Showing posts with label state surveillance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label state surveillance. Show all posts

Thursday 16 November 2023

State's Eyes.

 

 

                                        Image courtesy of Natoinal Technology News.

           We all accept that Big Brother society is already here, and it is for ever tightening its grip on our everyday movements. Unseen, the eyes of the state are on your daily life, from shopping to work, from your leisure activities to your daily chores. Then of course there is Stingray the phone data vacuum. IMSI-catchers, also known as Stingrays, allow police forces to track mobile phones and intercept text messages, calls and other data within their radius in real time. The devices can capture the private data and phone calls of anyone who happens to be in range, whether they are a suspect or not.

                                                    Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

An interesting article from Wired.

          

           A Beyoncé gig, the coronation of King Charles, and the British Formula One Grand Prix all have one thing in common: Thousands of people at the events, which all took place earlier this year, had their faces scanned by police-operated face recognition tech.
          Backed by the Conservative government, police forces across England and Wales are being told to rapidly expand their use of the highly controversial technology, which globally has led to false arrests, misidentifications, and lives derailed. Police have been told to double their use of face searches against databases by early next year—45 million passport photos could be opened up to searches—and police are increasingly working with stores to try to identify shoplifters. Simultaneously, more regional police forces are testing real-time systems in public places.
          The rapid expansion of face recognition comes at a time when trust in policing levels are at record lows, following a series of high-profile scandals. Civil liberties groups, experts, and some lawmakers have called for bans on the use of face recognition technology, particularly in public places, saying it infringes on people’s privacy and human rights, and isn’t a “proportionate” way to find people suspected of committing crimes.
          “In the democratic world, we are an outlier at the moment,” says Madeleine Stone, a senior advocacy officer with Big Brother Watch, a privacy-focused group that has called for a ban and “immediate stop” on live face recognition, a proposal backed by 65 UK lawmakers. The EU, which the UK left in 2016, may ban the real-time use of face recognition systems, and one of its highest courts has called the technology highly intrusive.” Various US states have banned police from using the technology.
          Cops in England and Wales can hunt for potential criminals using two main kinds of face recognition. First, there are live face recognition systems (LFR): These usually include cameras mounted on police vans that scan people’s faces as they walk by and check them against a “watchlist” of wanted people. The LFR technology is deployed for some big events and announced in advance by the police. Second, there’s retrospective face recognition (RFR), where images from CCTV, smartphones, and doorbell cameras can be fed into a system that tries to identify the person based on millions of existing photos. Police use of both systems is increasing.
          Two police forces in England and Wales—London’s Metropolitan Police and South Wales Police—have embraced LFR, using the technology for multiple years. (Police in Scotland, where policing is overseen locally, don’t use live systems but are reportedly increasing their use of RFR). So far this year, the Met and South Wales Police have used LFR on 22 separate occasions, according to statistics published on their websites.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Tuesday 13 December 2022

Bugs.


            We live in the surveillance society, we see it all around us, in pubs, shops, bus and rail stations, along the street where we walk, where we drive, they are there those ever watching eyes of the surveillance cameras. However what about the ones we don't see the hidden bugs, that most people think only appear in James Bond movies, how wrong they are. People who stand and speak out against the injustices and inequalities in this society can and do come in for some extra surveillance by means of the hidden bug. It can be in your car, in your home unseen quietly monitoring your every word. The following example is from Italy, but  you'll find it happens in every country.

The following from Act for Freedom Now.

       Same old story, same place, same shack. Discovery of a bug in a flat in Rome

    

             Probably in the days leading up to the event of November 12th in Rome in solidarity with Alfredo and the other prisoner comrades on hunger strike, someone sneaked into the house where we live and planted a bug.
             Perhaps with a sense of irony, or perhaps with investigative “acumen,” that in the continuous misinterpretation of “solidarity and complicity” that develops among anarchists will have made them expect a collective fast, the intruders thought the most suitable place to accommodate their bug was the back of the kitchen oven Powered by the cord of the same household appliance, it also came with a battery. The incident is aggravated by recurrence, as another bug had already been found in the same place, powered by the same power cable, several months ago. Time passes but control remains.
            We will not be intimidated by the attention paid to us by some of those responsible for the detention of the revolutionary prisoners.
            Our thoughts are fixed on the comrades who even from inside jail are continuing to fight.

To them all the esteem, anger and love they deserve.

Marco and Sandro

via: fuoridallariserva Translated by Act for freedom now!

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Wednesday 19 January 2022

Google!

            Millions of people use Google Maps, your friendly find the way companion. However, like all large corporations Google tend to work hand and glove with powers that be. With Google's advance technology, it has now become much more sinister and a tool for the state and its various appendages. Apart from the total surveillance in our towns and cities, cameras in pubs, shops, shopping malls, bus and train station etc., we now have the Google giant capturing your every movement, and making it all available to the state and and its various tentacles. From the sky, from the lamppost, from the corner of a building, from the road, you are being filmed, photographed and logged to assist the state with its endless desire for total control over the population. How do we recover our right to privacy and to roam without being photographed, logged and profiled without your prior consent?
The following from Act For Freedom Now:
    
 
          A mafia boss was arrested in Spain in December after 20 years on the wanted list after Italian anti-mafia cops used Google Street View to confirm their ‘traditional methods’ which led to information that he was running a hairdressing salon, a restaurant and a grocery shop in Galapagar, Spain. To his “How did you find me? It’s been ten years since I even called my family on the phone.” “We saw you on Google Maps”, was the reply.
 
 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk    

Thursday 4 November 2021

DNA etc..

         As technology advances so does the state's use of that technology. Ever larger data bases are built with more and more of our details on file and the pandemic was a boost for this data gathering exercise. The state now has the ability to tag everybody through apps and vacs passports, and the ever increasing gathering of DNA, making it much easier to enforce any legislation they care to introduce. Freedom is the enemy of the state and it will do everything in its power to curtail any attempt by individuals who work towards freedom, and data bases are one of its weapons..

The following article from Act For Freedom Now:


          It is a fact that worldwide the system of monitoring and control using biometric data is growing with the creation of data banks for everyone with the cooperation of State, European and international organisations.
At the same time as the majority of society is subjected to the violence of the State and capital, the increasing impoverishment and the rising cost of living, the beating of strikers and students by the repressive forces, the murders by the cops, the killings in the sweatshops of wage slavery , the repatriations and murder of immigrants.
         At the same time they are also expanding their legal arsenal and sharpening their attack on anyone and everyone who raises their head and anyone and everyone who attempts to resist modern totalitarianism. The Greek State is seeking to use trumped-up charges to break the morale of those who are struggling. We, the fighters, the comrades, the comrades declare our presence, we do not retreat, we stand on the side of every exploited and oppressed person, on the side of the persecuted and imprisoned comrades. Anyway, in the beginning DNA identification comes for the fighters, then it will be established for all.
-OPPOSITION TO COMPULSORY DNA COLLECTION OF THE 14 STUDENTS
-IMMEDIATE RELEASE OF COMRADE HARRIS.M.
-NO PROSECUTION FOR COMRADE KOSTAS. Κ.
Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

Thursday 2 September 2021

I Spy.

        I remember when CCTV cameras were first introduced to our streets. There was quite an outcry about privacy etc.. Of course the state being what it is, ignored all that concern of the public, and now we have an unbelievable array of cameras, they are everywhere. They are in pubs, shops, cash machines, stations, clubs, schools, on all our transport, etc.. They have developed immensely since there introduction from number plate recognition to face recognition, and the data collected can be used to build a picture of your habits, it can all be logged and kept for future reference. All this takes place in our so called "democracy", no matter where you go, you are being tracked, and of course your mobile phone will plot your movements and store that information. The state has plans to create a society where there is no place to hid. It is important to the state and its attendant apparatus to know where your are, should you be there, where are you going, have you permission to go there, and for what purpose. All possible with the ever present, always watching eye of the camera and your phone.

The following from Act For Freedom Now:



         While power continues to ravage and plunder territories, bodies and souls, we can still count on individuals who do not resign themselves and who, in spite of everything, continue on the tortuous path of freedom.
          The capitalist system, now well established, always ready to hide behind the mask of democracy and security, unveils its tentacles a little more each day, which are insinuating themselves into the life of each individual, as well as into the exploitation of the earth, water and air. Those who (finally) realize this and those who are aware of it and have been opposing it for a long time, are immediately beaten and repressed, so that the dirty integrity of the authority that watches over the order and the instituted system is not damaged. Because of this, companions who have always thrown themselves with their tension against the power, see their affinities described as “terrorist associations”, their lives monitored and their freedom limited.
          Faced with the current intensification of the exploitation of the weakest and the exploited, the new shaping of the repressive strategies (from the violent repression of the revolts in the prisons to the repression by force of the struggles in the logistic sector, to the permanent persecution of the immigrants, up to the more and more common application of the preventive measures of surveillance) carries its effects, always more incisive and widespread, with the purpose of putting in a corner those who struggle.
        From Bologna to Cagliari, Genoa, Turin, Florence and Rovereto, the requests for the application of the Special Surveillance fall as if it were raining. It is a dirty and detestable fascist measure, which aims to strike in a discretionary way behaviors considered “dangerous” for the maintenance of the system.
        On September 15, the Genoa court will give its decision on the request of the Prosecutor Stalker Manotti to apply this measure of preventive surveillance to a fellow anarchist, after the same measure has already been applied to two Genoese companions during the last year.

 

       Since always, Anarchists and all the courageous bearers of rebellious ideas see the power experimenting on their lives, on their struggles, repressive strategies that will be later used against all those who refuse to bow their heads in front of an ever more oppressive system, which follows the merciless dictates of the mechanisms of prevarication and marginalization of the weak, the exploited, the “different” people, with the aim of isolating and sidelining the “enemies” of this order, now more than ever.
        It is now even more necessary to respond with determination and rage to these continuous attacks. We are aware that our enemy will continue to attack us, trying to limit our freedoms even more, but we have long since chosen our side.

Wednesday, September 15th,

9:30 am: gathering in front of the court of Genoa

5:00 pm: demonstration from Piazza Banchi

        In solidarity with Carlo, hit by the request of Special Surveillance, and with all the companions affected by this preventive measure.
        Against the special surveillance of our thoughts, our behaviors, our relationships, against the power and the system that supports it.
Source: Attaque
Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Thursday 22 July 2021

Rage.

 

             One aspect of our lives that has seen remarkable growth is the surveillance camera, they are everywhere. It would be difficult to take a walk through your city, town, village and not be photographed, recorded, stored for future profiling. It is no longer just photos, the technology has moved rapidly in an insidious manner, it is now videoing your every move with face recognition, profiling you according to mannerism etc. following you into shopping malls, pubs, on transport, there is no escaping the all seeing eye of Big Brother. How anyone can be aware of this all encompassing state, council, private companies recording your every move and still believe they live in a free society, beggars belief. A proliferation of surveillance is incompatible with individual freedom, it is the hall mark of state control, but somehow we have accepted this 24 hour prying eye of the state and its partners to invade our every move. If we wish to live in a free society then we will need a concerted effort to rid our lives of the all encompassing, invasive prying state eye. 

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

         As long as there are forms of police control over our lives, whether widespread or not, there will be people trying to prevent them from doing harm.
Download PDF HERE:    PDF: ‘Rage Against Video Surveillance’

Visit ann arky's home at:

http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page   

Monday 14 December 2020

Every Step!

       The Covid19 population control directives and dictates are just part and parcel of the state's mechanisms to keep a watchful eye on you, yes their is a pandemic, and we have to take care, but the state will not miss an opportunity to tighten its grip over the people, it needs total control and a submissive population to guarantee its survival, to guarantee that wealth, power and privileges stay where they are.
         The eyes of the state are everywhere, often very visible in the form of an epidemic of CCTV cameras littered all over our streets, in shopping malls, shops, bus stops, pubs, as well as in buses, trains and all forms of public transport and public places, libraries etc.. You can rest assured that the prying eyes of the state are with you every step of the way. You disagree with some aspect of the state and/or its policies and you could come under a bit more scrutiny than you friends and neighbours. A walk in the countryside or a drive to the coast does not guarantee your out of their vision. There is that invisible array of cameras, microphones and tracking devices that are planted secretively where you're not supposed to find them. All this rather contradicts the state's projected illusion that we live in a democracy, I'm not referring to the UK in particular, for they are all at it, every state on the planet, the West, and those other states that our lords and master declare vile enemies of freedom.
       The following little article is not new, nor is it unique, but is the sort of thing that goes on day and daily in our free and democratic world, remember the undercover cops "scandal", that was no scandal, but part of their methodology on keeping tabs on you and your activities.
 
From Ears and Eyes:
      The information below comes from a recent article published by Reporterre, a left-wing environmentalist media. The article in question, whose “legalistic” approach disturbs us, can be read here: https://reporterre.net/Au-Carnet-des-cameras-cachees-et-illegales-pour-surveiller-des-ecologistes (in french).
       In august 2020, four cameras were found near the “ZAD du Carnet”, a place of struggle against the creation of an industrial area, in Loire-Atlantique, in the west of France. The cameras were found on august 31, and “appear to have been installed right before a « weekend of resistance »” organized there on august 29 and 30.
      The four cameras, hidden near an access gate to the area, were “camouflaged in a fake tree log and fake stones“. They “filmed continuously and were connected, via buried cables, to large batteries and modems, also concealed, allowing images to be sent directly to a remote station“.
       In addition, “the mention « Allwan », visible on some of the images found, as well as on a label on a camera, strongly suggests that the equipment was supplied by the company Allwan Security“. The company Allwan Security is present in our list of companies.
        Below, you will find a picture of the devices found, two pictures of the objects in which they were hidden, and a map showing the positioning of the cameras around the access gate.
 




 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Friday 4 December 2020

Signal.


       More and more groups and individuals are starting to use "Signal" as their chosen messaging service, it's free, open-source and encrypted end to end. Your message leaves your device encrypted arrives at signal encrypted, is forwarded encrypted and then deleted at the server's end. Even the server has no idea what you sent. Making it extremely difficult for any prying eyes to see what you are chatting about. Sounds like the right method to communicate with your little group knowing that only those you send to can read what you sent. This is not a sales pitch, I just think it is worth considering in switching, for obvious reasons.

Info on Signal.

EU and Signal.

Signal, what is it.


Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Saturday 26 September 2020

Tomorrow!!


      More and more our world is seen through a screen, now with virtual meetings and virtual reality the natural world is becoming a forgotten and alien world. Even the barbarity of war can be carried out from an office somewhere thousands of miles from the horror, destruction and death. The hands-on world is slowly becoming a distant memory. Is this the direction we wish to go, to a world that suits big business and the controlling state, where you become a studied, profiled predictable entity, devoid of the right to your own social structures and interactions, without being monitored? Where communities are in a monitored virtual world?

The following from Montreal Counter Information:


Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

PDF to print (11 x 17)

Poster text:

Fire to the Cybernetic Prison

It’s never too late to resist

Artificial Intelligence
     AI labs, recipients of several $100M in government funding, are working to put “machine learning” algorithms in the service of a long list of industries. Under an “ethical” facade, some applications will simply allow well-placed capitalists to further enrich themselves. Others aim to reinforce repression, whether detecting shoplifters at the supermarket with automated video surveillance, developing facial recognition tools that work even on partly covered faces, or “predicting” crime or the probability of a prisoner re-offending.

5g Wireless Networking
     The unprecedented bandwidth of 5G technology enables the deployment of AI on the scale of a city in real time. Every movement becomes trackable thanks to thousands of cameras integrated into a centralized surveillance apparatus. This vision is already in practice in more than one European “smart city”. Countless sensors dotting public spaces, in businesses, cars and public transit, and worn on our bodies aim to make every action the object of calculation, prediction and control, all under an eco-friendly label. By its pervasiveness, a web of algorithms is made invisible and therefore impossible to resist.

Robotics and Automation
     Self-driving cars. Robotized warehouses. Cashierless stores. Delivery robots that call the cops when they are attacked. An infrastructure is being deployed that will change the world of work and our living environment permanently. We don’t mourn the disappearance of back-breaking and boring jobs. A dehumanizing pace is imposed on the remaining workers, who must keep up with the machines and productivity software or be shown the door. Meanwhile, what measures of social control and what exploitative schemes await the new excluded masses of an age of technological unemployment?

Life in Front of a Screen
     Possibilities for authentic relations between humans and with our surroundings are increasingly erased in service of a virtual hyper- connectivity. Understanding, discovery, and the search for meaning are reduced to production of data. Attention deficit, memory problems, loss of emotional skills and imagination, disrupted sleep, musculo-skeletal pain, anxiety, loneliness, depression: the symptoms of addiction to online technologies are worsening as the proportion of the population that has spent their entire lives immersed in touch screens grows.

For free and full lives, open to the unknown

Be the outage in their network!

And just a thought: 

Tomorrow’s World!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile
as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,
Chasing profit as it goes
firing millions of ordinary folk.
Raping and polluting land after land,
starting bloody wars.
Toxic waste, sweat shop wages
and oil covered sea shores.
Where have all the flowers gone
beneath this ozone free sky?
To join the birds, to join the fox
on yonder plutonium field to die.
Mercury fish, strontium lamb
trees that never show a leaf,
radio active beaches, toxic streams
good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.
In a world of epidemic, plague and famine
it’s bottled water and chemical food.
Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice
so you know its got to be good.
Beneath a sky that’s always black,
hurricane winds and endless drought,
its oxygen masks for the toxic air,
corporate profit’s what its all about.


Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Friday 14 June 2019

Democracy, The World's Most Misused Word.

       Very often an arrest in this society is not just the loss of freedom for one person, it is a deliberate attack on the free flow of information. Especially information regarding the dealings of "our" representatives, a lot of which takes place behind closed doors. Decisions are made that dramatically affect all our lives, but we are not privy to those decision making processes. The government and the people are two entirely different entities, the government assumes the right to know everything about you, but you are not allowed to know all about the government. This arrangement is safeguarded by a vast array of secret service agencies, which work away diligently protecting the institution of the state, and the power and privileges of those who are in control. We, the ordinary people, will be fed misinformation, lies, trivia, propaganda, and overdoses of the culture of the celebrity, all bubble gum and candy floss to keep us happy and our thoughts away from what controls our lives, and in a lot of cases, our death. 
     Democracy is probably the most misused and most misunderstood word on our planet, our representatives will spout it as what we have, and what the state is trying to protect. However, democracy, if it ever has lived, is most certainly an alien land to the society we inhabit today, an anathema to the state.
      Those individuals who dare expose this subterfuge and duplicity, and to pass on to the public these inner dark dealings of the state are vilified, persecuted and in most case silenced. Lies and subterfuge are the daily tools of the secret agencies, and with the sophisticated surveillance techniques of the modern world, all of us are suspect, and can and are, monitored in our every day actions. The world of trivia and fantasy that swamps our lives is the state's propaganda wing issuing us with paracetamol to take away the pain, in an attempt to keep us happy and our thoughts away from the world we actually inhabit.
      Sorry George Orwell, we ignored you.
The following is an extract from an article by Chris Hedges:

         We have watched over the last decade as freedom of the press and legal protection for those who expose government abuses and lies have been obliterated by wholesale government surveillance and the criminalizing of the leaking and, with Julian’s persecution, publication of these secrets. The press has been largely emasculated in the United States. The repeated use of the Espionage Act, especially under the Obama administration, to charge and sentence whistleblowers has shut down our ability to shine a light into the inner workings of power and empire. Governmental officials with a conscience, knowing all of their communications are monitored, captured and stored by intelligence agencies, are too frightened to reach out to reporters. The last line of defense lies with those with the skills that allow them to burrow into the records of the security and surveillance state and with the courage to make them public, such as Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Jeremy Hammond, now serving a 10-year prison term in the United States for hacking into the Texas-based private security firm Strategic Forecasting Inc., or Stratfor. The price of resistance is high not only for them, but for those such as Julian willing to publish this information. As Sarah Harrison has pointed out: This is our data, our information, our history. We must fight to own it.”
       Even if Julian were odious, which he is not, even if he carried out a sexual offense, which he did not, even if he was a poor houseguest—a bizarre term for a man trapped in a small room for nearly seven years under house arrest—which he was not, it would make no difference. Julian is not being persecuted for his vices. He is being persecuted for his virtues.
        His arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities carried by the Ecuadorian, British and U.S. governments in the seizure of Julian two months ago from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London are ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses, corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by the global ruling elite will be masked from the public. They presage a world where those with the courage and integrity to expose the misuse of power, no matter what their nationality, will be hunted down around the globe and seized, tortured, subjected to sham trials and given lifetime prison terms. They presage an Orwellian dystopia where journalism is outlawed and replaced with propaganda, trivia, entertainment and indoctrination to make us hate those demonized by the state as our enemies.
     The arrest of Julian marks the official beginning of the corporate totalitarianism and constant state surveillance, now far advanced in China, that will soon define our lives. The destruction of all protection of the rule of law, which is what we are witnessing, is essential to establishing an authoritarian or totalitarian state.
       The BBC China correspondent Stephen McDonell was locked out of WeChat in China a few days ago after posting photos of the candlelight vigil in Hong Kong marking 30 years since student protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square were gunned down by Chinese soldiers in June 1989.
“Chinese friends started asking on WeChat what the event was?” he wrote. “Why were people gathering? Where was it? That such questions were coming from young professionals here shows the extent to which knowledge of Tiananmen 1989 has been made to disappear in China. I answered a few of them, rather cryptically, then suddenly I was locked out of WeChat.”
In order to get back on WeChat he had to agree that he was responsible for spreading “malicious rumors” and provide what is called a faceprint.
“I was instructed to hold my phone up—to ‘face front camera straight on’—looking directly at the image of a human head. Then told to ‘Read numbers aloud in Mandarin Chinese.’ My voice was captured by the App at the same time it scanned my face.”
        Governmental abuse of WeChat, he wrote, “could deliver to the Communist Party a life map of pretty much everybody in this country, citizens and foreigners alike. Capturing the face and voice image of everyone who was suspended for mentioning the Tiananmen crackdown anniversary in recent days would be considered very useful for those who want to monitor anyone who might potentially cause problems.”
This is almost certainly our future, and it is a future that Julian has fought courageously to prevent.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

Thursday 13 June 2019

The Omnipresent Surveillance State.

        I, like many others have scribbled away, in anger, at the ever growing threat from the  onslaught of surveillance that is relentlessly entwining every fibre of our existence. It is spreading like a plague, it is insidiously multiplying in the background, growing in sophistication and increasing the state's power over us all. Worse still, it now works with and for the corporate juggernaut. It trolls your personal habits, likes and dislikes and targets you with consumer crap. What the corporate world knows about you will be shared with the state's policing agents. This will be building up a very detailed picture of you, you will be monitored, profiled and assessments made of your loyalty to the state's aims. You are all guilty until proven innocent, and even then, you will continue to be monitored and profiled until the day you die. 
     We have sleep walked into George Orwell's 1984, and we still haven't rubbed our eyes to wake up to this reality, time is running out.
     The following is an extract from a very detail article on the surveillance subject by John W. Whitehead. Though it refers to America, we would be naive in the extreme to harbour the thought that some how we are different in this country, we are not. The spider's web of surveillance, is at this moment monitoring and profiling you and yours. I recommend you read the full article.
--------Here’s what a lot of people fail to understand, however: it’s not just what you say or do that is being monitored, but how you think that is being tracked and targeted. We’ve already seen this play out on the state and federal level with hate crime legislation that cracks down on so-called “hateful” thoughts and expression, encourages self-censoring and reduces free debate on various subject matter.

Say hello to the new Thought Police.
     Total Internet surveillance by the Corporate State, as omnipresent as God, is used by the government to predict and, more importantly, control the populace, and it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. For example, the NSA is now designing an artificial intelligence system that is designed to anticipate your every move. In a nutshell, the NSA will feed vast amounts of the information it collects to a computer system known as Aquaint (the acronym stands for Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence), which the computer can then use to detect patterns and predict behavior.

No information is sacred or spared.
       Everything from cell phone recordings and logs, to emails, to text messages, to personal information posted on social networking sites, to credit card statements, to library circulation records, to credit card histories, etc., is collected by the NSA and shared freely with its agents in crime: the CIA, FBI and DHS. One NSA researcher actually quit the Aquaint program, “citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.”
       Thus, what we are witnessing, in the so-called name of security and efficiency, is the creation of a new class system comprised of the watched (average Americans such as you and me) and the watchers (government bureaucrats, technicians and private corporations).

Clearly, the age of privacy in America is at an end.


      “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”—Orwell

So where does that leave us?          We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers. This is the fact-is-stranger-than-fiction lesson that is being pounded into us on a daily basis.
        It won’t be long before we find ourselves looking back on the past with longing, back to an age where we could speak to whom we wanted, buy what we wanted, think what we wanted without those thoughts, words and activities being tracked, processed and stored by corporate giants such as Google, sold to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, and used against us by militarized police with their army of futuristic technologies.
       To be an individual today, to not conform, to have even a shred of privacy, and to live beyond the reach of the government’s roaming eyes and technological spies, one must not only be a rebel but rebel.
      Even when you rebel and take your stand, there is rarely a happy ending awaiting you. You are rendered an outlaw.

So how do you survive in the American surveillance state?

We’re running out of options.
       As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’ll soon have to choose between self-indulgence (the bread-and-circus distractions offered up by the news media, politicians, sports conglomerates, entertainment industry, etc.) and self-preservation in the form of renewed vigilance about threats to our freedoms and active engagement in self-governance.
      Yet as Aldous Huxley acknowledged in Brave New World Revisited: “Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in their calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.”
Read the full article HERE: 
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 5 June 2019

Beware Of That Cop In Your Pocket.



        Probably one of the most difficult pieces of information for most people to follow, but think about it, you're never alone with a phone, your phone is a cop.
         With Stingray:(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) you are an easy target.


The following submitted to It’s Going Down
Are you hitting the streets in support of a righteous cause?

         TL;DR Leave your phone at home. It is a conduit into your entire life and all of your networks. It contains years of passively recorded conversation transcripts. It has data on all of your associates, friends, and sexual partners. It tracks your movements down to the meter. It is a black box that can be recovered from your person and used against you in a court of law.
Leave it at home. Your phone is a cop.
        If the above doesn’t make it abundantly clear WHY you should leave it at home, imagine the terror you feel when you hand someone your phone to show them a picture and they start swiping left or right. Now imagine The State swiping through your pictures. Hopefully we’ve convinced you! Information security (abbreviated to InfoSec because it sounds cooler) can seem intimidating, but it’s as easy as trading away some of your own convenience in exchange for obstructing the Panopticon of State/LEO/reactionary forces that seek to undermine your project. This document is not a deep dive into any of the topics covered. Devices and software exist in a state of flux, and what is considered secure now will likely be obsolete within months, weeks, or days of writing this. It is up to you to stay vigilant and informed.
The Case for Disconnection.

        It’s important that we come to terms here. This is not aimed at the “Hold a sign and shout some slogans” crowd. If you are attending a *Fully Permitted and Peaceful Protest* and you want to bring your phone to document what you see and do, knock yourself out. Are you in the Black Bloc? Are you engaging in “black bloc things”? Are you covering your face? If any of these conditions apply to you, you need to leave that shit at home. We understand that these devices are integral parts of modern life, but if you are engaging in “effective resistance” the presence and use of any cell phone is a risk to everyone around you. If you are compelled to carry it or would somehow render yourself critically unsafe without it, you need to consider finding a different outlet for your dissent. While documenting abuses by state security forces is important, it is necessary to leave that task to journalists covering the action. Yes, they will do a horrendous job. Accept this and move on. Additionally, cell/LTE service breaks down quickly when towers get overpopulated. At a big protest, thousands of people are texting “R U HERE?” to each other simultaneously. The network will shit the bed in short order, leaving your device crippled until the traffic storm abates. It won’t be useful to you until you’re heading home or more likely until it’s sitting in an evidence locker waiting to be processed. If your device is limping along on a degraded network connection, there is a significant possibility that you aren’t communicating directly with the tower providing your signal. The police have access to technologies, Stingray among them, which will seamlessly intercept and record cellular communications. Calls and plain text SMS are vulnerable to these “man in the middle” attacks. Lock screen patterns are insecure. Four digit codes are insecure. They can be bypassed quickly and easily. You can be compelled to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone by a court order. Encryption can be bypassed using tool kits available to law enforcement. As careful as you think you’ve been, the odds are not in your favor. If your phone is seized as evidence, the fun isn’t over if the charges are dropped. Don’t assume present legal or cultural norms are going to protect you. Your information can sit in a database until it’s useful to The State.
       We might be technical professionals, but it’s likely that you aren’t. You have fucked up when configuring something. Don’t leave things to chance, and don’t rely on some combination of official incompetence and your own perceived individual insignificance to protect you.
Leave your phone at home.
Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Saturday 1 December 2018

The State Watching You In Your Kitchen.

         We are aware that we live in a surveillance society, the evidence is all around us, and in lots of cases openly visible. We see the cameras in shops, pubs, transport vehicle, bus-stops, bus stations, train stations, airports and on our streets at strategic points. Then there is the phone tapping and physical surveillance by members of the state's policing system. If we want to escape them we stay at home or live in our cars. Well maybe not, if you are involved in any form of dissent from the established power structure of the state, then your home and/or your car may not be as private as you think. Big brother may have taken up residence in your home or be sitting beside you as you drive around with your friends.
        The following is well worth reading it is from Des oreilles et des yeux via Anarchist News.


        The States, according to their role of repression of individuals and groups doing subversive actions, put in place ways of keeping those individuals and groups under surveillance. It seems that some of this surveillance is done through the hiding of surveillance devices in the spaces we live in.
      These devices take different forms : microphones, cameras, geolocation devices. Targeted spaces can be all the spaces we go through : buildings, vehicles, public space. These practices are sometimes legal, authorized by a judge for example, and sometimes not, done illegally by intelligence agencies.
       We noticed the lack of informations available around us concerning this kind of surveillance. What is the real use of these devices by intelligence agencies? Which kind of devices are used? In which contexts? How efficiently? What can we do to oppose this kind of surveillance?
          Therefore we decided to gather informations about the subject, with the idea of writing and publishing a booklet in a few months. We want to focus in this booklet on surveillance carried out by intelligence agencies and political police in European States against individuals or groups doing subversive actions. Also, we limit ourselves to the study of physical surveillance devices hidden in the spaces inhabited by the suveilled individuals and groups (so we won’t talk about other kind of surveillance such as shadowing, phone-tapping and Internet surveillance).--------
Continue reading: 

A list of devices found in homes and cars:

The examples list can be downloaded here :
The archive containing the devices pictures can be downloaded here :
     This list would be included in the final booklet, along with summaries concerning the locations of devices, how they work, and possible ways of detecting them.
Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Wednesday 24 January 2018

Claimants And Two Way Mirrors.

        Still on the insidious subject of state surveillance of the population, the more you dig the more reprehensible the state's actions become. What is more, we pay for all this surveillance on our movements with taxpayers money, all this surveillance pours tax payers money into the pockets of private companies, who no doubt will use the information for their own commercial ends.


        The following extract shows another devious low and duplicitous aspect of the state's desire to manufacture compliance and subservience, with this particular form being targeted at vulnerable claimants. When you troll the cesspit of state surveillance you find it has no end to its depth of depravity, it is a bottomless pit of duplicity aimed at control of the population.

Two Way Mirrors.
         I regularly write to raise concerns about the current government’s misuse of psychology in public policies and research. There has been a shift towards the formulation of targeted, prejudiced, class contingent policies which have the central aim of “changing behaviours”  and enforcing “compliance” and conformity. This behaviourist approach has some profound implications for democracy. It constrains autonomy and curtails the basic liberties of targeted citizens, whilst excluding them from any political consideration of their human rights. 
      On the government website, a contract finder notice for the “Provision of Research Laboratory Facilities” for the Department for Work and Pensions says:
        “The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) requires research to be undertaken, in a research laboratory environment, with recipients of the Carers Allowance and recipients of the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA).
In a typical lab situation DWP shall have one DWP researcher in a room with the participant and other DWP researchers (if appropriate) and invited observers behind a two way mirror evaluating what is happening. As well as viewing the interview they can also see the activity on the web screen via monitors in their room.
The proceedings are currently recorded on MP4 for subsequent use when research findings are being reported. The participants cannot see the people in the viewing facility though they know they are there. There needs to be flexibility to be able to undertake the research in the North West and Leeds and be able to recruit for participants to attend a Government Lab set up at Aviation House in London WC2B 6NH.” 
       Northern Voices T/A The Talking Shop is a Manchester based market research and public opinion polling company that has been awarded the contract in June this year. This company will be paid up to £60,000 for experimenting on sick and disabled claimants, using covert observation from behind a two-way mirror, studying eye movements, facial expressions and body language. 
       Eye movement measurements are frequently used, though controversially, in criminal psychology, too, as a somewhat unreliable method of “lie detection.” Questions arise regarding precisely how eye movements, perception and cognition are related, and to date, this question hasn’t been answered by academics. 
           It struck me that the experimental set up is very reminiscent of the social psychology experiments conducted in the 60s and early 70s to study social conformity and obedience to authority. However, the welfare “reforms” were specifically designed to coerce people claiming welfare into conformity – “to do the ‘right thing'”-  and compliance with a harsh “conditionality” regime and ever-shrinking eligibility criteria. It’s hardly a secret that the New Right Conservatives and neoliberals have always loathed the welfare state, and along with the other social gains of our post-war settlement, it is being systematically dismantled.
          The wider context is significant, both in terms of its impact on individual citizen’s experiences and behaviours, and on the way that theory is formulated to conflate  and align citizen’s needs with neoliberal outcomes, and this is also reflected in how research is being designed and used.
Continue Reading: 
Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk