U.S.-based TikTok executives were totally “complicit” in efforts to hand over Americans’ data to China despite company assertions to the contrary, a former senior data scientist at the social media platform alleged, according to Fortune.
The House of Representatives passed legislation in March that would compel Chinese parent company ByteDance to sell TikTok for the social media app to continue operating in the United States because of the potential national security threats of its ownership. Evan Turner, a former senior data scientist who worked for the popular app in 2022 from April to September, alleged TikTok hid the participation of ByteDance in the app’s operations during his tenure, which overlapped with an initiative intended to solve the issue of Chinese data access, Fortune reported Monday.
Other ex-TikTok workers interviewed spoke of the progress TikTok has made to separate itself from its China-based parent and segregate U.S. user data from China.
“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,” Turner told Fortune. “They were completely complicit in that. There were Americans that were working in upper management that were completely complicit in this.”
Turner first reported to a Beijing-based ByteDance executive but the company then announced Project Texas, a $1.5 billion initiative to establish an isolated unit to safeguard American data, leading him to receive a documented reassignment to a Seattle manager, he told Fortune. However, a human resources representative acknowledged Turner would persist in collaborating with the ByteDance executive.
The former senior data scientist participated in short meetings with the ByteDance executive on a weekly basis, where he would provide rudimentary updates on his progress with key assignments, Fortune reported.
Turner was allegedly required to send spreadsheets containing hundreds of thousands of American TikTok users’ data, including names, emails and locations to ByteDance staff every 14 days, he told Fortune. The project’s intention was to use the data to learn trends to make users more hooked on the app, and it occurred after Project Texas launched.
Fortune interviewed 11 ex-employees, many alleging TikTok’s operations were connected to ByteDance to an extent while they worked there despite the company’s claims it was prohibiting the Chinese parent company from having access. Some of the former employees spoke anonymously because of concerns of revenge against them, according to the outlet.
Managers within TikTok were directing employees to send similar data to ByteDance, bypassing authorized channels, according to current and previous employees as well as company records The Wall Street Journal saw in January. Executives believe it is crucial to distribute the data supposedly protected by Project Texas to ByteDance because it controls TikTok’s algorithm, individuals with knowledge of the project’s unit told the WSJ.
TikTok and ByteDance did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s response for comment.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-04-18 16:51:242024-04-18 16:51:24Ex-TikTok Employee Alleges American Executives Were ‘Completely Complicit’ In Giving ‘U.S. Data To China’
In the wake of House subcommittee hearings this week on threats coming from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the FBI and lawmakers are warning of the cybersecurity threat that the CCP poses to U.S. infrastructure.
Over the last year, the size and scope of the CCP’s cyberwarfare tactics have begun to come to light, which U.S. officials have publicly admitted to being stunned by. On Tuesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray repeated his warnings from January (when he stated that China’s hackers are “wreaking havoc” on American infrastructure), remarking that the CCP is “the defining threat of our generation.”
He continued, “China’s hacking program is larger than that of every other major nation, combined. If each one of the FBI’s cyber agents and intelligence analysts focused exclusively on the China threat, China’s hackers would still outnumber FBI cyber personnel by at least 50 to 1.”
Examples of the CCP’s cyberwarfare campaign on the U.S. abound. A recent report from The Heritage Foundation catalogues how CCP have hackers infiltrated “key sectors including communications, energy and water,” and “may have the ability to access heating and air conditioning systems to overheat data servers, to cause blackouts by disrupting control rooms that regulate water and electricity, and to manipulate surveillance cameras at some of these facilities.”
In February, a report revealed that Chinese hackers had embedded themselves inside U.S. infrastructure IT environments for five years without being detected in order to extract sensitive information.
In addition, the military is among the prime targets of the CCP’s cyberwarfare campaign. In 2013, it was discovered that a China-backed military hacking group known as APT1 “had pilfered military contractor designs such as the Patriot, THAAD and Aegis missile systems, as well as aircraft designs including the F/A-18 Super Hornet, V-22 Osprey, Black Hawk helicopter and F-35 joint strike fighter.”
Government email servers have also been exploited by CCP hackers, with the Biden administration hammering Microsoft for its lax cybersecurity policies.
On Thursday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) contended that increased openness about the threat of CCP hackers is needed in order to keep the U.S. government accountable.
“[W]e can’t always talk about [cyber threats] because a lot of the stuff is classified — that’s the problem. The American public really needs to be informed on a lot of this stuff so they can put pressures in the right areas. Unfortunately, a lot of stuff is not declassified sometimes on purpose, sometimes because we just get used to containing this information.”
McCormick, a former emergency room doctor who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the House Armed Services Committee, went on to highlight a recent cyberattack on the health care industry.
“But quite frankly, we don’t have to worry just about cybersecurity and having our information stolen. [W]e recently had a bunch of hospitals shut down [as well as] their billing process — just that alone could be destructive [by] stealing a patient’s information [and] how we reimburse medicine and hospitals and doctors. It sounds like a trivial thing, but when that happens for a couple of weeks, you’re talking about billions of dollars of impact, one out of every three patients.”
The congressman further pointed out the immense scope of the cybersecurity threat posed by the CCP.
“We’re being constantly attacked, relentlessly attacked. It’s disruptive to our entire society — [it] can happen on power grids, it can happen to your information, it can happen to businesses. This is something that we have to be more and more aware of because as AI [artificial intelligence] comes into its full fruition, it starts to affect us. It can literally be like this scenario out of movies where you see stoplights changing the wrong color at the wrong time [and] could cause catastrophes, shut down your power to a hospital. It could do all kinds of horrible things that would impact our economy and our society in major ways.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins responded by emphasizing the importance of a competent government. “[T]his puts a lot of responsibility on the government, because if there’s one thing the government has a responsibility to do … [it] is to protect us.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-04-15 22:52:072024-04-15 22:52:07Lawmakers, FBI Director Warn of CCP’s Vast Cyberwarfare Campaign
It’s bad news for our constitutional republic as 86 members of the socialist Republican Party working in tight unity with the Communist Democrat party is continuing to follow the same path of the Communist Venezuelan Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) and the General Directorate of Venezuelan Military Counterintelligence.
The Republican controlled Congress has recently re-funded the unconstitutional spying on American citizens without a warrant much like the Venezuelan government. The Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela like the Republican controlled Congress in Washington DC also redirects millions of dollars to spy on its Venezuelan citizens.
The Maduro Communists in Venezuela use Italian and Russian technology to monitor emails, keywords and telephone conversations and internet surfing of its citizens.
The National Security Agency (NSA) and the corrupt FBI leadership in Washington DC use AT&T telecommunications software and hardware. Same corrupt system using different platforms.
The SEBIN Communists in Venezuela operate from two headquarters. The first is El Helicoide where the Communists spying on its citizens originated and the second more modern facility is in Plaza Venezuela. This building has a close resemblance to the NSA listening post in New York City.
The secretive members of the Communist Venezuelan SEBIN agency are rarely seen in public wearing their full black uniforms; they could be compared to the secretive duties of the NSA or FBI perhaps even the Men in Black operating under deep state surveillance programs.
These Communist Venezuelan federal officials can be sometimes seen providing protection for dignitaries within a few federal buildings throughout Venezuela. But they are rarely seen.
In Plaza Venezuela Maduros political prisoners are held for interrogation much like the J6 Biden political prisoners in the USA are being held in prison.
The Venezuelan political prisoners are shackled five stories underground of the SEBIN headquarters. The cells are permanently kept at freezing temperatures with no ventilation, sanitation, or daylight.
One of my Venezuelan wife’s close friend’s were executed with a bullet to the head by the Communist regime in Caracas. My wife was granted asylum in Colombia for 10 years as she feared for her life after she denounced Maduro before relocating to the USA to be with me.
The 86 republican traitors to our constitutional republic who voted yes to continue the Bush, Obama / Biden 4th Amendment violations on Americans must be removed from our Congress sooner rather than later. They are of the same mindset of the Communist legislature in Venezuela.
It must be noted that the Communist government of Venezuela led by the dictatorship of Nicolas Maduro also “maintains a network of spies in the United States, formed by supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution” according to former Communist SEBIN officials.
We Americans must continue to publish articles that offend the Biden Marxist regime, while we protect our internet surfing history, protect our phone calls etc spied on by AT&T technology, where our Emails etc being read unconstitutionally by the NSA and FBI without a warrant. We must also be wary of the Communist dictatorship of Venezuela operating in our republic.
The first step to disrupt the NSA and FBI from spying on us as conservatives is to immediately delete your Facebook and Instagram accounts. Change your phone company from AT&T to something else. Stop traveling with your IPhone, delete as many applications as possible from your phone. Disable the microphone in your iPhone.
Reduce your phone contact list to only close associates reduce your circle to only close friends. Create un breakable passwords on your g mail accounts and online banking.
We must not allow this Republican weasel led Congress to continue funding Biden’s weaponized FBI and NSA programs. They are traitors, they are bottom feeding maggots they are UnAmerican scum that live in a recycled septic tank of Marxist crap.
Vote these evil politicians out of office both republican and democrat. Replace them with constitutional conservatives. Vote for Trump in November 2024 and crush these deep state Marxists. Crush them like fleas. Crush them at the ballot box, stop funding their campaigns. Do it.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-04-15 10:51:152024-04-15 10:51:15Crush the Deep State Fraud Republican Maggots on November 5th, 2024
Last month, Google AdSense warned us to take down articles about Islamic terrorism, including one about the San Bernardino terrorist attack at a California Christmas party, or we wouldn’t be allowed to be part of their ad revenue program. And we didn’t even have to think twice about it.
After five years of political persecution by the IRS, we’re struggling to financially survive, but we won’t censor ourselves for Big Tech cash. We will go on telling the truth about Islamic terrorism.
A few weeks later, Frontpage Editor Jamie Glazov had his account disabled by Facebook over one of his Glazov Gang interviews warning about the threat of Islamic terrorism in America.
According to Facebook, Jamie Glazov’s work of exposing the Islamic terror threat, violated its “community standards” and posed a threat to “the security of people on Facebook.”
Which people on Facebook was the interview about Islamic terrorism a threat to?
While Facebook was telling Glazov that criticizing Hamas and other Jihadists posed a threat, its Oversight Board had ruled that the company should stop taking down posts calling Islamic terrorists “shaheeds” or “martyrs” because it violated their “freedom of expression.”
On Facebook, Islamic terrorism supporters have the freedom of expression to praise terrorism, but counterterrorism journalists like Jamie Glazov are banned from exposing them.
While Jamie Glazov has been banned from Facebook, Jihadists routinely operate there.
Telling the story of the barbarous Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 got Jamie Glazov banned, but one of the little told stories of that day is how Islamic terrorists had used Facebook to taunt and terrorize the families of their victims.
When Islamic terrorists broke into the home of Bracha Levinson, a 74-year-old grandmother, and murdered her, they used her phone to post a video of her killing to her Facebook page.
Her granddaughter, Mor, recalled leaving the bomb shelter and “my aunt called my mother, screaming, ‘Open Facebook, open Facebook’”. And there she was, “my grandmother on the ground, in her own home, murdered, in a video. The floor was all bloody.”
Facebook is full of pages supporting terrorist groups, glorifying Islamic terrorist attacks and calling for more of the same. The Israeli government had previously noted Facebook terrorist fan pages for Islamic terrorists, including one who had killed two children.
And Facebook or Meta goes to great lengths to protect their freedom of expression.
For example, “in the past, despite repeated external requests, Facebook has refused to take down a community page called, ‘Stab Israelis.’” Another “Facebook page contained a victim’s photograph with a knife blade almost completely embedded in his head” and the message “there is nothing greater than a knife penetrating the heads of the Jews.”
The proliferation of Islamic terrorists on Facebook led to a lawsuit by terror victims.
The Big Tech double standards on terror speech and counter-terrorism speech confronted by Jamie Glazov and Front Page Magazine are typical of the double standards faced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Facebook took down my original page because I spoke out against Islamic terrorism. Twitter, even after the Musk takeover, suspended me for criticizing Islamic violence. Jamie Glazov had been previously suspended by Twitter for mentioning an Islamic Hadith about sex slavery.
Many of us have stories like that.
In 2018, David Horowitz had been censored for tweeting, “but if you’re a Muslim, you might not want to be sworn in on a Judeo-Christian bible, since Islam has conducted a 1500 year war against Christians and Jews, is calling for death to Israel and has slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Christians recently.”
PayPal had previously banned Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch which is one of the numerous times that Spencer and his site were targeted by Big Tech platforms trying to suppress the truth.
And Front Page Magazine contributors like Raymond Ibrahim and Danusha Goska have also been censored for discussing the same forbidden subject.
But they haven’t silenced us and they never will.
After all these years and all of these bans, the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the brave men and women associated with it are still speaking out. We may be among the few that are left, who have not bowed to Big Tech and stopped talking about the Jihad and certain other banned subjects, and as long as we are around, that will never change.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center and our people have been deplatformed by Google, Facebook, payment processors like Visa and MasterCard, and more companies than we can count. We had our videos kicked off Vimeo because the Babylon Bee’s Seth Dillon told the truth about the transgender movement and we lost Disqus, our commenting system, because of the smear campaign against us by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And that’s nothing. We’ve spent the last 5 years and six figures fighting an assault by the IRS.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center is among the most censored, deplatformed, debanked and demonized organizations in the country. We may be small, but we’ve already been a big target.
But whatever happens, the Glazov Gang is not about to stop spreading the truth. And neither are we. They can deplatform us, threaten us and censor us, but they will never silence us.
Below is the video that got Jamie banned and that Facebook doesn’t want you to see:
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-04-15 10:51:142024-04-15 10:51:14Big Tech Can Censor Us, But We’ll Tell the Truth About Islam
With the FBI’s political censorship of social media exposed, proponents of weaponized government are using a different tool: Biden’s Federal Communications Commission.
Recovering from the spook revelations in the Twitter Files, the central government is increasingly marginalizing, censoring and silencing the free speech of Americans who express views that unaccountable bureaucrats believe should not be permitted.
We all know the pattern now. Anonymous officials brand unapproved facts, even when true, as disinformation. They dismiss unapproved opinions as conspiracy theories.Last year, a federal court issued a scathing judgment against the administration, showing that some of those supposed “conspiracy theories” were true all along. That ruling, in the Missouri v Biden case, showed that the central machine engaged in “coerced censorship” with social media companies to silence citizens with the wrong views.
“The United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth’” from the novel 1984, Judge Terry Doughty said in his ruling.
Team Biden appealed in Murthy v Missouri, a case argued last week before the Supreme Court. The administration admitted it seeks to “coerce” certain forms of censorship. It complained that victims and individual states were using the courts “to audit all of the executive branch’s communications with and about social media platforms.”
Translation: The central government wants to deny American citizens the right to identify precisely who in the administrative state is responsible for censoring them. Remember that.
The case has documented a ghoulish strategy behind this. All in the name of “national security,” healthcare, and, of course, fighting “disinformation.”
At the same time, the harmless-looking FCC is making two power grabs aimed at Internet Service Providers. ISPs, as they are known – the companies that own and run the infrastructure that provides access to the Internet.
We can thank dissident FCC commissioner Brendan Carr for sounding the alarm. The FCC agenda goes far beyond the FBI’s comparatively narrow suppression of individual accounts that the Twitter Files revealed.
Carr warns that the FCC’s power grab will allow the agency to grant privileges to politically compliant ISPs, and to punish the politically noncompliant.
“President Biden gave the FCC its marching orders,” Carr explained last October. “The President called on the FCC to implement a one-page section of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Infrastructure Act) by adopting new rules of breathtaking scope, all in the name of ‘digital equity.’”
This digital equity central planning, “for the first time ever,” Carr said, “would give the federal government a roving mandate to micromanage nearly every aspect of how the Internet functions—from how ISPs allocate capital and where they build, to the services that consumers can purchase; from the profits that ISPs can realize and how they market and advertise services, to the discounts and promotions that consumers can receive.”
In the age of DEI, the Biden-FCC initiative can dictate terms to ISPs according to the racial, social and economic profiles of their customers.
As if this is not enough, the FCC is placing net neutrality regulations on ISPs to classify them as public utilities subject to rate regulation. If the government can control what you offer and how much you can charge, it all but owns you. With such a powerful government looming over their every decision, what ISP could not be made to bend to the will of the administrative state?
This massive accumulation of central government power is where the threat of lawless censorship comes in.
With such power, what could political operatives in Washington quietly coerce ISPs to do behind the scenes? What independent or conservative news and opinion platforms might be slowed, shadowbanned or deplatformed if a nameless bureaucrat or some leftist activist group falsely labels them purveyors of disinformation or hate speech?
We have seen the evidence of what the government will do in secret to censor or suppress information with the powers it already has. Just think what it would do if given vastly greater power over private communications platforms.
And since some ISPs own separate news, online media and entertainment platforms, consider what the FCC’s massive, indirect control of their platform could have on information and messaging of those subsidiaries.
The Draconian policy is all wrapped up in nice consumer-friendly language. But as Carr explained, it “was never about improving your online experience – that was just the sheep’s clothing. It was always about control.”
“The plan,” he said, “is motivated by an ideology of government control that is not compatible with the fundamental precepts of free market capitalism.”
More dangerous than the FBI’s abuses. With powers to censor us all.
J. Michael Waller is Senior Analyst for Strategy at the Center for Security Policy.
His academic and professional areas of concentration are foreign propaganda, political warfare, psychological warfare, and subversion.
He is the former Walter and Leonore Annenberg Professor of International Communication at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school in Washington, DC.
He has been an instructor with the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. He has guest lectured at the FBI Academy, George C. Marshall Center, Marine Corps University, National Defense University, National Intelligence University, and other military schools and combatant commands.
Dr. Waller holds a Ph.D. in international security affairs from the University Professors Program at Boston University. His award-winning doctoral dissertation, written in 1993 and published as Secret Empire: The KGB In Russia Today (Westview, 1994), foresaw the rise of a KGB officer to seize political control of Russia. He received his military training as an insurgent with the Nicaraguan contras.
He has written for American Greatness, the American Mind, the Daily Beast, Daily Caller, The Federalist, Forbes, Insight, Investor’s Business Daily, Kyiv Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Real Clear Politics, USA Today, the Washington Examiner, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal. See his page on Authory.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-03-30 00:52:082024-03-30 00:52:08You’ve heard about weaponization of the FBI and CIA; now they’re weaponizing the internet
“Google Gemini AI’s refusal to translate my latest podcast title with Robert Spencer, sparks controversy over alleged hate speech and Islamophobia, prompting debate on context and censorship in language processing technology.” — Kate Wand
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” ― George Orwell
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” ― George Orwell, 1984
The video that Gemini AI objects to is about the legacy of the Byzantine Empire and its relevance to Western Civilization in my book
My book is a comprehensive exploration of the Roman Empire, its origins, governance, and impact on modern society, with insights on historical parallels, the Influence of Constantine, and the dichotomy between Christianity and Islam, highlighting the defensive nature of the Crusades and the rise of the Arab Empire, along with the overlooked Islamic threat to the Byzantine Empire and Israel, and the Byzantine Empire’s resistance against Islamic invasions, and its impact on Western Civilization, through the transmission of Ancient Greek philosophical texts and the role of the printing press in the Renaissance and Enlightenment, with insights on historical lessons, economic stability, and the fight for freedom in Modern Civilization.
The video that Google found so objectionable is here:
There is nothing wrong with this video or my work. I don’t promote hatred or violence. The left-fascists cannot stand dissenting voices.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-02-26 06:51:162024-02-26 06:51:16Google’s Gemini AI rules that Robert Spencer’s video about the survival of the West ‘hateful’ and ‘discriminatory’
In a Federal Court in Atlanta, Georgia, computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman was able to hack a Dominion voting tabulator in front of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg using only a pen to change the vote totals.
Georgia election officials have been aware of existing vulnerabilities in the state’s voting software for more than two years but continue to insist the system is safe and won’t be updated until after 2024, according to a report that was unsealed this week as part of a controversial court case in Georgia.
The report’s findings focus on weaknesses in software for certain Dominion Voting machines. Those weaknesses were previously verified by federal cybersecurity officials, who urged election officials across the country to update their systems.
A lawyer for Georgia’s top election official, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, recently told a federal court that officials would forgo installing Dominion’s security patches until after the 2024 presidential election.
Georgia election officials insist it is highly unlikely that the vulnerabilities will be exploited in real attacks. Those officials also say they have already carried out a number of security recommendations without having to update the system’s software.
“Upgrading the system will be a massive undertaking, and our election officials are evaluating the scope of, and time required for the project,” Mike Hassinger, a spokesperson for the Georgia secretary of state’s office, told CNN when asked about the delay.
A long-awaited report on the cybersecurity vulnerabilities of election machines in Georgia was finally released alongside another report on Wednesday.
The report — by University of Michigan professor J. Alex Halderman and Auburn University assistant professor Drew Springall, who helped him — outlined several cybersecurity flaws, the most critical of which they say could be exploited by malicious hackers to change votes and alter election outcomes. Importantly, Halderman said there’s no evidence that the vulnerabilities have actually been used by malicious hackers to change votes or steal an election.
BREAKING: In a Federal Court in Atlanta, Georgia, computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman was able to hack a Dominion voting tabulator in front of U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg using only a pen to change the vote totals.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2024-01-22 09:51:322024-01-22 09:51:32GEORGIA: Engineering Professor Hacks Dominion Voting machine Using Only a Pen to Change Vote Totals in Front of U.S. District Judge
On December 15, 2023, a pro-Hamas hacking group claimed perpetrating a cyber attack on SpaceX, a private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company founded and owned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, in retaliation for Musk’s support of Israel in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. During a visit to Israel at the end of November, Musk met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and toured an Israeli community attacked by Hamas on October 7.[1] On Telegram[2], the hacking group published the “first part of SpaceX leaks,” an Excel file containing the names and email addresses of 12,529 SpaceX employees.
The statement reads: “Ever since Elon Musk… agreed to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the mass-murderer Netanyahu, the one whose hands are drenched in the blood of over 7,000 of our children, we […] had Mr. Musk and his business interests in our scope. Today we publish the first part of [our] leaks – a complete list of SpaceX employees (all 12.5k) along with their email addresses. Their passwords (hashes), phone numbers, home addresses, and employment positions are not included in the first part.”
The statement continues: “To those who participate in supporting those responsible for the mass murder of our children: know that your support is itself complicity, and you will be held to account for this complicity, even if the support was done purely out of personal greed.”
Addressing U.S. President Joe Biden, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and “all other Western leaders encouraging and bankrolling the killing of our children,” the statement warns that their “support of genocide” is causing them to lose domestic “political and moral credibility,” as it “unties the decades of your soft power efforts in the Muslim lands.” It further warns that their “ongoing support of the genocide” will bring a “state of cyber war” on their countries, mentioning that their “cyber landscapes” are “far richer and vaster than that of Israel’s.”
The statement concludes: “Should you continue in supporting the killing of our children… you would not need to worry about just a cyber Pearl Harbor, but rather a cyber flood, from which there will be no mountain to climb.”
Since December 1, the group has claimed a series of cyber attacks on Israeli sites.[3]
First they came for your drive-thru, then they came for your pastors. Now they’re here for your legislators.
The Associated Press reported recently that in Brazil, the first known artificial intelligence (AI) generated law was passed in October. City councilman Ramiro Rosário of Porto Alegre, Brazil apparently had some trouble crafting a city ordinance. Rosário, instead of shopping around for model legislation from another town or special interest group, did the most 2023 thing he could: he asked ChatGPT. The AP reports:
“Rosário told The Associated Press that he asked OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT to craft a proposal to prevent the city from charging taxpayers to replace water consumption meters if they are stolen. He then presented it to his 35 peers on the council without making a single change or even letting them know about its unprecedented origin.
“‘If I had revealed it before, the proposal certainly wouldn’t even have been taken to a vote,’ Rosário told the AP by phone on Thursday. The 36-member council approved it unanimously and the ordinance went into effect on Nov. 23.
“‘It would be unfair to the population to run the risk of the project not being approved simply because it was written by artificial intelligence,’ he added.”
When he was facing leadership challenges in the church due to his age, the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, “Let no one despise you for your youth.” Now we have Brazilian lawmakers speaking up for the oppressed AI, which apparently gets no respect. The councilman is not only the champion of the stolen water meter, he’s the voice of AI in government, speaking up for the little bot who has none.
I don’t fault an ill-equipped lawmaker for getting help doing his job, but it does say something about a society where a presumably elected official needs to resort to something that an adept 10-year-old can do. It raises the question, is the councilman even needed if his duties have been reduced to writing a query instead of writing legislation?
After President Lincoln had put Ulysses S. Grant in charge of the Union forces during the Civil War, there was worry among some as to whether the army could match Lee’s rebel forces. When someone asked about Grant’s chances, Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” that Lincoln told this anecdote:
“The question reminds of me of a little anecdote about the automaton chess player, which many years ago astonished the world by its skill in that game. After a while the automaton was challenged by a celebrated player, who, to his great chagrin, was beaten twice by the machine. At the end of the second game, the player, significantly pointing his finger at the automaton, exclaimed in a very decided tone, ‘There’s a man in it.’”
Putting aside the fact that there were apparently “automaton chess players” before the Civil War (who knew?), it was clear then that military and political operations were not automatic. Military operations required people. Political operations required people. Even mechanical chess players required people.
That remains true today. Politics — nasty business as it is — requires people. While we may joke about it being better off without them, we should think long and hard before we relinquish our leadership to something that doesn’t have to eat three squares a day. ChatGPT may be able to compose a water meter ordinance, but it won’t inspire people to use their water in a better way. People need to be led by people.
Just like the automated chess player, for ChatGPT there’s also “a man in it.” AI may have a body of silicon, precious metals, and transistors, but its intellectual framework of ones and zeros can never amount to a soul. AI may be able to write its own answers, and interpret what we want, but it can’t run without programming and someone feeding its server farms the electricity it needs.
No matter how much the hype-mongers of artificial intelligence may tell us to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, there’s always a man in it. The question for us as we see the advent of AI applied to politics, is which man do we want? The one we elected, or the people doing the programming? It’s only a matter of time before we’re faced with this here in the U.S. And as much as we think a robot might do a better job than whichever current leader you’ve elected (I bet you can think of a few…), the solution is not to defer to some unelected artificial Oz behind the curtain. The solution is to elect better leaders.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
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Turkish government agencies have requested the removal of a total of 90,400 web pages and other content from Google in the last decade, Voice of America (VOA) Turkish edition reported on Wednesday, citing data from a report by the virtual private network company Surfshark.
According to the report, 150 countries have submitted a total of 335,000 removal requests to Google in the last 10 years. These requests included the removal of 3,870,000 different websites and pages claimed to be “objectionable.”
Turkey was the fourth country, after Russia, North Korea and India, that most frequently requested the removal of content from Google, submitting 18,900 requests for the removal of 90,400 web pages and other content in 10 years, which corresponds to an average of 5 pieces of online content per day.
During the same period, Russia submitted a total of 215,000 content removal requests to Google, accounting for 85 percent of all requests. North Korea came in second, submitting 27,000 content removal requests to Google over the past decade, and India was in third place with 20,000 requests.
The report showed that “national security” is the most common reason cited by governments to get unwanted content removed, with 27 percent, followed by “copyright” (19 percent) and “defamation” (10 percent). Turkey leads in citing defamation as the reason, representing over a fifth of all defamation claims with more than 7,600 requests.
According to the report, the number of requests worldwide has increased approximately 13 times, rising from 7,000 annually to 91,000 in the past 10 years, or from 19 requests per day to 249….
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-12-01 07:51:202023-12-01 07:51:20Over the last ten years, Turkey has made 249 requests every day for removal of content from Google
An Iranian hacking group targeted the water system of a small Pennsylvania town over the Thanksgiving weekend, in what may have been a test case targeting widely-used industrial control systems (ICSs).
On Saturday, November 25, the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa (PA) announced that one of their booster stations was hacked by the Iranian group Cyber Av3ngers. The group targeted and infiltrated one of the station’s Unitronics programmable logic controllers (PLCs), which are responsible for monitoring water pressure for customers in Aliquippa, as well as Raccoon and Potter Townships. According Matthew Mottes, the chairman of the board of directors for the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa, despite the Iranian group’s successful hacking, there is not believed to be any impact on the safety of drinking water in the affected areas.
This hack comes in the middle of an ongoing war where Israel is up against Hamas and other Iranian proxies in the Middle East. Cyber Av3ngers has claimed to have successfully hacked 10 similar water systems in Israel as of October 30. The Unitronics system hacked in Pennsylvania is headquartered in Israel, which is likely a reason for the group targeting a system physically located in the United States. Congressman Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district said he is “closely monitoring” the cyberattack. The Facebook post below makes it clear that Cyber Av3ngers considers “every equipment” made in Israel as a target of the group.
While the majority of cyber-attacks are focused on financial gain in the form of ransomware, the affected booster station does not contain any personal or proprietary information. Rather it is designed to operate automatically. Apparently, the hackers “wanted” to be found, and may have been infiltrating this system to simply see how the Municipal Water Authority reacted to being hacked. This is similar to some financial hacking schemes where criminals will make an initial withdrawal from an account of a few cents, and if that goes unnoticed, they will make a larger withdrawal hoping to not raise any alarms.
The cyberattack does not appear to be specifically focused on water systems, as Unitronics provides control systems to a variety of critical infrastructure, not just water. Based on Cyber Av3ngers’ track record and open hatred of Israel, it is likely they will continue to target control systems in the U.S. and elsewhere that rely on Unitronics’ technology.
According to a November 27 Shodan search, there are more than 220 Unitronics systems in the U.S. and over 1,800 worldwide. Thus there are plenty of systems for Cyber Av3ngers to target, and the Iranian group has proven indiscriminate when it comes to choosing targets.
To prevent further attacks, the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has been pushing for “infrastructure funding and finance mechanisms” to enhance U.S. water infrastructure for years due to its age and insufficient funding. AWWA has also called for policies “that advance physical and cybersecurity in effective ways while securing information about potential vulnerabilities.”
As the Center for Security Policy’s Secure the Grid Coalition has noted, local governments and emergency planners will have to be the ones making improvements to critical pieces of the United States’ critical infrastructure. The Coalition has been sounding the alarm on inadequate physical security of electric grid infrastructure for years. The U.S. electrical system, while still lacking a variety of safeguards, does have better cybersecurity standards than the water system, but this recent attack in Pennsylvania shows that control systems for critical infrastructure of all kinds remain vulnerable.
This recent attack in Pennsylvania further proves that proactive measures must be taken at all levels of government, especially locally, in order to protect services that millions of Americans rely upon daily.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-11-28 16:54:052023-11-28 16:54:05Situation Report: Iranian-backed hacker group infiltrates U.S. water system
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has released further evidence of the collaboration between the federal government and private institutions to censor the First Amendment protected speech of Americans, including new files show that the infamous Election Integrity Partnership, which targeted social media posts for censorship during the 2020 election, was created “at the request” of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). One of the examples of the censorship machine in action shared by Jordan is a request to censor a tweet by President Donald Trump including a link to a Breitbart News story.
The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) is a consortium of four organizations: the Stanford Internet Observatory, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public.
Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC), in a hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee earlier this year, played a clip unearthed by the Foundation for Freedom Online showing the Atlantic Council , showing the Atlantic Council casually discussing the EIP’s “partners in government… most particularly those in CISA/DHS.”
Now, internal communications from the Atlantic Council obtained by Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) show that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a sub-agency of DHS, was more than just a “partner” of EIP — it was involved in its very creation.
“We just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA and are in weekly comms to debrief on disinfo, IO, etc.,” said a member of the Atlantic Council in the emails.
According to one EIP member, the EIP was created “at the request of CISA.”
In another email, head of the election integrity partnership, former Facebook executive Alex Stamos, said that “we are working on some monitoring ideas with CISA.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Foundation for Freedom Online head Mike Benz, who exposed DHS censorship efforts in a report last year. “Watch this 8 minute clip showing the exact timeline chronology in which CISA spawned EIP to censor what the government could not.”
Jordan provided examples of speech targeted for censorship, which he says included “true information, jokes, and political opinions.” The example Jordan provides to illustrate this point is a tweet by Donald Trump including a link to a Breitbart News story.
As Breitbart News previously reported, the Election Integrity Partnership developed a censorship “switchboard” which allowed government the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department could file “tickets” alongside news stories, flagging them so that Big Tech platforms could subsequently suppress or attach warning labels to them.
Via Breitbart News:
News outlets targeted by the EIP included Breitbart News, Fox News, the New York Post, and the Epoch Times, as well as the social media accounts of prominent conservatives Charlie Kirk, Tom Fitton, Jack Posobiec, Mark Levin, James O’Keefe, and Sean Hannity, amongst others.
President Donald Trump was also frequently flagged by the consortium, as well as his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
The extent of collaboration between the government and censorship organizations is the central question of Missouri v Biden, the landmark online free speech case currently before the supreme court. Evidence that DHS was involved in the very creation of arguably the most important private sector censorship partnership of the 2020 election could have an impact on the case.
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The idea that is “Israel is losing the media war” or “Israel has to step up its PR game” (!) is a false premise. You cannot win in a fixed game. You cannot win when the deck is stacked against you.
At this point, it’s life or death for Israel and it is my fervent hope that Israel stops subduing and supplicating itself to the annihilationist forces that are working furiously to see its end.
The blood libels and false news is coming from the media and inside the tech industry.
Software giant Adobe has been caught selling AI-generated images of the Israel-Hamas war, as first spotted by Australian news outlet Crikey, a shocking and morally reprehensible instance of a company directly profiting from the spread of misinformation online.
A quick search on the company’s Adobe Stock website — a service that offers subscription customers access to a library of generic stock images and now AI-shots as well — for “conflict between Israel and Palestine” comes up with photorealistic images of explosions in high-density urban environments that closely resemble the real-life carnage currently unfolding in Gaza.
Another image shows a “mother and child in destroyed city in Palestine Israel war conflict,” a devastating framing that was entirely AI-generated. In fact, it’s one of a series of 33 images that all show a similar composition.
These images all appear to have been submitted by Adobe Stock users and were seemingly not generated by Adobe itself.
However, while they’re technically tagged as being “generated with AI,” a requirement for all user-submitted works, some of these images are already making their rounds on other parts of the web, as Crikey found, which could easily mislead unsuspecting members of the public.
After all, without closely examining these images for telltale signs of having been generated by an AI, like misaligned windows or mismatched lighting and shadows, they could easily pass for the real thing.
AI image generators like OpenAI’s DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney have made massive technological leaps over the last 12 months. Long gone are the days of obvious glitches or horrifying animal monstrosities.
Consequently, AI-generated images are getting huge amounts of visibility online. Earlier this year, Futurismfound that the top image result on Google for the name of famed realist artist Edward Hopper was an AI fake.
Instead of treading into the world of generative AI carefully, Adobe has chosen to embrace the tech with enthusiasm.
By Noah Beck, Special to IPT News • November 5, 2023T
he adage that “journalism is the first draft of history” understates the impact that journalists have on the present, given that their reporting can change perceptions and public discourse in a way that shapes the history being recorded in that first draft.
The media’s ethical duties and challenges are among the greatest when it comes to reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an issue plagued by misinformation and disinformation, and where passions are inflamed by reports that can quickly affect events on the ground. Compounding those concerns is the broader geopolitical context of reporting in the Middle East, a volatile region of proxy wars, terrorism by state and non-state actors, and nuclear weapons and proliferation.
Failures to adhere to journalistic standards can perpetuate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel that leads global public opinion and world leaders to pressure Israel into allowing a baby-burning terror group at its doorstep to prepare for the next round of war, within months after the latest round of violence, rather than allowing Israel to defeat Hamas once and for all.
Through defamatory allegations of “genocide,” anti-Israel activists add to the global pressure on Israel that prevents it from militarily eliminating the Hamas threat, a necessary step towards any improvement in the lives of both Gazans and Israelis, given Hamas’ commitment to killing all of the Jews in the world (as the organization clearly states in its charter). So while activists and the media outlets that quote them (like Al Jazeera) ignore the very genocidal elements in Hamas’ foundational document, they will absurdly allege that Israel is engaged in a “genocide” against Gaza, but never explain why such a powerful army needs nearly two decades and multiple wars to accomplish this “genocide,” when the Israeli military could easily do so in a day.
It is Israel’s own extraordinarily high ethical standards that have prevented it from committing “genocide,” despite countless vicious Hamas attacks whose barbarism has gotten progressively worse over the last few decades, culminating in the October 7th slaughter of 1,400 Israelis, which is the equivalent of almost 52,000 deaths in the USA – about seventeen September 11s in one day, or about 1.3 times the 39,000 people killed by the nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. And the horrific savagery of those murders even in far smaller numbers would likely prompt most militaries in the world to act far more aggressively and decisively than Israel has thus far. Indeed, it is the many battlefield advantages that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) concedes to its enemies, in order to comply with the IDF’s exceptionally high ethical code, that have led observers, including British military expert and war hero Richard Kemp, to note that the IDF is the most moral army in the world. In the October 9, 2009 debate on the infamous Goldstone Report issued in the wake of Operation Cast Lead, Colonel Kemp asserted that “the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”
Yet journalists quickly forget these ethically crucial details and too often fail to provide critical context for those trying to gain a meaningful understanding of the conflict and the moral character of each side. And the international community – fueled by the unethical and/or sloppy reporting of so many journalists – forces Israel into accepting military half-measures that simply bring a temporary “quiet” to the region. Tragically, the international pressure for cease fires that allow the root problem of Hamas to fester have proven to be utterly counterproductive, even from the perspective of those claiming to care about the Palestinians, because leaving Hamas in power condemns Gazans to indefinite suffering with only brief respites that end as soon as Hamas decides once again to launch violent attacks against its northern neighbor.
But bad journalism does more than perpetuate the conflict – it actually aggravates it. By omitting crucial context or publishing inflammatory rumors rather than verified facts, the news media fuel a dangerous strategy preferred by Palestinians: inciting fury on the Arab street (often by claiming that Jews are endangering the Al-Aqsa mosque or grossly exaggerating Palestinian casualty figures, as with the 2002 libelously labeled “massacre” in Jenin). The more the Arab street is enraged by misleadingly incomplete or patently false news, the more likely an already combustible situation can quickly spin out of control, with more attacks on Israel by “lone-wolf” attackers, terrorist groups, and/or Arab states feeling public pressure to jump into the fray (as is the current concern with Lebanon, a failed state that is effectively ruled by the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah).
It’s almost four weeks since the horrific terrorist attack on #Israel. A lot has happened, the public debate has become heated and confused. Find thoughts from Vice-Chancellor Robert #Habeck in the video, putting the events in context. 📣With English, Hebrew and Arabic subtitles. pic.twitter.com/5jdXAZr7ey
— Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz (@BMWK) November 2, 2023
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-11-06 05:52:182023-11-06 05:52:18Adobe Caught Selling Dishonest AI-Generated Images As Actual Photos of Israel ‘Violence’
What is Destiny? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future. Throughout your life, you always have choices to reach your goal, your success. The problem with success. Success can be good or bad. Whether the outcome is good or bad depends on? Who? That is the ultimate question. Who will control your life?
The global cabals of elitists met and decided that they had a plan where the elite would control the world in the image they decide. World Economic Forum chair Klaus Schwab declared on Chinese state TV: ‘China is a model for many nations.’ Is that what you want?
China is playing the Hunger Games. They have enslaved their population. Their people live in high rises in “sustainable developments aka 15 Minute Cities” The factories are at the bottom of these buildings. No car, you walk to your job. You make enough money to buy a few things and some groceries, but there are no stocked freezers. Your money is given to you by points on your Social Credit score card. If you follow the party line, your card account is green – no dollar amounts. If there is a problem, your card chip will become yellow and you are on notice with “limited mobility.” Red is “quarantine.” During Covid a red alert was issued people were locked in their apartments. No food. No heat. No way out. A fire started. The people inside died. All men, women, and children died. The government watched. They didn’t care. Always remember their goal: DEPOPULATION by any means possible. Schwab said 10% of the population is enough.
According to Bill Gates, “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s heading up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [world population] by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.” 10% X 6.8 Billion = 680,000,000 people. How many people died from Covid? Will you be fooled into taking the Covid shot? How many more will die? millions of illegals are coming to America without shots. Are they here to replace us?
In 2014, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) announced a moral ranking system whereby individuals, government organizations, and companies are ranked based on social credit. Comparisons have been drawn to environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, scores being used by major financial institutions and global organizations to create a type of social credit system for corporations designed to influence behavior and transform society.
Schwab wrote in 2019 that ESG scores are necessary for stakeholder capitalism. I thought we had stockholder capitalism. The stockholders, those people who invested money in your company. They owned and had a say in the company and were paid dividends. They are the risk-takers.
What is “‘Stakeholder capitalism?’ a model Schwab first proposed a half-century ago, positions private corporations follow ESG as trustees of society, and is clearly the best response to today’s social and environmental challenges,” he wrote. “We should seize this moment to ensure that stakeholder capitalism remains the new dominant model.”
I then have questions about Elon. The money to buy Twitter came from China. Elon just introduced a chip for your brain to interface with the computer making humans into cyborgs. where “Resistance is futile.”
Who will control your thoughts, suggestions, and demands? What pain will be introduced if you go off script? This chip will be interfaced with everyone and everything, from your most prized possessions to your toilet paper. Everyone will think the same, dress the same, live in the same size apartment, have the same furniture, and obey without question. This is the essence of Communism/Globalism. It is the playbook for a communist takeover. You will obey. Resistance is futile.
So exactly why did Elon buy Twitter? Could it be to gather data, making controlling the people easier? Elon expects to have the chip ready for humans in 6 months. This fits with O’Biden’s:
Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy September 12, 2022, and
13, 2022, Now Called “‘C-DAY’ ‘BIDEN BUCKS/ Central Bank Digital Currency: (CBDC) Executive Order14067.”The article claims the order eliminates cash in favor of digital currency. Who makes money from processing digital currency? Did I hear Hunter?
Communism is the same no matter where you go. Communism has killed more people than any other ideology. Communists use different names for the same goal: Depopulation. Money, Power, Control. Communists are in both parties.
We must fight back. We must conduct oversight. Boycott. There are more of us than them. I believe America is worth saving. Do you? Will you call your legislator and tell them, ” No Border = No Funding = No CR. This regime is trying to destroy us, why would we fund them? Shut down the government.
Show: Sat and Sun 7AM ET and 9PM ET on AmericaOutloud.com
Podcasts and Articles: Karenbschoen.com, karenschoen.substack.com
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-09-20 14:51:372023-09-20 14:51:37Decoding Destiny: Who Controls Your Future?
Amanda* sat, hunched over her laptop, her eyes red and bleary with exhaustion. She had spent the better part of her week reading tech companies’ parents’ guides and clumsily navigating through obscure safety settings on almost a dozen social media apps. The experience had made her want to chuck her laptop at the wall.
But it was worth it. It was worth it if it meant her kids would be safe online.
… Unfortunately, that was a big “if.”
Little did Amanda know that the safety settings were grossly ineffective and full of loopholes.
Little did she know that new social media apps she’d never heard of had come on the scene, and her children had downloaded those too.
Little did she know that, despite all her efforts, online dangers would find her children anyway … And Amanda would be blamed for it.
If you resonated with the above story, you are not alone.
In today’s digital age, so many parents are utterly overwhelmed by the impossible task of protecting their children online.
We know how you feel, and we want to tell you that it is not your fault.
Further, we want to encourage you and give you hope. Because we have solutions.
Imagine if, every time your child downloaded a new social media app or got a new tech device, you could rest easy, knowing that that app/device was already safe.
With your help, this is the world NCOSE is working to create!
Together, we are moving the tech industry to prioritize child safety and build their products to be safe by design and by default.
Here are just a few examples of major victories we’ve achieved together in the past few months alone:
Google is now automatically blurring sexually explicit images for all users and blocking sexually explicit search results for minors signed into an under 18 account—both changes we requested. Google stated, “We appreciate the feedback from survivors and subject matter experts like the National Center on Sexual Exploitation that help improve practices around online safety.”
Snapchat made numerous safety changes we requested and publicly credited NCOSE. These changes include improving detection and moderation for sexually explicit and exploitative content, defaulting content controls for new minor-aged accounts joining Family Center, increasing parent’s visibility into their child’s activity through Family Center, and creating dedicated resources on sexual abuse and exploitation (some changes pending a 2024 release date).
Apple is now automatically blurring sexually explicit images and videos for accounts age 12 and under, something we’ve been asking them to do since 2021. Furtand has made their blurring technology available for FREE to other apps accessed through iOS.
Discord, a messaging platform popular with teens, made multiple safety changes we requested, including activating higher safety settings by default, updating their content policies to more specifically ban various types of child sexualization and exploitation, and offering parental controls for the first time.
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“It’s just the next step in evolution. I’m serious,” Larry Page, the Google co-founder, said.
An engineer from Silicon Valley, California, the home to some of the latest and cutting edge technologies in the world, has said that they and others who are working on artificial intelligence are “creating God,” this all-knowing, all-powerful machine that can do it all for mankind that cuts like a double-edged sword.
Nick Bilton for Vanity Fair explored these tech engineers research to understand the process, and one researcher told him plainly:
We’re creating God. We’re creating conscious machines.
One AI engineer working on large language models (LLMs) recently told Bilto
Bilton wrote in his piece that AI has been touted as being able to ‘solve all of the world’s problems or destroy every single human on the planet in the snap of a finger—or both. Machines that will potentially answer all of our unanswerable questions: Are we alone in the universe? What is consciousness? Why are we here?’
Bilton added, ‘Thinking machines that could cure cancer and allow us to live until we’re 150 years old. Maybe even 200. Machines that, some estimate, could take over up to 30 percent of all jobs within the next decade, from stock traders to truck drivers to accountants and telemarketers, lawyers, bookkeepers, and all things creative: actors, writers, musicians, painters. Something that will go to war for us—and likely against us.’
In a span of just six months Bilton highlights just some of the things AI has transformed and openly accomplished in the world today, such as LLMs learning to “write stories in the style of Ernest Hemingway or Bugs Bunny or the King James Bible while you’re drunk with peanut butter stuck in your mouth;” or things like making highly customizable pornography, to voiceovers and music covers, to AI therapists or emulating dead relatives to keep the memories lively; and people are even “discussing using AI to create entirely new species of animals (yes, that’s real) or viruses (also real). Or exploring human characteristics, such as creating a breed of super soldiers who are stronger and have less empathy, all through AI-based genetic engineering,” Bilton writes.
It excites me and worries me in equal proportions. The upsides for this are enormous, maybe these systems find cures for diseases, and solutions to problems like poverty and climate change, and those are enormous upsides.
The downsides are humans that are displaced from leading the way, or in the worst case, extinguished entirely, [which] is terrifying.
David Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and neural science at NYU, said
Larry Page, the famed computer scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded Google, also said that the AI is on course (very soon) to reach artificial general intelligence (AGI), creating “superintelligent machines” that will simply just simply be rid of us living folk, adding that this is only the next step in human evolution.
It’s just the next step in evolution. I’m serious.
Page told Bilton’s friend during a conversation
Elon Musk has also confirmed that chaps like Page really are trying to recreate an AI God. “My perception was that Larry was not taking AI safety seriously enough. He really seems to want digital superintelligence, basically digital God, if you will, as soon as possible,” Musk said on Fox News earlier this year.
Nate Soares, executive director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, a nonprofit focused on identifying and managing potential existential risks from AGI, chastised Page’s reckless ambitions:
If Larry Page said, ‘I’m going to obliterate the planet with a nuke and nuking the entire planet is just the natural order of things and so we shouldn’t mourn it,’ we would all say, ‘What the f***, that’s a terrible idea!’
Moreover, a political lobbyist consultant told Bilton in a statement: “All of the people leading the development of AI right now are completely disingenuous in public. They are all just in a race to be the first to build AGI and are either oblivious to the consequences of what could go wrong or they just don’t care.”
Simply put, the general consensus and open goals of the “leaders in Silicon Valley seem to think it’s time that we should outsource all of that time and thinking to their AIs.”
Furthermore, May Habib, who, as the cofounder and CEO of Writer – an AI start-up that helps people at companies write with the same style and voice – is still critical of the technology, blasting it for not having basically zero diversity and “no women in AI.” She did note, however, this whole craze centers around one driving principle:
You look around AI today and everyone is a generative AI capitalist. The way they sell, what they build, their vision for the future, is that it’s all about money.
Bilton additionally wrote:
In 1965 the statistician I.J. Good, when envisioning what the world would look like once we created ultraintelligent machines, said that the second machines became smarter than people, there would “unquestionably be an intelligence explosion” as machines quickly created smarter machines, and that “the intelligence of man would be left far behind.” We’d likely understand what they were doing in the same way our pets understand the words of a book we read aloud.
“Thus,” Good wrote, “the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.”
Howbeit the geeks working on this are relentless in creating their new God that will bring prosperity to all. Sam Altman, the co-founder of Open-AI and founder of Worldcoin, is, according to Bilton, “a god. An AI messiah. He’s fawned over in news articles. Doted on in interviews.”
Mustafa Suleyman is the billionaire co-founder of the computer giant’s DeepMind but warns it’s not robots that pose the most danger to mankind. He said the ability to cook up a deadly pandemic at home is likely to become commonplace before the end of this decade.
And Covid gave governments gave themselves absolute power over every individual life and liberty. the temptation is too great for evildoers.
The billionaire co-founder of Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence technology, Mustafa Suleyman, has warned the public that AI is being used for genetic engineering to trigger a “super-pandemic.”
Suleyman warns that an AI-developed super-pandemic is one of the biggest threats facing the human race.
He issued the warning in an episode of the “Diary of a CEO” podcast.
According to Suleyman, scientists are scrambling to engineer a deadly pandemic, such as a modified variant of COVID-19, to unleash before the end of this decade.
The warning from Suleyman comes amid increasing fears that another pandemic may trigger widespread lockdowns and mandates ahead of the 2024 election.
Suleyman added that in the next five years or so, a regular person could easily download the instruction set for a pandemic that’s “more lethal” than anything the world has encountered so far.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-09-13 19:52:262023-09-13 19:52:26Google Exec Warns AI Being Used to Engineer ‘Super-Pandemic’
China-based hackers impersonated American voters online and used artificial intelligence (AI) to create and promote divisive online content during the 2022 midterm elections, according to a report by Microsoft.
The effort was part of a series of covert influence operations by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intended to mimic U.S. voters from across the political spectrum and create controversy along racial, economic, and ideological lines, according to the Sept. 7 report.
“Ahead of the 2022 U.S. midterms, Microsoft and industry partners observed CCP-affiliated social media accounts impersonating U.S. voters—new territory for CCP-affiliated [influence operations],” the report reads.
“These accounts posed as Americans across the political spectrum and responded to comments from authentic users.”
The report includes examples of visual content created by Chinese communist actors using artificial intelligence. These included images supporting “Black Lives Matter,” the false claim that “most black people are killed by police,” and more generic anti-American rhetoric.
The report states that the AI-generated content is more “eye-catching” than China’s previous attempts at overseas propaganda and will likely be improved upon and used against Americans in the future.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-09-12 16:51:552023-09-12 16:51:55Chinese Operatives Impersonated U.S. Voters With AI-generated Propaganda During 2022 Elections: Microsoft
“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” — Isaiah 6:8, King James Version (KJV)
The first GOP presidential primary will begin on January 15th, 2021 with the Iowa Republican caucuses.
However, we believe that the primary is over.
Why?
Because of the persecution and prosecution of the 79+ million voters and their leader President Donald J. Trump who are part and parcel of the Make America Great movement.
Each and every time an attack is made against either Trump or a member of the MAGA movement the movement gets stronger and stronger.
Why?
Here are some reasons that the opponents of the MAGA movement are losing ground:
Every time President Donald J. Trump is indicted his poll numbers go up and the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time any patriot is harassed, arrested, tried, convicted and put in prison the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time the truth is told and then shadow banned, deplatformed or attacked the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time the traitors protect their fellow traitors and their families the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans fill up their gas tanks, purchase groceries, pay their bills, see their retirement accounts shrinking, the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans see how lawless their communities have become the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans see our borders violated and our immigration laws ignored the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans go to their doctors and see how big government has intruded into their patient/doctor relationship the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans see one racial group being given special privileges over other racial groups the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans watch the incompetence of the current administration the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans learn the truth about what really happened during the 2020 election, and the massive fraud that took place, the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every time Americans learn the truth about what really happened on January 6, 2021 Save America rally the MAGA movement gets stronger.
Every day since January 20th, 2021 Americans have learned NOT to trust their government, from the school house to the White House, less and less and therefore the MAGA movement keeps getting stronger and stronger.
🧵 Was there election fraud in Georgia in 2020?
YES there was.
My then husband, Perry Greene showed up to vote and was told he already voted by absentee ballot but did NOT and NEVER requested an absentee ballot.@GovKemp@GaSecofState what happened?https://t.co/qHEIKsZQyq
A new poll has shown that Americans do not supporthow Department of Justice handled the Hunter Biden investigation.
Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?
In an email President Donald J. Trump wrote,
We are living through the darkest chapter of American history.
We are watching the ruling regime try to IMPRISON its opposition. Nothing like this has ever before happened in America.
I will continue to speak out against the disturbing downfall of our once great country – but there’s one thing you will NEVER hear me say…
…You will never hear me feel sorry for myself. You will never hear me lose hope in our country.
As dark as these days may be, our national history is filled with peaceful patriots who REFUSED to give up even during the toughest times imaginable.
There were many times when the cause of our Founding Fathers looked bleak. The odds were certainly not in their favor.
They were standing up to the largest empire the world had ever seen.
Imagine if in 1775, the Founders decided that their mission was impossible and so they dropped to their knees and surrendered their noble quest for freedom. America never would’ve existed.
But they didn’t give up. Because they embodied that age-old adage: “I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees.”
The truth is: nothing great in life ever comes easily — and what could be greater than reclaiming our American Independence from a corrupt, self-serving regime that attempts to imprison its opposition?
When I chose to run against the ruling class as a complete political outsider, I knew what I was getting myself into.
I knew that the Deep State would use the full weight of the federal government to try and take me down.
But the Deep State made one massive mistake…
…They didn’t realize that they wouldn’t just have to take me down, but the millions and millions of hardworking Americans who refuse to surrender our country as well.
Thanks to YOU, our movement is stronger than ever before.
Together, we have defied every narrative, we have outsmarted the so-called experts, and we have trumped the special interest globalist donors.
So, let me once again say to all our haters and enemies who want to put me BEHIND BARS for the rest of my life as an innocent man — I WILL NEVER SURRENDER OUR MISSION.
We will prevail against these vicious witch hunts.
We will win back the White House.
We will save America from tyranny.
And we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
[Emphasis added]
The Bottom Line
Never give up. Never surrender. We are winning even though the legacy media wants us to think that we are losing.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-08-18 15:51:442023-08-18 15:51:44The GOP Primary is Over
The most common question transgender activists use to bully parents into approving their daughter’s lifelong dependency on experimental hormone injections is: “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?”
But the tragic story of Abigail Martinez’s daughter, who took her own life after attempting to transition to life as a boy, proves what a false dichotomy that is.
A hard-hitting new film reveals how the trans movement inflicts death, depression, and familial estrangement in service of the pharmaceutical industry.
The story of Yaeli Martinez forms the heart of “Gender Transformations: The Untold Realities,” an original production of The Epoch Times. Though technically classified as a “docudrama,” the term does not do justice to the reality that plays out on the screen: The majority of the film consists of real people sharing heartbreaking true stories, without an interviewer’s prompting. Through their eyes, the 85-minute Epoch Original production traces the transgender contagion from its funding sources in Big Pharma, to ideologically extremist teachers who radicalize children behind their parents’ backs, to trans activists who brainwash and kidnap minors, to the irreversible damage the industry causes teens and young adults. Abigail Martinez sheds real tears for her daughter’s suicide — and real footage shows trans activists mocking her grief.
The “docudrama” label comes from the movie’s dramatization of the short life, radicalization, and death of Yaeli Martinez. The film renames Yaeli “Evie,” who transitions to “Evan.” But the recreation of Yaeli’s life — which can only be reconstructed, since she stepped in front of a train at age 17 — forms the narrative arc turning patchwork of first-person vignettes into a mosaic picture of lives callously shattered for profit.
Yaeli became indoctrinated in extreme gender ideology through a school LGBT group, where she eventually joined her “friends” in identifying as transgender. One night, Yaeli’s “friends” pulled up outside Martinez’s home, picked her up in an unmarked car, and whisked her away to an unknown location to live with other transgender-identifying young people. “They even took the license plate off of their car,” Martinez remembers.
Things got worse when the government got involved. Yaeli said her mother refused to affirm her identity, causing the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to put the minor into a group home. A judge would authorize the minor to receive transgender injections against her mother’s will. Eventually, Yaeli — who now identified as “Andrew” — brought her mother back into her life, just as newfound friends began to desert her and reality began to assert itself.
“She told me, ‘Mom, I realized that no matter what I do I’m never going to be like my brother. I’m in pain. I can’t sleep. I can’t concentrate,’” Martinez recalls. “’It’s not working the way that I thought.’”
One day in 2019, law enforcement gave Martinez the news that her daughter had committed suicide. “I was screaming. I said, ‘No, I want my daughter,’” Martinez later told The Daily Signal. She pleaded to be able to spend time with the body of her daughter, whom she had not seen since the child ran away.
“The gentleman from the funeral home told me there’s nothing really that you can see or recognize,” Martinez recalled.
All that remained of her child’s legacy was the undying hatred of the radical LGBTQ movement. The movie includes real footage of Martinez sharing her story, as trans activists yell, “Cry more!” and “What a sob story!”
After removing a child from a loving home and transitioning her, the Los Angeles government refused to acknowledge any responsibility for Yaeli’s death. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Andrew M., as well as to the LGBTQIA community which advocates relentlessly to protect its youngest and most vulnerable members from such tragedies,” responded the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
The statement said nothing about the role of the transgender movement — top to bottom — in creating the tragedy.
That story falls to Martinez and the movie’s ensemble of grieving parents, whistleblowing therapists, investigative journalists, and remorseful detransitioners.
The origin story of transgenderism’s social contagion begins by tracing the money back to the Big Pharma companies that manufacture these drugs. “If you’re going to look for anything in this country, you’re going to follow the money, because it will always tell you the truth. Who’s funding these LGB organizations?” asked writer and investigator Jennifer Bilek. “What I found was a whole lot of very, very powerful moneyed people in the highest echelons of finance, Pharma, and technology.” Dr. Katherine Welch, a concerned physician, agrees that pharmaceutical companies “fund the activists and the NGOs to stir up a lot of passion.” Then the companies ask for emergency use authorization, based on “a mental health crisis among our youth.” Thanks to their combination marketing-and-lobbying efforts, there is now “a $1.5 billion industry for surgery alone,” said lawyer Erin Friday. “And I think that’s an underestimate.”
The trail extends to dishonest researchers, such as John Money, and subject criteria set by organizations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The academic cohort produces the shoddy research trumpeted by the media, entertainment industry, and school officials. When Erin Friday learned her daughter had secretly begun identifying as a boy at school, administrators told her, “We need to be a safe space” for her child. “By extension, I’m unsafe,” said Friday.
The message promptly filters down to young people. A few confess to being amazed at the virtually godlike power they hold over their own bodies. “When I went into the Planned Parenthood building to [talk about] the surgery … I could pick from 25 sets of breasts,” said detransitioner David Bacon. “I could build myself.”
But most seek to rebuild themselves from a trauma, or they naïvely believe the transgender industry’s claims that the silver bullet for their depression lies at the end of a needle. Continually hearing the (scientifically inaccurate) mantra that children who identify as transgender will commit suicide if not immediately “affirmed” caused at least one woman to become profoundly depressed. “It made me feel even more hopeless, because I thought there was no way to accept myself. I had to get these painful surgeries and take hormones,” said detransitioner Catt Catinson. Her psychological evaluation “affirmed me immediately” and “just sort of overlooked my eating disorder” and childhood sexual abuse. Abel Garcia received the same treatment, even after telling them, “I might be autistic” and that he felt unsure whether he identified as transgender.
“The worst part, honestly, is that I was allowed to do all this, and that nobody was willing to stop me and have a second opinion,” says Garcia. “Instead, I was affirmed, I was love-bombed. I was allowed to destroy my body.”
So, was Yaeli Martinez, to whom the movie is dedicated.
“This pain never goes away,” says Abigail Martinez. “You breathe and you can feel the pain.”
Yet the movie ends with the hope that some victims of the transgender industry survive long enough to live as their authentic selves, the ones reflected by their biology. “It took me about a year to fully deprogram from gender identity ideology,” said Cattinson. “I feel like it was the act of deprogramming, just changing my beliefs, that allowed me to recover from my depression.” Now, she has reconnected with the family her embrace of gender ideology estranged. “It’s been very healing, having that family connection again. We can just be together and love each other.”
That gives hope to Pamela Garfield-Jaeger, a therapist and social worker who believes adults caught up in the transgender movement “didn’t realize just how harmful this was.” One day, Americans will look back at this chapter as “a dark time in our history, but I don’t think this is going to last.”
But until then, the testimony of Martinez and other grieving families torn apart by extreme transgender ideology, preserved in this Epoch Original, reveals the incalculable consequences when darkness triumphs, even briefly.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2023-08-11 08:51:412023-08-11 08:51:41When the Transgender Movement Kills
