Category: Freedom and the Right to Privacy
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Everything is Watching: A Field Guide to Everyday Surveillance Tech
The problem is not just that we’re being tracked more than ever; it’s that everyone is actively paying for the surveillance. Video doorbell ownership in the US rose from 4% to over a 35% between 2017 and 2024. Smart TVs – which track and sell your viewing analytics – are now in 86% of homes, Read more
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Nearly One Million UK Toddlers Hooked on Social Media
Nine in ten UK children own phones before age 11, according to a House of Commons Library brief. Six in ten kids between 8-12 years old have their own social media platforms despite many minimum age restrictions being 13. If upper-primary children are already deeply embedded online, then pushing the start line as far down Read more
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Small Business at the Heart of Australian Prosperity
Small businesses employ over 5.1 million people in Australia; they are the backbone of the Australian economy in response to contributing immensely to economic growth. Bakhtiari (2019) suggests that small, young firms contribute strongly to job creation, typically in their first two years of operation, and that four out of every five jobs added to the Read more
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How the West Was Won: Counterinsurgency, PSYOPS and the Military Origins of the Internet
There was another DARPA program that also ‘disappeared’ one year before Facebook made its debut. Often cited as the precursor to Facebook. The Information Awareness Office (IAO) brought together several DARPA surveillance and information technology projects including MDDS which provided Google’s seed funding. The stated aim of the IAO was to gather and store the Read more
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The Modern Slave
Most people hear ‘modern slavery’ and picture trafficking victims or sweatshop workers—suffering that’s clearly visible, obviously wrong, and comfortably distant from their daily lives. What if the most effective slavery in history isn’t hidden—but public, celebrated, and defended by the very people it enslaves? This isn’t about personal hardship or material deprivation. Many people living Read more
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Biometric bondage: How government-backed wearables threaten mental well being, bodily autonomy and freedom
The right to privacy—once a cornerstone of American liberty—is crumbling under the weight of algorithmic authoritarianism. What began as voluntary health tracking has morphed into a full-scale assault on bodily autonomy, with government and corporate overlords poised to seize control of our most intimate biological data. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Secretary of Health and Read more
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MAHA, Wearables and the War for Embodied Consciousness
While some people may genuinely benefit from wearables for managing chronic conditions or maintaining motivation, the broader trajectory moves us away from bodily intelligence. Consider the pipeline already emerging: wearable detects irregularity → automated medication reminder → insurance adjusts your premium employer questions your productivity → economic survival depends on biometric obedience. Your device doesn’t Read more
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Neoliberalism’s Playbook: Control, Crisis and Compliance. Endgame Logic of Late Capitalism.
Neoliberalism has run its course, resulting in the impoverishment of large sections of the population. But to dampen dissent and lower expectations, the levels of personal freedom we have been used to will not be tolerated. This means that the wider population will be subjected to the discipline of an emerging surveillance state. To push Read more
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Zowe Smith: “They’re Layering Our Personal Information With Our Covid Status, With Our Vaccine Status, With Our DNA, Which They Were Collecting Through the PCR Tests…”
Medical whistleblower, author, and former medical coder Zowe Smith describes for AM Wake Up how the COVID-19 registry—used to keep track of those who (supposedly) contracted COVID (whatever that is) as well as the contacts of those who contracted COVID—has been privatized. Specifically, privatized by Datavant, which is a health information “AI ecosystem” company working Read more
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Where Is the Bio-Fascist State Headed?
Consider ten bills that were introduced in the California State legislature in January 2022: 1. SB 871: adds covid vaccine to required immunization schedule for all private and public schools, regardless of whether these vaccines receive full FDA approval.2. AB 2098: classifies any medical opinion that runs contrary to the establishment’s covid narrative as “misinformation” Read more