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“Google knows a lot about you and, if you use Google Maps or other Google apps, it stores a copy of everywhere you go,” explains Todd Haselton, CNBC’s technology products editor. Haselton picked a random date in the midst of performing Google’s “Privacy Checkup,” and what he discovered shocked him. “It knew everywhere I went, including that I took Interstate 95 to our office in northern New Jersey and that I arrived at 7:58 a.m.,” he explains. “It knew that at 1:02 p.m. I drove to Jersey City and took a train in to Manhattan to the New York Stock Exchange before returning home at 4:38 p.m. And it has a copy of the pictures I took at each location.”

To what end? Google claims the maps will help one discover more efficient commuter routes and reacquaint one with locations along the way. Yet as the Associated Press revealed last year, such help wasn’t optional. It discovered Google services wants your data bad enough “to store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so.”

The AP’s discovery was confirmed by computer-science researchers at Princeton. Moreover, while Google assured users they can turn off “Location History” anytime they want, the AP discovered that some Google apps still store time-stamped location data automatically.

As both Haselton and the AP note, Google offers a number of ways to either remove or control such data, but it requires a number of user-initiated steps to do so. Moreover, much of it is misleading. For example on an iPhone, one can turn off “Location History” and Google will still get location data from apps that will store it under the heading of “My Activity.”

Last Tuesday, Google announced it will give users more privacy tools and greater control over how they’re being tracked both outside and inside their homes. CEO Sundar Pichai insisted the company was making an effort to stay ahead of “constantly evolving user expectations” on privacy.

Jeremy Tillman, president of Ghostery, wasn’t buying it. “They’re sort of marginal improvements,” he stated. “They are not bad, but they almost seem like they’re designed to give the company a better messaging push instead of making wholesale improvements to user privacy.”

Princeton computer scientist Jonathan Mayer, was equally unimpressed with Google’s promise to give Chrome users better control over tracking cookies used by digital advertisers to target customers. “This is not privacy leadership,” he asserted. “This is privacy theater.”

If Google were genuinely interested in privacy leadership they’d answer a simple question: Why is Google’s default position that the user must opt out, rather than in to tracking schemes that would make George Orwell blush?

As always, the answer is money. “The company makes billions of dollars annually by selling digital ads that are targeted at the interests people reveal through their search requests and data collected by Google apps and services,” the AP explains.

Google is hardly alone. Amazon’s Alexa a home-based, name-activated device that listens to what one is saying — and then sends a copy to Amazon of everything it records. Like similar devices, including Apple’s Siri, these recordings are ostensibly used to train the artificial intelligence tech companies use to make them more “efficient.” Or as both Amazon and Facebook assert, to improve products, not to sell them.

Reality is a bit more chilling. “Alexa keeps a record of what it hears every time an Echo speaker activates,” explains columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler. “It’s supposed to only record with a ‘wake word’ — ‘Alexa!’ — but anyone with one of these devices knows they go rogue. I counted dozens of times when mine recorded without a legitimate prompt.”

A couple of states have stepped up to prevent what amounts to eavesdropping. Illinois passed the Keep Internet Devices Safe Act, which prohibits such recording without specific consent from users, and the California State Assembly’s privacy committee has advanced an Anti-Eavesdropping Act addressing the same concerns.

Yet tech giants keep pushing the envelope. Google’s Nest thermostat reports one’s house temperature to Google in 15-minute increments, and also tracks the movement of people in the house. “Smart lights” track when they’re turned on and off, smart garage door openers track up and down movement, and smart speakers track one’s music choices, with all of the data sent back to the companies that make the devices — most of whom share it with Amazon.

Unfortunately, hackers have access to such data as well. A woman who thought her three-year-old daughter was having nightmares discovered that the Nest Cam installed above her bed was transmitting pornography via the intercom feature in the software.

Such possibilities are enabled by Big Tech’s insidious priorities. The Washington Post reports, “Software designed to help people break into websites and devices has gotten so easy to use that it’s practically child’s play, and many companies, including Nest, have effectively chosen to let some hackers slip through the cracks rather than impose an array of inconvenient countermeasures that could will detract from their users’ experience and ultimately alienate their customers.”

Almost unbelievably, this virtually unlimited surveillance has its supporters. RealClearMarkets editor and Director of the Center for Economic Freedom at FreedomWorks John Tamny brings up the inefficiencies of Communist Cuba, where “aren’t any Amazon-style companies going out of their way to meet the needs of their customers,” to tout the benefits of a device that he wished listened to him “with greater frequency.” “Figure that the more Alexa listens to my wife and me, along with our daughter, the better Amazon can get to know us,” he declares.

And while he makes the legitimate point that no one held a gun to anyone’s head and made them put Amazon’s Echo in their house, he derides Fowler’s aforementioned take because if “one’s buying something in the market economy, your purchases are being tracked. This is a good thing.”

Utter nonsense. As Ben Franklin stated, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” That goes double for those who would sacrifice liberty, safety, and privacy for efficiency and convenience.

As mentioned above, government — assuming it hasn’t totally surrendered running the country to the tech giants — should at the very least impose opt-in on these intrusive behemoths.

Moreover, if they can’t squeeze the surveillance toothpaste back in the tube, then it’s time to hit these companies where it hurts: Congress should allow people to copyright their personal data, and require tech companies to provide detailed logs of who’s getting what for the purposes of exploitation. Every company using one’s personal data to make a profit should be required to pay a percentage of that profit back to each individual they track.

It’s not a cure, but it might force companies to do some serious re-prioritization. Far more important? Break up these giants — giants with historically unprecedented power — and limit the amount and nature of data they can share with each other.

“Efficient” totalitarianism is a lousy alternative.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62965?mailing_id=4270&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4270&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Blexit opened many black eyes to the truths of the Democrat party. Now we look forward to the 2020 presidential election and examine the pressing issues black voters are truly concerned about.

The horde of progressive Democrats are running on empty, using any sensitive issue to fuel their campaigns. It’s their way to reach for low-hanging fruit that appeals to the uninformed. Topics like reparations and marijuana legalization are worn like a brand shown only to black voters to keep them emotional. For one, it’s insulting that these candidates believe black voters would give up their precious votes in exchange for free money and drugs. And two, it’s cheap. This is why the Blexit movement matters.

In 2020, the Blexit movement will shine a guiding light on the real issues affecting black Americans. I think of it as a lighthouse designed to help our lost sailors find their way home through the thick fog cast over them. To see this light, some of us have a long way to go, but more than ever before has the black population been closer to reaching the shores of sound political insight and the true issues that affect us.

Gun Rights: The Impact on Black Americans

Gun rights are becoming a growing issue among blacks. NBC reported on the increasing awareness of the importance of gun ownership in the black community, with more black first-time gun owners enrolling in gun-safety and concealed-carry courses. While demographic records are not kept on the race of gun buyers, more black people in my own circles and across the nation are showing concern for keeping themselves and their families safe by owning a gun.

Republican haven’t voiced a platform for gun ownership to date, yet Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker suggests a national gun registry that would put licensing in the hands of the federal government. Booker claims to want to “fight” the NRA, the very organization that has historically fought for gun rights for minorities. The idea of more limitations is dangerous because when increasing crime disproportionately affects your community, having protection is all you can think about. To restrict gun ownership is to keep guns further out of reach for black Americans.

Putting Abortion in its place

According to The Washington Times, six minority Democrat legislators in North Carolina voted nay on an infanticide bill. In Nevada, two minority Democrats voted nay on the Trust Nevada Women Act. State Senator Marcia Washington stated that she had no issue casting a different vote from her Democratic colleagues because she doesn’t “believe in any form of abortion,” according to the article.

More black people — regardless of party affiliation — are seeing the light and truth about abortion, which is actively reducing the black population in our nation. Progressive candidates are all for it, calling it “health care” yet at the same time minimizing the number of abortions that actually take place at Planned Parenthood clinics. While Democrats actively obfuscate the truth about black genocide, movements like Blexit help put this and other issues front and center. Because to those of us who are part of the movement, black lives actually matter.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62940?mailing_id=4270&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4270&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Iran initially responded with veiled threats against U.S. interests in the region, and with threats to stop any other nation from exporting oil through the Strait of Hormuz if Iran’s oil exports were cut off by the sanctions. National Security Advisor John Bolton announced last week that the United States would deploy an aircraft carrier group and an Air Force bomber group to the region, citing specific threat reporting. On Wednesday, Iran threatened to begin withdrawing from certain parts of the 2015 nuclear deal, including ramping up enrichment work, if its European allies — sorry, we meant the United States’ notional European allies — did not take action to help Iran avoid the effects of sanctions. President Trump in turn announced new U.S. sanctions on Iran’s metal industry, which accounts for around 12% of Iran’s economy. Iran also declared all U.S. forces in the region “terrorists,” a move that is merely an angry tit-for-tat with no legal impact.

What might be the next steps in this dance? Iran’s response to similar tensions in the past has been to hold a large, highly publicized military exercise involving its naval and missile forces, with the explicit message that Iran can control the Strait of Hormuz. Both Iran’s regular Navy and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy have stopped and boarded merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz, although none of those ships to date has been U.S.-flagged. Increased interference with merchant shipping, in particular oil tankers carrying Saudi or Kuwaiti crude oil, would be a simple way for Iran to exert leverage over the rest of the developed world’s economic safety.

Iranian-backed Shia militia groups in Iraq, which probably outnumber the Iraqi Army in manpower, are within eyeball range of U.S. forces every minute of every day, and would have ample opportunity to target those U.S. forces or the Iraqi forces we are training and supporting. And Iran can carry through on its threat to stop observing part or even all of the 2015 nuclear deal’s terms.

Or, Iran could agree to negotiate new terms to the nuclear deal. Those terms would have to include Iran’s ballistic missile development, its sponsorship of terrorism throughout the region, and the numerous unanswered questions about various Iranian nuclear facilities and past research on nuclear weapons. Iran has never allowed a detailed inspection of the Parchin complex, for example, and has literally dismantled and hauled away every brick and stone at other suspected facilities. It still has not provided a serious accounting of its pre-2003 work on nuclear triggers or warhead design. All of those issues must be addressed, and it is for that reason the United States has ramped up the pressure on Iran.

How long before that pressure changes Iran’s mind? Iran’s leaders are the true believers of the Islamic Revolution, and have suffered sanctions and deprivation since 1980. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps functions as a virtual state within the state, and its senior leaders are the hardest of the hard-core. They have the ability to limit Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s freedom of action if he was inclined to negotiate.

The Europeans have shown very little inclination to support efforts to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions, preferring instead to trade with Iran and pretend Iran can be trusted. And China has several massive economic development deals with Iran, including a deal to modernize Iran’s oil infrastructure, in addition to being highly dependent on Iranian oil.

All of those factors add to the challenge of keeping the pressure on Iran until it produces the desired outcome. But that pressure must be maintained if we are to rectify the serious deficiencies in the Iran deal while avoiding war.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62957?mailing_id=4270&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4270&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Yet less than 1,500 miles off our shores — half the distance of a cross-country flight — there’s an ongoing geopolitical conflict that provides the latest test of a nearly two-centuries-old American operating principle, the Monroe Doctrine. In layman’s terms, the foreign-policy approach of our fifth president told the rest of the world to lay off the nations of the Americas as they naturally fell under our sphere of influence.

In January, Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro was again sworn in as president despite being selected last year in what Vice President Mike Pence called a “fake election with a fake outcome.” The highly irregular circumstances behind the 2018 election have led most Western nations to refuse to recognize Maduro as the country’s leader, contending that the presidency is vacant according to Venezuela’s constitution.

This scenario of a constitutionally mandated presidential vacancy means that leadership falls to the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly. That man is 35-year-old Juan Guaido, who was just chosen in December to lead the nation’s rightful legislative body. Rightful or not, however, the sole possessors of the nation’s guns form the basis of Maduro’s support. Aside from controlling most of the military, Maduro is also being propped up by three key nations still in his corner: Cuba, China, and Russia. In the latter case, therein lies the rub.

Our Thomas Gallatin touched on the issue last week, but the dictator who “was ready to leave this morning as we understand it,” according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, was talked out of it: “The Russians indicated he should stay.”

Last Friday, President Donald Trump said he “had a very good talk with [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin — probably over an hour.” As White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders breezily explained, “The president’s primary focus throughout the call was about helping the people of Venezuela, making clear that the United States stands with the people of Venezuela, and the importance of making sure those individuals are able to get the food and the water and the medical supplies needed.” But others had a different take on this chumminess, claiming it ran counter to American global interests — and to his own administration officials’ statements.

While there are times that President Trump confounds the so-called conventional wisdom by going against the grain, the long history of Russian involvement with Venezuela is troubling. A Wall Street Journal editorial provides a quick and handy guide to some recent developments, but Trump is apparently taking Putin at his word that he’s “not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela.”

“I feel the same way,” Trump added. “We want to help on a humanitarian basis.”

But given the hypersensitivity of Democrats (and their media enablers) to all things Russian, the mere appearance of working together on anything with Putin creates a lot of bad optics, including the shrill prediction  about National Security Advisor John Bolton resigning his post in frustration and giving the Democrats another excuse to pursue impeachment for collusion.

The U.S. has little interest in a military intervention, so perhaps this is an instance of Trump trying to kill the Russians with kindness. It was, after all, another Republican who once told the world to “speak softly and carry a big stick.”  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62911?mailing_id=4265&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4265&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The U.S. unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 50 years, and more than a quarter million jobs were added in the month of April alone.

As Susan Ferrechio writes at the Washington Examiner, “Friday’s report on job gains is just another in a series of indicators that show the economy under President Trump is booming. Republicans and the president credit policies they put in place to reduce government regulations and taxes. The party’s signature achievement, a comprehensive tax reform law, lowered taxes not only for individuals but small businesses and corporations.”

But Democrats simply can’t begrudge Donald Trump (or any Republican president) any credit for what is unequivocally good news for all Americans. Consequently, when the economy roars under Republican leadership, Democrats drum up a lot of deceptive ways to either distract us from the good news or to simply give themselves credit.

For example, Democrat Sens. Amy Klobuchar and scumbag-Cory Booker, both 2020 presidential candidates, argue that former President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama really started the economic recovery we’re enjoying today. They’re referring to the same scumbag/liar-nObama who said America’s lost jobs would never come back, who referred to 2% economic growth as the “new normal,” and who became the only U.S. president to never post a single year of 3% growth.

Another tactic employed by the Left is to simply ignore what’s happening. Ferecchio adds, “Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren, D-Mass., tweeted another call for Trump’s impeachment, loose lips-Joe Biden tweeted about restoring voting rights for felons in Florida, former Rep. socialist-Beto O'Rourke tweeted about tackling climate change, and Sen. lowlife-Kamala Harris, D-Calif., tweeted about unaffordable healthcare and the need for Medicare for All.”

With the Leftmedia trumpeting the Democrat message, no wonder so many Americans are convinced that they’re not “feeling” the benefits of Trump’s economy.

The facts, however, paint a different and more realistic picture.

Adam Michel explains at The Daily Signal, “When the economy is strong and unemployment rates are consistently low, two things happen. First, job openings pull workers off the sidelines and into the workforce. People who had been so discouraged that they stopped looking for work start getting jobs again. That’s what we’re seeing. New York Times reporter Ben Casselman noted that more than 70% of new hires last month "weren’t actively looking for work, but got jobs anyway.”

The unemployment rate fell to historic lows for Americans with a high-school diploma, for workers with disabilities, and for both black and Hispanic workers. As Michel concludes, “One could hardly wish for a better trend. This economy is working for every class of American.”

Tell that to House Speaker Nancy Pulosi, who responded to the incredible numbers from the April jobs report by incredulously stating, “Unfortunately, the evidence shows that most of the economic gains continue to benefit those already well off.”

If by “well off” she means anyone with a job and a future, then she has a point. It’s more likely, though, that Pulosi simply can’t stomach the prospect of so many newly employed Americans now being able to break their dependence on government.

Meanwhile, former Vice President loose lips-Joe Biden delivered a mostly incoherent message for a paltry crowd that included a promise to restore the soul of America and to build the backbone of the country. One might ask: Where was that soul and that backbone during the scumbag/liar-nObama/loose lips-Biden years?

Yet, in the same speech, loose lips-Biden’s recipe for building America’s backbone included tired and worn calls for increasing taxes, restoring scumbag/liar-nObamaCare, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and offering free tuition for community college. That message simply won’t sell to millions of Americans now drawing a paycheck for the first time in months or even years.

And all this happened because President Trump reversed scumbag/liar-nObama’s policies to those that reduced taxes for individuals and businesses of all sizes, removed excessive regulations from the federal bureaucracy, and unleashed our nation’s untapped energy resources.

Between now and November 2020, Democrats will pull out all the stops to convince Americans that times are tough — indeed, they’re desperately hoping for recession. But millions of people casting votes on Election Day will have a job that they didn’t have before the Trump presidency, and that might be enough to keep the Democrats from taking us back to their “new normal” of economic stagnation.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62925?mailing_id=4265&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4265&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Socialists commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have teamed up to introduce the Loan Shark Prevention Act. The legislation would limit credit card interest rates to 15% — significantly lower than the “extortion-level interest rates” commie-Ocasio-Cortez says companies now charge. According to The Washington Post, “For borrowers with high credit scores, the average rate was 17.73 percent last week. … For those with poor credit scores, the average is now about 24.99 percent.” The median interest rate is currently 21.36%.

Those rates have climbed precipitously in recent years. In part, that’s for good reason. People with lower credit scores have a poor track record repaying debt. And the financial crisis of 2008 was driven by banks taking undue risks (mandated by Democrat law) on borrowers with bad credit. Hedging against that is a basic business decision, and the result of the legislation to “fix” the problem is that fewer poor people will be able to get credit cards. It’s reminiscent of Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s regulations on payday lenders. Those lenders are distasteful but sometimes necessary options, and enlightened bureaucrats in Washington aren’t going to improve anything.

Speaking of payday lenders, the commie-Sanders/commie-AOC legislation aims to create an alternative “not-for-profit public option for basic banking services” via … the U.S. Postal Service. Yes, the same U.S. Postal Service that has lost $69 billion since 2007. As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey quips, “The idea that the US Postal Service is a good model for any kind of ‘public option, let alone banking, is an absolute riot.” But commie-Sanders and comie-AOC are totally serious.

By introducing regulation and eliminating options, argues Reason’s Peter Suderman, “What commie-Sanders is actually bragging about is eliminating choices — choices that may seem unfortunate or unpleasant to the sort of people who, say, own three homes and write bestsellers that make them millionaires — but which often benefit the people who make those choices: lower-income people with less stable finances. In essence, commie-Sanders is proud of having eliminated useful financial tools for the poor.” Nonetheless, it will win him and the Democrat Party votes, so they’ll keep doing it.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/62927?mailing_id=4265&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4265&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body