Gaslighting Liberty

Don’t worry.

The monsters aren’t under your bed or in your closet.

They’re your prized guest. Invited in, or more like…injected through the syringe of convenience and the needle of safety.

The medicine isn’t worse than the cure…it’s the disease.

My last post dealt with all of the privacy we excitedly give away.

This post will deal with the fears associated with the erosion of said privacy.

Concerning privacy, the horse has left the barn, so what does the lack of privacy mean for us average citizens?

There is the “now” and “not yet.”

Those who downplay the concerns are stuck in the “now” and refuse to give any credence to the “not yet.” So what are the “now” and “not yet” you ask?

The “now” is consumer marketing. It’s Amazon collecting your data, creating a digital version of “you” and then using artificial intelligence to map your buying patterns, decision making skills to predict future purchases and products you’ll prpbably be interested in purchasing. Don’t worry, Amazon is an ethical player if you’re an “Amazon customer” (not so much if you’re an Amazon merchant…check here), because they keep the data you give them for themselves.

Google on the other hand (YouTube, Deepmind, etc.) not only creates a digital version of “you” for themselves, but also sell “your data” to any interested buyers for marketing purposes. Upset about spam calls? Annoyed with all the constant email spam? Annoyed about all the targeted digital ads? I’m sure the fact that Google and others are legally selling your data, that you said they could sell on your behalf, has something to do with it.

While this scenario angers me to the core; many people are not bothered by it. They are annoyed by people like me sounding the alarm. Many of them yearn for the convenience and would gladly trade more of their privacy for more convenience.

The “now” is the act of building of a digital universe populated with as many digital ID’s as possible…and it’s easy…because #convenience.

Now on to the “not yet.”

The “Not Yet” is also currently being built; it’s just out of the public eye. It’s the infrastructure that will store and process this new population of digital ID’s. It includes  better real-time-storage-products (like ID2020) and the system to integrate it (like a social credit system). The “not yet” will use catastrophes , natural disasters, pandemics, and the like to scare you into trading liberty for safety. This will be difficult to discern because of the massive polarization that has happened in first world earth. One side will say the world is ending while the other says nothing is happening and it’s all just created hysteria.

For instance…Covid-19.

Covid-19 is real.

• It is a real virus.
• It was not “created-in-a-lab”
• It is organic (naturally occurring)
• It is mutating
• It is highly contagious
• It is deadly; especially to the most vulnerable.

We can agree or disagree about government response and overreach. I know many in the US/Ohio who think we went too far, and others in the US/Ohio who think we didn’t go far enough. I personally think we are more or less on the right track in Ohio. However, I saw something in South Korea that gave me pause. Part of the reason South Korea had such incredible containment numbers was because they were able to track people by combing through their personal cell phone data. If a person tested positive, they would mine that persons data and retrace their steps for the previous 14 days. Then they would alert all people who were in close proximity to the Covid-19 positive patient, and ask them to self quarantine for 14 days. This would continue down stream to everyone in contact with the initial patient during incubation time. This is a great policy on paper; however it comes with significant privacy concerns because it sets a precedent. One that could be enacted later for other, non-pandemic reasons.

Needless to say I was gravely concerned when I saw this same policy enacted in Kansas.

Yes, that Kansas.

I asked myself how this is legal.

What I found out, did not surprise me. It is illegal in the USA for anyone, government or private company, to track your cell phone without your permission. What the Kansas government was able to do was partner with popular App companies who had GPS tracking exclusions in their privacy riders. These App companies then turned the GPS data over to the federal government for Covid-19 tracking purposes. This is all above board since all of the phone owners agreed to allow the app to track them when they checked the privacy box to download the app for “free.”

You see nothing in this world is free.

Nothing.

Google is not free, They do not give your child’s school “free” tablets or “free” software (Google Drive), their Maps are not free, nor is their search engine or Chrome Browser. These products may not cost you dollars, euros, or bitcoins, but that’s because Google charges a different currency for these products. They want information about you, to continue to build your digital ID, in exchange for using these services.

But back to the Covid-19 pandemic and Kansas.

Many people I know are OK with Kansas doing this. They are 100% cool with trading privacy for safety. I mean how many lives is your privacy worth? Would you trade your privacy to safe 1 life? 10 lives? 100 lives? 1000 lives?

I hate this question because it is a false dilemma.

I am pro-liberty.

If you want to sign up to trade privacy for safety, that’s great! I don’t want to stop you. My position is that it should be a known choice; not hidden in the small print of terms and services privacy agreement.

Covid-19 is the latest example. There have been plenty others and will be plenty more in the future. Any crisis that can be exploited, will be exploited.

But it’s not just the government.

The government is a willing participant, but its hand are tied. There is actually an unholy trinity working together to create this “Not Yet” infrastructure.

• Corporations (especially Tech and Banking)
• Government
• Media

The ultimate goal is to continue to mine each and every catastrophe for as much “personal information” currency as possible with the infrastructure looking something like a social credit system that Google is helping the Chinese government to implement as of last year. Here is an NBC News segment on exactly this from June 2019. A social credit system concedes ultimate control to whoever is in power. The Corporations mine the data which benefits them financially, the government integrates with the Tech Companies to develop a social credit system as a way to control citizens, and the media is the propaganda arm that persuade citizens what to do and how to think. In the end, these 3 will develop the system to rank businesses and citizens dependent on their social credit score. The more in-line you or your business is with the collective (Corp/Gov/Media) the higher your credit score and more “rewarded you’ll be. The more obstinate you or your business is, the more you’ll be disciplined.

The window of discourse, or Overton Window, is a term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range (below), rather than on politicians’ individual preferences.

If you want to radically shift political thought, it is easier to shift it in smaller increments as the population becomes more comfortable with change in smaller, incremental doses, than large paradigm shifts. The “now” is the act of small incremental shifts to get us comfortable with the idea of us parting with our privacy. For anyone who was an adult before 2000, could you imagine selling out your privacy? Could you imagine having amazon’s Alexa listening inside your home at all times? There would not have been a chance of that gaining traction in 1987, 1995, or even 2000…but through small incremental shifts, we are not only accepting, but we want more.

Social Credit Systems are coming the USA. Big Tech is in bed with the Government, and the media is their mouthpiece focused on gaslighting liberty.

Thomas Jefferson rightly said…

“There is no justification for taking away individuals’ freedom in the guise of public safety.” He said it because he new it was a threat to the republic all the way back in the 18th century.

Jefferson also said…

“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”

While the ideas of Epicurus are more enjoyable and ever growing in popularity, I’d rather be part of an institution that perseveres, than a nursery that is pacified. I am not sure what the answer is. I’m not sure how to alert family, friends, and peers that this is a serious issue and is happening as you read this post. I’m not sure what the answer is; but I am sure it is happening, it is a problem, and it will lead to the end of our personal freedoms if not stopped.