newswars--2019-02-28--Fed Policy Rescuing Stock Market

Fed Policy Rescuing Stock Market

After weeks of hinting, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirmed that the central bank will end its balance sheet reduction program this year.  This just five months after insisting quantitative tightening was on “autopilot.”  “We’ve worked out, I think, the framework of a plan that we hope to be able to announce soon that will light the way all the way to the end of balance sheet normalization,” Powell said during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee.  Powell said the central bank would be in a position to “to stop runoff later this year.”  According to the Fed chair, the balance sheet will remain at about 16 to 17% of GDP. That would mean the new normal for the Federal Reserve balance sheet would come in at between $3.2 trillion and $3.4 trillion. In other words, almost all of the mortgages and Treasurys that the Fed purchased at part of its three rounds of quantitative easing during the Great Recession will remain on its balance sheet.  As Peter Schiff talked about in a recent podcast, when Ben Bernanke launched QE, he insisted the Fed was not monetizing debt. He said the difference between debt monetization and the Fed’s policy was that the central bank was not providing a permanent source of financing. He said the Treasurys would only remain on the Fed’s balance sheet temporarily. He assured Congress that once the crisis was over, the Federal Reserve would sell the bonds it bought during the emergency.  Not so much.  According to a Reuters report, the current Fed board began hammering out a new balance sheet approach in November. That coincides with the plunge of the US stock markets in the fourth quarter of last year. It’s astonishing how quickly the Fed moved from “autopilot” to “we’re done” once the markets started to tank.  In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff talked about Powell’s testimony on Capitol Hill. He noted that Powell continued to harp on this theme of “patience,” reiterating that the Fed wasn’t in any hurry to resume, pushing interest rates up. But that raises a question: why patience now? Why not patience in December? What’s changed?  “The only difference is the market hadn’t completely collapsed. In fact, at the last meeting, the Fed was not only not patient, they were hiking rates. They were interested in hiking rates more. But they have the quantitative tightening program, the shrinking of the balance sheet that was on autopilot. Why did they take it off autopilot? And not only did they take it off autopilot, but why are they saying they are going to wind it down so that we finish the reduction this year? ,,, Well, the only thing that changed is the stock market. They clearly came to the rescue of the stock market.”  Peter reiterated this really should come as no surprise. This was inevitable from the beginning.  “This is not some new information that just happened and now all of a sudden a Fed that was going to bring interest rates back up to normal because something happened they had to stop. I was saying from the beginning that they were going to stop. I just didn’t know what the excuse was going to be. But eventually, they would come up with one because I knew that they could not complete the journey. But they were able to fake it as long as the markets were giving them the thumbs-up. But the minute the market gave them the thumbs down, well, then they had to call it off. The same thing with the balance sheet. When they said this autopilot, the markets were tanking on a balance sheet reduction plan going on autopilot, and so they had to call it off.”


thedailycaller--2019-03-22--Trump Orders Policy U-Turn On North Korea-Related Sanctions

President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Friday he was reversing course on new sanctions on Chinese companies doing business with North Korea.  “It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” Trump wrote. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”  The U.S. Treasury had announced the new sanctions Thursday, not Friday as Trump wrote, and they immediately received “swift pushback” from both the Chinese and North Korean governments, reported Fox News. (RELATED: Dan Crenshaw Breaks Silence On Trump’s McCain Feud)  “President Trump likes Chairman Kim [Jong Un] and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said when asked about Trump’s tweet.  Trump’s decision came a day after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin detailed the U.S. decision to impose sanctions on two China-based companies.  “The United States and our like-minded partners remain committed to achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization of North Korea and believe that the full implementation of North Korea-related UN Security Council resolutions is crucial to a successful outcome,” Mnuchin said in a statement Thursday, according to Fox News. “Treasury will continue to enforce our sanctions, and we are making it explicitly clear that shipping companies employing deceptive tactics to mask illicit trade with North Korea expose themselves to great risk.”  Trump and Kim may have another summit this year after their most recent summit in late February fell apart.  Trump had used Twitter in early March to weigh in on the U.S. and South Korea’s decision to end their annual large-scale joint military exercises.  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


thedailycaller--2019-04-03--Trumps Labor Department Proposes Trashing Obamas Joint-Employer Policy

Trump’s Labor Department Proposes Trashing Obama’s Joint-Employer Policy

The Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposal Monday to roll back Obama-era policies that left franchisers confused to the extent they could interact with their partner franchisees, The Washington Free Beacon reported.  The DOL proposal would codify the definition of a “joint-employer” as two companies with direct control over how an employee is treated and paid. The Obama administration had implemented policies that widened the joint-employer definition to include businesses not directly involved with the day-to-day management of employees. (RELATED: A Pro-Union Labor Board Ruling Is An ‘Industry -Wide’ Drag On Hotel Employees’ Wages, Study Says)  The Obama precedent concerned many in the franchise industry that workplace violations committed by individual franchisees could be used to influence or punish major corporations. For example, a union could use workplace violations at one franchisee to organize the corporation above it, though the corporate franchiser was not directly involved in the abuse.  “This proposal will reduce uncertainty over joint employer status and clarify for workers who is responsible for their employment protections,” Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said in a statement. “Providing public notice and comment is the best way to move forward with another significant deregulatory proposal.”  The DOL’s proposal institutes a four-part test to determine whether two businesses can be classified as joint-employers over a single employee. The joint-employer rule applies to companies that both have the ability to hire or fire the employee, control the employee’s work schedule or conditions of employment, determine the employee’s pay and are legally obligated to handle the employee’s employment records.  Critics say the proposal is too narrow and will allow companies to get away with unfair or abusive labor practices.  “It sends the message to companies that outsource or use contractors that they might be off the hook,” National Employment Law Project general counsel Catherine Ruckelshaus told The Wall Street Journal. “The Labor Department won’t be coming after them for violations of minimum-wage or child-labor laws.”  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


thedailycaller--2019-05-20--Kamala Harris Unveils Equal Pay Policy

Kamala Harris Unveils Equal Pay Policy

California Democratic Sen. Kamala Harris unveiled a policy proposal to close the pay disparities between men and women by mandating corporations to disclose wage data and earn “Equal Pay Certifications” Monday.  Corporations that do not secure certification would be fined 1% of their profits for every 1% pay gap for the same work, The Associated Press reported Monday. Federal contractors will be required to receive the certification within two years of Harris presiding in office or they would not be allowed to compete for contracts valued more than $500,000.  “Kamala Harris has a simple message for corporations: Pay women fairly or pay the price,” her campaign said, according to The AP.  Companies would also need to disclose top-earners who are women and total pay and total compensation gap that exists between the genders regardless of position, experience and performance under the policy, the AP reported.  The proposal shifts the responsibility from employees to corporations when addressing pay discrimination, according to the AP. (RELATED: Google’s Annual Pay Equity Analysis Finds More Men Than Women Were Underpaid In 2018)  “We’ve let corporations hide their wage gaps, but forced women to stand up in court just to get the pay they’ve earned,” the campaign said, the AP reported. “It’s time to flip the script and finally hold corporations accountable for pay inequality in America.”  The 2020 hopeful estimated that $180 billion would be generated over a decade due to fines, but the fines would decrease as organizations bolstered their equal pay practices, according to the AP.  Harris’s policy is based on the belief that women are paid 80 cents to every dollar a man makes, according to a Sunday tweet where she hinted about releasing the proposal.  The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues that statistics surrounding the pay gap only considers media earnings of full-time and salaried workers. Furthermore, the data does not take into account education, experience, hours worked or preferences between the genders.  Harris’s team did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


21stcenturywire--2019-05-01--SYRIA Amnesty International bias provides cover for Al Qaeda crimes against the Syrian people in Id

SYRIA: Amnesty International bias provides cover for Al Qaeda crimes against the Syrian people in Idlib and Hama

Maha Assaad with her disabled 25-year-old daughter, Amal, their house was targeted by Nusra Front two days before orthodox Good Friday in Al Skeilbiyyeh, Northern Hama. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)  Amnesty International’s recent biased and misleading report ignores the suffering of communities under attack from Al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria’s Idlib.  Tensions are being ratcheted up in the north-westerly provinces of Idlib and Northern Hama and Western media prepares itself for the revival of the notorious “last doctor” meme.  In September 2018 Russian and Turkish negotiators agreed to establish a demilitarized zone in Idlib which should have been completed by October 15, 2018. The reality is that the withdrawal of heavy weaponry has only been partially successful and the remaining armed groups dominated by Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), effectively a rebrand of Al-Qaeda or Al-Nusra Front, have consistently violated the ceasefire and targeted cities, towns and villages on the borders of the so-called “safe zone.”  Think tanks and globalist organisations that serve to bolster NATO’s aggressive interventionist policy in Syria are advocating an increase of Turkey’s military footprint in Idlib, ostensibly to curtail the HTS expansionism, but, clearly, and perhaps foolishly relying upon Turkey’s NATO membership to offer them a compliant occupier in the northwest while the US coalition increases its own military presence in the vast band of Syrian territory east of the Euphrates – despite President Trump’s hollow withdrawal-of-US-troops rhetoric in December 2018.  In amongst all this geopolitical jockeying for position and supremacy, civilians in the region are suffering and few more so than those who live in the towns that border Idlib and areas of Northern Hama still under control of the armed groups and their HTS overlords. These are the Syrian people entirely ignored by NATO-aligned media and “human rights” groups that have sustained narratives that traditionally only criminalize one side in a complex and externally imposed eight-year war.  The most recent example of this extreme bias in favor of the US supremacist alliance is the Amnesty International reportdated 28th March 2019 entitled “Syria: Government forces have bombed medical facilities, school and bakery in Idlib.” The title has unequivocally laid out the report’s intent, to criminalize the Syrian government. The report opens with Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty International claiming:  The report covers “six recent attacks” in Idlib that Amnesty claim to be “verified.” The report provides no context during this “verification” process. No names of witnesses are provided, we are expected to accept the testimony of anonymous sources whose affiliations are not questioned. We are expected to rely upon the “evidence” provided by “verified open source information, social media photos and videos” which have been “corroborated” remotely by Amnesty’s recently established “Digital Verification Corps” (DVC) in Toronto, California, UK or South Africa. Despite this alleged verification process, none of these videos or photos are shown in the Amnesty report.  Amnesty claims to have interviewed witnesses themselves but does not provide the identity of the alleged Amnesty staff on the ground in an area infested by Al-Qaeda affiliates who are known to kidnap and endanger the lives of anyone that might question their motives. Were these witnesses interviewed via Skype by the DVC or were anonymous proxies instructed to conduct interviews in an area controlled by HTS? The report does not clarify.  What is familiar about this report are the claims of Syrian government aggression against “civilian” targets in an area occupied by hostile armed groups financed and armed by hostile NATO member states and their allies whose intent is to topple the Syrian government and impose a tyrannical sectarian regime in its place.  We have heard identical, sensationalist rhetoric during the Syrian Arab Army campaigns to cleanse East Aleppo and Eastern Ghouta of the same extremist occupiers that were then transported to Idlib as part of the Syrian/Russian amnesty and reconciliation deals.  This report criminally erases the atrocities committed by HTS and subordinate groups against the towns and villages clustered inside Syrian government secured territory on the borders with the last terrorist stronghold in Syria. The report misleads an unsuspecting public to believe the Syrian government is conducting unprovoked attacks against a civilian population. This is an outright lie.  So, let’s add some vital context to this biased and misrepresentative report. Amnesty mention attacks by the Syrian government on March 9 and 11, in Saraqeb and Talmans, southern Idlib. There are claims that hospitals and blood banks were the main targets, while in February bakeries and makeshift medical clinics had been hit.  Acclaimed journalist, Sharmine Narwani, had previously conducted an investigation into the systematic destruction of bakeries, flour mills and deliberate decimation of wheat production by Western-backed armed groups to increase pressure on the Syrian government and collectively punish the Syrian people that have resisted the Western-sponsored extremist bid to take over their country. According to Narwani, “the West’s terrorists drove wheat production from 2.5 M tons per year to 100K.”  It is worth noting that several of the Amnesty testimonies come from members of the NATO-member-state financed and promoted White Helmets embedded with HTS in the region. It is also worth noting that a UK government draft documentpublished in April 2017 demonstrates that the White Helmets are the most “routinely reliable source” for both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. So a biased source provides “reliable” and unverified corroboration of biased reports that serve the imperialist agenda.  What is not mentioned in the report is the reality that armed groups have systematically occupied hospitals, schools, and medical centers across all areas they have previously controlled in Syria, converting many of them into prisons, military centers and ammunition stores and factories.  What is also not mentioned are the daily attacks from these HTS enclaves against the Syrian Christian towns of Al Suqaylabiyah and Mhardeh and surrounding villages. In the weeks leading up to March 9, these attacks intensified. I visited the area on March 9 and was shown the destruction of civilian homes in Al Suqaylabiyah by one attack on March 7. The Amnesty report highlights the alleged displacement of civilians as a result of Syrian government attacks but does not mention the homelessness brought about by such attacks by HTS against the civilian populations of these towns.     Nabel Alabdalla, leader of the volunteer National Defence Forces in Al Skeilbiyyeh. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)  Nabel Alabdalla, the commander of the Al Suqaylabiyah volunteer National Defence Forces told me that the extremists were using a new, more powerful C4 explosive in their Grad rockets as the damage was so extensive to entire neighborhoods in the town. The town’s monastery had also been targeted in these attacks, a monastery which doubles as a community center and school for the children of the town. Since the escalation of attacks by armed groups, the children have not been able to attend school as the risk of death or injury is too great. These children are disappeared by Amnesty, their schools don’t count.  ..   After March 9, the merciless attacks against civilians and infrastructure in Mhardeh and Al Suqaylabiyah continued unabated. On March 16, terrorists targeted another residential area in Suqaylabiyah. Salma Boutros Khalil was seriously injured by shrapnel, her home was destroyed. Her daughter in law, Ayat Al-Mahmoud, a Palestinian originally from Damascus, was killed. Ayat was pregnant, her baby was due in one week. Salma’s grandson was also terribly injured by shrapnel and was rushed to Hama National hospital. Two other children were grievously wounded in this attack.  These attacks do not target military centers, they target only residential areas and civilians. They are, in many instances, war crimes, but according to Amnesty International, these attacks never happened.  On March 26, according to the Amnesty report, Syrian government forces fired rockets “at a school in Sheikh Idriss.” Again the context is non-existent. On March 23, a suspected chemical weapon attack was carried out by HTS against villages around 10km to the northwest of Al Suqaylabiyah – al-Rasif, al-Aziziyyeh, al-Khandaq, and al-Jayyid. The attack came in from the north, in fact close to Sheikh Idriss.  I was in Al Suqaylabiyah when this attack took place and I was able to visit the local hospital that received the 34 victims which included three children, one severely affected with respiratory problems. Victims complained of breathing difficulties, skin blisters, eye sensitivity, nausea and shock syndrome after the attack. One victim, Nawfal Tawbar, described the 1m high dense white smoke that enveloped the area after the mortars had exploded:  Without the Syrian government’s retaliatory measures, these extremist attacks would only increase. The attacks are motivated primarily by sectarian hatred against the Syrian Christian or Alawite communities or simply against those who remain loyal to their government. One of the recorded messages from the terrorist groups during this period demanded that Al Suqaylabiyah “release its Nusairi inhabitants” to the terrorists (for execution) to avoid their city being “burned.” Nusairi is the commonly used terrorist term for the Alawites.  In the Amnesty report, Maalouf makes the statement:  “Deliberate attacks on civilians and on civilian objects, including hospitals and other medical facilities, and indiscriminate attacks that kill or injure civilians are war crimes.”  Maalouf fails entirely to identify or qualify the HTS-led attacks against civilians as war crimes which is an egregious negation of the suffering of entire communities in the region. The Amnesty report goes on to further shoot itself in the foot. I asked former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford for a review of the report. Ford described the report as the “pseudo-findings on Syria by a Corps that has obviously taken up its place in the battle order of Western propagandists seeking to justify endless war on Syria.”  Ford points out that the Amnesty report implicitly acknowledges that the areas targeted by the Syrian government are awash with Al-Qaeda (HTS) militants while their student so-called experts “cite the testimony of ‘residents’ that no HTS were present, indeed couldn’t have been present because the areas were part of the demilitarized zone.” Ford punches a hole in this claim:  “Amnesty, you have just shot yourself in the foot! Any truly independent observer would have been aware from multiple open sources, including US mainstream media, that the demilitarized zone has not in fact been rid of HTS fighters and their weapons. Far from it. Unacknowledged by Amnesty, the takfiris have been shelling civilians in villages on the government side. Any credibility which might have been attached to these reports goes straight out of the window with these crucial highly revealing errors and omissions.”  To further reinforce Ford’s point, the Amnesty report – which contradicts itself – ends with the foot-shooting statement:  “Saraqeb is under the control of the Brigade of the Revolutionary Front of Saraqeb and Countryside, which comes under overall HTS control.”  The following video, published on February 26 2019, shows these Amnesty-whitewashed “rebels” targeting  Abu Duhour, by their own admission – presumably targeting civilian refugees who have fled this brutal terrorist occupation via the Syrian/Russian established and protected humanitarian corridor to the perceived safety of Abu Duhour. Another inconvenient fact omitted by the Amnesty report.  Needless to say, colonial media in the West re-published the Amnesty report without correction or investigation – The Guardian, Middle East Eye and Jaish Al Islam-affiliate, Scott Lucas of EA Worldview, among the first to trumpet the distorted Amnesty headlines and content within the state-aligned-western-media sphere.  This is nothing less than protectionism for Al-Qaeda. This Amnesty report, verified by its student Corps in remote locations who identify war crimes that only serve to increase the real terrorist war crimes against real civilians in Syria, is a travesty. As Peter Ford said:  Cover photo: Mother of 22 year old martyr from Mhardeh, Majed Monif Qiddeeseh, murdered by a Nusra Front rocket on the 7th April 2019.  Vanessa Beeley is an independent journalist, peace activist, photographer and associate editor at 21st Century Wire. Vanessa was a finalist for one of the most prestigious journalism awards – the 2017 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism – whose winners have included the likes of Robert Parry in 2017, Patrick Cockburn, Robert Fisk, Nick Davies and the Bureau for Investigative Journalism team. Please support her work at her Patreon account.  LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WHITE HELMETS BY READING THE FOLLOWING ARTICLES:  White Helmets Centre in Saqba, Eastern Ghouta Next Door to Terrorist Bomb Factory   “Humanitarians” and the ‘Moderate’ Bomb Factory in Saqba, Eastern Ghouta.  BBC and Guardian Whitewash of UK FCO Funding Scandal in Syria   What to Expect From BBC Panorama and Guardian’s Whitewash of UK Gov’t Funding Terrorists in Syria  White Helmets Evidence Presented at Geneva Press Club:   Vanessa Beeley Presents Exposé on White Helmets at Swiss Press Club in Geneva  ‘Global Britain’ – UK Funding a Shadow State in Syria   ‘Global Britain’ is Financing Terrorism and Bloodshed in Syria and Calling it ‘Aid’  Initial Investigation into White Helmets:   Who are Syria’s White Helmets?  21st Century Wire article on the White Helmets:     Syria’s White Helmets: War by Way of Deception ~ the “Moderate” Executioners  Who Funds the White Helmets?   Secret £1bn UK War Chest Used to Fund the White Helmets and Other ‘Initiatives’  Irish Peace Prize Farce   Tipperary’s White Helmets Peace Prize: A Judas Kiss to the Antiwar Movement and Syria  CNN Fabricate News About the White Helmets   A NOBEL LIE: CNN’s Claim That ‘White Helmets Center in Damascus’ Was Hit by a Barrel Bomb  White Helmets Links to Al Nusra   WHITE HELMETS: Hand in Hand with Al Qaeda and Extremist Child Beheaders in Aleppo  Report by Patrick Henningsen   AN INTRODUCTION: Smart Power & The Human Rights Industrial Complex  Open Letter by Vanessa Beeley   White Helmets Campaign for War NOT Peace – Retract RLA & Nobel Peace Prize Nominations  White Helmets Oscar Award Farce:   Forget Oscar: Give The White Helmets the Leni Riefenstahl Award for Best War Propaganda Film  Cory Morningstar report:   Investigation into the funding sources of the White Helmets, including Avaaz, Purpose, The Syria Campaign  Open letter to Canadian MPs from Stop the War Hamilton (Canada):   Letter from the Hamilton Coalition to Stop War to the New Democratic Party in Canada ref the White Helmet nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize:  Open letter to Canada’s NDP Leader on Nobel Prize:   Letter to NDP from Prof. John Ryan protesting White Helmet nomination for RLA and Nobel Peace Prize.


21stcenturywire--2019-08-14--Report Google Insider Gives 950 Pages of Documents to DOJ

Report: Google Insider Gives 950 Pages of Documents to DOJ

Many people are not aware that back in April of 2017, tech giant Google embarked on massive effort to ‘cleanse’ their search engines of content which Google’s executives believe should not be widely seen or read by billions of viewers across the globe.  However, Google’s censorship was not limited to ‘right wing’ or ‘pro-Trump’ information as has been widely reported by numerous conservative outlets. Google’s political censorship program has also buried content and redirected internet searches away from left-wing, progressive and anti-war websites, cutting the search traffic of leading alternative news outlets by well over 50 percent since they implemented their corporate information purge in April 2017. In some instances, website traffic from Google searches dropped more than 70%.  This political lustration by the Silicon Valley conglomerate has had a devastating effect of independent media outlets worldwide, as Google continually works to control the public information space.  But their gross manipulation is now beginning to be exposed.  A former Google insider claiming the company created algorithms to hide its political bias within artificial intelligence platforms – in effect targeting particular words, phrases and contexts to promote, alter, reference or manipulate perceptions of Internet content – delivered roughly 950 pages of documents to the Department of Justice’s Antitrust division Friday.  The former Google insider, who has already spoken in to the nonprofit organization Project Veritas, met with SaraACarter.com on several occasions last week. He was interviewed in silhouette, to conceal his identity, in group’s latest film, which they say exposes bias inside the social media platform.  Several weeks prior, the insider mailed a laptop to the DOJ containing the same information delivered on Friday, they said. The former insider is choosing to remain anonymous until Project Verita’s James O’Keefe reveals his identity tomorrow (Wednesday).  He told this reporter on his recent trip to Washington D.C. that the documents he turned over to the Justice Department will provide proof that Google has been manipulating the algorithms and the evidence of how it was done, the insider said.  Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the House Judiciary Committee in December, 2018, that the search engine was not biased against conservatives. Pichai explained what algorithm’s are said Google’s algorithm was not offensive to conservatives because its artificial intelligence does not operate in that manner. He told lawmakers, “things like relevance, freshness, popularity, how other people are using it” are what drives the search results. Pichai said even if his programmers were anti-Republican, the process is so intricate that the artificial intelligence could not be manipulated and it was to complicated to train the algorithm to fit their bias.  Google did not immediately respond for comment on the insider’s claims, however, this story will be updated if comment is provided.  The insider says Google is aware most people are unaware or not knowledgeable about these advanced IT systems and therefore unable to determine who is telling the truth.  “I honestly think that a free market can fix this issue,” he told this reporter at a meeting in Washington D.C. “The issue is that the free market has been distorted and what’s happened is that the distortion is so grotesque and the engineering is so repulsive, all we need to do is just expose what’s going on. People can hear that it is bad but that can be bias. But when they see what Google has actually written with the documents, this will actually be taught in universities of what totalitarian states can do with this type of capability.”  Watch the following Google whistleblower interview published by Project Veritas:


21stcenturywire--2019-09-07--Biometric Fight Facebook Defeated on Facial Recognition But Google Amazon Still Pushing Ahead

Biometric Fight: Facebook Defeated on Facial Recognition, But Google, Amazon Still Pushing Ahead

Whether you like it to or not, facial recognition is set to play an ever-growing role in people’s everyday lives. Nonetheless, the fight is now on: push-back has now begun against Silicon Valley’s global digital monopolies who seek to harvest the facial imaging data of every single user on the planet. But with seemingly endless resources and lobbying muscle, do not expect digital barons to give up on implementing a biometeric control grid.    Last month, Facebook lost its federal appeal over its attempt to own the public’s facial recognition data.  As a result, the firm is set to pay out substantial damages over its unethical privacy and business practices. This has also forced the company to halt its facial recognition photo tagging suggestion feature, now offering it on a voluntary basis only – as an ‘opt-in’ feature.  “We conclude that the development of a face template using facial-recognition technology without consent (as alleged here) invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests,” said the courts following the initial ruling in early August.  “This decision is a strong recognition of the dangers of unfettered use of face surveillance technology,” said ACLU staff attorney Nathan Freed Wessler.  While this may count as an initial victory for humanity, the battle is far from over. Indeed, caution may seem like the most reasonable route down the road towards a brave new world, this is not what technocrats in government and technology monopolists believe. Facebook’s setback has not deterred the other monopolies from advancing in their plans to own, market and use data on the facial features of the world’s population.  Firms like Amazon, Apple and Google are still actively pursing applications designed to harvest your personal biometric information. In fact, they are doing so as we speak. Google Photos have even been asking users to help “improve” the accuracy of its new facial recognition grouping algorithm by providing feedback on their own images. Recognition ability is becoming so accurate it can now recognise pets, as well as other animals.  If humanity is to prevail in this protracted battle, then users should be aware of which legal arguments will work in a legal setting, and how the courts are defining personal privacy and the limitations of big data capture.  A last-ditch attempt by Facebook to scuttle a class action lawsuit involving the company’s use of facial recognition technology has failed. That opens the door for the class action lawsuit to continue in federal court. If Facebook eventually loses the case, it could be forced to pay out billions of dollars to Facebook users who had their “face templates” used by Facebook without their express consent.  The class action suit involving facial recognition technology hinges on the court’s interpretation of landmark facial recognition legislation, the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which went into effect in 2008 – several years before Facebook began using facial recognition technology to create the “tag suggestions” feature for photos uploaded to the social media platform. Facebook officially launched its facial recognition technology back in 2011, and the court case has been limited to possible privacy violations that might have taken place in the period from 2011 to 2015. The case alleges that Facebook illegally collected and stored biometric data, representing a violation of an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.  Since 2015, the case has been working its way through America’s sometimes convoluted legal system, and the next step had been the certification of an official “class” of plaintiffs who could formally bring the class action lawsuit against Facebook. The Silicon Valley giant, as might be expected, has been fighting this case vigorously for the past several years, arguing that a class action lawsuit was not possible in this case. Instead, said Facebook, individuals would have to bring their case on a one-by-one basis instead of challenging the tech company as part of a certified class of plaintiffs.  So, it was big news when the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, indeed, there was a class of plaintiffs who could formally bring the case against Facebook. As the federal appeals court ruled, this class consists of “Facebook users in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011.” The limitation of this class to Illinois is important because Illinois is the state where the BIPA went into effect. But even limiting the plaintiffs to Illinois – one of America’s most populous states – is not going to help Facebook much, because the total number of those impacted within the state could be close to 7 million users. (By way of comparison, the city of Chicago in Illinois currently has a population of 2.7 million).


21stcenturywire--2019-09-20--Authoritarian Inc Facebook Declares Its a Publisher and Will Censor Who It Wants

Authoritarian Inc: Facebook Declares It’s a ‘Publisher’ and Will Censor Who It Wants

With each passing day, Silicon Valley’s corporate digital monopolies are realizing the story line of the recent Hollywood dystopian classic, The Circle, where a few tech firms appoint themselves as the rightful guardians of reality, by controlling speech, political discourse, and even elections. They do this not because they have a higher moral mission, or that they possess some superior ideological framework for society, but rather, they seize control of the key modes of social communication simply because they can. This is raw, unadulterated power.  That dark Hollywood vision just came one step closer to becoming reality this week after Facebook declared itself to be a ‘publisher’ rather than a network platform, thus reserving the right to censor or de-platform anyone it wants to.     OUT OF TOUCH: Many now believe that through the accumulation too much power, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lost touch with the reality in American and global society, prompting calls that it’s time to break up what has now become an authoritarian digital monopoly.  There are other efforts by government and civil liberties groups to push back against Facebook’s authoritarian policies and political gate-keeping.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s handling of a fact-checking controversy involving pro-life group Live Action was biased.  The embattled tech executive discussed the issue during a meeting on Thursday with Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, a frequent critic of Big Tech, on a host of topics, including privacy and allegations of anti-conservative discrimination.  “Zuckerberg admitted there “clearly was bias” in the @LiveAction @LilaGraceRose censorship. Said bias is ‘an issue we’ve struggled with for a long time.'” tweeted Hawley, one of several senators who questioned the tech company’s fact-checking systems in a letter to Zuckerberg last week.  Hawley also challenged Zuckerberg to sell off Instagram and WhatsApp, which the company owns, and submit to an independent, third-party audit on censorship. Zuckerberg declined on both counts.  Last month, Live Action was told by Facebook that its fact checkers had marked two videos containing the statement “abortion is never medically necessary” as false. The tech giant also said that Live Action, its links and Rose’s page would now have reduced distribution and other restrictions because of repeatedly sharing false news.  The tech mogul’s visit to Washington, D.C., came as Facebook faces an antitrust probe being led by state attorneys general ,and a separate antitrust investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.  The timing of these various challenges is certainly interesting – right as Facebook and its Silicon Valley anti-trust cartel partners are attempting to “cleanse” their platforms of  ‘wrong politics’ by banning a host of prominent conservative pundits and outlets in the run-up to the US 2020 Presidential Election.  RELATED: Biometric Fight: Facebook Defeated on Facial Recognition, But Google, Amazon Still Pushing Ahead  At the same time they have appeared to undermine the advantage they previously had by keeping their public political positions murky and arbitrary. Now that Facebook has declared that it’s now a ‘publisher’ they can justify censoring or banning whoever they want, but there may be consequences for choosing this tactic. Regarding Facebook’s newfound status, RT International adds:  “Facebook has invoked its free speech right as a publisher, insisting its ability to smear users as extremists is protected, but its legal immunity thus far has rested on a law which protects platforms, not publishers. Which is it?”  “Defining itself as a publisher opens Facebook up to lawsuits for defamation and other liability for the content users publish, something they were previously immunized against. All the lies, personal attacks, and smears launched by users going forward can now be laid at Facebook’s feet.”  “Whatever they say – platform or publisher – their words will haunt them legally from now on.”  RT also rightly points out that platforms like Google and Twitter claim protection from the legal consequences of users’ speech by invoking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. However, with this latest court declaration, Facebook can no longer claim Section 230 defense.  Their report also points out that during its recent legal challenge, “Facebook even makes reference to section 230 later in its motion, suggesting that it is trying to have its cake and eat it too.”  Facebook’s dilemma is now apparent: the more aggressively it enforces its biased political censorship agenda, the harder citizens and their elected representatives will push-back against the Silicon Valley’s elitist brand of latte fascism.


21stcenturywire--2019-12-03--LIBRA: Facebook Now Wants to Control Your Money

CONTROL ISSUES: Through the accumulation of too much power, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have lost touch with reality in global society and must be uprooted.  Facebook – backed by some of the largest banks and corporations on Earth – seek to create a global digital currency and reassert Western dominion over the global economy.  Many are probably already familiar with US-based social media giants like Facebook and Twitter carrying out sweeping campaigns of censorship executed in line with US foreign policy objectives.  New Eastern Outlook itself was deleted off of both networks – just one among many thousands of accounts wiped out in a virtual information war.  Many are also probably aware of how Facebook in particular has trampled the privacy of its users, manipulated users unwittingly through involuntary experiments and controls what many people around the globe see while online – most of the time without users even realizing it.  But imagine instead of just silencing and marginalizing opponents or controlling the information the public has access to and thus manipulating the public itself, Facebook was also able to control the very currency people use in their day to day lives. Its control over the public, both within the US and beyond, would be unprecedented.  The ability to control both information and money would be a potent tool, enhancing Facebook’s already deeply disruptive and abusive behavior as well as the much larger corporate-financier interests Facebook works with and for.  Earlier this year Facebook announced its own currency called Libra. It is based on blockchain technology, billed as a “cryptocurrency,” and aims at dominating banking and commerce in much the same way Facebook already dominates social media, messaging and in general, the flow of information.  There is no doubt that the same cooperation Facebook has provided the US government and the interests that dominate its domestic and foreign policy in controlling and manipulating public opinion around the globe, stifling alternative news, and even overthrowing governments will translate directly into a similar pattern of abuse through its desired control over a global currency.  Unlike hard currency which does not know in whose hands it resides and thus is unable to discriminate against its holder – Libra not only allows Facebook to know whose hands its currency is in, but how much of it is there, what it is being used for – in addition to all other personal information Facebook has access to. This not only allows for an obvious extension of Facebook’s already well-known politically-motivated abuses – but also gives Facebook the ability to target users who may pose as competition to Facebook or one of the many larger corporations Facebook works with or for.  Imagine Facebook carrying out a similar campaign to their current one of political censorship, but with an added monetary component – not only removing the West’s political opponents from their social media network and effectively silencing them, but crippling them financially by freezing their accounts and denying them access to the massive digital global economy they hope to create and control through Libra.  While US politicians and regulators appear to be obstructing Libra’s rollout, the truth is that many of the very interests these politicians and regulators work for are directly involved in Libra’s creation.  Not Just Facebook: What is the “Libra Association?”  The initial white paper laying out Libra’s premise included in its introduction:  Such noble intentions are betrayed not only by Facebook’s involvement, but also by the partners included in Libra’s creation.  While Facebook serves as the face of Libra, it and its subsidiary Calibra are only two among many members of the Geneva-based “Libra Association.”  Other partners include Mastercard, Visa, Lyft, Uber, Vodafone, and eBay along with a handful of venture capital firms and nonprofits.  These nonprofits include Women’s World Banking funded by Visa, Credit Suisse, MetLife, Citi Bank, Exxon, Bloomberg, Mastercard, Goldman Sachs and many other large corporations and banking interests.  There is also MercyCorps whose website is particularly opaque in regards to its funding, but includes inveterate Neo-Conservative, former World Bank president, and US Deputy Secretary of State under George Bush Jr. Robert Zoellick upon its “Global Leadership Council.”  Kiva – like MercyCorps – is another Libra Association “nonprofit” partnered with a collection of banks and corporations including Google, HP, Mastercard, PayPal, Capital One, Deutsche Bank, MetLife, PepsiCo, Citi Bank, eBay, BlackRock, Bank of America, JP Morgan, and Chevron.  It would be difficult to construct a more dubious list of partners, donors, and associates in fiction than the one standing behind Libra in reality.  Judging by the composition of those driving Libra forward, we can make two assumptions: • Libra’s founders are among the same special interests that drive US policy, legislation, and regulations. The prospect of the US government legitimately evaluating and regulating Libra in line with the best interests of the American and global public is nonexistent; • Despite Libra’s stated mission of “empowering billions,” its rollout looks more like the restructuring of America’s financial hegemony over billions. Libra seeks to circumvent alternatives created to work around the already abusive and coercive global financial networks the US dominates and weaponizes to its own advantage.  F. William Engdahl in his article, “Is the Fed Preparing to Topple US Dollar?,” aptly noted that Bank of England governor Mark Carney at a US Federal Reserve sponsored symposium proposed a global digital currency citing Libra specifically as a model.  Considering the very interests that constitute Western banking and finance are involved in Libra’s creation – it is obvious that Libra is more than just a model being cited – it is the global digital currency insiders like Carney proposed coming to life.  While many of the corporations and financial institutions involved in Libra’s creation are systematically corrupt all on their own, the conduct of Facebook past and present most aptly illustrates the abuse to be expected should Libra be adopted globally.  While Facebook poses as an independent corporation monopolizing and abusing its social media network and subsidiaries – in reality Facebook has carried out these abuses in tandem with the US government and the collection of special interests that monopolize US domestic and foreign policy.  US government oversight – including past hearing and regulatory inquiries into Libra itself – is often done for public consumption only – with Facebook otherwise continuing onward with absolute impunity.  Abusing Privacy: A summary of these abuses best begins with quoting Mark Zuckerberg himself. Elle magazine in an article titled, “Quick Reminder: Zuckerberg Once Called People Who Trust Him With Their Data ‘Dumb F*Cks’,” summarizes Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s view of the public and their entrusting of personal information to Zuckerberg and his social media network.  While Zuckerberg would apologize for this, it is clear he was only sorry that it became public. Facebook continues to this day abusing the trust of those using its services by involuntarily providing the personal information of tens of millions of Facebook users to third parties.  Business Insider in its article, “The Cambridge Analytica whistleblower explains how the firm used Facebook data to sway elections,” notes how Facebook not only provided personal information to the British firm Cambridge Analytica, but how that information was used to meddle in US elections.  Political Meddling: The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was mild compared to other episodes of political meddling Facebook has been involved in. Perhaps the largest most destructive episode was before and during the so-called “Arab Spring.”While the Western media portrayed it as a spontaneous uprising across North Africa and the Middle East – documented evidence reveals the US government along with its corporate partners including Facebook began training and equipping agitators years before the unrest began.  Facebook was one of the primary partners of Movements.org which organized annual training seminars for opposition leaders who then returned home and attempted to overthrow their respective governments in 2011.  Even the New York Times in an April 2011 article titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” would eventually admit:  Censorship: Building armies of pro-Western agitators is not the limit of Facebook’s involvement in politics. It also carries out systematic campaigns of censorship aimed at critics of Western foreign policy.  It recently banned New Eastern Outlook and several of its authors including this author from its network. More recently still, it has systematically removed accounts attempting to counter US-funded propaganda regarding unrest Washington is sponsoring in Hong Kong, China.  Facebook’s own statement over its selective censorship regarding China is ironically titled, “Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From China.” It provides no evidence of its claims and deliberately includes a political context to demonize the users and pages it removed. Its statement is ironic because the protests in Hong Kong themselves are most certainly coordinated inauthentic behavior – funded out of Washington D.C. and actively using Facebook to advance their agenda.  Manipulating Public Perception: In 2013, Facebook was caught manipulating the news feeds of unwitting users to influence them psychologically. A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” stated in its abstract that:  Facebook also regularly manipulates its users’ news feeds through its algorithm which sidesteps the preferences of users and shows them whatever Facebook itself decides they should see. This usually includes sponsored news content from accounts users aren’t even following and usually at the expense of seeing content from accounts users do follow.  Facebook’s ability to bait hundreds of millions of users to adopt their platform, then switch the nature of its network into a malign tool of manipulation, censorship, surveillance, and propaganda is already a global menace nations around the globe are finally starting to recognize and respond to.  The notion of Facebook coupling its already disturbing hold over information with control over a global currency backed by some of the West’s largest and most corrupt corporations and financial institutions is a larger problem still.  It takes no great leap of imagination to see how abusive and destructive to individuals, organizations, and even entire nations Facebook’s dominion over global currency would be.  Imagine how America’s trade war with China would play out if Facebook was able to hook hundreds of millions of users around the globe onto its Libra currency. Corporations like Huawei or retailers offering Huawei products might see their online stores shuttered, their accounts frozen, and otherwise sanctioned and economically strangled out of existence by Facebook.  It’s clear that the promise of decentralized, democratized money cryptocurrencies offered has been co-opted and leveraged by the very interests that stood the most to lose from such a future.  Nations would be wise to respond to Facebook’s Libra by responding to Facebook itself. Nations like Russia and China have already largely displaced Facebook from within their own borders by creating alternatives. Nations like Vietnam have recently begun creating alternatives as well.  While media organizations like Bloomberg in articles like, “Facebook’s Latest Competition? Authoritarian Governments.,” try to frame Vietnam’s efforts as a struggling dictatorship trying to stifle the free flow of information – it is clear by looking at Facebook’s past and present that Facebook itself represents a dictatorship.  Nothing about its policies are “democratic.” The execution of its policies is unilateral, lacking any genuine appeal process or any sort of independent oversight. It is in every way a monopoly and dictatorship over information and the growing variety of services linked to its social media network that Bloomberg claims Vietnam’s government is.  The important difference is that the Vietnamese government is located in Vietnam while Facebook is located in Silicon Valley thousands of miles away. The people of Vietnam have a much better chance at reforming, checking, and balancing their own government than keeping in check a malign foreign corporation. And ultimately – it is an issue for Vietnam and Vietnam alone to resolve.  Nations are beginning to understand the importance of defending their respective information space – it becoming as important as a nation’s physical territory. It is obvious that the same vigor must be dedicated to defending a nation’s monetary policy and the economy it glues together.  Uprooting the conduit through which highly disruptive schemes like Libra will flow by replacing them with domestic alternatives controlled by and for domestic interests is the only way to fully confront the looming threat Facebook and the interests working with it on Libra represent.  Nations that believe they can work with Facebook on ensuring regulations and policies align with local laws need only look back at the “Arab Spring.” When a large move is made by Washington against a targeted nation, this token cooperation Facebook normally provides evaporates. Nations lack the time and resources to respond and are often overwhelmed by the large influence Facebook and other foreign firms are able to exert during episodes of concentrated, sponsored unrest.  The only way to be certain of ensuring national security and monetary stability is to eliminate Facebook and other foreign firms like it from a nation’s information space. A nation’s defense would never be outsourced to a foreign corporation. Neither should a nation’s flow of information – and now – the flow of money.  ***   Author Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher, writer and special contributor to 21st Century Wire. See more of his work at Tony’s archive. Over the last decade, his work has been published on a number of popular news and analysis websites, and also on the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. Also, you can follow him on VK here.    HELP SUPPORT THIS INDEPENDENT MEDIA PLATFORM – BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV


abcnews--2019-01-17--Facebook removes more accounts linked to coordinated inauthentic behavior in Russia

Facebook removes more accounts linked to 'coordinated inauthentic behavior' in Russia

Facebook has unfriended more fraudulent accounts tied to Russia.  The social media giant, in a blog post credited to Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy, said today that it's removed "multiple Pages, groups and accounts that engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior on Facebook and Instagram."  The two operations discovered by Facebook originated in Russia. One was active in multiple countries, the other specific to Ukraine and "we didn't find any links between these operations, but they used similar tactics by creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they were and what they were doing," Facebook said.  "We're taking down these Pages and accounts based on their behavior, not the content they post," the Menlo Park, California-based company added. "In these cases, the people behind this activity coordinated with one another and used fake accounts to misrepresent themselves, and that was the basis for our action."  No additional details were provided in the blog post.  Exactly a year ago, Facebook, in a similar blog post attributed to Gleicher, announced it had removed 364 Pages and accounts for "inauthentic behavior." A similar announcement was made last August.  Fighting such misinformation, according to Facebook, is "an ongoing challenge because the people responsible are determined and well funded."  Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the seventh-richest person on Earth, with an estimated net worth of more than $58 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.


activistpost--2019-01-16--Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results To Program Users Behavior

Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results To Program Users’ Behavior

In a new leak that can be accurately labeled “the smoking gun,” Google has been busted manipulating search results on YouTube in order to manipulate social behaviors and control minds. An internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals that Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform.  According to Breitbart, the existence of the blacklist (terms Google considered sensitive) was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source. Some of the blacklisted terms included “abortion,” and terms related to the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist and communist, David Hogg.  In the leaked discussion thread, Breitbart further reported that a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source. “We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”  According to the source, the software engineer who started the discussion called the manipulation of search results related to abortion a “smoking gun.” The software engineer noted that the change had occurred following an inquiry from a left-wing Slate journalist about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube and that pro-life videos were replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results for the search terms following Google’s manual intervention. “The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” wrote the employee. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.” –Breitbart  The manual (human) adjustment of search results by a Google-owned platform contradicts a key claim made under oath by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in his congressional testimony earlier this month. Pichai actually said that his company does not “manually intervene on any search result.” A Google employee in the discussion thread drew attention to Pichai’s claim, noting that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.”  And it cannot get more dystopian than that. Hitler insured his propaganda minister was able to manipulate the minds of many during his reign as a tyrant. Journalists in America are now no better and they are using Google to alter the minds and morals of otherwise good people. We live in strange and disturbing times.  Please read Breitbart‘s entire article here. There is much more information!


activistpost--2019-01-21--Coalition Demands Amazon Microsoft and Google Stop Giving Facial Recognition Tech to Government Ag

Coalition Demands Amazon, Microsoft, and Google Stop Giving Facial Recognition Tech to Government Agencies

The Tenth Amendment Center has joined more than 85 other organizations demanding Microsoft, Google and Amazon stop providing facial recognition surveillance technology to government agencies.  The TAC signed on to separate letters to all three companies.  The coalition makes it clear to each company a decision to provide face surveillance technology to the government threatens basic liberties and will also undermine public trust in its business.  “We are at a crossroads with face surveillance, and the choices made by these companies now will determine whether the next generation will have to fear being tracked by the government for attending a protest, going to their place of worship, or simply living their lives,” ACLU of California Technology and Civil Liberties Director Nicole Ozer said.  Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have partnered up to create a massive facial recognition system. As of 2016, law enforcement face recognition networks included photos of more than 117 million adults. That number has undoubtedly grown significantly. Many of the pictures enter the system when police take mugshots during booking after an arrest, but increasingly, police have access to photos of innocent people. Currently, at least 16 states allow the FBI to access their driver’s license and ID photos. Ubiquitous surveillance cameras in some cities. and automatic license plate reader cameras that capture photos of vehicle occupants along with plate numbers and location information also provide entry points into the system.  Private companies such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google assist with this Orwellian nightmare by providing technology to government agencies. This needs to stop. No company should willingly assist the government in violating our most basic rights.  The letters come as executives from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have all spoken publicly about facial recognition technology, revealing an industry at odds on how to respond to concerns raised about government use of such technology.  Google recently announced that it will not sell a face surveillance product until the technology’s dangers are addressed, with its CEO Sundar Pichai warning the tech industry that with artificial intelligence, you “just can’t build it and then fix it.” The coalition welcomed Google’s decision and called on the company to fully commit to not release a facial recognition product that could be used by government.  Microsoft President Brad Smith also recently acknowledged the risks associated with face surveillance and the company’s obligation to act internally to address potential harms. The coalition commended Smith’s acknowledgment of the technology’s harms, but noted that the company’s proposed measures to prevent such harms were “wholly inadequate.” The groups added that Microsoft has a “responsibility to do more than speak about ethical principles; it must also act in accordance with those principles.”


activistpost--2019-02-07--NYPD Orders Google to Stop Showing Drivers Where the Cops Are At

The New York Police Department (NYPD) sent a cease and desist letter to Google last week, demanding that the company stop allowing its customers to report police checkpoints using their GPS apps.  The report mentioned Google Maps and Waze, the popular GPS app that allows users to share information about hazards on the road, including the presence of police. The app allows drivers to pinpoint the exactly location of police and report sightings to fellow drivers, saving untold people from speeding tickets and arrests due to victimless crimes.  However, the NYPD says that Google is helping users break the law. The letter sent to Google last week focused specifically on the issue of impaired drivers.  The NYPD has become aware that the Waze Mobile application … currently permits the public to report DWI checkpoints throughout New York City and map these locations. Accordingly, we demand that Google LLC, upon receipt of this letter, immediately remove this function from the Waze application. Further, the NYPD requests that Google take every necessary precaution to ensure that GPS data of NYPD DWI checkpoints, or any other substantially similar data, is not uploaded or posted at a future time on the Waze Mobile application, google.com, Google maps, or any other associated internet/websites, or web portals and platforms under Google LLC’s, its partners’ sponsors’ or affiliates’ control.  Ann Prunty, NYPD’s Acting Deputy Commissioner for Legal Matters and author of the letter, says users who post data of police locations could be breaking the law:  Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free?      Individuals who post the locations of DWI checkpoints may be engaging in criminal conduct since such actions could be intentional attempts to prevent and/or impair the administration of the DWI laws and other relevant criminal and traffic laws. The posting of such information for public consumption is irresponsible since it only serves to aid impaired and intoxicated drivers to evade checkpoints and encourage reckless driving. Revealing the location of checkpoints puts those drivers, their passengers, and the general public at risk.  “The NYPD will pursue all legal remedies to prevent the continued posting of this irresponsible and dangerous information,” Prunty added.  The app has infuriated police for years because it allows users to gain an upper hand on the harassment and revenue-generating schemes police often engage in. Now with the recent tensions between police and the public hitting new heights, the push against this equalizing technology has been stronger than ever before.  Google purchased the app in 2013 for $966 million and has kept it more or less the same in its functionality ever since. With calls from police to ban the app or remove its most popular function, many Waze users are concerned that Google will give in to government demands as they have in the past. We believe that informing drivers about upcoming speed traps allows them to be more careful and make safer decisions when they’re on the road. John Vibes is an author, researcher and investigative journalist who takes a special interest in the counter culture and the drug war. This article was sourced from The Mind Unleashed.


activistpost--2019-02-17--Deep Dive FTC Negotiating Multi-Billion Dollar Fine For Facebooks Privacy Scandals Violating 2011

Deep Dive: FTC Negotiating Multi-Billion Dollar Fine For Facebook’s Privacy Scandals; Violating 2011 Accord

Facebook is being accused by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) of privacy violations and is in the midst of negotiating over a multi-billion dollar fine that would settle the agency’s investigation into the social media giant’s privacy concerns.  The massive fine according to several news sources is not disclosed, although it’s said that it could amount to a record multi-billion dollar fine for privacy violations, Ars Technica reported.  This comes after a series of privacy scandals, such as Cambridge Analytica, that may have put the personal information of its users at risk, as well as numerous times the company has been caught spying on its users or slipping up with its overall security.  The FTC’s probe of Facebook began in March of last year in response to big social’s entanglement with Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy firm connected to a U.S. subsidiary (SHELL COMPANY) of a UK defense contractor SCL Group, Strategic Communication Laboratories, that improperly accessed data on 87 million of the social site’s users to use for campaign targeting for U.S. President Donald Trump through his former adviser Steve Bannon. According to reports, Facebook knew for an entire three years that Cambridge Analytica was abusing and misusing user data but did absolutely nothing.  [READ: The TRUTH About The Cambridge Analytica Scandal Is Bigger Than Just Facebook #MyDataMyChoice]  The FTC’s investigation stems from whether Facebook’s conduct and lack of protection of users since then is in breach of an accord in 2011 that Facebook brokered with the FTC to improve its privacy practices. Facebook has stated it did not breach that accord, despite evidence on the contrary showing that the social media giant sold user data to third parties and may have even been recording users’ private messages with its Messenger app.  Although Facebook contends that it didn’t use the data, it openly admits that it scanned/scans all user data that is sent and received on the Messenger app and will review text you send if something is flagged, as Activist Post reported last year.  Facebook also got entangled in a bug in December of last year that gave app developers access to private user photos including those shared on Marketplace or Facebook Stories and unposted pictures — an absolute privacy nightmare. The Facebook blog states, “that some third-party apps may have had access to a broader set of photos than usual for 12 days between September 13 to September 25, 2018.” However, who’s to say the bug wasn’t preexisting for quite some time and this is just to save face for the company?  Facebook also announced another privacy issue last year: A software bug “unblocked” some people who had previously been blocked by another user, meaning the unblocked user could suddenly see some posts from the person who blocked them or message them on the Messenger app. The bug affected 800,000 users and was live for about a week at the end of May and early June according to the social company.  There is also the issue of 14 million Facebook users who thought they were posting only to their friends or smaller groups when they actually had been posting that content publicly due to their privacy settings being changed for days according to Wired.  Last year, Facebook further suffered an attack by hackers that accessed as many as 50 million Facebook user profiles without permission, Facebook said.  Facebook stated the hackers took advantage of a “vulnerability in Facebook’s code” that gave the attackers access to special “digital keys” that keep people logged into their accounts without needing to re-enter a password.  Getting those digital keys meant the hackers could then use them to “take over people’s accounts,” the company wrote in a blog post in September.  Then there is the fact that Facebook got caught for years giving tech giants access to user data as well, so it’s not just Cambridge Analytica and numerous other analytics companies.  The New York Times reported a bombshell in December of last year detailing the secret relationship that Facebook had with the tech companies including Amazon, Microsoft, Spotify, and Yahoo just to name a few. The Times report was backed by 50 former employees of the company and its partners, as well as documents for the deals.  The official corporate partnerships with Facebook totaled more than 150 companies, which The Times notes that the oldest deal dates back to 2010, one year prior to Facebook’s brokered deal with the FTC for its privacy practices. One has to wonder if the social giant disclosed these type of deals to the FTC one year later when it was under scrutiny — more than likely, probably not.  “For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.” The Times wrote.  “The special arrangements are detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times. The records, generated in 2017 by the company’s internal system for tracking partnerships, provide the most complete picture yet of the social network’s data-sharing practices. They also underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond,” The Times added.  The New York Times goes on to detail the level of access that a few companies were given to users’ profiles; and it’s quite shocking, including the ability to read and delete messages, as the Huffington Post highlighted.  Again, from The New York Times:  Besides the 150 tech companies, Facebook gave 60 device makers themselves — including Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Samsung — special access to Facebook data, according to another report by The Times. This special access allowed a reporter using a BlackBerry device (old model) to view private details of Facebook users despite their privacy settings, a shocking contention.  To make it clear, Facebook never asked for every specific user’s consent to send over their personal data to these other companies. Facebook claims that it didn’t need user consent since it considered these companies “service providers,” and “integration partners” which were acting in the interests of the social network. I am no lawyer, but it seems bluntly obvious that Facebook violated its 2011 agreement with the FTC.  In other words, the company used a loophole and said that users who logged into the aforementioned services were giving their consent to their partners.  It’s not known how far back the FTC is looking at Facebook’s privacy violations, but before 2011 it may come to the reader’s surprise that Facebook was embroiled in data scandal after scandal. To refresh the reader’s memory, in 2010 Facebook got caught giving advertisers its users’ names, ages, hometowns, and occupations simply from clicking an ad, Business Insider reported.  One year prior, in 2009, protests ensued against Facebook when the company decided to change its data retention policy for its users, ABC reported.  Two years before, in 2007, Facebook faced another scandal with its forced Beacon advertising software. Beacon would share users’ shopping experiences online or what websites a Facebook user was visiting if they were logged in.  It turns out that Beacon was tracking people’s Web activities outside the popular social networking site to other websites, PC World reported. Facebook was then sued in 2008 for violating the federal wiretap law when it began monitoring and publishing what Facebook users were doing on participating sites of Beacon.  Mark Zuckerberg himself even apologized for Beacon, explaining his thought process behind the system — of course, leaving out that it was profiting from this data. Nonetheless, Facebook finally allowed users to opt out of the system a month later.  “We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends,” Zuckerberg wrote.  In 2009, Facebook finally shut down Beacon in an effort to settle the class action lawsuit against the social-networking site and donated $9.5 million to a foundation dedicated to exploring issues around online privacy and security, Telegraph reported.  Facebook said that it learned a great deal from Beacon in 2009, but then continued these type of deceptive marketing practices selling its users’ data years later. So how much did the company actually learn? Not much, as the company started partnering with data broker firms in 2013 after the 2011 FTC ordeal. For those unfamiliar, data brokers earn money by selling your consumer habits and monitoring your online and offline spending. Facebook’s partnership allows them to measure the correlation between the ads you see on Facebook and the purchases you make in-store — and determine whether you’re actually buying the things you’re seeing digitally while using Facebook.  “We learned a great deal from the Beacon experience,” said Barry Schnitt, a spokesman for Facebook. “For one, it underscored how critical it is to provide extensive user control over how information is shared. We also learned how to effectively communicate changes that we make to the user experience.”  However, there are two more of the biggest stories Mark Zuckerberg wishes were not forever archived on the Internet. The first is from 2004, when he was 19. When Mark was in college he used his newly created website, which was “TheFacebook.com” at the time, to hack into the email accounts of two Harvard Crimson journalists critical of him. The two journalists were allegedly working on a story that made claims that Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from Cameron Winklevoss, Tyler Winklevoss, and Divvya Narenda who later founded a similar site ConnectU (HarvardConnection), Business Insider reported.  The second story is the most revealing and comes from an interview in 2009 in which Facebook is grilled by a BBC reporter, an event in Zuckerberg’s life that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden highlighted in a tweet last year. The revealing exchange is from 2009, two years after Beacon advertising software successfully launched on the platform in 2007, and 1 year before Facebook gifted its advertisers its users’ names, ages, hometowns, and occupations simply from clicking on ads, selling their information. Something that Zuckerberg said he would never do to the BBC reporter.  One year later in 2010, a story in The New York Times reveals that Mark Zuckerberg had flip-flopped and changed his view against an individual’s privacy in a penned headline, “Facebook’s Zuckerberg Says The Age of Privacy Is Over.”  Then the Zuck, Zucked us by changing everyone’s default privacy settings.  After 2011, Facebook faced another data scandal in 2013, when a bug was discovered by a white hat that exposed the email addresses and phone numbers of 6 million Facebook users to anyone who had some connection to the person or knew at least a single piece of contact information.  In February earlier last year, a German court echoed that previous ruling, stating that Facebook is breaching data protection rules with privacy settings that “over-share” by default and by requiring its users to give their real names.  The judges found that at least five different default privacy settings for Facebook were illegal, including sharing location data with its chat partners WhatsApp and Instagram or making user profiles available to external search engines, allowing anyone to search and find information on a person.  Facebook’s partners and subsidiaries collect data to enable what’s known as “hyper-targeted advertising” on its users.  Additionally, the court ruled that “eight paragraphs of Facebook’s terms of service were invalid,” while one of the most significant requires people to use their real names on the social network which the court deemed was illegal.  In 2015 the Belgian privacy commission study concluded Facebook’s use of user data violated privacy and data protection laws in the EU, Guardian reported.  All of this occurred despite another 2014 court decision where the judge ruled that Facebook must face a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating its users’ privacy by scanning the content of messages they send to other users for advertising purposes. Something that again was reminded to users last year.  A U.S. court in 2017 dismissed nationwide litigation accusing Facebook of tracking users’ Internet activity even after they logged out of the social media website. It was dismissed despite the practice previously being admitted that it would start using data from users’ Web browsing history to serve targeted advertisements, and use data from apps and websites users visited.  Although Facebook has had a plethora of scandals in its past, recently it feels like its downfall was with the emergence of a whistleblower, Christoper Wylie, thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Wylie appeared before a committee of British MPs, delivering bombshell testimony noting that Facebook has the ability to spy on all of its users in their homes and offices, something many people miss.  Facebook itself has admitted in a 2016 blog post that:  Although Facebook claims they do not listen in on conversations, the catch here is that Facebook does have access to your phone’s microphone — as giving permission to access your microphone is a requirement to be able to download the site’s mobile app – thus giving the company the ability to access your phone’s mic at any time.  The app itself can listen to audio and collect audio information from users – while the two aren’t combined, and that no audio data is stored or correlated with advertising according to Facebook, after all these other lies one has to wonder.  Facebook admits it has a public feature that started in 2014 which will try to recognize any audio in the background, like music or TV— however, it’s only while you’re entering a status update, and only if you’ve opted in. So don’t worry they have required consent for everything else!  Forbes has also reported on the potential that Facebook was using its users’ audio information to target them with ads.  Mass communication professor at the University of South Florida, Kelli Burns, believes that Facebook is using the audio it gathers not simply to help out users, but might be doing so to listen in to discussions and serve them with relevant advertising. Burns tested an experiment talking about cat food with her phone out, then loading Facebook — to her surprise she saw cat food ads, The Independent reported.  Last year, Vice reported another bizarre story about Facebook using its microphone to listen in on users. The author wrote they were talking about Japan with a friend, then subsequently received ads for flights to Tokyo.  The author then decides to do a series of tests, to see if they are being spied on.


bbc--2019-03-20--Google hit with 15bn fine from EU over advertising

Google hit with €1.5bn fine from EU over advertising

Google has been hit with a €1.49bn (£1.28bn) fine from the EU for blocking rival online search advertisers.  It is the third EU fine for the search and advertising giant in two years.  The case accuses Google of abusing its market dominance by restricting third-party rivals from displaying search ads between 2006 and 2016.  In response, Google changed its AdSense contracts with large third parties, giving them more leeway to display competing search ads.  Google owner Alphabet makes large amounts of money from advertising - pre-tax profits reached $30.7bn (£23bn) in 2018, up from $12.66bn in 2017.  "Google has cemented its dominance in online search adverts and shielded itself from competitive pressure by imposing anti-competitive contractual restrictions on third-party websites.  "This is illegal under EU anti-trust rules," said EC commissioner Margrethe Vestager.  Google's global affairs head, Kent Walker, said: "We've always agreed that healthy, thriving markets are in everyone's interest.  "We've already made a wide range of changes to our products to address the Commission's concerns.  "Over the next few months, we'll be making further updates to give more visibility to rivals in Europe."  Last year, the EU competition authority hit Google with a record €4.34bn fine for using its popular Android mobile operating system to block rivals.  This followed a €2.42bn fine in 2017 for hindering rivals of shopping comparison websites.  The European Commission said that websites often had an embedded search function.  When a consumer uses this, the website delivers both search results and search adverts, which appear alongside the search result.  Google's "AdSense for search" product delivers those adverts for website publishers.  The Commission described Google as acting like "an intermediary, like an advertising broker".  In 2006, Google started to include "exclusivity clauses" in contracts which stopped publishers from placing ads from Google rivals such as Microsoft and Yahoo on search pages, the Commission said.  From 2009, Google started replacing the exclusivity clauses with "premium placement" clauses, which meant publishers had to keep the most profitable space on their search results pages for Google's adverts and they had to request a minimum number of Google adverts.  Publishers also needed to get written permission from Google before making any changes to how rival ads were displayed, letting Google control "how attractive, and therefore clicked on, competing search adverts could be", the Commission said.  The restrictive clauses "led to a vicious circle", Ms Vestager said in a media conference.  "Google's rivals, they were unable to grow, and to compete, and as a result of that, website owners had limited options for selling advertising space on those websites, and were forced solely to rely on Google," she said.  "There was no reason for Google to include these restrictive clauses in their contracts, except to keep rivals out of the market," she added.  Between 2006 to 2016, Google had more than 70% of the search intermediation market in the EU. It generally had more than 90% of the search market and more than 75% of the online search advertising market, the Commission added.


bbc--2019-09-19--World Cup 2022 Qatar still failing to protect workers rights says Amnesty International

World Cup 2022: Qatar still failing to protect workers' rights, says Amnesty International

Workers in Qatar continue to be mistreated despite promises to improve rights ahead of the 2022 World Cup, Amnesty International says.  A new report from the human rights group says thousands of workers are going unpaid.  It adds that a new commission set up to help improve workers' rights is failing to protect them.  Amnesty has urged Qatari authorities to "end the shameful reality of labour exploitation".  "Despite the significant promises of reform which Qatar has made ahead of the 2022 World Cup, it remains a playground for unscrupulous employers," said Stephen Cockburn, Amnesty International's deputy director of global issues.  "Migrant workers often go to Qatar in the hope of giving their families a better life - instead many people return home penniless after spending months chasing their wages, with too little help from the systems that are supposed to protect them."  The report, All work, no pay: The struggle of Qatar's migrant workers for justice, cites the example of "several hundred" contractors who were forced to "return home penniless" after the companies employing them first stopped paying them then ceased to operate.  Amnesty's research focused on firms not directly related to the World Cup.  Qatari authorities passed new laws to improve workers' rights after signing an agreement with the United Nations' International Labour Organisation in November 2017.  Those changes included ending the labour sponsorship system that forced foreign workers to seek their employer's permission to change jobs or leave the country.  New legislation also introduced a temporary minimum wage, created a workers' insurance fund and set up committees to address disputes.  However, Amnesty's latest report states that several hundred migrant workers employed by three construction and cleaning companies were forced to return home without being paid.  The BBC has contacted the Qatari government for a response but following a similar report into workers' rights in February, it said it "welcomes" the "continued interest and scrutiny" of its systems from Amnesty and claimed it penalised or banned 11,994 companies in 2018 for violating labour laws.


bbc--2019-11-21--Amnesty International: Chile using violence as a deterrent

Security forces in Chile have deliberately injured people taking part in the current mass demonstrations, Amnesty International says.  The rights group said the aim is to discourage further protests.  Excessive police force had led to the deaths of five people while thousands had been seriously injured, tortured or sexually abused, the report said.  They are not isolated acts, Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International, told reporters.  "The intention of the Chilean security forces is clear: to injure demonstrators in order to discourage protest," she said in a statement.  Protesters are demanding social reforms and a change to the constitution which dates back to the pre-democracy era of the military leader, Augusto Pinochet.  The government has announced it will hold a referendum on the country's constitution.  Twenty-two people have been killed and more than 2,300 injured in the protests.  What does Amnesty say?  The security forces under the command of the president - mainly the army and the national police - are carrying out widespread attacks using unnecessary and excessive force with the intention of injuring and punishing protesters, the report states.  The deaths and injuries are a deliberate ploy to deter others from taking to the streets, it says.  "They are not isolated or sporadic events. It's not a few rotten apples within law enforcement. They are sustained attacks in different parts of the country," Ms Guevara-Rosas said.  It also condemns the number of severe eye injuries, including loss of vision.  There have been more than 270 documented cases of eye injuries from rubber bullets and tear gas cylinders with many victims alleging the security forces aimed at their eyes on purpose to try to blind them.  President Sebastián Piñera acknowledged that in some cases the security forces may have disregarded the proper rules of engagement for mass demonstrations.  What are the protests about?  The demonstrations started originally over a rise in the fare of the metro in the capital, Santiago, but quickly spread across the country and widened into more general protests against high levels of inequality, the high price of health care and poor funding for education.  Harsh repression by the security forces further stoked the anger of those protesting as did the response by President Piñera, who declared a state of emergency and said the country was "at war".  Mr Piñera has since struck a more conciliatory tone and on Sunday said: "If the people want it, we will move toward a new constitution, the first under democracy."  The current constitution, which came into force in 1980, is seen as a hangover from the time of military rule with its trust in neoliberal economics and Catholic values.  While there have been some amendments since 1980, many Chileans think they have not gone far enough to modernise the document. They demand that the state take a more active role in providing public healthcare and education.  Under an agreement between the government and opposition parties reached on Friday, a referendum will be held in April 2020 in which Chileans will be asked whether they want a new constitution and if so, how it should be drafted.  But the announcement of the planned referendum failed to quell the protests in Santiago, where demonstrators again gathered at Plaza Italia and small groups clashed with police.


bbcuk--2019-02-11--Facebook and Google news should be regulated report says

Facebook and Google news should be regulated, report says

A regulator should oversee tech giants like Google and Facebook to ensure their news content is trustworthy, a government-backed report has suggested.  The Cairncross Review into the future of the UK news industry said such sites should help users identify fake news and "nudge people towards reading news of high quality".  It also backed tax reliefs to encourage the provision of local journalism.  In addition, the report called for a new Institute for Public Interest News.  Such a body, it said, could work in a similar way to the Arts Council, channelling public and private funding to "those parts of the industry it deemed most worthy of support".  The independent review, undertaken by former journalist Dame Frances Cairncross, was tasked with investigating the sustainability of high-quality journalism.  Its recommendations include measures to tackle "the uneven balance of power" between news publishers and online platforms that distribute their content.  Services like Facebook, Google and Apple should continue their attempts to help readers understand how reliable a story is, and the process that decides which stories are shown should be more transparent, it said.  "Their efforts should be placed under regulatory scrutiny - this task is too important to leave entirely to the judgment of commercial entities," according to the report.  A regulator would initially only assess how well these sites are performing, but if they are not effective, the report warned "it may be necessary to impose stricter provisions".  Yet the report fell short of requiring Facebook, Google and other tech giants to pay for the news they distribute via their platforms.  Dame Frances told the BBC's media editor Amol Rajan that such "draconian and risky" measures could result in firms like Google withdrawing their news services altogether.  "There are a number of ways we have suggested technology companies could behave differently and could be made to behave differently," she said.  "But they are mostly ways that don't immediately involve legislation."  The report instead recommended "new codes of conduct" whose implementation would be supervised by a regulator "with powers to insist on compliance".  Frances Cairncross earned widespread respect as a journalist for her hard-headed and pragmatic approach to economics.  That pragmatism is the very reason the government commissioned her to look at the future of high-quality news - and also the reason many in local and regional media will be disappointed by her recommendations.  What is most notable about her review is what it doesn't do.  This is because the practicalities of doing these things are difficult, and experience shows that the likes of Google will simply pull out of markets that don't suit them.  There are concrete measures that could boost local news, from tax relief to an extension of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.  And Dame Frances certainly seemed cognisant of the argument that BBC News has over-reached, to the extent that it is harming the commercial sector. But this is a matter for Ofcom.  Ultimately, as this report acknowledges, when it comes to news, convenience is king. The speed, versatility and zero cost of so much news now means that, even if it is of poor quality, a generation of consumers has fallen out of the habit of paying for news.  But quality costs. If quality news has a future, consumers will have to pay. That's the main lesson of this report.  One local newspaper editor welcomed the report's recommendations while suggesting the report "comes too late for so many once proud and important community newspapers".  The Yorkshire Post's James Mitchinson said: "The various fiscal reviews and recommendations... must come quickly... if we are to turn the Cairncross Review into something which we look back upon as being instrumental in preserving what we do for generations to come."  Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright said some of its suggestions could be acted upon "immediately", while others would need "further careful consideration".  Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson urged the government to tackle Google and Facebook's "duopoly" in the digital advertising market, and said Dame Frances was "barking up the wrong tree" in recommended an inquiry into the BBC's online news output.  Follow us on Facebook, on Twitter @BBCNewsEnts, or on Instagram at bbcnewsents. If you have a story suggestion email entertainment.news@bbc.co.uk.


bearingarms--2019-11-05--Amnesty International Commission Will Look At U.S. Gun Violence

Amnesty International is a group that supposedly opposes dictatorships and human rights abuses and abusers throughout the world. They’re the people who speak up about genocidal madmen and countless other forms of evil that take place throughout the world.  Well, the group’s Inter-American Commission will take a look at the United States. In particular, gun violence in the U.S.  The hearing was requested by Amnesty International USA, the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law, the Center for American Progress, and Instituto Igarape to examine how gun violence in the United States affects the Organization of American States member countries. The hearing is a follow-up to Amnesty International’s testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Bogotá, Colombia in February 2018 laying out the ways in which the U.S. is failing to fulfill its human rights obligations to address gun violence. “This hearing will bring much needed international attention to the urgent and escalating problem of gun violence in the United States, which has become so prevalent that it amounts to a human rights crisis,” said Ernest Coverson, campaign manager of the End Gun Violence campaign at Amnesty International USA. “The ability to go about one’s daily life in security and dignity, free from fear, is at the very cornerstone of human rights and it’s well past the time that the United States government reformed its laws and policies to enact gun control.” The hearing will examine the impact on survivors of the U.S government’s failure to address gun violence, and the commission will hear testimony from individuals who have survived gun violence in the context of domestic violence, children involved in gun homicides, as well as individuals from disproportionately impacted communities of color and others across U.S. borders who are living with the life-long repercussions of the government’s inadequate regulation of firearms.  What the commission won’t be doing is listening to any of the millions of Americans who have defended their own lives thanks to having had a firearm. They also won’t be hearing about those who have been hurt or killed because someone wasn’t able to have a firearm due to gun control laws.  None of that will get a mention, primarily because Amnesty International doesn’t care about any of that.  However, if this organization says they want to stand for human rights, they need to understand that perfect safety is not a human right. It’s unachievable. Instead, a human right is empowering people to take their own safety into their own hands. That means owning firearms.  Take a look at the worst human rights abusers in history. Do you know what you find in all of those cases? A lack of private gun ownership. Even if the dictator didn’t ban guns himself, someone before them did, which allowed them to subjugate the population and commit their atrocities without fear of repercussion.  Gun ownership is a human right. It’s the most fundamental human right. It’s the only real way to protect any other right, when you get right down to it.  Further, while there are issues with violence in our inner cities, I find it ironic that the United States was singled out about the same time as eight Americans–three mothers and five children–were killed in a crossfire between two violent Mexican drug cartels. Where’s the hearing on that?  The truth is that Amnesty International is pushing to set up a framework that will lead to more human rights abuses here in the United States if they get their way. It’s imperative that we don’t let them get it.