March 2018 – Page 5 – REPUBLIC REBORN

Cities across the country are replacing older public lighting with newfangled LED light bulbs. Sold as efficient, cost-saving, and “eco-friendly”, it turns out they’re perfect for covert surveillance. From City Lab’s latest article, ‘LED Streetlight Raise New Opportunities for Surveillance’:

“But as more communities adopt government-funded, eco-friendly LED lights as an environmental measure, some worry that the eyes on these bulbs may be a bit too literal. As they illuminate the streets, they could be watching—and recording—what happens below with attached cameras, microphones, and other devices.The biggest appeal of LEDs is their efficiency and cost-saving potential: They aren’t designed specifically to surveil. But the bulbs’ complex wiring and strategic positioning make recording devices an easy addition. When LEDs started brightening the halls of Newark Liberty International Airport in 2014, and malls across the countrysoon after, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and community members were unsettled to discover that hidden inside some of them were cameras. Others, microphones.

“I think rather than call them smart bulbs in smart cities I’d call them surveillance bulbs in surveillance cities,” said Chad Marlow, advocacy and policy council for the ACLU. “That’s more accurate.””“Smart city” is the new buzzphrase among city councils across the country intent on bringing their cities “into the twentieth century”. But their equation of “progressive” with “internet-connected everything” is creating a scenario where Surveillance State hyperbole becomes impossible. The “smart city” ideal would entail total, ubiquitous, 24/7 surveillance of every activity within the entire jurisdiction, for “efficiency” purposes and to make everyone’s lives easier. But imagine a Google city, or Microsoft township. Every conceivable surveillance toy would be operational within the city, and these cities would become playgrounds for the tech giants, the Pentagon, and the myriad corporations churning out spy goodies at a break-neck pace. And you know the push behind fast-tracking these surveillance cities, behind the PR campaign that came up with the propagandistic “smart city” catchphrase are the very companies and government agencies that will stand to make a fortune off the boondoggle. Buyer beware.

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Meddling in the affairs of other nations is pretty much the modus operandi of U.S. foreign policy

Posted on March 8, 2018 by S. Smith

Hypocrisy has reached new frontiers in the official outrage over possible interference by Russia of the U.S. Presidential election, given that US foreign policy is solely concerned with attempting to control the outcomes of foreign elections and foreign conflicts.

On the subject, see Daniel Lazare’s piece, “The National Endowment for (meddling in) Democracy”:

“But meddling in other countries has been a favorite Washington pastime ever since William McKinley vowed to “Christianize” the Philippines in 1899, despite the fact that most Filipinos were already Catholic. Today, an alphabet soup of U.S. agencies engage in political interference virtually around the clock, everyone from USAID to the VOA, RFE/RL to the DHS—respectively the U.S. Agency for International Development, Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the Department of Homeland Security. The last maintains some 2,000 U.S. employees in 70 countries to ensure that no one even thinks of doing anything bad to anyone over here.

Then there is the National Endowment for Democracy, a $180-million-a-year government-funded outfit that is a byword for American intrusiveness. The NED is an example of what might be called “speckism,” the tendency to go on about the speck in your neighbor’s eye without ever considering the plank in your own (see Matthew 7 for further details). Prohibited by law from interfering in domestic politics, the endowment devotes endless energy to the democratic shortcomings of other countries, especially when they threaten American interests. In 1984, the year after it was founded, it channeled secret funds to a military-backed presidential candidate in Panama, gave $575,000 to a right-wing French student group, and delivered nearly half a million dollars to right-wing opponents of Costa Rican president Oscar Arias—because Arias had refused to go along with our anti-communist policy in Central America.”