If you haven’t been paying attention, you may have missed the fight between the global surveillance state and global freedom. The U.S. – once the beacon of freedom in the world gave up some of this freedom for safety – specifically when it enacted the Patriot Act after 9/11.
Section 215 of the act permits the FBI to go before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for an order to search for “any tangible things” connected to a terrorism suspect. The order would be granted as long as the FBI certifies that the search is “to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities [spying].” But the FBI would not need to meet the stronger standard of probable cause.
This is what was used to spy on the Trump campaign by using “Russian collusion” as cover. As a result, many American citizens were unmasked – violating the U.S. constitution. To date – other than about 30 people being let go from the FBI and other agencies – there have been no criminal prosecutions.
Moreover, there is little doubt the U.S. election in the past mid-term was swayed by a lie made up by intelligence agencies. A lie which is still repeated today in Congress and on mainstream media news.
In other words – abusing an act which gave up civil liberties in exchange for safety has had absolutely no real consequence.
There is a pattern here of abuse with no counter-action which protects freedom.
In 2013 DNI Clapper told the American people that the NSA does not collect metadata on U.S. citizens and was subsequently caught lying about it.
There has been no consequence for doing so.
Abusing our “beacon of freedom” status – unmasking citizens illegally, using intelligence tools to spy on a presidential campaign is tolerated.
An entire cabal of media networks – the people who are supposed to protect U.S. citizens, actually defend this behavior because it coincides with their political objectives.
With powerful technology at its disposal – citizens of any country are at the mercy of government officials.
This is why encrypted apps have taken hold – to keep the government out of the personal communications of citizens. In Hong Kong, many are using Telegram to communicate their protest plans.
Sadly, the Chinese have found a bug in group communications and have used it to target protesters.
In other words, there is a tech war going on between freedom and government oppression.
The latest tool for those seeking freedom is San Fransisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app – it has seen an increase in it’s mesh-networking app of 3,685%!
This is the same type of technology that music-sharers employed after Napster was shut down. Kazaa was founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis as a p2p file-sharing network which was impervious to being shut down. Billions of files were shared using this technology. They later parlayed this tech – especially its ability to get around NAT, to develop Skype which also benefitted from p2p processing power for its communications network.
Hong Kong protesters are very concerned about government surveillance – especially the social credit score the Chinese government has instituted. They use biometrics to track everything – perhaps even jay-walking which could decrease your standing and ability to use mass transit and other government essentials.
This is why Hong Kong protesters knocked down surveillance-laden smart lamp-posts in their country.
The bottom line is there is a war happening. In some countries, the governments are acting rapidly such as China, Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela – so quickly that citizens may never gain their freedom back. In the U.S. it is happening rapidly but behind the scenes.
A look at Hong Kong shows this clash happening before eyes.
Here is the shocker.
Hong Kong protesters look to the U.S. as the beacon of freedom in the world.
Yet, considering what U.S. intelligence agencies did to a presidential campaign – followed by a fictitious Russian investigation, Hong Kong may actually be freer already.
The question is – when will U.S. citizens realize how much freedom they have lost and will it be too late when they do?
