National Review’s David French explains the unsettling development.

From, well, The Criminality of the State:

“The weaker the State is, the less power it has to commit crime. Where in Europe today does the State have the best criminal record? Where it is weakest: in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra. Yet when the Dutch State, for instance, was strong, its criminality was appalling; in Java it massacred 9,000 persons in one morning which is considerably ahead of Hitler’s record or Stalin’s. It would not do the like today, for it could not; the Dutch people do not give it that much power, and would not stand for such conduct. When the Swedish State was a great empire, its record, say from 1660 to 1670, was fearful. What does all this mean but that if you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness — which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe — its criminality may be safely got on with.

So it strikes me that instead of sweating blood over the iniquity of foreign States, my fellow-citizens would do a great deal better by themselves to make sure that the American State is not strong enough to carry out the like iniquities here. The stronger the American State is allowed to grow, the higher its record of criminality will grow, according to its opportunities and temptations. If, then, instead of devoting energy, time, and money to warding off wholly imaginary and fanciful dangers from criminals thousands of miles away, our people turn their patriotic fervor loose on the only source from which danger can proceed, they will be doing their full duty by their country…

…Many now believe that with the rise of the “totalitarian” State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.

…Stripping the American State of the enormous power it has acquired is a full-time job for our citizens and a stirring one; and if they attend to it properly they will have no energy to spare for fighting communism, or for hating Hitler, or for worrying about South America or Spain, or for anything whatever, except what goes on right here in the United States.”

The Dutch massacre Nock refers to is the 1740 Batavia Massacre in present-day Jakarta.

In an era of the rapid growth of surveillance ability by our own government, Nock exposes the true nature of the institution we are allowing to amass such power.  That governments butcher and enslave entire populations is the greatest lesson of history.  And governments always strive to obtain more convenient methods of doing so.  The phenomenon is so bizarrely consistent that you almost wonder whether the human cogs that make up the institution even know what they’re doing, almost like its part of our programming.  Once established, the State begins hoarding power the way a dragon hoards gold. And to ensure a sufficiently subjugated population, one homogeneous enough and malleable enough to hand over power willingly, this institution immediately takes over the education of children.  Every government in history has made the education of the young one of its first priorities. This ‘education’ consists mainly of instructing children to worship the State, through prayers and pledges, and the insistence that the State is a civilizing force, and the expansion of its power is necessary, and inevitable.  In the film Serenity, River Tam’s instructor presented the Alliance to her class as a necessary, civilizing force, and anyone opposed as backwater Neanderthals standing in the way of peace.  But the Alliance was borne out of a succession of bloodbaths, pogroms that cleansed the subdued populations of dissent and rebellion.  So it has been with every State in history.

McClatchy DC: CIA whistleblower loses in court, sparking warning of ‘chill’ for those seeing abuse

The Guardian: ‘Living laboratories’: the Dutch cities amassing data on oblivious residents

The Verge: Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology

Motherboard: Crypto Harlem is teaching digital security to the over-surveilled black community

The Week: The disturbing acceptance of Google’s new ‘smart’ camera

Forbes: Should Silicon Valley take a stand against governments to protect our digital rights?

Bloomberg: More than 30 Trump aides lose top-secret security clearance, sources say

Fox: Controversial aerial surveillance could take off in Baltimore

Non-gated version of yesterday’s article: The sublime and scary future of cameras with AI brains

Financial Times: US spy chiefs look to the UK for guidance in cyber security battle

American Prospect: The dark power of Big Tech

Daily Beast: ‘The Looming Tower’ takes aim at US intelligence agencies for failing to prevent 9/11

If they aren’t obligated to serve and protect the public? Asks Rutherford Institute founder John Whitehead:

“In recent years, Americans have been killed by police merely for standing in a “shooting stance,” holding a cell phone, behaving oddly and holding a baseball bat, opening the front door, running in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch, crawling around naked, hunching over in a defensive posture, wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey, driving while deaf, being homeless, brandishing a shoehorn, holding a garden hose, and peeing outdoors.

So when police in Florida had to deal with a 19-year-old embarking on a shooting rampage inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., what did they do?

Nothing.”

Indeed.  Police from the neighboring Coral Springs PD arrived at the scene and found four Broward police hiding behind their cruisers outside while the shooting occurred inside.The Coral Springs cops, who did not hesitate to enter the school and provide aid, were reportedly upset to find the first responding cops hiding.

Despite this, US cops had no problem killing 987 citizens in 2017.

Ed: I have rarely proofread the longer posts on here before publishing, but that will change.  Thanks to the several people who pointed out the typos.  Comments can be sent to [email protected]

CNBC: Americans’ data privacy could be at stake in case between Microsoft and US government

Business Standard: About to break the law? Chinese cops are on to you with predictive policing

Techdirt: Israeli tech company says it can crack any Apple smartphone

HuffPost South Africa: As we build the ID systems of the future, where does privacy fit in?

Bend Bulletin: Cameras could be getting eerily smart

TomDispatch: The Pentagon budget as corporate welfare for weapons makers

The Intercept: A pound of flesh: The criminalization of private debt

Antimedia: Americans are horrified by mass murder…unless their government is doing it

Fox News: Why are federal salaries a State secret?

Motherboard: Hubble confirms universe is expanding faster than previously thought

Cosmos: Virus visible to the naked eye found in Brazil

Discover: Here’s how some mushrooms became ‘magic’

There’s a grim irony in the anticlimax of the year-long “Trump colluded with Russia” investigation.  The entire ordeal took on the aura of the most paranoid of conspiracy theories, with the majority of the anti-Trump crowd wanting so badly for it to be true that they would take any evidence, no matter how flimsy, if it could confirm this belief.  Well, the only “evidence” of interference into our electoral system that the investigative team could come up with was a Russian “troll farm”, or a group of people sitting at computers talking about the US election on Facebook and Twitter.  This group of people spent a total of $100,000 on political ads, a grain of sand in a desert compared with the millions spent by other special interest groups.  Needless to say, there are plenty of other countries interfering in US domestic politics to a far greater degree than Russia.  Why no uproar over the influence of the Israel lobby or Saudi Arabia’s  political pull in Washington DC?

Anyway.  Now that there is uproar now over this pathetic “troll farm”, concerned citizens should be informed of their own government’s involvement in the creation and funding of its own troll farms that are used to sow dissent abroad, as well as here at home.  And what our government does, in the realm of foreign election interference and the propagation of propaganda, dwarfs the actions of every other State in the star system.

Specifically, The Hill recently reported on a $40 million influx of cash to the “Global Engagement Center”, which is the U.S. variant of the troll farm.  Ostensibly set up to counter foreign online propaganda directed at the U.S., this Obama-era troll farm is almost certainly being used to discredit the very real online critics of the United State’s actions abroad.  Disturbingly, DOD undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Steve Goldstein had this to say about the boondoggle:

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight.”

There’s something Freudian about this statement.  The malign influence and disinformation will, of course, be emanating from the Goldstein’s pet propaganda hub, used mainly to counter that most dangerous enemy of all governments, world without end: the comments’ section.

The comments’ section is the public arena where the common people eviscerate the actions of the inveterate asses, elected and unelected, that have run our country into the ground.  So, internet trolls have been mobilized en masse and deployed to the far reaches of unfettered, online speech, to counter “disinformation”. “We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds!”

Also, leveraging “deeper partnerships” with the tech giants doesn’t inspire peace of mind to any degree.  Will they also be drafted into the troll wars?  It’s a certainty that they already have, though. Reason reported back in November, in a piece entitled, Is Silicon Valley Building the Infrastructure for a Police State?, author Zach Weissmueller details how Silicon Valley “threat intelligence” firms, such as Palantir, are building AI surveillance tools designed to make sense of all the data that US intelligence agencies capture every year.

And there is no doubt that these firms are on a quid pro quo basis with the federal intelligence agencies.  They spy, and provide the government with the tools for total surveillance, in exchange for market protection and other favors.

But back to trolls.  US funding for internet trolls is nothing new.  Just look at this piece from The Guardian back in 2011: Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media.

Basically, fake online personas are created and then used to influence online discussion and crowd out undesired opinions.  One imagines it will be an automated AI army that will flood the ‘net with pro-American propaganda soon.

No, Russia has nothing on the US in terms of online propaganda, despite what it wants us to believe.

New York Times: The sublime and scary future of cameras with AI brains

NPR: Supreme Court seems unconvinced of Microsoft’s argument to shield email data stored abroad

Fast Company: Google rejected 57% of 2.4 million “right to be forgotten” privacy requests

Gizmodo: A judge denied Facebook’s attempt to kill a privacy suit over biometric face prints

Daily Mail: Facebook posts new details about its facial recognition tech amid lawsuit that claims ‘face prints’ may violate users’ privacy

We’ve got our own troll farms too, and they’re just as dopey as Russia’s. Activist Post: State Department gets $40 million to fund new propaganda troll farm

Reuters: Google’s Clips camera is latest effort to bring AI into home gadgets

Inverse: China uses Big Data to target minority groups, says Human Rights Watch. Ed: The fundamental reason for governments’ interest in Big Data is population control.

Miami Herald: Miami’s airport adopts facial recognition technology as cure for wait times. Ed: The Surveillance State is being sold, successfully, in the form of short-term, short-sighted benefits.

WND: Release the shooting surveillance video!  Ed: It is disturbing that the abundant video footage of the recent shooters (Vegas, Florida) has never been presented to the public in any form.

Politico: Sessions: Justice Department watchdog investigating GOP Russia memo claims

TechCrunch: Warrantless surveillance law proves it’s time to take privacy into our own hands

Justin Raimondo writes better stricken with debilitating cancer than every other internet scribbler in peak health.  His latest column skewering the phony ‘Russia-gate’ fracas proves this once again.  A slice:

“One by one, the plaster gods fall, cracked and crumbled on the ground: the latest is Bernie Sanders, the Great Pinko Hope of the (very few) remaining Democrats with a modicum of sense who reject the “Russia! Russia! Russia!” paranoia of Rep. Adam Schiff and what I call the party’s California Crazies. The official Democratic leadership seems to have no real commitment to anything other than fealty to a few well-known oligarchs, who provide the party with needed cash, a burning hatred of Russia – an issue no ordinary voter outside of the Sunshine State loony bin and Washington, D.C. cares about – and exotic issues of interest only to the upper class virtue-signalers who are now their main constituency (e.g., where will trans people go to the bathroom?). Overlaying this potpourri of nothingness, the glue holding it all together, is pure unadulterated hatred: of President Trump, of Trump voters, of Middle America in general, and, of course, fear and loathing of Russia and all things Russian.

And now the one supposedly bright spot in this pit of abysmal darkness has flickered out, with Bernie Sanders, the Ron Paul of the Reds, jumping on the Russia-did-it bandwagon and cowering in the wake of Robert Mueller’s laughable “indictment,” in which the special prosecutor avers that $100,000 in Facebook ads were designed to throw the election to Trump – and to help Bernie!

Oh no, says Bernie, from his place of exile in the wilds of Vermont, where the Russians did not take over the electrical grid: It wasn’t me!

And this gem:

“I’ll tell you one thing: I would have colluded with the Klingon Empire to prevent Hillary and her band of authoritarian statists and warmongering nutcases from taking the White House. If only the Russians had intervened, they’d have been doing this country – and the world – a great service. Alas, there’s not one lick of solid evidence – forensic, documentary, witness testimony – that shows this. Which is what the Mueller investigation is all about: the Democrats are claiming there was interference, and Mueller is out to find corroboration. Except it’s been over a year and he’s come up with … nothing.”

Most of us probably take for granted the process that allows us to sample the food, music, and culture of the world, without having to travel all over the world.  I certainly take for granted the fact that I can enjoy upper-crust sushi complete with a decorative, flaming shot of Everclear in the evening, followed by a hole-in-the-wall diner the next morning.

“Cultural appropriation” is merely a smear of the wonderful process of cultural exchange that ineluctably occurs when people are given a modicum of liberty.  How would society look if cultural barriers were put up?  Would we be better or worse off if we could only participate in our own culture?

WSJ: FISA abuses are a special threat to privacy and due process.  The standard for obtaining an intelligence surveillance warrant is lower than that in a criminal investigation.

CNBC: Here are the 7 biggest things you missed about the Democratic memo on the Russia probe

CyberScoop: Case against alleged hoarder of NSA documents gets tougher for federal prosecutors

The Federalist: How to reform federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies

National Review: Broward County sheriff is everything that’s wrong with American authority

Reason: Trump wants to start executing drug dealers

High Times: NYPD facing criticism for racial disparity in marijuana arrests

Techdirt: Kansas legislature introduces two bills mandating speedy release of police body camera footage

Washington Examiner: The fight against extremism is turning into a fight against freedom

Cipher Brief: No Facebook or Twitter? You’re probably a spy

Gizmodo: US Air Force chief warns of space war “in a matter of years”

CNBC: This smartphone cuts off your camera and microphone so no spy agencies can watch you

Well+Good: Are psychedelic drugs about to become the new Prozac? Ed: We can only hope