correcting the record or corroborating the representations it had made to the Committee under oath and in written statements,” the lawmakers said. “Instead of taking advantage of this opportunity to provide clarity, however, Amazon offered conclusory denials of adverse facts.”
As a result of the committee’s investigation, the lawmakers called for stricter regulation of Amazon and other large companies like Facebook and Google. Their 449-page report said that tech behemoths have turned into “the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons” that abuse their power to create anti-competitive conditions. Wednesday’s referral is an escalation of actions against Amazon as it faces scrutiny from members of both major political parties.
As the organized opposition to the “Big Tech loophole law” ballot initiative grows in Massachusetts, a number of key consumer, community, and civil rights groups have joined with workers’ rights advocates to announce their commitment of activating and growing the coalition opposing that initiative under a new name: Massachusetts is not for Sale.
