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TRUCKER DROPS TRUTH BOMB

https://www.bitchute.com/video/1506rNRpPK9m/

February 10, 2022

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Freedom Convoy – Address To Canadians by Tom Marazzo

February 10, 2022

End the mandates now. We will not be tricked into a violent outcome. We are peaceful protestors. Justice Hugh McLean acknowledges that we have a right to be here, to be heard and to protest, that is what we are here for. We are prepared to be arrested. We have our lawyers. We have no fear. We are here for our children.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Officials Weigh Steps to ‘Protect Children,’ as Ottawa Police Cut Off Critical Supplies to Freedom Convoy

By Judith Robinson | The Defender | February 9, 2022

As protests against Canada’s COVID vaccine mandates entered their 12th day, Ottawa police continued to cut off food and fuel supplies for hundreds of truckers.

Police Tuesday told reporters they are “having discussions with the Children’s Aid Society about what steps to take” to protect children living in what they estimated to be about 100 of the 400 trucks parked in the city.

The Freedom Convoy left Canada’s westernmost province, British Columbia, on Jan. 23 and arrived Jan. 29 in Ottawa.

It has inspired protests around the world, including in 27 European countries which are planning their own convoys.

Here’s the latest news on the Freedom Convoy:

  • Police said discussions are underway with the Children’s Aid Society for the possible removal of the children from their protesting parents. Ottawa’s Deputy Police Chief Steve Bell cited noise, carbon monoxide fumes, lack of sanitation and noise levels as possible safety hazards. “We’re not at the stage of looking to do any sort of enforcement activity around that,” Bell told CTV News. “We’ll rely on the Children’s Aid Society to give us guidance.”
  • In a news release, groups of retired and active-duty police officers from across Canada, along with members of parliament and other advocacy groups, expressed support for the truckers: “The government’s decision to block refueling of the trucks puts fellow Canadians and their families including their young children in danger due to the extreme cold temperatures currently occurring in Ottawa. Regardless of where one stands on this topic, these actions are inhumane and do not align with Canadian principles,” the release stated.
  • Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bodyguard resigned stating that he could not abide by the government’s dictates which he felt contravened the human rights enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.
  • Nick Motichka, a 10-year veteran of the Calgary Police Service, delivered a strong message on Facebook to his fellow regulation enforcement officers: “Police are here to help and protect people” not “to do the politicians’ dirty work… What is happening in Ottawa, with the clear political influence on the police, to physically exert political will on peaceful protesters for nothing more than possible political gain is so very wrong, on so many levels.”
  • Alberta Premier Jason Kenny dropped his province’s vaccine passport program at midnight, promising to lift other public health restrictions by March 1, depending on the number of hospital admissions.
  • Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced Tuesday he will end his province’s vaccine passport policy by Monday, Feb. 14. Other public health policies, such as masking, will remain in effect until the end of the month.
  • Provincial Parliament Member Randy Hillier is organizing another “Blue-collar Convoy” of tractors to join the truckers in Ottawa this weekend, as he did last week. The proposed routes are listed on the Facebook page.
  • Freedom Convoy truckers and Canadian doctors sent a message that vaccine mandates must be removed and they pleaded for a meeting with Trudeau.

Beyond Canada’s borders:

  • The current blockade by truckers of the bridge from Windsor, Ontario to Detroit is preventing much of the daily “$300 million in car and truck parts, agricultural products, steel and other raw materials” to reach its destinations, according to the Financial Post. “Almost 20% of all Canada-U.S. trade moves across the Ambassador Bridge, and 30% of cross-border freight moved by truck uses that route.”
  • According to Politico, convoys are now being organized across the U.S. and “regional protests have been planned in states from Alabama to Wyoming, based on Politico’s review of social media activity.”
  • “Anti-mandate protesters in France, inspired by the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Canada, plan to make their way to Paris, then Brussels, to demand an end to vaccine passports,” according to the Financial Post. “Around 200 protesters gathered in a parking lot in Nice today, waving Canadian flags in solidarity with protesters in Canada. Their convoy is made up of motorcycles and cars, but no trucks.”

Similar protests erupted in the last few days in Australia and New Zealand, the Washington Post reported. The “Convoy to Canberra” involves only a couple of 18-wheelers as few Australian truckers own their own vehicles. Protestors brought camping gear — setting up an occupation which has been compared to “Occupation Wall Street.” According to CNN, a convoy of trucks and camper vans has blocked the streets near New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington.

© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , | Leave a comment

Ontario Attorney General freezes GiveSendGo donation distribution to Freedom Convoy

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | February 10, 2022

The Ontario government is further being accused of suppressing civil liberties and the right to organize a protest after it has announced that it has successfully petitioned a court to freeze access to the millions of dollars donated to the Freedom Convoy through free speech fundraising platform GiveSendGo.

GiveSendGo is the alternative US-based fundraising platform that came to the rescue after GoFundMe pulled the plug on donations to the Freedom Convoy protesters who are campaigning for civil liberties in Ottawa and at multiple border crossings.

A spokesperson for Premier Doug Ford says Ontario’s Attorney General submitted the application to the Superior Court of Justice, requesting that it be illegal to distribute donations made through GiveSendGo’s two crowdfunding campaigns, the “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker.”

The full statement is as follows:

“Today, the Attorney General brought an application in the Superior Court of Justice for an order pursuant to section 490.8 of the Criminal Code prohibiting any person from disposing of, or otherwise dealing with, in any manner whatsoever, any and all monetary donations made through the Freedom Convoy 2022 and Adopt-a-Trucker campaign pages on the GiveSendGo online fundraising platform.

“This afternoon, the order was issued. It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.”

Ford’s office said that an order binding “any and all parties with possession or control over these donations” has been granted and issued.

GiveSendGo is now being described as an “offense-related property” as described in 490.8 of the Criminal Code.

Civil liberties protestors have faced an uphill battle, with the Canadian government trying to suppress the protest in several ways.

More than $10 million was originally raised through GoFundMe, a platform that has been accused of bias and selectively enforcing its policies.

Donors have raised over $8.4 million on GiveSendGo at the time of writing.

In a statement, GiveSendGo was not deterred by the order and said, “Know this! Canada has absolutely zero jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for every campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.”

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , | Leave a comment

How Big Pharma sold vaccines to the world – Part 3

By Paula Jardine | TCW Defending Freedom | February 10, 2022

THE World Health Organisation’s Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP) was developed to help GAVI (the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation) achieve its ‘decade of vaccines’ from 2010, helping ‘all individuals and communities enjoy lives free from vaccine-preventable diseases’.

All countries were to make immunisation a strategic priority, requiring more surveillance to ‘strengthen national capacity to formulate evidence-based policies’. There was no aversion to financially incentivising either individuals or healthcare workers to encourage vaccination, despite the potential for conflict of interest.

The primary success metric in the GVAP was that by 2020 there should be at least 90 per cent national vaccination coverage ‘with at least 80 per cent vaccination coverage in every administrative unit for all vaccines in the national immunisation programme’ for the target populations.

Immunisation Information Systems (IIS), national registries to record the who, what and when of vaccination, were established.

The European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC) led a scoping exercise for this in 2016. Systems which would be interoperable with other databases were to be formulated with ‘a heavy design emphasis on generating evidence to support decisions that need to be made at the population level’.

Vaccination coverage is mentioned 81 times in the ECDC report, twice as many times as vaccine safety.  The ECDC claims that ‘IIS can help mitigate potential rumours and unfounded concerns through the provision of evidence, including on adverse events following immunisation’.

That may be so, but the only safety signal likely to emerge from an IIS is evidence of secondary vaccine failure – that is, breakthrough disease outbreaks amongst those inoculated against a given disease, requiring a booster vaccination campaign.

The IIS do not exist for safety monitoring (the technical term for which is pharmacovigilance) of the vaccines once they are deployed on the population at large. Pharmacovigilance is the remit of the regulators who license them, not of the public health authorities who monitor vaccination coverage.

In fact, only seven European countries record adverse events to vaccines in their IIS. The UK is not amongst them. Of the seven that do, only Sweden automatically reports them to the regulator who has the power to withdraw unsafe products from use.

Dr David Sencer is the former director of the US government agency the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who lost his job after America’s ill-fated 1976 swine flu vaccination campaign.

He has pointed out that some adverse effects from vaccines become apparent only once the clinical trials conclude and after the vaccine is administered to very large numbers of people.

Sencer’s swine flu program had an active surveillance system for adverse events which he later called a trojan horse as the scale of death and injury led to the vaccination campaign being terminated after three months. Having indemnified the manufacturers because their insurers balked at covering them, the US government paid $135m for swine flu vaccines and an additional $90m in compensation for death or injury – almost as much in compensation over the swine flu vaccine programme as it did rolling it out.

The size of the US government’s 1976 compensation bill perhaps explains why no pharmaceutical regulator in the world has a system that actively monitors for post authorisation adverse events. Instead all regulators rely on passive surveillance through voluntary reports to systems like the Yellow Card system operated by the Medicines and Health Care Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) in the UK.

A vaccine is deemed safe if it passes Phase 1 clinical trials without any ‘unscheduled’ animal deaths or untimely deaths of human subjects and effective if it passes Phase 2 clinical trials.

Products such as the ill-fated Pandemrix flu vaccine – hit by adverse effects in 2009 – may on occasion be withdrawn after licensing. But as a rule, regulators make no active effort to protect consumers at large that might necessitate a product being withdrawn once it is in use.

To facilitate GAVI’s efforts to monitor vaccination coverage rates reliably, the GVAP asks for each individual to be assigned a unique identification number so that the respective health authority can ensure everyone gets every vaccine in ‘time-monitored’ adherence with the vaccine schedules.

In 2013, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) funded a fingerprint identification system to track vaccinated children in Africa. GAVI, the Rockefeller Foundation and Microsoft subsequently formed the ID2020 alliance in 2016 to promote the global need for secure digital identity.

‘We are currently in the middle of a global identity crisis: Tens of millions of children – especially those living in most remote, impoverished communities – have no formal record of their existence,’ said Dr Seth Berkley, associate director of health sciences at the Rockefeller Foundation, and one of the instigators of GAVI.

‘That represents an enormous impediment to GAVI’s mission of ensuring that every child worldwide receives the essential vaccines they need to survive and thrive.’

He said the pacesetters of GAVI’s initiative called INFUSE (Uptake, Scale and Equity in Immunisation) ‘are on the cutting edge of technologies that might help us overcome that challenge’.

Covid-19 has presented another opportunity to fulfil GAVI’s vaccination monitoring mission. Dr Rebecca Weintraub, a board member of Simprints, one of the companies working with it to develop biometric identification solutions for immunisation registries, said: ‘We have a narrow opportunity to set the stage for such fair and sustainable infrastructure across the globe. If done well, we can ensure the promise of the Covid-19 vaccine portfolio leads to future widespread vaccination – and protection – for global populations.’ https://gatesopenresearch.org/articles/4-182/v2

However, biometric identification for developing immunisation registries is beginning to morph into something else. The Ada Lovelace Institute, which was set up by partners including the Wellcome Trust in 2018 to ‘ensure that data and AI work for people and society’, calls vaccine passports and Covid status apps ‘systems for verifiably sharing private health data relevant to Covid-19 which could be used to stream society and impose differential lockdown restrictions.

‘This might mean limiting individual access to work, insurance, hospitality and leisure, and other parts of life, based on an individual’s health or risk of Covid-19 infection or transmission.’ In other words, universal vaccination means universal control.

Covid-19 may have brought these passports to public attention, but the idea is not new. In December 2017, the European Commission published a Roadmap on Vaccination.

The first action on the roadmap is to ‘examine the feasibility of developing a common vaccination card/passport for EU citizens (that takes into account potentially different national vaccination schedules and) that is compatible with electronic immunisation information systems and recognised for use across borders, without duplicating work at national level.’

In 2018, the European Health Parliament, a lobby organisation that develops health policy recommendations to ‘rethink European health care’ and whose sponsors include Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, recommended that electronic vaccination passports be established in order to ‘ensure people know and act in their best interests on vaccination’.

The very day the MHRA authorised the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the WHO put out a call for experts to develop a so-called Smart Vaccine Certificate programme.

Pharmaceutical revenue growth has been stimulated not only by measures to increase inoculation coverage, but by raising the number of vaccines put on national immunisation schedules.

The ‘child survival revolution’ promoted by the United Nations agency UNICEF began in 1982 with six vaccines. At the time of the first GAVI board meeting in 1999, there were 11 routinely recommended vaccines on the US national immunisation schedule.

GAVI immediately identified a vaccine gap that the developing world needed to close, and its ambition is for immunisation schedules around the world to mirror that of the US.

The goalposts keep moving. When it was updated again in 2013, the US immunisation schedule comprised a total of 52 injections of 17 different vaccines over the course of a person’s lifetime.

Gone are the days when the promise made to parents was that with a single injection their children could avoid infections and be protected for life. The number of boosters continues to increase and now includes a recommendation for adults to have an additional measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.

A footnote to the MMR recommendation says: ‘Documentation of (healthcare) provider-diagnosed disease is not considered acceptable evidence of immunity for measles, mumps or rubella.’

The very idea that someone might have acquired lifelong immunity after recovering from an infectious disease is now anathema, unless proven by a laboratory test.

The current UK immunisation schedule is marginally more conservative, both in terms of the total number of vaccines recommended and the number of doses. The most recently updated version, as of November 23, 2021, appeared on the website of the Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project.

It recommends only three vaccines for adults – flu, pneumococcal and shingles. The three are  recommended by Public Health England only for over-65s, or 70 in the case of the shingles vaccine. Despite the controversial mandate for NHS staff to have the Covid-19 vaccine – now withdrawn – the jab is not listed on the schedule.

The Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project’s medical information is reviewed by Professor Andrew Pollard, chair of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, and a member of the WHO’s Scientific Advisory Group of Experts Committee.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

EU capital bans ‘Freedom Convoy’ protest

Police will keep the Canada-inspired trucker demonstration out of the Belgian capital, its mayor says

RT | February 10, 2022

Brussels Mayor Philippe Close announced on Thursday that a protest convoy of truckers will be barred from entering the city. Inspired by an ongoing demonstration against vaccine mandates in Canada, the truckers are set to reach the Belgian capital early next week.

“We have taken the decision to ban the ‘Freedom Convoy’ which has not been authorized to demonstrate because no request has been sent,” Close wrote on Twitter, noting that he made the decision along with Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden and Brussels region Minister President Rudi Vervoort.

Local and federal police “will divert motorized vehicles coming towards the capital despite the ban,” Close added.

Drawing participants from across the continent, the protest is inspired by a similar demonstration in the Canadian capital of Ottawa. Traffic in parts of Ottawa has been brought to a standstill for nearly two weeks by truckers demanding the immediate lifting of Covid restrictions, including a mandate that requires them to be vaccinated to re-enter the country from the US.

As host to key EU institutions, Brussels is a natural focal point for the European protest. While individual nations in the bloc have begun rolling back their vaccine pass systems at home, vaccination or proof of a negative Covid test is required to cross national borders within the union, and the EU recently proposed extending this system until 2023.

Truckers en route to Brussels have planned some stops along the way, with a major protest set to hit Paris this weekend. Authorities in the French capital issued a similar ban on Thursday, and threatened protesters with stiff fines should they block traffic in the city. Paris police said that a “specific device” would be used by the authorities to prevent the convoy from entering the city.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | Leave a comment

Why the Freedom Convoy is provoking unprecedented hysteria

By Rachel Marsden | RT | February 10, 2022

In the two weeks since the Freedom Convoy of Canadian truckers and their supporters began rallying in Ottawa to demand an end to all pandemic-related mandates and restrictions nationwide, it has become clear that this movement isn’t like other protest movements. And that’s a scary proposition for those in charge who thought that they’d manage and exploit this crisis on their own sweet time and schedule regardless of the actual science and reality on the ground.

There has long been an agenda to corral as many humans as possible unwittingly into a global dragnet through technological adoption. That’s what the revelations of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden were about back in 2013. A technological panopticon provides those in charge with the ability to monitor and ultimately control or sanction dissidents or outliers as the state pursues the self-serving agenda of a select few. Algorithms that exploit this massive online presence enable the state to accurately craft propaganda to be deployed to vilify them in the eyes of the general population, while portraying the state as the great protector — all while selling citizens out to the interests of a select few elites. Essentially, people are manipulated into arguing against their own good.

For those citizens who aren’t seduced by the mere convenience of technology or the narcissistic allure of social media, the fear of terrorism or of Covid-19 more actively encouraged onboarding to these dragnets. And that was before it was flat-out mandated with government-issued QR code health and vaccine passes that linked directly to your identity.

But then a bunch of truckers noticed that the threat of authoritarianism in Canada and elsewhere was closer than it may appear in their mirrors. And these essential workers decided to park their essential tools until officials stopped treating essential freedoms like they were negotiable.

Because Canadian mainstream media is so severely lacking in truly contradictory debate and diversity of thought, the protests risked sparking an unprecedented new awareness for those who had been force-fed government talking points while they may have already been starting to wonder why their entourage was triple-jabbed and still catching the virus. They were probably beginning to question the real value of the sacrifices that they were forced by government into making over the past two years under the illusion of safety.

Into this mix comes a group of people who aren’t paid activists or troublemakers, but rather everyday people with real jobs — and ‘essential’ ones at that, as previously hailed by the governments themselves. This makes the truckers a different breed of dissenters from Black Lives Matters, Antifa, or French Yellow Vest protesters. And that explains why the rhetorical big guns are now being deployed against them. The truckers, by demanding that life go back to exactly the way it was before governments started instrumentalizing the pandemic, could undermine any agenda to exploit the crisis for globalist advancement. This would especially be the case if the Freedom Convoy movement spread around the world, as it’s beginning to do. Here in France, for example, convoys departing from various cities are reportedly scheduled to arrive in Paris beginning on February 11.

Former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, a dual citizen of Ottawa and Globalistan, wrote in a recent Globe and Mail newspaper opinion piece: “[B)y now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition. Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start. Canadian authorities should take every step within the law to identify and thoroughly punish them. The involvement of foreign governments and any officials connected to them should be identified, exposed and addressed.”

Unlike previous environmental protests that have raged in Canada to the detriment of the country’s future energy independence, and been backed by US-based think-tanks funded by American business interests close to Washington elites — all of which have apparently escaped Carney’s attention or interest — truckers don’t actually require ‘foreign funding’. They have actual jobs that pay quite well.

You’d think he’d know that, given his illustrious background as an expert in money. But good luck trying to exploit the ‘foreign bogeyman’ trope and attempting to find the scapegoat that you’re looking for. Carney is concerned about the ‘occupation’ by protesters, who are merely fighting against the government blockade of citizens’ lives for the past two years. And a bonus L-O-L for his effort to portray protests to regain basic freedoms as some kind of attempt to overthrow the government of Canada. Perhaps someone could provide him with a paper bag before he passes out?

Here’s your ground truth in Ottawa: “More than 100 Highway Traffic Act and other ‘Provincial Offence Notices’ were issued for offenses including excessive honking, driving the wrong way, defective muffler, no seat belt, alcohol readily available and having the improper class of driving license,” according to a Fox News report.

Well, you know what they say. Every hardcore coup d’état starts with a seat belt offense, right?

Meanwhile, US Homeland Security, already apparently attempting to ward off any potential future pushback against its own unpopular agenda, issued an advisory on February 7 conflating terrorism with “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.” Would that include dissent against any government-approved narrative around the pandemic and related liberticidal measures?

Restrictions, mandates, and ‘vaccine passports’ in two Canadian provinces — Alberta and Saskatchewan — are now ending, premiers of both jurisdictions announced on February 7.

The rest of the world now runs the risk of these trucker movements gaining momentum, before the restrictions and mandates can allow for the full implementation of a lasting solution of tracking and surveillance capable of monitoring populist blowback to government insanity.

The rally race between truckers and globalists is on! And with nothing less than democracy and freedom at stake.

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist and host of an independently produced French-language program that airs on Sputnik France.

February 10, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

FREEDOM CONVOY PREEMPTIVE SOS PRESS CONFERENCE

Ottawa, February 7, 2022

https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZGMi4BHCP7JU/

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science, Video | , , | Leave a comment

DHS Issues Terrorism Bulletin Over “Conspiracy Theories” and “Misleading Narratives”

By Paul Joseph Watson | Summit News | February 9, 2022

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a new terrorism bulletin in response to concerns over “conspiracy theories” and “misleading narratives.”

Yes, really.

“The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors,” the DHS bulletin stated.

The advisory goes on to assert that the US is in a “heightened threat landscape” due to “the proliferation of false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.”

Apparently, lack of trust in the Biden administration and the legacy media represents a terrorist threat.

Under DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas, who thinks “white extremists” are the biggest terror threat to America, five separate bulletins striking a similar tone have now been issued.

One of the bulletins even suggested that Americans who are angry at COVID lockdown rules or who express concerns about election integrity are potential extremist threats.

“It’s clear as day these bulletins are pure political propaganda to demonize all white people as “domestic terrorists” ready to carry out terrorist attacks at any moment and justify using terrorism laws against them as part of the new Domestic War on Terror,” writes Chris Menahan.

Since Biden took office, his administration has intensified efforts to demonize its political adversaries, tens of millions of ordinary Americans, as domestic extremists.

Following the January 6 Capitol riot, Democrats ludicrously compared the events to September 11 in an attempt to justify using federal resources that would normally be focused on actual terrorists against American conservatives.

Last month, the Justice Department created a new “specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism” in response to an “elevated” threat from violent extremists in the United States.

As we also reported in January, the US Army conducted a “guerrilla warfare exercise” in North Carolina where troops engaged in mock battle against “freedom fighters.”

In September last year, the National Association of School Boards (NASB) sent a letter to the Biden administration claiming parents were engaging in domestic terrorism by fighting against CRT and mask mandates.

Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently announced the DOJ and FBI would establish a task force aimed at probing a “disturbing spike” in threats against school officials.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Four Attorneys General Claim Google Secretly Tracked People

By Dr. Joseph Mercola | February 9, 2022

If you’ve ever felt like Google’s watching you, it’s because they, quite literally, are. “The truth is that contrary to Google’s representations it continues to systematically surveil customers and profit from customer data,” Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, said in a statement.1

He’s among four attorneys general who have sued Google for its deceptive practices in collecting location data from the public. The separate lawsuits allege that Google continued to track location data of its users even after they had disabled location tracking.

“Google falsely led consumers to believe that changing their account and device settings would allow customers to protect their privacy and control what personal data the company could access,” Racine said.2

Google’s Been Secretly Tracking People Since at Least 2014

Racine initiated an investigation into Google after a 2018 AP News report revealed Google was tracking people’s movements even when they’d opted out of such tracking.3 Google’s misleading claims to users regarding privacy protections available in their account settings have been ongoing since at least 2014, Racine’s investigation found.4

The AP investigation included a real-world example from privacy researcher Gunes Acar, whose location was tracked to dozens of locations over the course of several days, and the data saved to his Google account, even though he had turned “Location History” off on his cellphone.5

Location data collected by Google has been used in criminal cases in the past, including a warrant issued by police in Raleigh, North Carolina, to track down devices in the area of a murder.6 When you use an app like Google Maps, it will ask you to allow access to location, but it also tracks your location during use of apps that you might not expect. According to the AP investigation:7

“For example, Google stores a snapshot of where you are when you merely open its Maps app. Automatic daily weather updates on Android phones pinpoint roughly where you are. And some searches that have nothing to do with location, like “chocolate chip cookies,” or “kids science kits,” pinpoint your precise latitude and longitude — accurate to the square foot — and save it to your Google account.

The privacy issue affects some two billion users of devices that run Google’s Android operating software and hundreds of millions of worldwide iPhone users who rely on Google for maps or search.”

Tracking You Even When ‘Location History’ Is Off

At issue is the company’s continued tracking of its users even when Location History is turned off. “If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Jonathan Mayer, a former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission’s enforcement bureau, told the AP. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”8

Indeed, it states on Google’s Account Help webpage, “You can turn off Location History for your account at any time.” Only lower down on the page does it explain, however, that location data may still be saved even if Location History is paused:9

“If you have other settings like Web & App Activity turned on and you pause Location History or delete location data from Location History, you may still have location data saved in your Google Account as part of your use of other Google sites, apps, and services.

For example, location data may be saved as part of activity on Search and Maps when your Web & App Activity setting is on, and included in your photos depending on your camera app settings.”

Aside from hiding location tracking under settings users wouldn’t expect, like Web & App Activity — which is turned on by default — Google is accused of collecting and storing location information via Google services, Wi-Fi data and marketing partners, again after device or account settings had been changed to stop location tracking.10

In addition to the District of Columbia, the attorneys general of Texas, Washington and Indiana have also filed lawsuits against Google for their deceptive data collection practices. The suits allege that Google also pressured users to use location tracking more often because it claimed — falsely — that its products wouldn’t function properly without it.11

“Google has prioritized profits over people,” Todd Rokita, Indiana attorney general, told The New York Times. “It has prioritized financial earnings over following the law.”12 Texas, meanwhile, has also filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google that alleges it has abused a monopoly over ad space auctions to marketers. The suit joins those from more than a dozen other states that claim Google has maintained and abused a monopoly over searches online.13

Google Is Even Tracking Children

Google has been called a dictator with unprecedented power because it relies on techniques of manipulation that have never existed before in human history, according to Robert Epstein, a Harvard trained psychologist who is now a senior research psychologist for the American Institute of Behavioral Research and Technology, where for the last decade he has helped expose Google’s manipulative and deceptive practices.

They’re not only a surveillance agency — think about products like Google Wallet, Google Docs, Google Drive and YouTube — but also a censoring agency with the ability to restrict or block access to websites across the internet, thus deciding what you can and cannot see.

Google has also infiltrated education with its Google classrooms, usage of which skyrocketed during the pandemic, but many aren’t aware that even their children are being tracked. The attorney general of New Mexico filed a suit against Google for its educational tools in its classroom suite, helping to “break through the fog,” Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff said:14

“[The suit is] identifying the huge amounts of data that they’re taking about kids, how they track them across the internet are they integrate it with all the other Google streams of information and have it as a foundation for tracking those children all the way through their adulthood.”

The suit was later dismissed, but the attorney general filed an appeal, maintaining that Google’s G-Suite for Education products “spy on New Mexico students’ online activities for its own commercial purposes, without notice to parents and without attempting to obtain parental consent.”15

Google Force Installed COVID-19 Tracking Apps

In another sign of Google’s dictatorial tendencies, it partnered with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Apple to create a smartphone app called MassNotify, which tracks and traces people, advising the users of others’ COVID-19 status.

While the tool claims to have been developed “with a focus on privacy,”16 the app suddenly appeared on Massachusetts residents’ Android phones out of nowhere, without consent. The feature must be enabled by the user for it to function, but it’s extremely disconcerting that the tool was automatically added to people’s cellphones, whether they intend to use it or not.

In China, COVID-19 tracking apps have been used as surveillance tools in collaboration with its social credit system, raising red flags that this force-installed app could be tracking residents’ movements and contacts without their knowledge and consent. The MassNotify app uses Google’s and Apple’s Bluetooth-based Exposure Notifications Express program.

The software framework was first released in April 2020,17 with the goal of allowing users who test positive for COVID-19 to report their results, which then sends out an alert to anyone whose phone crossed paths with the positive case and may have been exposed. The Exposure Notifications Express program acts as a blueprint from which states can implement their own tracking systems without having to develop their own individual apps.

While other states have required users to download an app to use the system, MassNotify was integrated directly into the operating system of Android phones.18 Such apps are based on technology developed by Apple and Google that was previously known as the “Privacy-Preserving Contact Tracing Project”19 and is now referred to as the Exposure Notifications API (application programming interface).

In a May 2020 Forbes article by Simon Chandler, he pointed out that while contact tracing apps “may be cryptographically secure,” they still “threaten our privacy in broader and more insidious ways,”20 namely encouraging you to keep your cellphone with you at all times and tracking your whereabouts while you do, and further “normalizing” the constant use of technology to dictate your freedoms and behavior.

Using ‘Trickery for Profits’

The attorneys’ general lawsuits against Google are seeking fines and an end to Google’s use of “dark patterns” that influence users to give up more and more personal data in order for the company to increase its profits. The suits allege that Google’s products are designed to pressure users to allow location tracking “inadvertently or out of frustration,” in violation of state consumer protection laws.21

“Google uses tricks to continuously seek to track a user’s location,” Racine said. “This suit, by four attorneys general, on a bipartisan basis, is an overdue enforcement action against a flagrant violator of privacy and the laws of our states.” The more data that Google collects about individual users, the more advertising dollars it can generate. But, Racine noted, “The time of trickery for profits is over.”22

In a similar lawsuit filed in 2020, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich also alleged that Google used deceptive practices to track its users’ locations. That suit stated:23

“This case concerns Google’s widespread and systematic use of deceptive and unfair business practices to obtain information about the location of its users, including its users in Arizona, which Google then exploits to power its lucrative advertising business. Google makes it impractical if not impossible for users to meaningfully opt-out of Google’s collection of location information, should the users seek to do so.”

Location data, meanwhile, can be used to reveal your gym memberships, health care visits, stores and restaurants you frequent or where you go to church. It may also be used to provide personalized ads on digital billboards as you pass by, and Google tracks and provides to its customers information about how well online ads work to drive people into brick-and-mortar stores.24

In addition to disabling as many location tracking apps as possible, and deleting your location history from your Google accounts, you can avoid additional Google products — and the privacy invasions they entail — using the following tips:

  • Stop using Google search engines. Alternatives include DuckDuckGo and Startpage
  • Uninstall Google Chrome and use Brave or Opera browser instead, available for all computers and mobile devices. From a security perspective, Opera is far superior to Chrome and offers a free VPN service (virtual private network) to further preserve your privacy
  • If you have a Gmail account, try a non-Google email service instead such as ProtonMail, an encrypted email service based in Switzerland
  • Stop using Google docs. Digital Trends has published an article suggesting a number of alternatives25
  • If you’re a student, do not convert the Google accounts you created as a student into personal accounts

Sources and References

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

Narrative collapse quickens pace

The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | February 9, 2022

Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, has, today announced that all coronavirus restrictions will be lifted in less than two weeks. This is a month earlier than initially proposed, showing the accelerating change in the narrative.

He said he plans to abolish the remaining restrictions in the UK, including the self-isolation rules after testing positive. It is not clear, however, whether this will also apply to the unvaccinated.

Mr Johnson said “I can tell the house today, that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half term recess to present our strategy for living with Covid”. What is this new normal that the Prime Minister has in plan? Surely living with Covid means going back to the old normal, not even thinking about Covid anymore?

In other parts of the world, Portugal, Greece and France are to ease travel restrictions and Italy is changing its mask mandate for outdoor areas. The EU is removing testing regimes for fully vaccinated travellers, again leaving the nasty after taste that the new narrative is to go back to normal whilst leaving restrictions on the unvaccinated.

Across the pond, in Canada, Saskatchewan Premier, Scott Moe, announced the end to Covid passes and masks, signalling a victory for the protesting Truckers. Will Trudeau realise which way the wind is blowing and cave in but try to spin a victory or will he double down?

Fauci has said that America is almost past the ‘full blown’ pandemic phase and will be winding down restrictions and masks ‘soon’.

Although Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, admitted that Scotland is entering a ‘calmer’ stage of the pandemic, she still decided that masks and Covid certification will remain.

The Scottish public, on the other hand, are saying enough is enough. Data from their Test AND Protect system shows that 91.5% of incomplete cases (purple), in the recent few weeks, are due to the public not responding to the surveillance calls.

It seems the narrative is collapsing and faster and faster each day. However, whilst this may be due to Omicron being more mild, I remain sceptical. The reasons being given are the same reasons many of us said restrictions were unnecessary in the first place. Now, all of a sudden, the corona fog is receding and everyone, in multiple countries and along similar time scales, is seeing the light. Or are they? Will all restrictions be removed or will they remain all but in name for the unvaccinated?

Will they remove all legislation to ensure none of these measures will never return again? If the legislation stays then it will be all too easy for restrictions to return when vaccines wane and seasonal illnesses return in the winter.

Will they remove all restrictions for everybody, including the unvaccinated? That means no additional testing regimes for the unvaccinated and no back-door use of Covid passes.

Or are we truly seeing the end of the pandemic? Some of the pharma documentation that I am about to write an article on may suggest that they see the writing is on the wall.

The next few weeks will certainly be interesting and the key will be to keep an eye on the small print.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Limited Hangout of the Mandaters

BY THOMAS HARRINGTON | BROWNSTONE INSTITUTE | FEBRUARY 8, 2022

Yesterday, a number of important Democratic governors lifted mask mandates in their states. Almost to a one, they cited the changes wrought by the fast moving and relatively mild omicron variant of the SARS-CV2 virus as the prime reason for the change.

What none of them did was admit what “the Science” has shown for at least two decades, and has been clear through the last two years to anyone doing a modicum of independent research on the subject: masks have never been shown to fundamentally alter the spread of respiratory viruses within the general population.

What they did say almost to a one, like their counterparts in Great Britain, Denmark and other countries now dismantling previous Covid restrictions, was that the return to normality was greatly facilitated by the uptake of vaccines in the populations they currently govern.

Nearly a half century ago, a man named Ron Ziegler held the position now occupied by Jen Psaki. Like all presidential spokespeople before and since he was a serial dissembler.

But back then there were still a few journalists at the presidential court and beyond willing to do their jobs. And when one day in the midst of the Watergate scandal he used the passive voice construction “mistakes were made” in an attempt to explain away obvious breaches of honesty and ethics committed quite actively by the Nixon Administration, he was roundly mocked by the press corps.

Sadly, however, as I have argued elsewhere, this type of non-apology apology, which caused a scandal then, has become ubiquitous across our social landscape. And that’s a shame.

Why?

Because real apologies and expressions of accountability are important. Without them, neither the apologizer nor the aggrieved party ever experiences what the ancient Greeks considered a cardinal element in human development and human relations: catharsis.

This is especially so in the case of government entities. Without admissions of guilt, the assumptions and premises undergirding failed policies remain intact, lying fallow until such time as the government entity in question feels it opportune to deploy them again in the service of another misguided crusade.

This is what is currently occurring with the Covid hawks who have violated our fundamental rights time and again over the last two years.

These enemies of human dignity and freedom now realize that many of their former supporters among the citizenry feel exhausted, and in many cases, flat out deceived.

At the same time, however, they do not want to permanently relinquish the powerful repressive tools they have acquired during the two-year state of exception.

The answer?

One part of it, already mentioned, is the moderated limited hangout operation now being conducted regarding the use of masks in public. By relaxing these strictures while in no way addressing the fundamental fallacies upon which the masking policies were based, they ensure that mask mandates can be brought back when and if they deem it necessary to do so.

The second part, which is far more pernicious and consequential, is the effort to push a proposition that is at best quite tenuous in light of what actual scientific studies are currently revealing about vaccine efficacy: that without widespread injection uptake the virus would have never receded, and we would have thus never have gotten into a position to recover our freedoms.

Note the underlying logic here. We are not getting our freedoms back because they intrinsically belong to us and were unjustly stolen. We are getting them back because an important plurality of us have done what the “experts” and the “authorities” coerced us into doing.

With this approach there is no catharsis or healing, and certainly no acquisition of new wisdom and knowledge. What there is, is a sly reification of the infantilizing and anti-democratic ways of thinking that have predominated in our policy-making class throughout the pandemic.

Though many people, laboring under the mortal fear of being branded with the weaponized term of “conspiracy theorist,” are reluctant to admit it, the central concern of policy-makers throughout the pandemic has not been the health of our communities, but rather gaining enhanced control over where we go and what we put into our bodies.

There is nothing more central to the idea and practice of freedom than bodily autonomy. It is the basal freedom from which all others are derived. Without it—as the history of slavery starkly reminds us—all other liberties are comparatively ornamental.

For this reason, we must vigorously oppose this organized attempt to present the vaccines, which have been delivered to millions under rather severe coercion, as a great, if not the greatest, hero of the pandemic film.

Thomas Harrington, Senior Scholar at the Brownstone Institute, is an essayist and Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College in Hartford (USA) where he taught for 24 years. He specializes in Iberian movements of national identity Contemporary Catalan culture. His writings are at Thomassharrington.com.

February 9, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment