PRIVACY? what privacy?

​​Image from AdEspresso

The average citizen has not enjoyed privacy since taxes, licences and voting were invented - long before the advent of computers.

You don't hear the words "democracy" and "freedom" every day for no reason. Repetition is the key to mind control.

Face it: If you apply for a loan, or want to rent an apartment, all of your personal details are readily accessible to the banker and the landlord (and anyone else who can pay for it) through such companies as the recently hacked Equifax.

Identity theft is now a household word. It's not our privacy at stake in all of this pretend outrage, it's our basic freedoms! With all of the rules governing our daily activities, only one more freedom is left to be regulated: the right to openly criticize government and corporate media.

Hard to know why we're just now getting upset about this sort of thing, since it's been going on for eons, and becoming increasingly more sophisticated with the surge in technology. If the Russians bothered to meddle at all, they are a tiny drop in the manipulation bucket.

Surely you've noticed there is no longer any significant difference between Left and Right. As the old saying goes: "It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government will get in anyway".

The Western states hated Communism only because their top dogs had more powers than ours. Not to worry, our governments are incrementally acquiring them even as they work hard to convince us that we are the only truly free people on earth.

It's okay now to finally admit that there was no Trump-Russia collusion -- although it's still hard for the Democrats to let go of it:

• Democrats fear the report could distract from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, who is separately probing Russian meddling in the 2016 election and any involvement by Trump's team.

Suddenly, higher stakes have been zeroed in upon, and we're encouraged to be furious with Facebook for helping to manipulate the American electoral process.

As if that any longer matters considering the latest revelations of domestic election meddling that pulled much more effective strings. It's one thing to have our personal information, it's quite another to use it nefariously. Ordinary people convicted of Identity Theft go directly to jail; but this is personality theft, a high-class activity against which there is no law, nor is there ever likely to be, despite the feigned moral outrage and blame emanating from all professional quarters.

You really should get to know the guys who made it all possible -- and it's not likely that Facebook's was the only data they used.
 
First: Alexander Nix, CEO, Cambridge Analytica

• ... was recorded saying, “It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but these are things that don’t necessarily need to be true as long as they’re believed.
• ... "Today in the United States we have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points on every individual ... So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people."

Watch Nix explain the sublime beauty of the whole process on YouTube.

Motherboard: How Cambridge Analytica used your Facebook data to help the Donald Trump campaign in the 2016 election.

• Cambridge Analytica had become involved in the US election campaign almost two years earlier, initially as a consultant for Republicans Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. Cruz—and later Trump—was funded primarily by the secretive US software billionaire Robert Mercer who, along with his daughter Rebekah, is reported to be the largest investor in Cambridge Analytica. 

Here is the company that owns Cambridge Analytica:

• In 1990, Nigel Oakes, who had a background in TV production and advertising, founded the Behavioural Dynamics Institute (BDI) as a research facility for strategic communication. The study of mass behavior and how to change it led him to establish Strategic Communication Laboratories in 1993. Oakes thought that in order to shift mass opinion, academic insights as gained through psychologists and anthropologists at BDI should be applied, and would be more successful than traditional advertising methods.

The brain back of all of this is Stanford U. Assistant Prof. Michal Kosinski.
Notice the vague reference to some sort of previous corporate founding/affiliation in his Bio.

Watch him on YouTube -- "The End of Privacy" -- wherein he cheerfully explains why you have no privacy to protect.

Now, here is a strange Globe&Mail article attempting to downplay the influence of Cambridge Analytica and put the blame squarely on Facebook: Facebook’s threat to democracy is worse than Cambridge Analytica

Not that I'm defending Facebook either. I quit Facebook a decade ago, not just because I doubted it was secure, but mainly because I don't care how many people "like" or don't "like" me.

​And when the phone makers started calling them "Smart", well, it doesn't (or shouldn't) take a genius to know what that means.

But I would defend to the death the right of anyone to express themselves through these and other media. Freedom is being allowed to make our own mistakes.

The problem for me with the Globe article is that it ends with: We need to seize regulatory control of our most popular communications tools, before even more aspects of democratic politics become obsolete and uneconomic.

As I always say, pay attention to the final statement in a corporate news media item.  The word "seize" alone reveals a fascist state of mind. And it doesn't escape me that a blog is a "communication tool".

I predict that the day may come when my silly little blog here is banned from the Net for the "protection" of the delicate minds of my fellow citizens, one or two of whom might actually read it and start THINKING for themselves.

Also important to note is this (and if you're still an Obama fan, this could hurt a bit):

Obama's Former Campaign Director Makes Bombshell Claim: Facebook Was "On Our Side"

• ... the 2012 Obama campaign was scraping data from Facebook, got caught, and was specifically told they were allowed to do things "they wouldn't have allowed someone else to do because they were on our side."

And ... When Obama Harvested Facebook Data On Millions Of Users To Win In 2012, Everyone Cheered

All's fair in turf wars, if you're not embarrassed to be part of one.

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Further Reading:
Why the UK, the EU and the US Gang-Up on Russia
At the very least, read the "Conclusion" section that begins with:

• The Western regimes recognize that Russia is a threat to their global dominance; they know that Russia is no threat to invade the EU, North America or their vassals.

​Below Image: The Next Web