Video - Belgium launches "Its me", It's the new smartphone app from Belgium's banks and telecom operators.

Belgium launches "Its me", It's the new app from Belgium's banks and telecom operators. It will allow you to identify yourself in the digital world and make payments using your smartphone.

The U.S. government won't protect your internet privacy, so here's how to do it yourself.

The U.S. government won't protect your internet privacy, so here's how to do it yourself. (Popsci).

Yesterday, by a vote of 215 to 205, the House of Representatives voted to strip privacy safeguards from people who use the internet. The measure already cleared the Senate with a narrow majority, and experts expect that President Trump will sign the bill into law. When he does so, ISPs, the companies that connect people to the internet, will be able to collect and sell information about specific users without their permission.

More specifically, the bill nullifies a set of rules put in place by the FCC. Collectively, the rules—which have been in the works in the works for months and years and are built on prior rulemaking—are newly formalized: The FCC published the final version last December, and most took effect in January, with one part coming into effect this March.

Some of those protections provided by these rules are, technologically speaking, ancient—like extending 1934 privacy requirements originally written for telecommunication companies to also cover broadband internet service. Modern additions deal more explicitly with consumer consent and privacy online. The rules mandate that ISPs do three things: Let customers know about (and opt-in or opt-out of) any sharing of their information; get affirmative consent when offering customers financial incentives in exchange for selling their data; and not offer cheaper service to people on the condition that they surrender privacy rights.

Without these measures in place, ISPs will be freed up to turn user data into a lucrative business—and to do so without the users' knowledge or consent. Nullifying these rules, after all the time it took to create and implement them, gives companies implicit permission to do exactly what the rules protect against. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a major online privacy rights organization, describes it succinctly:

Putting the interests of internet providers over internet users, Congress today voted to erase landmark broadband privacy protections. If the bill is signed into law, companies like Cox, Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T, and Verizon will have free rein to hijack your searches, sell your data, and hammer you with unwanted advertisements. Worst yet, consumers will now have to pay a privacy tax by relying on VPNs to safeguard their information. That is a poor substitute for legal protections.

This change in rules means ISPs can profit off a captive customer base twice: first, by charging them for the service, and second, by collecting data on what users do online and selling it to a third party.

“I’m concerned about their stewardship of the data,” says Shauna Dillavou, a former member of the D.C. intelligence community who now runs CommunityRED, a nonprofit that works on finding and providing secure technology tools for citizen reporters operating in journalism-unfriendly places abroad. “We still have to pay for their service, for the most part, and a lot of the tools you’ll have to use to safeguard your privacy and your security will slow your connection down, so then you have to upgrade your service and pay even more, because ISPs are sucking your data out.”

To make matters worse for users, should the bill be signed into law, ISPs will no longer be required to disclose data breaches. That means people could have their information stolen from the company that collected it without their consent, and then not even know that the data theft took place.

“We’ve put the entire responsibility of security on the users,” says Dillavou.

Restoring consumer protections will likely take either legislative or legal action, which means waiting until the next Congress takes office in 2019 at the earliest—or hoping a privacy-relevant case works through the courts before then.

Still, that doesn’t mean individual users are completely powerless to protect their own data. Here are some steps a user can take to secure their privacy: Read the full story here.

Yahoo built specialized software to spy on users for the NSA.

Yahoo built specialized software to spy on users for the NSA. (extremetech).

Ever since the Snowden leaks in 2013, there’s been an ongoing debate over the nature of state surveillance. One of the more interesting things we learned in 2013 was that certain companies had fought the NSA tooth and nail — and Yahoo had led the charge.

When the company was ordered to produce user data in 2007, it challenged the legality of that order at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC, also sometimes known as the FISA Court). When its challenge failed, it appealed the case to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review. While it also lost on appeal, the company earned accolades for its willingness to stand up for user privacy, even though all of the court proceedings and decisions were classified at the time and couldn’t be milked as a PR opportunity.

If a new report from Reuters is accurate, the Yahoo that went to bat to defend its users is a dim and distant memory today. The news agency reports that last year, Yahoo built a custom search engine to allow the government to search its entire database of email for keywords and terms provided by US intelligence agencies. The decision was apparently highly controversial within Yahoo and reportedly led to the departure of the company’s Chief Information Security Officer, Alex Stamos, who now works for Facebook.

Sources close to Yahoo have previously stated the company was reluctant to upgrade its email security or adopt end-to-end encryption out of fear that any disruption to its service would drive customers away to other email providers.

This new information suggests this may have been a strictly secondary concern. We already know that the federal government pays for access to customer databases; the Snowden leaks showed that the NSA paid AT&T $190 million in 2011.

We don’t know what kind of arrangement the government struck with Yahoo, but it’s not hard to connect the dots here.

Mayer’s company has been in trouble for years, with declining revenue and poor user engagement. The Yahoo that went out on a limb to defend its customers in 2007 – 2008 and decried the government’s collection of millions of webcam images through Yahoo’s own infrastructure is a far cry from the Yahoo of 2016, and Mayer may well have taken the deal as a way to generate additional revenue.

Prior to this, federal agencies have had the right to demand information on specific users. But no other company is known to have built a database that automatically scanned all incoming mail and provided that information to a federal agency, or allowed real-time analysis based on specific criteria (called a selector).

“I’ve never seen that, a wiretap in real time on a ‘selector,'” Albert Gidari, a lawyer who represented phone and Internet companies on surveillance issues for 20 years before moving to Stanford University this year, told Reuters. “A selector refers to a type of search term used to zero in on specific information. It would be really difficult for a provider to do that.”

Yahoo’s sole comment on the matter was terse: “Yahoo is a law abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States.”  Hmmm.........'We were just following orders' ....'Wir folgen nur den Befehlen'. Read the full story here.

UN Secretary-General Post: Soros 'buddy' Kristalina Georgieva to be nominated – reports.

European Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva receiving the award of the Open Society foundation, from George Soros.

UN Secretary-General race: Soros 'buddy' Kristalina Georgieva to be nominated – reports. (SofiaGlobe).

Bulgarian European Commission vice-president Kristalina Georgieva is to be a late entry into the race to succeed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, media reports on September 10 said.

According to a tweet by Talal Al-Haj, UN bureau chief of television station Al-Arabiya, Georgieva will be nominated by Hungary, Latvia and Croatia, with the support of Germany.

He said that the nomination of Georgieva – now in her second term on the European Commission – had been agreed on the sidelines of the most recent meeting of the G20.

Separately, Bulgarian-language media said that Bulgaria’s Cabinet would withdraw its nomination of Irina Bokova to replace it with a nomination of Georgieva. Well-informed sources indicated to The Sofia Globe that this move could be expected in coming days.

The reports came the morning after the UN Security Council’s fourth and latest “straw poll” saw Bokova, scion of a Bulgarian communist family and now in her second term as head of Unesco, came in a poor fifth in the vote among the 15 Security Council members.

In the vote, Bokova got seven “encourage” votes, five “discourage” and three “no opinion”.
Bokova initially was nominated in the dying days of the 2013/24 ruling axis, a government nominally led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, that stepped down amid widely-supported public protests demanding its resignation.

Her nomination was confirmed in 2016 by the current centre-right government headed by Boiko Borissov, after minority socialist ABC party leader Georgi Purvanov – a former BSP leader – threatened to withdraw his support for Borissov’s government unless it endorsed Bokova. Though Borissov gave in to this pressure, Purvanov later led his party out of the government anyway.

Georgieva previously indicated, early in 2016, that she would not be available to be the candidate because she would be continuing in her post in the Juncker European Commission.

However, the ground has been being prepared for some time for the nomination of Georgieva, who has an impressive range of experience at international level at the World Bank and at the European Commission and is widely respected.

Apart from the dwindling support for Bokova, it is seen as highly likely that her candidacy would be vetoed by at least one of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, the United Kingdom.


Bokova’s controversial candidacy has been backed in part by those who say that the next head of the UN should be a woman from Eastern Europe – a criterion that Georgieva meets.

CIA using Pokemon Go for mass surveillance of the 'brain dead' population.

CIA using Pokemon Go for mass surveillance of the 'brain dead' population. (USpoliticsnow).

By now, you’ve probably heard of Pokemon Go, the new “hybrid reality” mobile app game that overlays real world geographic locations with virtual monsters that are collected for points.

What you may not yet know is that the game was actually developed by a CIA-funded software front group for the purpose of using all the mobile device cameras of the brain dead public to conduct what I call “mass redundant surveillance” of any area requiring immediate video documentation by the CIA or NSA. It’s essentially a CIA spying machine pretending to be a game.

To accomplish citizen-assisted spying, the game’s puppet masters simply plop a virtual monster into any desired surveillance location, and hoards of totally brain dead apocalyptic zombie humans instantly converge on the scene, all pointing their mobile cameras at the virtual “monsters” so they can earn their virtual “points.” (See bizarre photos and videos below…)

As this is happening, the video from selected players’ cameras is being streamed to the CIA in real time, along with precise GPS coordinates of the players’ locations.


The more people the CIA wants to converge onto an area of interest, the higher the monster value they place at that location. Hmmm......Reminds me of facebook. Read the full story here.

CIA using Pokemon Go for mass surveillance of the 'brain dead' population.

CIA using Pokemon Go for mass surveillance of the 'brain dead' population. (USpoliticsnow).

By now, you’ve probably heard of Pokemon Go, the new “hybrid reality” mobile app game that overlays real world geographic locations with virtual monsters that are collected for points.

What you may not yet know is that the game was actually developed by a CIA-funded software front group for the purpose of using all the mobile device cameras of the brain dead public to conduct what I call “mass redundant surveillance” of any area requiring immediate video documentation by the CIA or NSA. It’s essentially a CIA spying machine pretending to be a game.

To accomplish citizen-assisted spying, the game’s puppet masters simply plop a virtual monster into any desired surveillance location, and hoards of totally brain dead apocalyptic zombie humans instantly converge on the scene, all pointing their mobile cameras at the virtual “monsters” so they can earn their virtual “points.” (See bizarre photos and videos below…)

As this is happening, the video from selected players’ cameras is being streamed to the CIA in real time, along with precise GPS coordinates of the players’ locations.


The more people the CIA wants to converge onto an area of interest, the higher the monster value they place at that location. Hmmm......Reminds me of facebook. Read the full story here.

The Pentagon's secret pre-crime program to know your thoughts, predict your future behavior.

The Pentagon's secret pre-crime program to know your thoughts, predict your future behavior. (InsurgeIntelligence).

In the US, an unknown number of police authorities are already piloting a software called ‘Beware’, which analyses people’s social media activity, property records, the records of friends, family or associates, among other data, to assign suspects a so-called “threat-score.”

The US Department of Defense (DoD) wants contractors to mine your social media posts to develop new ways for the US government to infer what you’re really thinking and feeling — and to predict what you’ll do next.

Pentagon documents released over the last few months identify ongoing classified research in this area that the federal government plans to expand, by investing millions more dollars.

The unclassified documents, which call on external scientists, institutions and companies to submit proposals for research projects, not only catalogue how far US military capabilities have come, but also reveal the Pentagon’s goals: building the US intelligence community’s capacity to forecast population behavior at home and abroad, especially groups involved in political activism.

They throw light on the extent to which the Pentagon’s classified pre-crime R&D has advanced, and how the US military intends to deploy it in operations around the world.

Could your social media signature reveal your innermost thoughts?

A new Funding Opportunity Announcement document issued by the DoD’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) calls for research proposals on how mining social media can provide insight on people’s real thoughts, emotions and beliefs, and thereby facilitate predictions of behavior.

The research for Fiscal Year 2016 is part of the Pentagon’s Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative (MURI), which was initiated over 25 years ago, regularly producing what the DoD describes as “significant scientific breakthroughs with far reaching consequences to the fields of science, economic growth, and revolutionary new military technologies.”

The document calls for new work “to understand latent communication among small groups.” Social meaning comes not just from “the manifest content of communication (i.e., literal information), but also from latent content — how language is structured and used, as well as how communicators address each other, e.g., through non-verbal means — gestures, head nods, body position, and the dynamics in communication patterns.”

The Pentagon wants to understand not just what we say, but what is “latent” in what we say: “Subtle interactions such as deception and reading between the lines, or tacit understanding between communicators, relative societal position or relationship between communicators, is less about what is said and more about what is latent.”

All this, it is imagined, can be derived from examining social media, using new techniques from the social and behavioral sciences.

The Pentagon wants to:

“… recognize/predict social contexts, relationships, networks, and intentions from social media, taking into account non-verbal communication such as gestures, micro-expressions, posture, and latent semantics of text and speech.”

By understanding latent communication, the Pentagon hopes to develop insight into “the links between actors, their intentions, and context for use of latent signals for group activity.” The idea is to create:

… algorithms for prediction and collection of latent signals and their use in predicting social information.”

These algorithms also need to “accurately detect key features of speech linked to these structural patterns (e.g., humor, metaphor, emotion, language innovations) and subtle non-verbal elements of communication (e.g., pitch, posture, gesture) from text, audio, and visual media.”

The direct military applications of this sort of information can be gleaned from the background of the administrator of this new research program, Dr. Purush Iyer, who is Division chief of Network Sciences at the US Army Research Laboratory (USARL).

Among the goals of Dr. Iyer’s research at the US Army are expanding “Intelligent Networks” which can “augment human decision makers with enhanced-embedded battlefield intelligence that will provide them with tools for creating necessary situational awareness, reconnaissance, and decision making to decisively defeat any future adversarial threats.”

The allure of co-opting Big Data to enhance domestic policing is already picking up steam in the US and UK.

In the US, an unknown number of police authorities are already piloting a software called ‘Beware’, which analyses people’s social media activity, property records, the records of friends, family or associates, among other data, to assign suspects a so-called “threat-score.”

That “threat-score” can then be used by police to pre-judge if a suspect is going to be dangerous, and to adapt their approach accordingly.

Given the police’s discriminatory track record with shootings of unarmed black people skyrocketing, the extent to which such ‘Minority Report’-style policing could backfire by justifying more discriminatory policing is alarming.

In the UK, Home Secretary Theresa May just last week told the Police ICT Suppliers Summit that polices forces should use predictive analytics to “identify those most at risk of crime, locations most likely to see crimes committed, patterns of suspicious activity that may merit investigation and to target their resources most effectively against the greatest threats.”

Noting that the police have yet to catch up with the “vast quantities of data” being generated by citizens, she complained: “Forces have not yet begun to explore the crime prevention opportunities that data offers.” Hmmm..........Thought crimes are the crimes of the future. Read the full story here.

Microsoft Adding Windows 10 Style Spyware in 'upgrades' to Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Microsoft Adding Windows 10 Style Spyware in 'upgrades' to Windows 7 and Windows 8. HT: Ghack.

Microsoft has been criticized by privacy advocates in regards to the data hunger of its Windows 10 operating system. The operating system slurps data like there is no tomorrow, especially when systems are set up using the express settings.

Experienced users may disable telemetry and data collection partially during setup, and then some more afterwards using the Registry or Group Policy.

What makes this problematic however is the fact that it is nearly impossible to stop all of the data collecting that is taking place.

While users may disable some, for instance by using privacy tools (of which there are plenty), others cannot be disabled or stopped that easily, for instance because of hardcoded host and IP address information that bypass the Hosts file of the operating system.


Windows 7 and 8.

Windows 7 and 8 users have been plagued by "upgrade preparation" updates but left alone otherwise up until recently when it comes to this new level of data collecting.
This changed recently with the release of several updates for both operating systems that step up the game.

• KB3068708 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry - This update introduces the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices. By applying this service, you can add benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights. (Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1)
• KB3022345 (replaced by KB3068708) Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry - This update introduces the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to in-market devices. By applying this service, you can add benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet been upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights. (Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1)
• KB3075249 Update that adds telemetry points to consent.exe in Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 - This update adds telemetry points to the User Account Control (UAC) feature to collect information on elevations that come from low integrity levels. (Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1)
• KB3080149 Update for customer experience and diagnostic telemetry - This package updates the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service to existing devices. This service provides benefits from the latest version of Windows to systems that have not yet upgraded. The update also supports applications that are subscribed to Visual Studio Application Insights. (Windows 8.1, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1), and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1)

If these updates are installed on the system, data is sent to Microsoft regularly about various activities on it.
Microsoft lists two host names in KB3068708 that data is received from and sent to:

• vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
• settings-win.data.microsoft.com

These, and maybe others, appear to be hardcoded which means that the Hosts file is bypassed automatically.

What you can do about it. Read the full story here, MUST READ more here.

'SKYNET?' - SpaceX Files with Government to Provide Internet Service from Space.

'SKYNET?' - SpaceX Files with Government to Provide Internet Surveillance Service from Space. (Wapo).

Elon Musk’s space company has asked the federal government for permission to begin testing on an ambitious project to beam Internet service from space, a significant step forward for an initiative that could create another major competitor to Comcast, AT&T and other telecom companies.

Elon Reeve Musk is a South African-born Canadian American entrepreneur, engineer, inventor and investor. He is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, CEO and product architect of Tesla Motors and chairman of SolarCity. He is the founder of SpaceX and a cofounder of PayPal, Tesla Motors, and Zip2.He has also envisioned a conceptual high-speed transportation system known as the Hyperloop

The plan calls for launching a constellation of 4,000 small and cheap satellites that will beam high-speed Internet signals to all parts of the globe, including its most remote regions. Musk has said the effort “would be like rebuilding the Internet in space.”

If successful, the attempt could transform the L.A.-based SpaceX from a pure rocket company into a massive high-speed Internet provider that would take on major companies in the developed world but also make first-time customers out of the billions of people who are currently not online.


The idea of saturing Earth with Internet signals from space has long been the dream of prominent business tycoons, including Bill Gates in the 1990s.

But many of these ventures have run into obstacles that Musk is working to avoid. Musk has his own rocket, and he has said his swarm of satellites will be more efficient and inexpensive than relying on a handful of big devices that are difficult to replace. Hmmm......Why are all these alarm bells going of in my head? Read the full story here.

Internet giant Google has recently been transferring its servers to Russia, new 'strategy' move?

Internet giant Google has recently been transferring its servers to Russia, new 'strategy' move? (RBTH).

Internet giant Google has recently been transferring its servers to Russia. Experts believe the company is planning to develop new services and attempt to seize a substantial part of the market from Russian search engine Yandex, its main competitor in the country.

Google became one of the first foreign companies working in Russia to transfer the personal data of Russia citizens onto the country's territory.

This is required by a new law that will take effect in September 2015. Recently, eBay’s chief officer in Russia, Vladimir Dolgov, announced that his company is ready to do the same.

According to the RBC financial portal, Google began making arrangements to relocate its equipment to Russia more than a year ago and already has dozens of stands in several datacenters in the country.

Financial portal RBC obtained a transcript of a meeting dedicated to the new law held at the Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media.

General Director of StoreData Anton Platonov said during the meeting that it was revealed that Google already has dozens of stands in Russia-based datacenters.

It appears that Google does not fully trust local datacenters. One participant in the meeting added that Google keeps its information on its company’s property, referred to as a "classified semi-state enterprise."

In the participant’s words, Google does "not let anyone near its stands." Only the company's employees that come from abroad have access to the data.

Another participant in the meeting confirmed that Google happens to be a client of several commercial datacenters in Russia, including TrustInfo. In the participant’s words, Google already rents a room from TrustInfo and is currently discussing the rental of another. Read the full story here.

'SMILE' - U.S. Customs Quietly Launches Facial Recognition Experiment at DC Airport.

U.S. Customs Quietly Launches Facial Recognition Experiment at DC Airport. (Vice).

The next time you come back from overseas and flash your American passport at Washington, DC’s Dulles airport, customs officers might take a picture of you and use facial recognition technology to figure out if you really are who you say you are.

On March 11, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) quietly rolled out a new facial recognition pilot program to help custom officers catch “imposters,” or people using a passport that isn’t theirs, an agency spokesperson confirmed to Motherboard on Wednesday.

The pilot is part of a larger effort to modernize US customs practices with the use of new technologies as part of the Apex Air Entry and E?xit Re-Engineering (AEER) Project.

And it’s only the first of at least ?three experiments labeled “Targeted Biometric Operations,” according to a previously undisclosed CBP presentation obtained by Motherboard.


The goal of the pilot program, called “1:1 Facial Recognition Air Entry Pilot,” is to figure out if facial recognition can be a useful tool in catching these imposters, but civil liberties activists worry this is the first step to create a database of law-abiding Americans’ mugshots, which could create unforeseen privacy risks. Hmmm.......Reminds me of the 'renewed' Toronto Pearson airport departure terminal. If interested in a meal or drink you order by your personal IPad (With Camera), pay through provided bankcard terminal and receive a receipt if you enter your E Mail address....any other info needed? Read the full story here.

Windows 10 Lets You Say Goodbye to Passwords 'and privacy' Forever.

Windows 10 Lets You Say Goodbye to Passwords 'and privacy' Forever.(Fars).

Microsoft is adding support for the Fast Identity Online (Fido) standard to Windows 10 to enable password-free sign-on for a number of applications.

PC users' reliance on weak passwords that are easily cracked (and yet somehow still easy to forget, leaving the IT department with the tedious and time-consuming chore of managing them) coupled with regular password leaks by consumer apps mean moving to fingerprint or other biometric authentication methods could make signing in easier for users and make systems more secure as well, ZDnet reported.

Dustin Ingalls, Windows security and identity program manager at Microsoft, said the company has contributed "design inputs" to the Fido's upcoming 2.0 technical specs.

"Transitioning away from passwords and to a stronger form of identity is one of the great challenges that we face in online computing," said Ingalls.

The Fido standards aim to create a "universal framework" for secure but password-free authentication. Fido supports biometrics such as face, voice, iris, and fingerprint or dongles, and members of the group include Samsung, Visa, PayPal, RSA, MasterCard, Google, Lenovo, ARM, and Bank of America as well as Microsoft.

Ingalls said the Fido implementation in the Windows 10 Technical Preview reflects Microsoft's contribution to the Fido 2.0 specification technical working group, and showcases integration with Windows 10 sign-in, Azure Active Directory, and access to software-as-a-services packages like Office 365 Exchange Online, Salesforce, Citrix, Box, and Concur.

"With Windows 10, for the very first time Windows devices and Microsoft-owned and partner SaaS services supported by Azure Active Directory authentication can be accessed end-to-end using an enterprise-grade two-factor authentication solution - all without a password," he said.

Windows 10 will also include Active Directory integration and Microsoft Account integration for consumer Microsoft services such as Outlook.com and OneDrive, Ingalls added. Hmmm......The possibilities are endless.....Time to stock up on Windows 7-8 hardware and software.

@ColorMeRed just imagine the potential this has : 'User John Doe' ID xxxx will be blocked from the internet starting now

— MFS - The Other News (@MFS001) February 18, 2015

@ColorMeRed Look who's teaming up , starts to look like a Sci-Fi movie: internet access refused , bank access refused

— MFS - The Other News (@MFS001) February 18, 2015