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1984: USPS Political FreeSpeech SpyVeillance FOIA
by grarpamp 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

Judicial Watch Asks Court To Order USPS To Disclose Social Media Snooping Documents https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/postal-service-social-media/ https://www.judicialwatch.org/documents/jw-v-usps-complaint-01735/ https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20689281-lawmakers-question-dejoy-o… https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house.gov/files/2021-… https://www.theepochtimes.com/judicial-watch-asks-court-to-order-usps-to-di… https://www.theepochtimes.com/congress-presses-postal-service-after-report-… A non-profit government watchdog is suing in federal court to force the United States Postal Service (USPS) to produce copies of documents on its tracking of social media posts about planned political protests. U.S. Postal Service headquarters at L'Enfant Plaza in Washington. (Coolcaesar/Wikipedia, CC BY-SA) The suit filed by Judicial Watch in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is based on the group’s April 28 U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and the failure of USPS to respond by the required deadline. In its original request, Judicial Watch asked for all documents related to multiple aspects of the government’s activity that is reportedly known as the Internet Covert Operations Program (ICOP), including: All records from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present identifying criteria for flagging social media posts as “inflammatory” or otherwise worthy of further scrutiny by other government agencies. All records from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present relating to the ICOP database of social media posts. All records and communications from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present between any USPS official and any official from the FBI and/or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding ICOP. All social media posts flagged under ICOP and forwarded to other government agencies. Any analyses outlining USPS authority to monitor, track, and collect Americans’ social media posts. All records concerning justifications for USPS to monitor, track, and collect Americans’ social media posts. All records of communication sent to and by Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present concerning ICOP. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement announcing the suit that he wants to know, “Did the Biden administration weaponize the United States Postal Service to improperly spy on Americans?” A USPS spokesman did not respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on the Judicial Watch suit. The USPS program first came to public attention earlier this year when its existence was reported by Yahoo News. As The Epoch Times then reported, the revelation prompted a request from a group of House Republicans to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. “If the reporting is accurate, ICOP raises serious questions about the federal government’s ongoing surveillance of, and encroachment upon, Americans’ private lives and discourse,” House Oversight Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), along with 30 other Republican lawmakers, wrote to DeJoy. According to the bulletin, ICOP recorded the locations and times of protests. Social media websites Parler and Telegram are mentioned by name, described as “right-wing leaning” platforms on which people were coordinating events. Analysts with the USPS’ law enforcement arm were told to keep an eye out for “inflammatory” postings and share them with other government agencies. “The type of amorphous, broad mandate under which ICOP is allegedly operating is particularly troubling because it is unclear why the USPS, of all government agencies and the only one devoted to the delivery of Americans’ mail, is taking on the role of intelligence collection,” the lawmakers wrote. The Republicans asked DeJoy for a Members-Only briefing on the program, which was subsequently provided. Not long after the GOP members’ request, the oversight committee’s chairman, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) joined with Comer in a request to USPS Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb for “a comprehensive analysis of the program and its uses.” Among much else, Maloney and Comer encouraged Whitcomb to examine the USPS’ justification for expanding ICOP from its uses in drug interdiction to general surveillance of political expression and protest planning on social media. The IG was also asked to get answers from USPS to these questions: “What vendor does USPIS use to search publicly available information? What information is the vendor storing about searches and results, and how is this information secured? What is the total awarded value of the contract, and what are USPIS’s obligated costs under the contract? When was the contract initiated, and when does it terminate?” Comer told The Epoch Times July 12 that, “the United States Postal Inspection Service’s use of the Internet Covert Operations Program to spy on the First Amendment rights of the American people raises serious concerns and must be investigated.” The Kentucky Republican said he is “pleased the Inspector General’s office agreed to investigate the use of this program and we look forward to reviewing its findings. We must ensure the American people have transparency about how this program has been used and how [USPS] will install safeguards to prevent abuses from happening again in the future.”

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Re: US government agent Jim Bell and his honeypot.
by zeynepaydogan 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

And who is the Cari machet? He said he was a spy for Jim bell, which is funny, because (he or she's) a liar. when you look at his link, you'll know.He's a liar, because he shared a picture of a Turkish man.The location of the photo is also Istanbul. the man is a sketcher.The guy in that photo probably doesn't even know how to use the Internet.And now I ask you, Cari Machet, who are you? ProtonMail mobil ile gönderildi -------- Özgün İleti -------- 14 Tem 2021 01:55, zeynepaydogan yazdı: > And who is the Cari machet? He said he was a spy for Jim bell, which is funny, because (he or she's) a liar. > when you look at his link, you'll know.He's a liar, because he shared a picture of a Turkish man.The location of the photo is also Istanbul. the man is a sketcher.The guy in that photo probably doesn't even know how to use the Internet.And now I ask you, Cari Machet, who are you? > > ProtonMail mobil ile gönderildi > > -------- Özgün İleti -------- > 14 Tem 2021 01:45, Cari Machet yazdı: > >> Oh yay you went to law school and everything in order to develop crap arguments >> >> Conjecture is what lawyers learn to spill off their legal briefs >> >> Truth dodging is their art >> >> On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 1:44 PM Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 <punks(a)tfwno.gf> wrote: >> >>> US govt agent bell accepts 'donations' via the US BANKING SYSTEM >>> >>> https://jimbellproject.org/ >>> >>> wells fargo Cash Donations - 512000394 6168782032 >>> >>> Ask yourself who in his right mind would send money via the US BANKING SYSTEM to somebody who pretends he wants to overthrow the US govt? >>> >>> I think this is a pretty good evidence that bell works for the US govt. And it makes a lot of sense that after being jailed by his nazi govt, he's been offered a 'deal' and now he's one of them. >> >> -- >> >> https://about.me/carimachet?promo=email_sig&utm_source=product&utm_medium=e… >> cari machet [about.me/carimachet](https://about.me/carimachet?promo=email_sig&utm_source=product&utm_medium=email_sig&utm_campaign=gmail_api&utm_content=thumb)

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What Risks Are Corporations Really Taking For You [re: BigTech "Encryption" at Scale, LavaBit]
by grarpamp 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

> https://engineering.fb.com/2021/07/12/security/enforcing-encryption/ BigTech advertising their deployment of TLS ostensibly to thwart Govt NSA Spy Taps ala Google 641A, thus positioning themselves as grand Saviours to their Users and Society, is a rather laughable story... when they still rampantly Censor, Datamine, Buy/Sell, freely follow the wishes and do the bidding of Politicians and Governments worldwide, can see all the plaintext they want since they own the end service, keep developing and giving away "Insights" to other GovCorps so they can all remain in power over you, and keep deploying centralized non-e2e-encrypted crypto comms "solutions" subject to both spying and seizure and claiming they're "secure". When Corporations and their human heads literally start getting jailed for Freedom, gets extradited, starts getting Civil Forfeitured, blocked from SWIFT, Censored off all Social and Financial and Internet platforms, flees their home country, gets Epsteined, raided and shot at 5AM, takes its server farms refuge into foreign embassies and lands, scraps the "free" advertising sell-you-out model for anonymous cash in the mail and crypto payments, CEOs start big public campaigns talking Libertarian and Privacy Coins, gets their business "license" revoked, fights ever growing Govt power, sues against and refuses Corona lockdowns, donates to privacy and freedom efforts, refuses to Censor, refuses to collect information, refuses to rape the earth, refuses to take Govt and Spy contracts, etc... When Corps start taking the same risks, and incurring the same casualties that the people in the Freedom Privacy Crypto Libertarian P2P Cypherpunk FreeSpeech and whatever related spaces are... that's when people might begin to consider Corps as being even remotely on their side of some issues. Yet among the planet's millions of Corporations and their Heads and Investors, which and who among them have ever taken any such risk and casualty and voice...? 0.0000001%? Is that not sad and dispicable? Till then, all these press releases are nothing more than glowing propaganda meant to fool people and prop up GovCorp even further.

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more starlink garbage
by Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

the pentagon puppet musk plans to put 42,000 satellites in orbit EVERY 5 YEARS. Yes, the satellites only work for 5 years and then they are literally burnt. So musk wants to literally burn whatever insane amount of stolen capital is needed to build rockets, satellites, launch them etc. EVERY FIVE FUCKING YEARS. And all that so that a few turds in 'rural US' can have 'high speed' arpanet. Of course, it's waaaay cheaper to use ground radios. So what's the actual purpose of this farce? Also, if the pentagon puppet had his way, he would be the figurehead of a global arpanet monopoly. Now ask yourself who wants a global US military monopoly on 'satellite internet'? Is that somthing any half-sane half-decent person would want, let alone a 'cypherpunk'? so how come jim bell and 'grarpamp' are pushing for this kind of utter anti-freedom garbage? Well...

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Reuters UK: British police seize record $408 million haul of cryptocurrency
by jim bell 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

Reuters UK: British police seize record $408 million haul of cryptocurrency. https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/british-police-seize-250-million-cryptocur…

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Enforcing encryption at scale - Facebook Engineering
by jim bell 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

https://engineering.fb.com/2021/07/12/security/enforcing-encryption/

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Startup hopes the world is ready to buy quantum processors – Ars Technica
by jim bell 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/07/dutch-startup-hopes-to-sell-people-…

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US Civilian Entities Using Military HW and Intel Against Americans to Grow and Enforce Totalitarian State
by grarpamp 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

Capitol Police To Use Military Surveillance Equipment In Role As 'Intelligence-Based Protective Agency' https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jul/10/capitol-police-use-army-su… https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/iews-pss-t-2/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/topics/persistent-surveillance-systems/ In response to the January 6 Capitol riot, US Capitol Police will begin employing military surveillance equipment used by the Army in what the Washington Times described as part of "sweeping security upgrades" as the force transforms into "an intelligence-based protective agency." Lockheed Martin hybrid PSSG airship (read more here) Upgrades will include eight 'Persistent Surveillance Systems Ground - Medium' (PSSG-M) units, which provide HD surveillance video and includes night vision. According to the Pentagon, it does not include facial recognition. "This technology will be integrated with existing USCP camera infrastructure, providing greater high definition surveillance capacity to meet steady-state mission requirements and help identify emerging threats," said the Pentagon. The technology allowed U.S. troops fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor large areas 24/7 through extremely high-resolution cameras. Some privacy rights advocates have raised concern that Capitol Police are getting into the business of spying on Americans. In a wartime application, the persistent surveillance units were mounted on tethered blimps. The data could be stored, combined with sensor data from other platforms, and later referenced or rewound to track individuals or groups. The military could use the system to develop “pattern of life” analyses on suspected enemy combatants or intelligence targets in war zones. It could determine, for example, who was responsible for placing an improvised explosive device. -Washington Times According to a 2016 Government Accountability Office report, the Department of Homeland Security leased the same, or similar technology through the Department of Defense. Few details were provided to the Times about the new system - such as how and where it will be deployed, or whether collected data will be stored or disseminated - or whether it will be shared with other agencies. "Hopefully, you can understand it wouldn’t be smart of us tell the world all our capabilities," a Capitol Police official told the Times. The Pentagon says the Army will install the units and provide training to the Capitol Police to operate and maintain the system. Once installed, the Army won't have any role in operation.

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Cryptocurrency: WarOnCash, Cash Is Not Anonymous, You Are Being Tracked
by grarpamp 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwHdS1gCc6Q JetScan Cash Counter Fun video for all the retards who refuse to believe what is happening. That video is eight years old, global deployments of such tech predate that. It is now all networked, indexed, stored forever, bought, sold, shared, given, secreted, datamined, and used to fuck people. https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/mail-isolation-con… Wake the fuck up. Fight back.

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Cryptocurrency: ESG, Hydropower, Digital Power for Freedom
by grarpamp 13 Jul '21

13 Jul '21

“Old money is not going to pick us up; it pushes us down. The digital rebellion is here. -- Spike Lee" "China’s Ban on Bitcoin Follows a Pattern Frequently Used by Beijing Since the End 2000s: Anything that promotes freedom is banned by the Chinese authorities." "It’s ok for Billionaires to go to space for no reason and burn a ton of rocket fuel but nooooo we can’t have any crypto mining going on cause you know the oceans are LITERALLY ON FIRE because of crypto mining" "This block was mined with a carbon negative power source -- Block 690688" https://omid-malekan.medium.com/the-esg-case-for-crypto-a663888c4223 The ESG Case For Crypto First, let’s state the obvious: Bitcoin mining uses a lot of electricity, so it’s bad for the environment. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a salesperson or a fool. Arguing that mining is good for the environment because it encourages investment in renewables is like arguing that smoking saves lives by driving cancer research. All of the energy comparisons to the traditional banking system are also foolish. There are various nuances to this debate, but none change the fact that Bitcoin has a significant carbon footprint. But so do a lot of things. Tellingly, none are as controversial. What’s the carbon footprint of people cranking the AC, ordering takeout and watching Netflix? Significant, but seldom debated. Every kind of human activity impacts the environment, and plenty of mundane activities use “more power than some countries” when measured in aggregate. Deciding which ones are worthwhile requires an objective cost-benefit analysis and comparison to similar activities. Bitcoin mining is rather unique, but for the sake of argument, let’s compare it to the US military. Like Bitcoin, the US military uses more energy than some countries. Also like Bitcoin, a big reason why is to secure the purchasing power of a currency. But unlike Bitcoin, the military does this in a roundabout way, protecting unsavory regimes who price their exports in dollars and dropping the occasional bomb. The relationship between money and power is almost as old as money itself, with those issuing the former often utilizing the latter to keep their currency on top. Bitcoin’s clever contribution is to make this previously implicit relationship explicit. People trust its coins because they require a lot of power to produce. The ESG case for crypto starts with the recognition that the power consumption of coins like Bitocin and Ether is a feature and not a bug, the most important component of a novel security mechanism that achieves something remarkable: a global monetary system that is independent of any corporation or government, and strictly opt-in. There are no exclusive legal tender laws, capital controls or naval fleets that force people to trust Bitcoin. And yet, hundreds of millions do, perhaps for that very reason. Crypto has no coercion. It uses transparency, math and economic incentives to build trust where it wouldn’t otherwise exist. Crypto is meritocratic. Anyone can do anything — from mining to using to saving — and lots of people all over the world do. Like Lady Justice herself, crypto is blind. It doesn’t care (or even know about) anyone’s nationality, race, age, gender or sexual orientation. It’s the first electronic payment system that is accessible to anyone anywhere, from undcoumented workers in Western countries to women in Islamists ones to dissidents fighting dictators. The environmental impact is therefore offset by the social benefits, a negative E in exchange for a positive S. That tradeoff is worth it, thanks to the increasingly tragic failures of the traditional monetary system. Not in terms of devaluation and inflation — though that may come later — but in terms of access. Over one and a half billion global unbanked, most of them poor, undocumented, minority and innocent. That last adjective is important, because the exclusionary nature of our existing financial system is no accident. It’s a direct consequence of a system built on a presumption of guilt. As proof, consider the simple fact that opening up a bank account is often more intrusive than having open-heart surgery. Your doctor doesn’t have to collect a bunch of legal documents and perform a background check before doing her job, but your banker does. Most industries operate on a presumption of innocence. They accept anyone as a customer until individual behavior or law enforcement gives them a reason not to. Banking works on the opposite principle. Everyone is a potential terrorist or money launderer until they prove otherwise. This presumption of guilt is a minor nuisance for the affluent, but an existential threat to the underprivileged. It’s one reason why poor neighborhoods feature more pseudo-financial services like check cashers and pawn chops than bank branches, even in rich countries. It’s also a contributor to the growing wealth gap. Those who have the least amount of money pay the highest fees, keeping them ensconced in poverty. It’s not that banks don’t want to serve these communities. It’s that so-called anti-money laundering (AML) know-your-client (KYC) & sanctions regulations make it too hard or too expensive for them to do so. Bitcoin itself may not be the solution to this problem, but the tokenized financial system that it represents can, because it’s built on a presumption of innocence. Unlike banks and Fintechs who have no choice but to rely on legal identity — the kind that 10 million undocumented workers in America don’t have — tokens rely on cryptographic identity. Math doesn’t discriminate, so anyone who wants to access a blockchain network — to transfer Bitcoins, dollars or any other store of value — is able to. It goes without saying that the vast majority won’t be doing anything illegal. They’ll order goods online or send money back home, without having to pay exorbitant fees. Here the crypto critics chime in with the now-cliched canard about illicit use. They claim that a financial system as open to undcoumented Mexicans as it is to affluent Americans will be rife with criminal activity. The inherent racism and classism of this argument aside, it fails a basic smell test. It would be one thing if the existing financial system, for all of its exclusionary tendencies, actually prevented crime. But the numbers indicate otherwise. According to the World Economic Forum, an estimated 2 to 5 percent of global GDP — some two trillion dollars per year — is laundered through the banking system. There is $30b a year in credit card fraud, and according to acclaimed economist Kenneth Rogoff, up to a third of all hundred dollar bills are used in illegal activity. The most reliable estimate for the amount of Bitcoins used in illicit activity in 2020 — as published by Chainalysis, the leading government contractor in this domain — is only ten billion dollars, equal to the amount of money-laundering related fines global banks paid in the same period. If the existing approach was remotely successful at keeping out the bad guys, then we could have a debate about whether the social costs were worth it. But guilty until proven innocent has failed on both fronts, so it’s time for a new approach, one that shifts the focus from keeping out bad actors to isolating bad money — know your token as opposed to know your client. Here the transparency and immutability of blockchain networks come in handy. Unlike duffel bags full of cash or structured wire transfers, tokens leave a perfect audit trail, one that is increasingly used to solve crimes. source: Chainalysis The social benefits of crypto don’t end there. Tempting as it might be to shift the ESG debate away from speculative bitcoin to less power hungry platforms or central bank digital currencies, we should not shortchange what Bitcoin itself has achieved, which is to appreciate significantly. Skeptics love to complain about its volatility, despite the fact that it has always resolved to the upside. This critique can even be heard on Wall Street, where lots of things — including credit default swaps, Tesla stock and negatively priced oil futures — are also volatile. The inconsistency might have something to do with who has benefited. Bitcoin has made a lot of poor, foreign, minority and young people rich, even when factoring in the recent decline. This is in stark contrast to other high flying investments such as venture capital, private equity or real estate, access to which is restricted. Before Bitcoin, a majority of people had no access to the majority of assets — a socioeconomic failure so astonishing that it’s worth repeating: poor people don’t get to invest in most things, due to a nasty combination of misguided laws, high minimum entry prices, lack of infrastructure in poor countries and KYC regulations in rich ones. According to the FDIC, up to a third of all African Americans remain underbanked, and people who have a hard time getting bank accounts have an even harder time opening brokerage ones. But anyone could have bought bitcoin at any time, and even a few dollars invested five years ago would be worth thousands today. But that’s not how crypto investing is presented. Tellingly, the only time when investment luminaries like Warren Buffet or central bankers like Neel Kashkari comment on the investment potential of Bitcoin is to criticize it — “rat poison squared” according to Buffett and “burning garbage” per Kashkari. Their ignorance of what Bitcoin has achieved for ordinary people brings us to the final ESG argument for crypto, its superior governance. Crypto governance is egalitarian. Anyone can contribute, and lots of people all over the world do, by holding tokens, validating transactions, hosting nodes or submitting code. Crypto governance is also meritocratic. There are no politically appointed positions, entrenched incumbents or captured regulators. Some of the most important participants are pseudonymous, because the community doesn’t care where someone comes from or what school they attended. All that matters is their contribution, the ultimate embodiment of Emerson’s “doing well as a result of doing good.” This is in stark contrast to traditional governance, where power is usually shared by a small group of people who attend the same schools, work at the same companies and exist in the same power circles. No wonder then that Mr. Kashkari (Republican, Wharton MBA, former Goldman banker) and Mr Buffett (Democrat, Wharton MBA, former Goldman shareholder) share a disdain for crypto. If traditional governance was more like crypto governance, then Mr. Kahkari, chief architect of the U.S. government’s TARP program, would have never been able to engineer the taxpayer funded bailouts that disproportionately benefited Warren Buffet’s investment portfolio, almost half of which was in financial stocks at the dawn of the 2008 crisis. Despite his poor judgement at that time, Mr. Buffett is now only richer for the experience. The countless people who lost their home or their job in the same crisis are not. Perhaps more than anything, the ESG case for crypto begins and ends with what it isn’t, which is the old way of doing things. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Mechanicville-hydro-plant-gets-new-… New York Hydro Power Plant Mines Bitcoin Because More Profitable Than Selling Electricity To Grid This year, some of the hottest trends in the crypto industry have been bitcoin adoption and environmental, social, and governance factors into crypto mining. Tesla CEO Elon Musk pushed bitcoin's environmental concerns into the forefront, calling for "renewable energy" to be used for mining instead of fossil fuels. It's no secret that bitcoin mining takes a massive amount of electricity. It's estimated that energy consumption exceeds the power consumption of countries like the Netherlands and the UAE. With the push towards ESG-Friendly bitcoin mining operations, there's one historic hydroelectric plant near Albany, New York, using power generated from its massive water turbines to mine crypto. "We think this is the oldest renewable energy facility in the world that's still running," Albany Engineering Corp. CEO Jim Besha told the Times Union. He said the plant "could actually make more money with bitcoin than selling the electricity to National Grid. Albany Engineering Corp. receives around 3 cents per kilowatt-hour when it sells energy to National Grid. Mining bitcoin makes about three times the amount of money, Besha said. "It's the best (type of bitcoin mining) because we're using renewable energy," Besha said. "We're just doing it on the side, experimenting with it. We're buying used servers." Each week Besha converts thousandths of a bitcoin into fiat rather than 'HODL' because he's worried about crypto volatility. The hydroplant was constructed in 1897 and is getting new life amid China's crackdown on miners, resulting in the hash rate —the computational power available to mine the cryptocurrency, reflecting the efficiency of the bitcoin blockchain network, plunging since mid-May. The only issue Besha has to worry about is a bill that would ban cryptocurrency mining in New York.

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