10/13/22: CURSE OF CHUCKERBERG – HACKING YOUR DIGITAL REMAINS

Our relationship with the internet and electronic devices has already created a digital transformation.  As an ever-increasing amount of time is spent on our gadgets and online, we are constantly adding to our digital footprint. What is most alarming is that when your physical self dies, your digital self remains on the internet — unless you notify your loved ones of your passwords, you will be caught in a digital hell and they will be unable to recover your digital remains. Tonight on Ground Zero, Clyde Lewis talks about CURSE OF CHUCKERBERG – HACKING YOUR DIGITAL REMAINS.

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10/13/22: CURSE OF CHUCKERBERG – HACKING YOUR DIGITAL REMAINS

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We have often heard that the whole Transhuman agenda is to create immortality through having a symbiotic relationship with machines. Now we have to come to terms with the idea that our relationship with the internet and with our cellphones has already created the digital transformation.

Digital transformation is accompanied by a shift toward a digital society, a world with pervasive ubiquitous digital connectivity, and arguably, a quantified planet, wherein animate and inanimate objects increasingly have their digital twins and digital footprints. For example, a major current initiative of the European Commission is Destination Earth which has the objective to “develop a very high precision digital model of the Earth (a ‘digital twin’) to monitor and predict environmental change and human impact to support sustainable development.”

You may not know it but not only do you have your physical self — but you have also created a digital doppelganger when you are posting on social media, answering e-mails, or doing online banter in chat rooms.

But what is most alarming is that when your physical self dies — your digital self remains on the internet and unless you notify your loved ones of your passwords — you will be caught in a digital hell with your loved ones unable to recover your digital remains.

Have you heard the term Digital Death? It is a relatively new concept in our society that is making us think about what happens to our digital information and assets after we die. As an ever-increasing amount of our time is spent on our devices and online, we are constantly adding to our digital footprint. Take a moment to think about all that you do on your phone, tablet or computer. Online banking, shopping, photos and conversations are some common examples of what most of us have in our digital inventory. For better or worse, all of these things will outlive us unless we make a plan for our digital life after death.

Digital Death is the process of planning and taking action to control what happens to your digital information, as well as controlling who will receive the information, documents, photos and account passwords when you pass.

I guess it would be an understatement to say that the culture is changing rapidly. America has always had its culture wars, and they’re only intensified when news events big and small are filtered through the prism of Republican or Democrat, Right and Left, white-privileged, male-dominated, non-diverse, politically correct, Nationalist vs. Communist, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish agendas.

We are the melting pot that has boiled over and the scalding reality is that consensus has been fragmented and a sense of extremism permeates through every group that sees itself as special or victimized.

All cultural arguments and talking points are now being tested in the mainstream media after they have been grown in social media. Social media is so intrinsic to our lives and yet we don’t even think about what happens to our Facebook. Instagram or tik toc channels when we shake this mortal coil.

If you want a topic for a creepy horror movie then perhaps you can look into how many people who are on Facebook who are dead.

Good Trust, a leader in the death tech industry, estimates there are more than “30 million dead people on Facebook,” with accounts of deceased users still showing millions of photos, status updates and opinions on topics that are recent.

Many would say that their loved ones are still updating their Facebook pages.. but what is creepy is that most Facebook users who die forget to leave behind passwords –and so how is the page updating on its own?

That is the mystery.

According to Wired, Good Trust CEO Rikard Steiber has personally invested time in figuring out what to do with this massive digital graveyard, as it seems to be an afterthought for many social media users. In fact, a Good Trust survey revealed that “some 90 percent of people here in the U.S. have no plans whatsoever” as to “what happens to the digital stuff” after they die,

That means all those cherished photos in your iCloud, or those Bitcoin assets you may have tucked away, could potentially be lost forever when you kick the proverbial bucket.

Meanwhile, according to Facebook’s guidelines, a person’s account becomes “memorialized” after they die.

Memorialized accounts are a place for friends and family to gather and share memories after a person has passed away. Memorializing an account also helps keep it secure by preventing anyone from logging into it,

In n 2019, Twitter revealed it would begin deleting accounts of inactive users as they cannot agree to updated policy terms. The decision sparked a backlash as many people were upset at the thought of losing a loved one’s digital remains.

Again this does not explain how some accounts of dead Facebook users continue to update and how some users are still posting on other Facebook pages.

There are some who speculate that AI bots are somehow commandeering sites of the dead and are updating them randomly — or they are being used by some unknown hacking group that posts anonymous propaganda on websites and other social media pages.

We know that in the future AI bots may one day be able to interact with the loved ones of the deceased by adopting the dead users’ mannerisms, chat styles and digital personalities to interact as authentically as possible.

Perhaps some rogue algorithm is already raising dead loved ones from the digital grave.

And of course, there is the other possibility –and that is the dead are speaking through their Facebook pages.

It is very possible as many ghost hunters now have been using electronic equipment to detect ghosts as they give off electromagnetic signatures. This is how we can receive EVP or use ITC to contact the dead.

The problem is how you can get a signal from one of the 30 million Facebook dead to update or post something– that would be an arduous task.

It would be a very good topic for a Black Mirror episode.

The dead will eventually outnumber the living on Facebook, according to a new study whose authors want us to think more about the importance of preserving our collective digital histories.

The phenomenon could take place within the next 50 years, though will likely take longer, according to a research paper from the University of Oxford Internet Institute.

Carl J. Öhman and David Watson used a combination of data, including projected mortality and population rates from the U.N. as well as Facebook’s user growth over time. It may take a little longer than 50 years to reach the tipping point, the authors admit — that calculation assumes Facebook’s user growth stopped after 2018, but the company continues to grow. Still, it’s likely to happen “in the first decades of the 22nd century,” they say.

Öhman and Watson hope their work will serve as “an opportunity to respond with thoughtful and effective policy interventions” when it comes to handling what we leave behind online when we die, they wrote.

The personal digital heritage left by the online dead are, or will at least become, part of our shared cultural digital heritage,” the authors wrote, “which may prove invaluable not only to future historians but to future generations as part of their record and self-understanding.

This is all interesting and good to think ahead but when a photo pops up in your suggested friends file and that person’s dead — it can get a little creepy.

I know that death is a hard thing to talk about – I mean it is really hard to actually think about that there will be a time where you won’t exist anymore and while it is comforting to think that this is not the end for you spiritually, it may be a bit weird to think about how many of us will live on digitally.

Yes, we now live in an age where when you pass away, you have to also contemplate how you will live in an afterlife online.

Now before you think this is some sort of made-up blasphemy, you have to understand that while you probably know where you want your money and other physical possessions to go, you have a lot of digital assets to pass on too. You need to plan for the future of those accounts.

People are so used to making living wills, and leaving behind instructions for the living after death that they may not have considered instructions on the digital items that your family may want to access after you die. That includes financial accounts, but also any photos and videos stored online, digital notebooks, email, social media accounts, your phone, and even your contact list.

I remember that there was a kind lady that would always show up at the Ground Zero lounge. She was financially well off, and every time she would come to the shows she would give me a hundred-dollar bill and then she would buy a lot of my merchandise.

She became a bit of a friend – I had been to her house, we would have lunch and then when her husband died she had to move away.

We would keep in touch on Facebook. I would see her post things from time to time. I would say hello and she would look me up on messenger and we would text each other. For some reason, she just wasn’t available online. I tried to call but her phone had been disconnected.

Then one day, I got a reminder on Facebook that it was her birthday – I went to her Facebook page and wished her a happy birthday. I later received a phone message that she died a year ago.

I was told that the family had no access to her passwords or even to her contact lists – and so most of her friends in social media learned of her death when Facebook sent out a birthday reminder.

A recent extension to the cultural relationship with death is the increasing number of people who die having created a large amount of digital content, such as social media profiles, that will remain after death.

But another trend is that Increasingly, Facebook has become our conduit for talking to the dead.

Sometimes people send out messages to dead family members on their sites — some have claimed to have gotten direct messages from dead loved ones online.

Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and author of “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” comments that there is nothing wrong with occasionally wishing a happy birthday to good old dead posthumously or a happy mothers day to a departed mom — talking to a dead loved one expecting an answer can inidicate a very bad psychological disconnect.

She notes, it’s important to distinguish between online community memorials and the act of talking to the dead — and the latter might not be the healthiest of behaviors in her view.

And then there is the desire to still feel the deceased’s presence. In the past, when someone died, people would call their phone answering machine just to listen to the deceased’s voice in an outgoing message.

People have also claimed to have received phone calls from their dead loved ones.

There have even been cases of dead loved ones calling after a  major accident or tragedy. It could be a plane crash or a major disaster and yet they still manage to call from the dead.

Arnie and Myriam Notkin was an old couple who lived in Apartment 302 in the now-destroyed Champlain condominium in Surfside, Florida.

Jake Samuelson, their grandson claimed that his mother’s house line has been receiving calls from the Notkin’s landline phone that he said rested next to their bed in the now demolished condominium. But there was no human sound on the other end of the line, only static. The family claimed that they received a total of 16 calls with the first one coming in the evening of the condo collapse. The family held out hope that they were still alive and that they were trying tio get the attention of rescuers.

I received an e-mail from a listener who told me that the Notkins did not survive the collapse.

The creepiest call of all is a voicemail that was left behind by a man named Henry McCabe.

Henry McCabe’s story is certainly a strange one. You have a man out on the town just trying to enjoy a long Labor Day weekend. Then, in the span of 30 minutes and one bizarre voicemail, he becomes a missing person case shrouded in mystery to this day.

Henry was 32 years old and had immigrated to the United States from Liberia. He lived in California for a while with his wife and daughters. The family had been very active in the Liberian-American community in California by all accounts. At some point they decided to move to Mounds View, Minnesota where Henry worked as an auditor for the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

He was described as outgoing, friendly, and outspoken. Just a fun kind of person to be around. He was reportedly devoted to his family and had no reason to want to disappear or end his life. Henry was a young guy with a beautiful family, a good, stable career, he was active in his community, and had a whole life ahead of him. So, how did a night out of fun turn into a nightmare?

On the evening of September 6, 2015, Henry left his home in the town of Mounds View, Minnesota to go to a nightclub with his friends. They went to a club called Povlitzki’s in Spring Lake Park, which was about a five-minute drive from Mounds View. Their time at the club must have been mostly uneventful, other than one of Henry’s friends allegedly taking his wallet to prevent him from buying more drinks because no major clues were derived from within the place. It seems like it was just a normal boy’s night out with the typical types of shenanigans. At least until they left the bar

The guys left the club around 2 am. Henry hopped into the car of William Kennedy, who had planned to take him home from there. However, as he later told investigators, Henry asked to be dropped off at a gas station in Fridley. Fridley was another town a six minute drive from Spring Lake Park and was also in the complete opposite direction from Henry’s home. So, William obliged Henry and took him to this gas station.

At the time there was some mix-up about what gas station it actually was. William mistakenly thought he had dropped Henry off at the Super America station on the corner of Highway 65 and 73rd Avenue. He was so sure that he actually took investigators to that station and showed them where he believed he had parked that night. However, surveillance footage shows Henry actually being dropped off at the Hotel station between Central Avenue and Hackmann Avenue.

These two gas stations are more or less down the highway from each other, about a 7-minute drive. And the footage is there to prove Henry was actually dropped off, it just seems that William was mistaken on the exact location.

So it’s not really known what happens from here. What we do know is that Henry made a series of three calls, which pinged on towers in three separate towns. One in Spring Lake Park. One in Fridley. And one in New Brighton, a town that was in close proximity to the other three.

In the span of 30 minutes, Henry’s cell phone pinged on towers in three separate towns. Now, remember that he was on foot and had no money in the middle of the night. According to Google Maps, it would be a half-hour to an hour walk between any of those points, depending on the starting and ending destinations.

The last call, the one that pinged in New Brighton, resulted in a two-minute voicemail left on Henry’s wife’s phone. What can be heard in this voicemail is two full minutes of sounds that are, quite frankly, hard to believe are made by a human. There are moans, groans, high pitched squeals, it’s indescribable.

The entire two-minute voicemail was not released by police — only a short segment. But in that segment, we have to wonder what happened to him.

According to police at the end of the voicemail, there’s a brief pause and a low voice says “stop it.” It has never been determined if that voice was Henry’s or that of an unknown assailant.

Members of the Liberian-American community came out in droves to help search for Henry. Some volunteers even came from California to assist. They used his known locations and the cell phone tower pings to narrow in on where to look. They did multiple searches over the two months that Henry was missing.

Volunteers searched Spring Lake Park starting at Povlitzki’s. They searched the areas of both gas stations in Fridley. Then they searched the Creek View Park area of New Brighton, which was where Henry’s cell phone last pinged. Unfortunately they were not able to find any clues to what had happened to Henry.

A $10,000 reward for information leading to the discovery of Henry’s whereabouts was offered by Minnesota Community Policing Services INC. This was a nonprofit organization that specialized in public safety. I couldn’t find a distinct description of their services because they no longer have a website, but they were pretty instrumental in helping organize the searches for Henry and seemed to help with press statements as well. I suspect they did a lot of work with things like victim advocacy, taking on some private investigating and fundraising.

Interestingly though, on October 23, 2015, the Minnesota Community Policing Services retracted the reward after there was a conflict with Henry’s wife. A spokesman for the organization told a newspaper that the reward was discontinued because of her “willingness to mislead the public.

In September of 2015, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office Water Patrol did a massive search of Rice Creek. They started in Long Lake located in New Brighton and followed the river to Locke Lake in Fridley, cutting off right before entering the Mississippi River. They were also unable to find any clues to Henry’s fate.

Then, on November 2, 2015, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office was notified by a kayaker of a dead body sighting in Rush Lake in New Brighton. The water patrol was sent out to retrieve the body. At the time of retrieval, the body was so decomposed that race, gender, and age could not be determined by sight. The Ramsey County Medical Examiner determined two days later, on November 4th, that the body was Henry McCabe.

The full autopsy details were released on November 20th with Henry’s cause of death being determined to have been drowning. There was no signs of Trauma -no suspects have ever been named and his death hasn’t necessarily been labeled a homicide, but the investigation is still open.

What could those noises possibly have been? Was Henry actually the one who made them? And how was he able to ping off of all those cell phone towers in such a short time? It kind of makes me wonder if he was picked up by someone after he left the field of view of the gas station’s security camera.

Is it possible that he was lost and confused and wandered really far really fast trying to find his way home and some awful fate befell him? I just want to know how he ended up in that lake.

The voicemail, however, is quite odd –some people claim that McCabe may have been attacked by an animal or that perhaps it was a Bigfoot or that he was a werewolf  – there are some that even claim that he was on drugs or that he was transforming into some hideous being.

Either way, in our digital world things can happen that are certainly unexplainable. However, these experiences are happening and there are many people who are afraid to speak up because they worry that they are losing their sanity.

 

Written by Ron Patton