Category A New Era Technocracy

Sep 18 2024

Ford Files Patent to Spy on Drivers


Posted Sep 18, 2024 By Martin Armstrong | 

Governments are pushing the public to switch to smart vehicles to reduce fossil fuel consumption, but there is also a second motive – surveillance.

This September, Ford filed a new patent to eavesdrop on riders. They plan to share this information with third-parties to personalize the advertisements riders hear. Ford will also take the driver’s destination into consideration to determine location-specific advertisements and suggestions. The technology will factor in the weather, traffic, and all external sensors to fine tune when and what to market to passengers.

Advertisements are perhaps the least ominous use of voice data based on the plans that these car manufacturers have. Car insurance rates in the United States spiked 26% in the past year, which is partly due to car manufacturers sharing ride data with insurance companies. Even older cars with basic features like OnStar have tracking devices that report your driving behavior to the manufacturers who share your data with insurance companies and, ultimately, the government. LexisNexis, which tracks drivers’ behaviors and compiles risk profiles, has been sharing individual data with General Motors, who passes that information along to the insurance companies. General Motors.

One driver demanded that LexisNexis send him his personal report, which was a 258-page document containing every trip he or his wife took in his vehicle over a six-month period. LexisNexis said that this data will be used “for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage.” They even reported small issues such as hard breaking and rapid acceleration, according to the report. “I don’t know the definition of hard brake. My passenger’s head isn’t hitting the dash,” an unnamed Cadillac driver enrolled in the OnStar Smart Driver subscription service told reporters.

“Cars have microphones and people have all kinds of sensitive conversations in them. Cars have cameras that face inward and outward,” a researcher with Mozilla Foundation told the Los Angeles Times. In fact, 19 automakers in 2023 admitted that they have the ability to sell your personal data without notice. Law enforcement may subpoena these records as well.

Ford claims that the patent was submitted, but they do not necessarily plan to use the technology. “Submitting patent applications is a normal part of any strong business as the process protects new ideas and helps us build a robust portfolio of intellectual property. The ideas described within a patent application should not be viewed as an indication of our business or product plans. No matter what the patent application outlines, we will always put the customer first in the decision-making behind the development and marketing of new products and services,” Ford said in a statement released to MotorTrend.

Now, the US Department of Transportation is permitted to mandate that certain manufacturers provide them with vehicle data. Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts testified that all vehicles in the United States with a GPS or emergency call system are collecting travel data that car manufacturers have remote access to via the computer chips. The computer chips are compiling data on vehicle speed, movement, travel, and even using exterior sensors and cameras to record the vehicle’s location.

All of this violates the Fourth Amendment which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause. These car manufacturers are surpassing what anyone would consider a reasonable expectation of privacy. Governments, third-party advertisement companies, and insurance companies all have warrantless access to personal data, and drivers are largely unaware they are being spied on. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits the government to have backdoor access to this data.

The aforementioned senators’ concerns fell on deaf ears at the Federal Trade Commission. The Department of Transportation clearly is not listed within the US Constitution. People are already experiencing stiff consequences from autos sharing data with the sharp uptick in insurance rates. Our freedom of movement is under attack. Our data has become more valuable than gold. The legal implications fall under a grey area as the Founding Fathers never expected their newly created government to turn against their own citizens.

Jul 22 2024

A New Era Technocracy


Posted originally on the CTH on July 21, 2024 | Sundance

Not surprisingly, a few people viewed my research presentation of JD Vance through a prism of negativity. [SEE HERE] We have many new readers who are not as in-tune with the details of how the bad parts of the DC surveillance state work.  So, let me take you behind the scenes a little and expand for context.

Nothing written about the data set, the facts within the JD Vance storyline, is incorrect.  Everything is cited, accurate and factually true. However, when you get into the intent and consequence part, that’s when people start to become emotional.  Some clarity is needed.

Commenter Freedom Ring provides a good example.  FR says, “JD has an association with Theil [sp?] & Musk; this could be worded to be a positive or negative, but the article paints it as a negative.”

This is correct. The research article positions the relationship between JD Vance and Peter Thiel as a serious challenge, here’s why.

Since his original endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, a good thing, billionaire tech executive Peter Thiel has expanded his company, Palantir Technology, to be the leading edge of a data-processing system.  The Palantir tech is designed to use artificial intelligence (AI) to crawl through massive sets of surveillance data, phone data, facial recognition data, metadata (writ large) etc.

In essence Palantir Tech is receiving government contracts (Defense and Intel) to use the Palantir AI tools to analyze/filter a massive amount of electronic data, and take action based on results from the data, or what might be called SIGNIT (Signals Intelligence).  There are billions at stake in this relationship.

In short, Thiel has a vested financial interest in providing AI surveillance filtration tools to the U.S. government.

Ok fine. That’s just a simple acceptance of what Thiel’s company does now. And Thiel recruited JD Vance back in 2012/2013 while at Yale law school, and personally financed JD’s entry into the world of politics in 2020/2021.  I won’t repeat all the citations but suffice to say, without Thiel there is no Senator/VP Vance.  Thiel leveraged his relationship with Donald Trump to get JD Vance the Ohio primary endorsement in 2022, and the rest is history.  Fair enough. Nothing disputed.

Here’s where things get sticky….

Thiel’s company Palantir Tech provides the AI metadata analytic tools used by the U.S. government in their national security efforts.  The government access to that metadata comes, in part, as an outcome of the legislative FISA authorization.  As a consequence, eliminating, say… FISA(702) surveillance processes, is against the financial interests of Peter Thiel.  If the U.S. government cannot access the dataset, the U.S. govt doesn’t need Palantir’s AI filtration tech.  That’s just the nature of the relationship.

Again, this is just a cold, factual acceptance of the situation.

Would JD Vance support the elimination of FISA(702), FISA Courts, or the National Security Division of the DOJ (something that forms the foundation of removing the worst elements of the Deep State), knowing that action would be adverse to the interests of his benefactor and mentor, Peter Thiel?

Again, just a question.  Perhaps he would, perhaps not; however, a review of history shows the odds are not in our favor.

I mean, there is a reason why Thiel recruited, financed, supported and guided Vance to the position he is now in, correct?

Elon Musk’s entire business model, sans X (maybe – lol) is contingent upon government contracts and policy.

Regardless of his altruistic disposition, or lack thereof, Musk’s enterprises, Tesla and Space-X, do not exist without direct government funding or indirect govt support via policy.  Peter Thiel is essentially in the same position with Palantir Tech, unless the U.S. Government gave him permission to sell his services to foreign adversaries.  Not likely.

Many are looking at JD Vance as the guy, maybe one of the ‘guys’, who can finally confront the worst elements of the Deep State.  However, the worst elements of the Deep State, the surveillance and control silos, are in a synergistic relationship with Vance’s benefactors.  Will Vance willingly tear apart the surveillance state, that will create a negative financial outcome for those who put him into office?  My note of caution is ‘don’t get your hopes up.’

I mean, seriously think about it.  Musk puts up USG satellites that monitor stuff.  The low-earth-orbit monitoring results (data signals) are returned to the USG.  The data signals are then analyzed by AI tech created by Thiel.

Another way to look at it…. Musk puts the camera on your face. Thiel tells the govt where you went.

♦ BIG PICTURE – Are the newest group of billionaire Silicon Valley tech leaders currently supporting MAGA Trump/Vance, really a modern assembly of the Green Dragon rebels in Boston, plotting the next Tea Party rebellion.  Or are they simply just the other side of a new modern Technocratic control system, aligned with and dependent on government?

The Obama-era ‘Technocracy‘ was based on public-private partnerships with social media.  This was the origin of the surveillance state that now scours, controls, filters, censors and ultimately monetizes your social media data profile.  The operational and business model is cemented into the process now. Everyone accepts it. Terms and conditions apply, and if you don’t agree, you can’t use.

Is the pending Trump-era ‘Technocracy‘ a rebrand, pushing social media off to the side (that part is done) and bringing data processing control agents, artificial intelligence software designers, big money venture capitalists, banks and those who are creating digital id systems. Does Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bill Ackman, David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya, Jacob Helberg and Vivek Ramaswamy, now occupy the empty chairs around the table of Technocracy?

Was the 5/10-year business model in the mind of tech billionaire Peter Thiel what led him to recruit JD Vance in 2013. Was it a financial decision blended with ideology to guide, finance and support JD Vance all the way to 2022 and 2024?  Was JD Vance an investment?

Truly, I suspect our gut knows the answer.

That’s why my approach is to say, “here’s the factual data – trust your instincts.”

[SOURCE]

Around this time someone will snark, saying my assembling this perspective indicates President Trump is an idiot, or something.

NO!  President Trump is not stupid, or naïve!

CTH has painstakingly outlined how the silo process within the Deep State works.  You have more information about that process. You have more knowledge about that process.

All of us, courtesy of dozens of brilliant researchers here and in lots of other places on the internet, have a far more comprehensive understanding of how the systems within the DC administrative state work than any subset of professional politicians or their staff.

Are you stupid or naïve?  No.  None of us are.

However, many of us are sick and tired of having the virtue of our patriotism weaponized against us. For reference see DHS, ODNI, CISA, TSA, The Patriot Act, or any other of the myriads of crisis-created legislative solutions, later turned into tools by bad actors that inevitably diminish freedom.

I was sitting at dinner with a good person, who happened to be the head, the tipy-top, of one of the most connected IC silos in Washington DC, and that person laughed recalling situations where they walked into their office many days and frustratingly shouted at their staff, “who the f**k is leaking information to this guy,” meaning me.  No one was leaking anything, and the entire organization was just as surprised as the leader of it.

My point is that many ordinary Americans know far more about the interconnectedness of DC silo operations, than the people within the individual silos can fathom.  They are stuck inside a purposefully created system of compartmentalization; we are not.

The overwhelming odds are that you know more than your federal representative. That fact doesn’t make you smarter than President Donald J Trump, it just means you have a different set of researched datapoints that create a different understanding.

Additionally, President Trump doesn’t “vett” anyone, someone else does the “vetting” for him.  That vetting helps him to make decisions, it doesn’t exclusively determine the final decision.

No one is stupid in this discussion.  No one knows all the information.  The fact-finding is a process of information assembly, that permits guidance to decision making.  That’s it.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) might have been a good decision at the time, until it starts getting weaponized later on.

Given the nature of the political landscape, Senator JD Vance was a good selection for Veep.  A candidate for the office of the vice-presidency that will hopefully position President Trump and the people around him to be able to start putting countermeasures into place that will stop this government weaponization, a seemingly out of control surveillance state.

Senator JD Vance helps to unite the various Republican clans.

Perhaps more valuable, his selection reduces the possibility of the Silicon Valley Technocrats to work against OUR interests – as we look to control THEIR influence.

More importantly, Senator JD Vance makes winning in November of 2024 more likely.  That’s the key value in his personage.

Perhaps Vance is a tool, perhaps he’s an ally, who knows.  However, we must understand the context of everything that comes with him, nothing more.

Trust God, and for everyone else – watch them like a hawk, while you live your best life.

If we win in November, we then have an opportunity to start putting countermeasures and guardrails into place that will seemingly impede the efforts of the bad operators within each IC silo.  Simultaneously, we need to identify who each bad actor is.

This mission then becomes the reversal of weaponization we desperately need.

I am optimistic about victory in November. However, I am also comprehensive about the nature of the enemy we face.

I recently suggested, partly tongue in cheek, for congress to enact legislation that simply says:

If any president dies during his term in office, all actionable authorization within agencies of the CIA, FBI, DNI and DHS is immediately revoked, until such a time as new legislative authorities can be debated, assembled and reauthorized by congress.