Ooops! Google admits it forgot to tell users about its hidden spy microphone

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All-powerful tech giant Google has apologized for forgetting to tell users that it’s Nest Secure home security system had a built-in microphone. Nothing to see here, guys!

Google’s Nest Secure system allows users to connect dozens of motion detectors, magnetic door alarms and security cameras to a centralized control unit. The unit monitors the user’s home, sending alerts if anything is amiss. Its initial tech specifications mentioned nothing about the potential spy devices hidden inside.

Naturally, Google caused a stir when it announced earlier this month that owners could use their Nest Secure hub to ask Google Assistant questions like “activate my alarm,” “do I need an umbrella today?,” or “are you spying on my every move?”

Even after announcing the Google Assistant integration, the company didn’t mention the hidden microphone. Only after an outcry from suspicious users and privacy advocates did Google admit that, yes, Nest Secure had a built-in microphone all along, and no, it’s not a big deal.

“The on-device microphone was never intended to be a secret and should have been listed in the tech specs. That was an error on our part. The microphone has never been on and is only activated when users specifically enable the option,”Google said.

The tech giant has since amended the device’s tech specs to include the mic. However, privacy advocates and those afraid of inviting Big Brother into their bedrooms weren’t buying Google’s explanation.

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Even if neglecting to tell users about the microphone before enabling it with an online update were somehow totally cool, who would trust Google with that kind of access to their homes?

After all, this is the same Google whose Street View cars “accidentally” stored data from WiFi networks they drove past between 2007 and 2010. It’s also the same Google whose sister company installed thousands of free WiFi kiosks throughout New York City that potentially tracked users’ movements; and the same Google that uses facial recognitiontech on users without consent.

Perhaps most terrifying is an internal video leaked from Google last year, describing a future in which Google hoards user data and uses it to push those users towards behavior that “reflects Google’s values.”

Google claimed the video –which the public was never intended to see– was designed to “provoke discussion and debate,” and was “not related to any current or future products.”  

But they were totally going to tell you about the microphone some day, swear.

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Facebook blocks pages with MILLIONS of subscribers after CNN reports ties with RT

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Facebook has suspended several accounts operated by Maffick Media without prior warning, right after CNN ran a report about the company’s perceived ties to the Kremlin.

In what seems to be a new step in the social media giant’s fight against perceived ‘Russian propaganda’, Facebook took down, without prior notice, several pages offering video content. The social media network said it would ask the administrators of SoapboxBack Then and Waste-Ed to disclose their “Russian affiliations.” Facebook also suspended another Maffick page, In the Now, which was originally a show aired by RT.

“People connecting with Pages shouldn’t be misled about who’s behind them. Just as we’ve stepped up our enforcement of coordinated inauthentic behavior and financially motivated spam over the past year, we’ll continue improving so people can get more information about the Pages they follow,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

However, no official requests were filed with Maffick Media, the German-based company operating all three pages. They were not notified before the fact, which prompted an angry response (posted on Maffick’s front page at the time of writing) in which they branded Facebook policies “new McCarthyism.” All three pages remained offline on Monday.

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The accounts were suspended shortly after CNN aired a report with the catchy headline “Kremlin funds viral videos aimed at millennials,” in which it listed all three pages as part of the Kremlin’s “influence campaign” targeting unsuspecting young American adults. CNN stated that German-based Maffick Media is “mostly owned” by Ruptly video news agency – a subsidiary of RT – and is thus in the Kremlin’s back pocket.

An open secret

CNN also repeatedly accused Maffick of concealing its suspected ties to Russia to mislead its audience. While, indeed, none of the pages bore a glowing stamp that said “paid for by the Kremlin,” they were never told that they were required to do so. Besides, no special effort was made to hide the funding sources – as proved by the CNN reporters themselves, who used an online commercial registers database to acquire documents showing that Maffick is 51 percent (which CNN generalized as “mostly”) owned by Ruptly.

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The remaining near-half belongs to Maffick CEO Anissa Naouai, an American journalist of Tunisian descent. Before launching her independent project, Naouai founded the show In The Now, which was aired by RT International (and whose Facebook page was also suspended), and before that, worked as a reporter and presenter for RT. She says the company only fully employs people in Berlin and hires Americans as freelancers. Notably, In The Now had over 2.5 billion views on Facebook.

Incidentally, CNN’s own report was based on a tip from the German Marshall Fund, financed by the US, German, and other governments. Among the Fund’s other accomplishments is the questionable Hamilton 68 ‘Russian propaganda tracker’ – a website that labels Twitter accounts as ‘Russian influence’ operations and tracks their activities based on an undisclosed methodology that is impossible to verify – but is still embraced by multiple US mainstream media outlets as a reliable tool.

Unexplained ban

Facebook’s decision to shut down the pages run by Maffick has gone unexplained so far. The company did not break any of the social media network’s rules, which as of now do not demand that anyone post funding details on their Facebook pages. On top of that, numerous other media companies supported with government money – including NPR, PBS, BBC, DW, CBC, and AJ+ – never had to deal with similar treatment, Maffick notes.

Maffick was singled out for the sole reason that Russia is the supporting government, the company says.

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Maffick Media says it is editorially independent – but, as per the CNN report, “much of [its] content seemed to be perfectly aligned with much of the propaganda coming out of the Kremlin” – that is to say, the content does not align with the mainstream view of American policies.

If I oppose a US war, does that automatically mean I am going to be accused of being aligned with the Kremlin? With this Russia hysteria we are experiencing now I feel like this is a very, very dangerous McCarthyist tactic to start saying that leftist views, anti-war views are just the Kremlin government’s talking points.

This is what Rania Khalek, the American host of Soapbox – one of the video shows Maffick ran on Facebook – told CNN when asked about her alleged connections to Moscow.

Each of the suspended pages had tens of thousands of followers on Facebook, while their videos were viewed “tens of millions of times,” according to CNN – a level of popularity which possibly spurred Facebook to take such drastic and swift measures to silence them.

 

MSM IS GARBAGE – Lara Logan Breaks Ranks with Media: Almost All Corporate News Far-Left, Dumbed Down, Dishonest… …‘Unless You Seek out Breitbart,’ You Won’t See the ‘Other Side’

By Robert Kraychik

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Lara Logan, foreign correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, said Breitbart News offers “the other side” of news media relative to what she described as a mostly left-wing and partisan Democrat news landscape in the U.S. and abroad.

She offered her remarks in an interview published last Friday with the Mike Drop podcast, hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland.

Ritland characterized U.S. news media as “absurdly left-leaning” and supportive of Democrats, further describing the status quo of American news media’s left-wing and partisan Democrat biases as a “huge fucking problem” and “disaster for this country.

Logan concurred, “I agree with that. That’s true.” She described U.S. and international news media as “mostly liberal,” adding, “most” journalists are left.

“The media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.,” assessed Logan.

Logan grouped Breitbart News and Fox News as dissident outlets relative to the “mostly liberal” news media landscape. She said:

Visually, anyone who’s ever been to Israel and been to the Wailing Wall has seen that the women have this tiny little spot in front of the wall to pray, and the rest of the wall is for the men. To me, that’s a great representation of the American media, is that in this tiny little corner where the women pray you’ve got Breitbart and Fox News and a few others, and from there on, you have CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever, right? All of them. And that’s a problem for me, because even if it was reversed, if it was vastly mostly on the right, that would also be a problem for me.

My experience has been that the more opinions you have, the more ways that you look at everything in life — everything in life is complicated, everything is gray, right? Nothing is black and white.

News media homogeneity cripples many people’s desire for getting to the truth about political goings on, determined Logan:

 

How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s a distortion of the way things go in real life.

Logan warned:

One ideological perspective on everything never leads to an open free diverse tolerant society. The more opinions and views … of everything that you have, the better off we all are. So creating one ideological position on everything throughout your universities, throughout academia, in school and college, in media, and everywhere else, that’s what concerns me. I don’t have to agree with everybody.

Logan added, “Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that.”

Logan cast Breitbart News as a useful barometer of “the other side” of news media:

This is the problem that I have. There’s one Fox, and there’s many, many, many more organizations on the left. … The problem is the weight of all these organizations on one side of the political spectrum. When you turn on your computer, or you walk past the TV, or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store If they’re all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true. You don’t question it, because everyone is saying it. Unless you seek out Breitbart on your computer, you’re probably not even going to know what the other side is saying.

Most news media outlets ignore the origins  of ostensibly grassroots political activism, stated Logan. She pondered the geneses of such campaigns, speculating on technology firms’ roles in amplifying such campaigns:

We don’t even question if what we see on social media is real or not. We don’t even question if a grassroots movement is really grassroots. You know, there’s a way to start a grassroots movement. You write an algorithm, and you create all this outrage, and you’re basically throwing out all the sparks that light the fire, so then it becomes a grassroots movement because it takes nothing to set that in motion. But did it really begin as one? And if it didn’t begin that way, but was manipulated and paid for by someone and serves someone’s political purpose, is it really what we believe it is?

People were manipulated into doing that. … Who’s behind it? Who’s doing it, and why are they doing it? And what else are they doing? Those things are profoundly significant, and we’re not even trying to find out who it is. That really bothers me.

 

Logan dismissed news media claims allegedly rooted in singular anonymous government sources as unreliable. “That’s not journalism, it’s horseshit,” she said.

“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” said Logan, referring to journalists and reporters.

Logan recalled for Media Matters for America (MMFA) targeted her following a 60 Minutes report she filed related to the September 11, 2012 Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I made one comment about Benghazi,” remarked Logan, ” [then] I was targeted by Media Matters for America, which was an organization established by David Brock, who has dedicated himself to the Clintons. It was their known propaganda organization.”

In February of 2011, Logan was sexually assaulted — and nearly murdered — by numerous men in Cairo, Egypt, while reporting on the ousting of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She shared some details of the attack’s nature, including

“Piece by piece, they tore all my clothing off, and just tore my body almost to pieces, and tore my insides apart,” recounted Logan. “I saw people taking pictures. … I remember fighting, being raped, and being able to sometimes push people away, and then I remember just realizing that there were too many of them — and it was over and over and over again — and that there was always someone else when you could fight one person.”

Towards the end of the interview, Logan quipped, “This interview is professional suicide for me.”

Interview with a French Yellow Vest protester: “We will fight until the elites fall”

Exclusive interview with the French Yellow Vest ‘Pierre’ in Paris by Swedish journalist and writer Katerina Janouch.

(Pierre is not his real name – and he wants to remain anonymous because he is worried about otherwise risking his job). He wants change in France, and he has participated in most of the protests that the Yellow Vests have arranged in Paris.

Katerina asks how his dedication began. “I was tired of sitting at home doing nothing”, he says. “So, therefore, I went out into the streets when the Yellow Vest protests started a few months ago. It felt good to be involved and make a difference.”

Last weekend was messy, Pierre confirms, a group of maybe 100 Antifa supporters were looking to pick a fight. “They are useful idiots of the elite and the police ignore them, and at the same time they attack us peaceful protesters.”

“But there is also a difference in whom you come across. The regular cops are respectful, while the BAC (Brigade Anti Criminalité) are aggressive and don’t know how to handle the protesters.”

“They don’t wear official uniforms, but jeans and black helmets and they are the ones who use violence against ordinary unarmed people. Every time I see them, I cover my face because they shoot flash-balls and they also use other kinds of weapons that are lethal.”

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“And there is no justice. One guy threw pâté at the police, he got four months in prison. For throwing pâté! While another who drove into the protesters with the intention of harming people only got a one month suspended sentence.”

“People with yellow vests are judged harder. They try to scare us as much as they can, they use violence and legal penalties against us citizens who protest against the abuse of power.”

Pierre develops his opinion on Macron and the goal of the French Yellow Vests: “Of course we want Macron to resign – but it is not enough to replace him, it is not the solution. For years we have elected different politicians but the result has been the same. They are traitors, they don’t do things that benefit the French people.”

“Macron’s agenda is complete. He was elected by the elite and he destroys France’s sovereignty. For example, it has been said that there is no French culture…”

Katerina breaks in: “A number of Swedish politicians have said that as well. That there is no Swedish culture.”

“It is because they want to wipe out the nation states”, says Pierre. “Weaken the unity of the people and thereby make it easy to control them.”

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“Macron and his followers are globalists, they don’t care about the French people. When he was elected, it was as a result of something that could be likened to exhaustion.”

“People were sick of the right and of the left. They were hoping for something new, but they were also intimidated by the media, which painted a picture that there would be chaos if Marine Le Pen’s Front National came to power. And Macron was portrayed as a hero. People wanted change and saw Macron as someone who could give them that.”

Former President François Hollande has been described as an extremely unpopular politician. However, Hollande’s unpopularity fades when one sees and hears how the French people react to Macron today.

“Macron is really despised”, says Pierre. “Wherever he goes, people boo, he can’t go anywhere without being criticised and scolded. I can’t see that he’ll stay in power for three years. He has offended the French too much, over and over again, accusing his own people of being lazy, alcoholics and so on…”

So what do you want to achieve? Macron’s resignation, and what else?

“We want direct democracy”, says Pierre. “The constitution must be amended. If there are laws we disagree with, we should be able to repeal them.”

“If the politicians don’t work for us, we should be able to get rid of them. The battle will be hard, it’s we the people against the elites, and they hold on to what they have, they don’t want to let go of their power. But we will fight until they fall.”

Do you want France to leave the EU?

“Yes, I want Frexit, many Yellow Vests want it, although not everyone. But I’m tired of French laws being dictated by Brussels.”

“Those of us who want Frexit don’t want Brussels to control and make decisions about France without us having anything to say about it. And I don’t trust the politicians in Brussels. They don’t act in the interest of the people.”

“In the past I believed in the EU. But now that I see what they have done with Europe, I don’t want it anymore. The EU is not working for the good of the Europeans. Juncker sits there and speaks with contempt of the people, disempowering them.”

“They’re threatening that there will be chaos if the countries leave the EU. They scare people. But what is the chaos? I believe in a pure trade union, not a superiority that interferes in how the countries are governed and questions freedom of expression and so on.”

“We need a Bruxit – to get rid of the bureaucrats who work for lobby organisations, and replace them with people who work for Europe’s best. But it’s not easy, these systems are so ingrained.”

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Nevertheless, Pierre believes a change for the better will come. “Macron is the last symbol of globalism, we see how these elites fall. Like Merkel. Instead, Salvini, Trump, Kurz in Austria are elected… more and more countries are starting to wake up.”

“We will not give up! We are full of fighting spirit and strong in the knowledge that the people always prevails in the end. They don’t want more abuse of power and a detached elite who controls them. We want direct democracy, an opportunity to remove politicians who harm the country, and to tear up laws that don’t benefit our people.”

“We won’t give up. If nothing else, we will fight for those who have been injured, for people who lost their eyes and others who have been beaten up and assaulted. Their injuries will not be in vain.”

What do you want to say to the Yellow Vests in other countries?

“You must organise yourselves, and stand united. We are fighting large systems, but we are also growing into a powerful worldwide movement. Don’t stop fighting! The more protesters there are, the stronger we become. Don’t give up! Bon Courage!”

Ex-London Gangbanger: “I Don’t Know How Many People I’ve Stabbed”

Says knifing as normal as breakfast in UK capital

Friday, February 15, 2019

A former London gangbanger offered his own confirmation that England’s capital city is rife with violent crime during an interview with the BBC.

Robert Bragg, 26, told Radio 1 Newsbeat that stabbing people was an integral part of his way of life in London prior to serving a six-year prison sentence.

“I started carrying a knife when I was 12 because everyone was doing it at the time,” Bragg said. “To fit in more you had to do certain things so I started to stab people. I didn’t do it because I wanted to be bad.”

“To be honest with you, I’ve stabbed quite a lot of people.”

“If I was to sit here and count I wouldn’t be able to. People remind me, to this day, about people I’ve stabbed that I don’t remember,” Bragg continued. “It’s just one of them things: you wake up, you have your breakfast, you stab someone. It’s mad because we’re not actually thinking about damaging a life.”

Fatal stabbings in England are now at their highest levels since the government began keeping records in 1946.

Some 285 homicides were carried out via knife or sharp object in a single year ending March, 2018 — far outpacing any other type of killing, according to government statistics.

Victims and suspects in stabbing deaths are predominantly young men.

Bragg asserts he has found redemption through church and a search for God.

“I said to myself before I kill myself I’m going to try God and see if God has a plan for my life,” he said. “I went to church one day and I lifted my hands and said: ‘God if you’re real, help me.’”

“I was desperate enough to cry for help.”

‘Absher’ app tracks & controls Saudi women

Apple and Google have drawn criticism from human rights groups around the world for hosting an app that allows Saudi Arabian men to track women and keep them from leaving the country. It also allows them to track the use of women’s passports and restrict their travel. Critics say the app facilitates human rights abuse and enforce gender apartheid. RT America’s Ashlee Banks reports.

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Migrant Arrested in Latest Child Rape Case in Finland

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A foreign man has been arrested in Oulu, Finland, as police investigate the latest child sexual assault case to rock the city, this one involving two girls and possibly multiple perpetrators, according to local media.

Criminal Commissioner Eveliina Karjalainen told local outlet Kaleva that police suspect the female victims, one 18-years-old and the other under 16, were raped by more than one offender in a private residence.

“The investigation is still in the beginning,” she said. “This fact, like many other things, is under investigation.”

The suspect in custody is reportedly a “foreigner with a residence permit in Finland,” who has lived in the country for several years.

“The case is being investigated, among other things, as gross rape,” Kaleva reports. “Other offenses are assault and coercion. For the younger girl, the police are also investigating the act as a gross sexual abuse of a child because of the victim’s age.”

New Gallup polling indicates that a majority of Finns believe the cultural values and religion of migrants are to blame for an explosive sexual assault crisis gripping the Nordic nation, with Oulu at its epicenter.

“People with a foreign background are responsible for a quarter of all reported sex crimes, despite constituting only 6.9 percent of the Finnish population,” Sputnik reports, citing Finnish police.

Finnish officials recently proposed that migrants in Finland who are guilty of serious crimes should have their citizenship revoked.

(ANOTHER DEMOCRAT!) – REP. ILHAN OMAR GOES ON ANTI-SEMITIC TWITTER RAMPAGE; ADVOCACY GROUP DEMANDS APOLOGY

Rep. Ilhan Omar Goes on Anti-Semitic Twitter Rampage; Advocacy Group Demands Apology

She accused deep-pocketed Jews of buying American politicians and retweeted a post calling Jews ‘hook nosed’

By Tom Elliott

Democrats’ freshmen class of lawmakers are providing the party with a new source of passion — and a lot of headaches.

A series of tweets sent Sunday night from Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) are another addition for the latter category.

The tweets began after a writer for the Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, posted a story about Rep. Kevin McCarthy “threatening punishment” of Rep. Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) “over their criticisms of Israel.” (As CNN’s Jake Tapper noted, McCarthy’s comments were actually directed at “what he sees as anti-Semitic rhetoric from Reps. Omar and Tlaib.”)

Rep. Omar responded to Greenwald’s post with, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby”:

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The insinuation that Jewish interests were compelling Rep. McCarthy’s actions prompted some to ask Rep. Omar for clarification.

When a writer for the Forward asked, “Would love to know who Omar thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel,” Rep. Omar responded: “AIPAC!”

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As a 501(c))4), the American Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) does not actually make contributions to politicians.

Omar later re-tweeted a Jewish writer who described himself as not generally sympathetic to Israel, but felt Rep. Omar’s attacks on Jews were akin to calling “us hook-nosed.” 

Rep. Omar subsequently deleted her retweet, apparently not having realized the post was calling her anti-Semitic. However, some online captured her retweet before it was taken down:

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Rep. Omar’s tweets were promptly condemned among Jewish advocacy groups. AIPAC responded: “We are proud that we are engaged in the democratic process to strengthen the US-Israel relationship. Our bipartisan efforts are reflective of American values and interests. We will not be deterred in any way by ill-informed and illegitimate attacks on this important work.”

The American Jewish Committee called her tweets “stunningly anti-Semitic.” 

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Her comments also drew scorn from her fellow Democrats. Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) wrote, “When someone uses hateful and offensive tropes and words against people of any faith, I will not be silent. Congresswoman Omar’s statements are deeply hurtful to Jews, including myself.” 

“Implying that Americans support Israel because of money alone is offensive enough,” Rose’s statement continued. “But to go a step further, and retweet someone declaring their parent at her sentiment is simply unacceptable. At a time when anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise, our leaders should not be invoking hurtful stereotypes and caricatures of Jewish people to dismiss those who support Israel.” 

“In the Democratic Party — and in the United States of America — we celebrate the diversity of our people, and the God we pray to, as a strength,” he said. “The Congresswoman’s statements do not live up to that cherished ideal.”

In response to the escalating anger over her tweets, Rep. Omar said she’s the victim of “smears.” After Chelsea Clinton said “we have to call out anti-Semitic language and tropes on all sides, particularly in our elected officials and particularly now,” Rep. Omar responded:

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The freshman lawmaker then began retweeting a series of people who said her comments about Jews were not anti-Semitic.

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This is not Rep. Omar’s first time being accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes. Before entering Congress, she wrote that Israel “hypnotized the world,” comments she later said she didn’t understand why Jews found offensive. More recently Rep. Omar used Holocaust Remembrance Day to downplay the Holocaust.

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