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Facebook faces new regulatory backlash over data privacy 

 

Guy Verhofstadt, chair of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, tweeted that Zuckerberg "was not totally honest" in claiming users control how their data is shared and who sees it.

"This limitless data sharing of users has to stop," Verhofstadt said. Multiple US lawmakers echoed the point.

 

"Sure looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress about whether users have 'complete control' over who sees our data on Facebook," David Cicilline, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, wrote on Twitter (TWTR).

 

 

 

http://money.cnn.com...dex.html?iid=EL

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How The FBI Silences Whistleblowers 

 

Most whistleblowers either suffer in anonymity or are personally, professionally, socially and financially ruined for speaking truth to power.

 

Darin Jones is one of those people. He’s one of the people silenced in Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers. And he continues to suffer under Donald Trump.

 

Jones was an FBI supervisory contract specialist who in 2012 reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties to his superior. Jones maintained that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) had been awarded a $40 million contract improperly because a former FBI official with responsibility for granting the contract then was hired as a consultant at CSC. Jones said, rightly, that this was a violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. He made seven other disclosures alleging financial improprieties in the FBI, and he was promptly fired for his troubles.   

 

 

https://www.zerohedg...-whistleblowers

 

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Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.  - Aldous Huxley

 

 

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4 Reasons Why Big Tech Is Hazardous to Our Lives    https://pjmedia.com/...s-to-our-lives/

 

Even Hollywood sees a problem here, and recently produced "The Circle" (starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson), which addresses the very real march of Big Tech erasing our privacy and taking over our lives: 

 

1. They are spying on us.

 

If you use Gmail, or if you use Google as your search engine, every click of the keyboard, even if you "delete" it, is permanently recorded by Google. Everything you have ever looked up is stored forever on their search engines. And now we actually purchase spies and set them up in our homes! They are called "Alexa."

 

One man was even able to listen, through Alexa, to over a thousand recordings of another person's "private" conversations. A link was "accidentally" sent to him, and of course this was "human error" that would "never happen again." Sure. And yet, people buy Alexa (which is nothing more than a data-mining tool) to record every single word and activity that it can possibly record ... and send it back to "headquarters." Feel good about that? (Here's another story about the same kind of thing.)

 

So even if we don't have something like an Alexa in our home, do our smartphones spy on us? We know they are tracking devices. Facebook tracks every picture or article you click on. It also uses facial recognition. 

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Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.  - Aldous Huxley

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China: The Perfect High-Tech Totalitarian State    thanks to Silicon Valley

 

In 2018, China had an estimated 200 million surveillance cameras, with plans for 626 million surveillance cameras by 2020. China's aim is apparently an "Integrated Joint Operations Platform" which will integrate and coordinate data from surveillance cameras with facial recognition technology, citizen ID card numbers, biometric data, license plate numbers and information about vehicle ownership, health, family planning, banking, and legal records, "unusual activity", and any other relevant data that can be gathered about citizens, such as religious practice, travels abroad, and so on, according to reports of local officials and police.

 

https://www.zerohedg...alitarian-state

China is in the process of fulfilling what Stalin, Hitler and Mao could only dream about: The flawless totalitarian state, powered by digital technology, where the individual has nowhere to flee from the all-seeing eye of the Communist state.

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“Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly lied to the American people about privacy. I think he ought to be held personally accountable, which is everything from financial fines to — and let me underline this — the possibility of a prison term.”

 

Those are the words of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who said Facebook Inc.’s chief executive should face serious consequences for misuse of consumers’ personal data.

 

Wyden introduced a bill in 2018 that would give the Federal Trade Commission expanded powers to punish companies that violate consumers’ data privacy, including steep fines and potential prison time for executives.                https://www.marketwa...term-2019-09-03