Google’s ‘Ambient Background’ Spy Tech

Source: Infowars
Paul Joseph Watson

Six years ago we warned readers that Google was planning to use the ambient background noise of a person’s environment to spy on their activities in order to direct targeted advertising at them through technological devices. That has now come to fruition with the search engine giant filing a petition for “Advertising based on environmental conditions.”

“As that title implies, it’s not just background sounds that could be used to determine what adverts you seen on your mobile phone. The patent also describes using ‘temperature, humidity, light and air composition’ to produced targeted adverts,” reports the Daily Mail.

In other words, Google is going to spy on your private conversations, music preferences, TV watching habits, your choice of radio station, and whatever else is happening in your immediate environment, in order to build a psychological profile of your entire life.

DOJ Asks Court To Keep Secret Any Partnership Between Google and NSA

Source: Legal Times

The Justice Department is defending the government's refusal to discuss—or even acknowledge the existence of—any cooperative research and development agreement between Google and the National Security Agency.

The Washington based advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center sued in federal district court here to obtain documents about any such agreement between the Internet search giant and the security agency.

The NSA responded to the suit with a so-called “Glomar” response in which the agency said it could neither confirm nor deny whether any responsive records exist. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington sided with the government last July.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear the dispute March 20.

EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request in early 2010, noting media reports at the time that the NSA and Google had agreed to a partnership following the cyber attacks in China that year against Google.

EPIC asked for, among other things, communication between the NSA and Google about Gmail and Google’s “decision to fail to routinely encrypt” messages before Jan. 13, 2010.

The NSA’s response to the request for records noted that the agency “works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associations” to ensure the availability of secure information systems. The agency, however, refused to confirm or deny any partnership with Google.

Protest "Illegal", FBI "Imam", Google "Privacy" - New World Next Week

Source: Corbett Report and Media Monarchy

Welcome back to http://NewWorldNextWeek.com — the video series from Corbett Report and Media Monarchy that covers some of the most important developments in open source intelligence news. This week:

Story #1: Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ Will Make Protest Illegal
http://ur1.ca/8fp7k
Obama Issues ‘Policy Directive’ Exempting American Citizens From Indefinite Detention
http://ur1.ca/8ge3m
NDAA Nullification Passes Virginia Senate by a Veto-Proof 39-1 Vote
http://ur1.ca/8ge3v

Story #2: Stratfor Leaks Show ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Imam Is FBI Asset
http://ur1.ca/8ge43
‘Al Qaeda’ Arrest Said to Be Case of Mistaken Identity
http://ur1.ca/8ge48
Flashback: 9/11 Commission Report Burning
http://ur1.ca/8gmds

Story #3: EU Wades Into Google Privacy Row
http://ur1.ca/8ge4g
Clock Counts Down As Google Privacy Change Looms
http://ur1.ca/8ge4b

Visit http://NewWorldNextWeek.com to get previous episodes in various formats to download, burn and share. And as always, stay up-to-date by subscribing to the feeds from Corbett Report http://ur1.ca/39obd and Media Monarchy http://ur1.ca/kuec Thank you.

Google to Censor Blogger Blogs on a ‘Per Country Basis’

Source: Threat Level
David Kravets

Google has quietly announced changes to its Blogger free-blogging platform that will enable the blocking of content only in countries where censorship is required.

Twitter announced technology last week addressing the same topic. It said it had acquired the ability to censor tweets in the countries only where it was ordered removed, instead of on an internet-wide basis.

Twitter’s announcement via its blog sparked a huge online backlash. The microblogging service was accused of becoming a censoring agent.

Yet Google’s announcement three weeks ago — buried in a Blogger help page — went unnoticed until it was highlighted by TechDows on Tuesday.

Google wrote Jan. 9 it would begin redirecting Blogger traffic to country-specific URLs, meaning whatever country you’re in, you’ll get that country’s domain for Blogger-hosted blogs.

TechDows reports that this is now happening in India, for example. So when you’re there and click on a Blogger blog, the URL will end .in.

Doing that, Google wrote, means content can be removed “on a per country basis.”

“Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law,” Google wrote.

Twitter did not announce how its new technology functions, but said Twitter has the ability to remove tweets only in countries where that content was barred.

Google Announces Privacy Changes Across Products; Users Can’t Opt Out

Source: Washington Post
Cecilia Kang

Google will soon know far more about who you are and what you do on the Web.

The Web giant announced Tuesday that it plans to follow the activities of users across nearly all of its ubiquitous sites, including YouTube, Gmail and its leading search engine.

Google has already been collecting some of this information. But for the first time, it is combining data across its Web sites to stitch together a fuller portrait of users.

Consumers won’t be able to opt out of the changes, which take effect March 1. And experts say the policy shift will invite greater scrutiny from federal regulators of the company’s privacy and competitive practices.

FAQ: What exactly will Google be able to collect and integrate? How does this affect me?

The move will help Google better tailor its ads to people’s tastes. If someone watches an NBA clip online and lives in Washington, the firm could advertise Washington Wizards tickets in that person’s Gmail account.

Consumers could also benefit, the company said. When someone is searching for the word “jaguar,” Google would have a better idea of whether the person was interested in the animal or the car. Or the firm might suggest e-mailing contacts in New York when it learns you are planning a trip there.

But consumer advocates say the new policy might upset people who never expected their information would be shared across so many different Web sites.

A user signing up for Gmail, for instance, might never have imagined that the content of his or her messages could affect the experience on seemingly unrelated Web sites such as YouTube. 

“Google’s new privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer. “Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out — especially the kids and teens who are avid users of YouTube, Gmail and Google Search.”

Soros Mouthpiece Calls On Google To Police "Conspiracy Theories"

Source: Prison Planet
Paul Joseph Watson

Former fellow of George Soros’ Open Society and current Stanford University scholar Evgeny Morozov has called on Google and other search engines to become thought crime enforcers, by providing warnings about websites that contain “conspiracy theories” such as the belief, held by a majority of Americans, that global warming is not primarily man-made.

Morozov, whose biography confirms him as a well-connected insider, decries in a Slate piece how the Internet is a useful tool for “People who deny global warming” as well as “the anti-vaccination movement,” calling on Google to provide a “socially responsible curated treatment” that would marginalize such beliefs by amending search results.

His solution is to, “Nudge search engines to take more responsibility for their index and exercise a heavier curatorial control in presenting search results for issues like “global warming” or “vaccination.” Google already has a list of search queries that send most traffic to sites that trade in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories; why not treat them differently than normal queries? Thus, whenever users are presented with search results that are likely to send them to sites run by pseudoscientists or conspiracy theorists, Google may simply display a huge red banner asking users to exercise caution and check a previously generated list of authoritative resources before making up their minds.”

Morozov describes the potential that such a move will be judged as Google “shilling for Big Pharma or for Al Gore” as “a risk worth taking”.

This represents a similar argument to Cass Sunstein’s “cognitive infiltration,” an effort by Obama’s information czar to slap government warnings on controversial websites (including those claiming that exposure to sunlight is healthy). In a widely derided white paper, Sunstein called for political blogs to be forced to include pop ups that show “a quick argument for a competing view”. He also demanded that taxes be levied on dissenting opinions and even suggested that outright bans on certain thoughts should be enforced.

Giving companies like Google, which has grown to virtually become the gatekeeper of the entire Internet itself and is already engaging in SOPA-like acts of censorship, the power to denote which political and scientific positions are acceptable and which are fringe “conspiracy theories” is an insult to free thinking and smacks of Chinese-style thought control.

SOPA: What if Google, Facebook and Twitter Went Offline in Protest?

Source: Techland
Graeme McMillan

Can you imagine a world without Google or Facebook? If plans to protest the potential passing of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) come to fruition, you won’t need to; those sites, along with many other well-known online destinations, will go temporarily offline as a taste of what we could expect from a post-SOPA Internet.

Companies including Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Yahoo! and Wikipedia are said to be discussing a coordinated blackout of services to demonstrate the potential effect SOPA would have on the Internet, something already being called a “nuclear option” of protesting. The rumors surrounding the potential blackout were only strengthened by Markham Erickson, executive director of trade association NetCoalition, who told FoxNews that “a number of companies have had discussions about [blacking out services]” last week.

According to Erickson, the companies are well aware of how serious an act such a blackout would be:

This type of thing doesn’t happen because companies typically don’t want to put their users in that position. The difference is that these bills so fundamentally change the way the Internet works. People need to understand the effect this special-interest legislation will have on those who use the Internet.

The idea of an Internet blackout should seem familiar to anyone who’s been paying attention to the debate so far. In addition to a blackout already carried out by Mozilla, hacking group Anonymous proposed the same thing a couple of weeks ago, suggesting that sites replace their front pages with a statement protesting SOPA. That suggestion itself came a week after Jimmy Wales had asked Wikipedia users about the possibility of blacking out that site in protest of the bill.

Senator Lieberman Urges Google to Increase Censorship of Anti-West Blogs

Source: Activist Post
Eric Blair

U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman sent a letter (PDF) to Google this week urging them to censor anti-West, violent jihadist content on their Blogger platform.

The letter, formally from the Committee on Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs which Lieberman chairs, cited the blog of recent "lone wolf" terrorist patsy Jose Pimentel.

"Pimentel allegedly used the Internet to access instructions to make bombs and share his support for violent Islamic extremism," writes Lieberman. "Pimental's (sic) site is just one of the many examples of homegrown terrorists Google-hosted sites to propagate their violent ideology."

Lieberman, no stranger to promoting censorship of the Internet, sent a similar letter in 2008 to then CEO Eric Schmidt requesting that Google-owned YouTube remove videos that contained "offensive material" and "terrorist propaganda".

Lieberman also appeared on CNN in June 2010 praising China's draconian censorship of the Internet and claimed America should have the same ability to shut down Internet content that the U.S. deems dangerous.

In his recent attempt to outlaw information on the Internet, Lieberman applauded Google for complying with his previous request by adding a "flag" option to YouTube videos where anyone can vote the material as offensive or harmful.  Now, Lieberman is strongly urging Google to add the flagging option to all of their content platforms.

Google Censors War Crimes Video

Source: Infowars
Kurt Nimmo

In the clip below taken from Infowars Nightly News, Alex Jones reveals the hypocrisy of the transnational corporation Google and its popular video asset YouTube. 

YouTube has not only blocked the ability to embed the video from the Alex Jones channel, but has used a host of tricks to prevent it from being viewed, including forcing users to register with YouTube to view adult content and include an email address. This works as a delisting to block views and in essence cosigns the video to the dead zone of porn and other questionable content. 

The following is a temporary fix to YouTube’s undermining. We are working on hosting a version on our servers and it will be included here soon. 

The second half of the Friday night Infowars Nightly News broadcast, however, was not locked down by YouTube because it does not include video footage of a Libyan child with the lower half of his face blown away, a powerful yet disgusting piece of truth information that will further turn the tide of popular opinion against the global elite’s endless wars and slaughter of innocents in much the same way the media in the late 1960s and early 1970s diminished public support for the Vietnam War. 

Facebook & Google+ Spying on Us?

From: Infowars.com

Kurt Nimmo 

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg said you need to get over the fact that there is no privacy on the internet? He meant it. Many of you have likely viewed the video below. It documents Facebook’s connection to the CIA. Many people, however, think the fun of posting on and the interaction of Facebook overshadows the downside, or they merely ignore the negative aspects. Well, it turns out it is worse than we previously thought.

Activist Post Deleted! Google Erases Popular Alternative News Source

From: Before It's News

Zen Gardner

At mid-day on Friday, September 23, 2011, the popular alternative news blog, ActivistPost.com, was taken offline. Activist Post receives over one million views per month and has been hosted by Google’s Blogger since its founding in June 2010. “We remain puzzled as to why Activist Post was erased completely by Google,” said chief editor and co-founder Michael Edwards. “When we tried to load our back-up file into our secondary Blogger account, that was blocked as well,” he added. It remains unclear whether Google has acted to censor ActivistPost.com for their controversial reporting.  Google is becoming somewhat notorious for clamping down on truth and liberty activists, of which Activist Post is known for. “Clearly, this is a huge set back for us and the work we do,” said co-founder Eric Blair.  “Our entire crew is working on resolving the issue and restoring the website.  We certainly look forward to an explanation from Google.” Activist Post will file an appeal with Google to restore the site in full, and asks their loyal supporters to make their voices heard as well.  However, they also are seeking other hosting services to avoid these types of censorship issues in the future. “We want to thank our loyal readers, contributors, and advertisers for being patient while we work this out.  We plan to come on even stronger in face of this adversity,” Edwards said.