MONOLOGUE WRITTEN BY CLYDE LEWIS

A few days ago we reported about the meeting in Switzerland with members of the Bilderberg group. Out of the many key points on their agenda, there was one point that seems to be materializing at the moment and that is the weaponization of the Internet with a direct focus on social media platforms. It can be argued that the Internet and social media platforms are the most consequential communications tools since the invention of the written word. Communications really were supercharged when everything could be done on smartphones.

It can also be argued that social media has been used to fuel popular uprisings, the most striking example in the Arab Spring. At the time, a lot of people talked about social media being this powerful, democratizing force.

We now have expression and calls for resistance and revolution in the hands of everyone.

The trouble is that even though we may feel that we have the power of a text to start a protest or an uprising - authoritarian regimes also have access to this tool. The advent of what has been called the technotronic era is now the advent of technotronic malfeasance at the hands of the secret government planners at Bilderberg.

It is business as usual for the shadowy world planners to implement the philosophy of the institutionalized predator state that condones the lack of due process, encourages that spirit of the police state and welcomes the tracking and surveillance of everyone because we are told we can never be too careful.

The President of the United States with all of his detractors will be reduced to nothing more than a warden overseeing a gulag of people that do not know what they truly want.

Here in America, we may not be confined to a camp of barbed wire and the concrete blocks, but we are building them spiritually and then they will materialize all for the cause of what we call “freedom.”

Authoritarians have figured out how to use social media in a couple of key ways. One is that it gives them a new way of monitoring their population and what theyundefinedre thinking and what theyundefinedre saying.

The biggest casualty in this techno malfeasance is the monitoring of journalists and whistleblowers. For example, a rebellious journalist who wants to break out an inside story tweets it to his followers. He is then forced to take it down. Depending on the country he lives in he can be banned from posting anything else or in places like Turkey he could wind up in a Turkish Prison.

Many governments around the world are using the power of draconian laws to silence journalists, ban them, jail them and in some cases kill them.

Then you have this new model that China is presenting which is this almost perverse incentive system - itundefineds called the social credit system - where essentially all your different online activities, everything from what you say to what you buy, can all be monitored and is brought together into a single score of your social trustworthiness.

That score then is used to give you rewards in society, everything from free charges of your smartphone at coffee shops, to the negative side where you canundefinedt take planes to travel. Itundefineds used in job evaluations. Itundefineds even used in dating profiles, so it affects your social life.

This whole social network takeover goes in a way that Orwell never could have imagined in his book, 1984. Your score reflects not only what you do but what everyone else in your network does. So if, for example, your brother is not being positive enough about the government online, your score will go down.

So then youundefinedll go to your brother and pressure him to accept and support all of what the regime says. This is this strange way of using technology, in essence, to steer us to a behavior that at least in China the government wants. What we do in America is similar as soldiers in the identity war have this idea that if they ban or block people from Facebook it will miraculously undefinedShow themundefined and that it will change their minds but what it truly does is steer algorithms in the direction of what it sees as a popular concept that reinforces a narrative or an agenda. In some cases, people eventually cave into and support these narratives without knowing that they were actually coerced into giving in to what the identity warrior’s demand.

The goal of weaponizing social media and the internet is to achieve whatundefineds known as mass control, to steer an entire population towards a certain direction. Itundefineds not just the idea that you will have your online activity but that the government will force you to have this kind of Internet presence. For example, there are certain places in China where there are police checkpoints, physical checkpoints where they will check your smartphone to ensure that you have the app that allows monitoring of you.

We are staring our Orwellian future right in the face. Beginning in New York, facial recognition has now arrived in schools in the United States and it has now been switched on for its undefinedtesting phase.undefined

According to an article by Engadget, the Lockport City School District in New York is testing a facial and object recognition system called “Aegis.”

According to BuzzFeed News, that will make it the first in the U.S. to pilot a facial recognition mass surveillance system on its students and faculty.

The district installed cameras and the software suite back in September, using $1.4 million of the $4.2 million funding it received through the New York Smart Schools Bond Act. Funding provided through the Bond Act is supposed to go towards instructional tech devices, such as iPads and laptops, but the district changed their minds.

BuzzFeed News got its hands on a copy of a letter distributed to the students’ parents, and it describes Aegis as “an early warning system” that can notify officials of threats. But that’s the propagandized version of what the system is in reality: it’s a mass surveillance tool being sold to the public as “safety” as with any human rights infringement. The system, created by Canadian company SN Technologies, can apparently keep track of certain individuals in school grounds.

Schools have long been indoctrination centers and it doesn’t look like that trend will be reversed anytime soon; in fact, it’s being amplified. The system can identify students and staff who’ve been suspended, but it’s unclear if Lockport will use it to monitor those who’ve been suspended over non-violent offenses. Aegis claims that it will delete all footage after 60 days and it won’t record the movements of students, staff, and visitors that aren’t in the list of individuals to monitor. That said, the system will have to analyze everyone’s faces to identify people it will have to “keep an eye on.” So in truth, this system monitors everyone and is mass surveillance packed up to sound like security.

It’s difficult to believe anyone falls for this anymore, but the truth is treason in an empire of lies. Anyone who’s read even a small amount of history knows there’s no benevolence to this at all. It’s an authoritarian dystopian system that seeks to monitor everyone at all times, and it’s coming to all schools.

There are, fortunately, some other people out there who understand just how invasive and this human rights trampling system has become. Stefanie Coyle, an education counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, told BuzzFeed News that the organization asked the New York State Education Department to block the project. After all, San Francisco banned the technology, and it’s a city filled with tech companies that understand it best.

Meanwhile, a government watchdog says the FBI has access to about 640 million photographs including from driver’s licenses, passports and mugshots that can be searched using facial recognition technology.

The figure reflects how the technology is becoming an increasingly powerful law enforcement tool, but is also stirring fears about the potential for authorities to intrude on the lives of Americans. It was reported by the Government Accountability Office at a congressional hearing in which both Democrats and Republicans raised questions about the use of the technology.

The FBI maintains a database known as the Interstate Photo System of mugshots that can help federal, state and local law enforcement officials. It contains about 36 million photographs, according to Gretta Goodwin of the GAO.

But taking into account the bureau contracts providing access to driver’s licenses in 21 states, and its use of photos and other databases, the FBI has access to about 640 million photographs, Goodwin told lawmakers at the House oversight committee hearing.

Dozens of civil liberties advocates asked lawmakers this week to implement a temporary, federal moratorium on the facial recognition technology.

However, I really do not believe that lawmakers will see a need to do so as the open playing field of Instagram and other platforms provide a treasure trove of data that they can compare to their vast databases.

The late Zbigniew Brzeziński a former member of the Council on Foreign Relations and Bilderberg attendee once stated in his book, Between Two Ages: Americaundefineds Role in the Technotronic Era.

“The technotronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities. ”

Tech platforms certainly have a lot of power and it appears that the Bilderberg elites want more control of them, in so much as they are now pushing for investigations into which platforms wish to comply with their plans of a techno panopticon.

Calls to rein in major U.S. tech companies, either by cracking down on how the companies use their power or by breaking them up, began to circulate in recent years among some academics and activists but did not receive mainstream attention until the past year, when elected officials and even some in the tech industry began openly calling for action.

In March, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., publicly called for the break-up of Facebook, Google, and Amazon. Since then, other prominent Democrats and even some Republicans have voiced support for either splitting up the major tech companies or taking action to address their power.

I am sure much of what is being done is political because of allegations that these tech platforms influenced the 2016 election process.

However, there is also a body of thought that many of these companies pose a threat to power and have the ability to sway the public away from government control.

The House Judiciary Committee announced that it will hold a series of hearings as part of a bipartisan investigation into whether there is enough competition among U.S. technology companies.

While no companies were named, any investigation will inevitably touch on Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Apple, all of which have come under increased scrutiny in recent years for their dominance in a variety of markets including social networking, online advertising, online search, e-commerce, and mobile apps.

undefinedA small number of dominant, unregulated platforms have extraordinary power over commerce, communication, and information online,undefined the Judiciary Committee noted in a news release that included the names of both Democratic and Republican members. undefinedBased on investigative reporting and oversight by international policymakers and enforcers, there are concerns that these platforms have the incentive and ability to harm the competitive process.undefined

undefinedThe Antitrust Subcommittee will conduct a top-to-bottom review of the market power held by giant tech platforms. This is the first time Congress has undertaken an investigation into this behavior.undefined

One area of the investigation is likely to be particularly unwelcome among tech executives: The committee said it would look into whether existing antitrust laws and enforcement levels are adequate to address the growing concentration of power in the tech industry.

Coincidentally when it was announced that investigation was underway, the Google Cloud that affects Gmail, YouTube, SnapChat, Instagram, and Facebook among others mysteriously and almost unprecedently went offline.

The Google Cloud outage also affected third-party apps and services that use Google Cloud space for hosting. Affected third-party apps and services include Discord, Snapchat, and even Apple’s iCloud services.

But an especially annoying side effect of Google Cloud’s downtime was that Nest-branded smart home products for some users just failed to work. According to reports from Twitter, many people were unable to use their Nest thermostats, Nest smart locks, and Nest cameras during the downtime. This essentially meant that because of a cloud storage outage, people were prevented from getting inside their homes, using their AC, and monitoring their babies.

The downtime of their Cloud Platform goes a long way to show what can happen in an age when smart home technology requires always being connected to the cloud.

This is another reason why 5G and the internet of things may not be a good idea.

A totally connected world will also be especially susceptible to cyberattacks. Even before the introduction of 5G networks, hackers have breached the control center of a municipal dam system, stopped an Internet-connected car as it traveled down an interstate, and sabotaged home appliances.

Ransomware, malware, crypto-jacking, identity theft, and data breaches have become so common that more Americans are afraid of cybercrime than they are of becoming a victim of violent crime. Adding more devices to the online universe is destined to create more opportunities for disruption and better opportunities for dangerous and invasive surveillance.

China’s leadership has enthusiastically embraced AI technologies and has set up the world’s most sophisticated surveillance state in Xinjiang province, tracking citizens’ daily movements and smartphone use.

Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE are constructing smart cities in Pakistan, the Philippines, and Kenya, featuring extensive built-in surveillance technology,undefined and although undefinedselling advanced equipment for profit is different than sharing technology with an express geopolitical purpose, these new capabilities may plant the seeds for global surveillance: As governments become increasingly dependent upon Chinese technology to manage their populations and maintain power, they will face greater pressure to align with China’s agenda.

The U.S. is campaigning to prevent Huawei 5G technology from being deployed in networks in allied countries. Its argument is that there may be cyber backdoors that either facilitate information collection or enable a network compromise attack. The U.S. also claims that Huawei is heavily linked to the government in Beijing and obliged to do its bidding. All of this is vehemently denied of course.

The latest news is that the CIA showed intelligence to senior British officials supporting claims that Huawei undefinedhas received funding from branches of Beijing’s state security apparatusundefined American intelligence shown to Britain says that Huawei has taken money from the People’s Liberation Army, China’s National Security Commission and a third branch of the Chinese State intelligence network.undefined

It looks as if the cyber Cold War is underway, however, the question, in the end, is who are going to control the controllers and how quickly will our technology will be fully weaponized by the powerful elite that met in the Bilderberg gathering?

The technologies and social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook that once promised to enhance democracy are now increasingly being used to undermine it.

The technotronic system rewards clicks, interactions, engagement and immersion time. If you can figure out how to make something go viral, you can overwhelm even the truth itself.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/technotronic-malfeasance-june-04-2019