(DCNF)—The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged on Friday that TikTok and its Chinese parent company collected sensitive data from their American users, according to court filings.

The DOJ alleged in court filings that TikTok had been collecting Americans’ user data on their views regarding sensitive topics like abortion, gun control and religion, arguing that the app poses a “potential threat to U.S. national security.” The DOJ’s latest filings follow a federal lawsuit TikTok filed in May after President Joe Biden signed legislation that gave the app’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, until January of 2025 to formally divest itself of the platform or risk a total ban in the U.S.

TikTok argued that the law, which required either a sale or a ban of the popular app, is a free speech violation for the 170 million American users, according to a statement in an X post on Saturday.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community assesses that ByteDance and TikTok pose a potential threat to U.S. national security because they could be used by the [People’s Republic of China] against the United States in two principal ways,” the most recent filing reads. “Malign foreign influence targeting U.S. persons, and collection of sensitive data of U.S. persons.”

The DOJ alleged in their most recent filing that TikTok and ByteDance allowed their employees to use software tools that allowed the app to collect user information and to censor certain content at the discretion of the Chinese-owned parent company.

“One of those tools allowed ByteDance and TikTok employees in the United States and China to collect bulk user information based on the user’s content or expressions, including views on gun control, abortion, and religion,” the filing reads. “Another tool contained policies that allowed both for the collection of bulk user information as well as the triggering of the suppression of content on the platform based on the user’s use of certain words.”

TikTok reiterated its view that the lawsuit is “unconstitutional” and that the DOJ has yet to provide “proof of its claims,” according to their statement on X.

“Nothing in this brief changes the fact that the Constitution is on our side,” TikTok said in a statement on X in response to the court filings. “The TikTok ban would silence 170 million Americans’ voices, violating the First Amendment.”

“As we’ve said before, the government has never put forth proof of its claims, including when Congress passed this unconstitutional law,” TikTok said in the statement. “Today, once again, the government is taking this unprecedented step while hiding behind secret information. We remain confident we will prevail in court.”

The oral arguments for the case are scheduled for Sept. 16, according to the recent court filings.

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“The privacy and dignity of our citizens is being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen—a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of man’s life at will.”—Justice William O. Douglas

(Rutherford)—The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion.

Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.

We are no longer safe in our homes, not from the menace of a government and its army of Peeping Toms who are waging war on the last stronghold of privacy left to us as a free people.

The weapons of this particular war on the privacy and sanctity of our homes are being wielded by the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries.

Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting virtual home invasions using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, aerial drones, and other monitoring devices.

Just recently, in fact, the Michigan Supreme Court gave the government the green light to use warrantless aerial drone surveillance to snoop on citizens at home and spy on their private property.

While the courts have given police significant leeway at times when it comes to physical intrusions into the privacy of one’s home (the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.), the menace of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment rights has barely begun to be litigated, legislated and debated.

Consequently, we now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

Indeed, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this surveillance age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

Without our realizing it, the American Police State passed the baton off to a fully-fledged Surveillance State that gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like an electronic prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

Cue the dawning of the Age of the Internet of Things (IoT), in which internet-connected “things” monitor your home, your health and your habits in order to keep your pantry stocked, your utilities regulated and your life under control and relatively worry-free.

The key word here, however, is control.

In the not-too-distant future, “just about every device you have—and even products like chairs, that you don’t normally expect to see technology in—will be connected and talking to each other.”

By the end of 2018, “there were an estimated 22 billion internet of things connected devices in use around the world… Forecasts suggest that by 2030 around 50 billion of these IoT devices will be in use around the world, creating a massive web of interconnected devices spanning everything from smartphones to kitchen appliances.”

As the technologies powering these devices have become increasingly sophisticated, they have also become increasingly widespread, encompassing everything from toothbrushes and lightbulbs to cars, smart meters and medical equipment.

It is estimated that 127 new IoT devices are connected to the web every second.

These Internet-connected techno gadgets include smart light bulbs that discourage burglars by making your house look occupied, smart thermostats that regulate the temperature of your home based on your activities, and smart doorbells that let you see who is at your front door without leaving the comfort of your couch.

Nest, Google’s suite of smart home products, has been at the forefront of the “connected” industry, with such technologically savvy conveniences as a smart lock that tells your thermostat who is home, what temperatures they like, and when your home is unoccupied; a home phone service system that interacts with your connected devices to “learn when you come and go” and alert you if your kids don’t come home; and a sleep system that will monitor when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and keep the house noises and temperature in a sleep-conducive state.

The aim of these internet-connected devices, as Nest proclaims, is to make “your house a more thoughtful and conscious home.” For example, your car can signal ahead that you’re on your way home, while Hue lights can flash on and off to get your attention if Nest Protect senses something’s wrong. Your coffeemaker, relying on data from fitness and sleep sensors, will brew a stronger pot of coffee for you if you’ve had a restless night.

Yet given the speed and trajectory at which these technologies are developing, it won’t be long before these devices become government informants, reporting independently on anything you might do that runs afoul of the Nanny State.

Moreover, it’s not just our homes and personal devices that are being reordered and reimagined in this connected age: it’s our workplaces, our health systems, our government, our bodies and our innermost thoughts that are being plugged into a matrix over which we have no real control.

It is expected that by 2030, we will all experience The Internet of Senses (IoS), enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 5G, and automation. The Internet of Senses relies on connected technology interacting with our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch by way of the brain as the user interface. As journalist Susan Fourtane explains:

Many predict that by 2030, the lines between thinking and doing will blur. Fifty-nine percent of consumers believe that we will be able to see map routes on VR glasses by simply thinking of a destination… By 2030, technology is set to respond to our thoughts, and even share them with others… Using the brain as an interface could mean the end of keyboards, mice, game controllers, and ultimately user interfaces for any digital device. The user needs to only think about the commands, and they will just happen. Smartphones could even function without touch screens.

Once technology is able to access and act on your thoughts, not even your innermost thoughts will be safe from the Thought Police.

Thus far, the public response to concerns about government surveillance has amounted to a collective shrug. Yet when the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

To our detriment, we are fast approaching a world without the Fourth Amendment, where the lines between private and public property are so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic—the hallmark of a healthy and free society—has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, none of this will change, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House, because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll still be prisoners of the electronic concentration camp.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Political campaigns use the same invasive tricks that behavioral ads do—pulling in data from a variety of sources online to create a profile—so they can target you. Your digital trail is a critical tool for campaigns, but the process starts in the real world, where longstanding techniques to collect data about you can be useful indicators of how you’ll vote. This starts with voter records.

Your IRL Voting Trail Is Still Valuable

Politicians have long had access to public data, like voter registration, party registration, address, and participation information (whether or not a voter voted, not who they voted for). Online access to such records has made them easier to get in some states, with unintended consequences, like doxing.

Campaigns can purchase this voter information from most states. These records provide a rough idea of whether that person will vote or not, and—if they’re registered to a particular party—who they might lean toward voting for. Campaigns use this to put every voter into broad categories, like “supporter,” “non-supporter,” or “undecided.” Campaigns gather such information at in-person events, too, like door-knocking and rallies, where you might sign up for emails or phone calls.

Campaigns also share information about you with other campaigns, so if you register with a candidate one year, it’s likely that information goes to another in the future. For example, the website for Adam’s Schiff’s campaign to serve as U.S. Senator from California has a privacy policy with this line under “Sharing of Information”:

With organizations, candidates, campaigns, groups, or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles, or objectives or share similar goals and with organizations that facilitate communications and information sharing among such groups

Similar language can be found on other campaign sites, including those for Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz. These candidate lists are valuable, and are often shared within the national party. In 2017, the Hillary Clinton campaign gave its email list to the Democratic National Committee, a contribution valued at $3.5 million.

If you live in a state with citizen initiative ballot measures, data collected from signature sheets might be shared or used as well. Signing a petition doesn’t necessarily mean you support the proposed ballot measure—it’s just saying you think it deserves to be put on the ballot. But in most states, these signature pages will remain a part of the public record, and the information you provide may get used for mailings or other targeted political ads.

How Those Voter Records, and Much More, Lead to Targeted Digital Ads

All that real world information is just one part of the puzzle these days. Political campaigns tap into the same intrusive adtech tracking systems used to deliver online behavioral ads. We saw a glimpse into how this worked after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the system has only grown since then.

Specific details are often a mystery, as a political advertising profile may be created by combining disparate information—from consumer scoring data brokers like Acxiom or Experian, smartphone data, and publicly available voter information—into a jumble of data points that’s often hard to trace in any meaningful way. A simplified version of the whole process might go something like this:

1. A campaign starts with its voter list, which includes names, addresses, and party affiliation. It may have purchased this from the state or its own national committee, or collected some of it for itself through a website or app.
2. The campaign then turns to a data broker to enhance this list with consumer information. The data broker combines the voter list with its own data, then creates a behavioral profile using inferences based on your shopping, hobbies, demographics, and more. The campaign looks this all over, then chooses some categories of people it thinks will be receptive to its messages in its various targeted ads.
3. Finally, the campaign turns to an ad targeting company to get the ad on your device. Some ad companies might use an IP address to target the ad to you. As The Markup revealed, other companies might target you based on your phone’s location, which is particularly useful in reaching voters not in the campaign’s files.

In 2020, Open Secrets found political groups paid 37 different data brokers at least $23 million for access to services or data. These data brokers collect information from browser cookies, web beacons, mobile phones, social media platforms, and more. They found that some companies specialize in more general data, while others, like i360, TargetSmart, and Grassroots Analytics, focus on data useful to campaigns or advocacy.

These political data brokers make a lot of promises to campaigns. TargetSmart claims to have 171 million highly accurate cell phone numbers, and i360 claims to have data on 220 million voters. They also tend to offer specialized campaign categories that go beyond the offerings of consumer-focused data brokers. Check out data broker L2’s “National Models & Predictive Analytics” page, which breaks down interests, demographics, and political ideology—including details like “Voter Fraud Belief,” and “Ukraine Continue.” The New York Times demonstrated a particularly novel approach to these sorts of profiles where a voter analytics firm created a “Covid concern score” by analyzing cell phone location, then ranked people based on travel patterns during the pandemic.

Some of these companies target based on location data. For example, El Toro claims to have once “identified over 130,000 IP-matched voter homes that met the client’s targeting criteria. El Toro served banner and video advertisements up to 3 times per day, per voter household – across all devices within the home.”

That “all devices within the home” claim may prove important in the coming elections: as streaming video services integrate more ad-based subscription tiers, that likely means more political ads this year. One company, AdImpact, projects $1.3 billion in political ad spending on “connected television” ads in 2024. This may be driven in part by the move away from tracking cookies, which makes web browsing data less appealing.

In the case of connected televisions, ads can also integrate data based on what you’ve watched, using information collected through automated content recognition (ACR). Streaming device maker and service provider Roku’s pitch to potential political advertisers is straightforward: “there’s an opportunity for campaigns to use their own data like never before, for instance to reach households in a particular district where they need to get out the vote.” Roku claims to have at least 80 million users. As a platform for televisions and “streaming sticks,” and especially if you opted into ACR (we’ll detail how to check below), Roku can collect and use a lot of your viewing data ranging from apps, to broadcast TV, or even to video games.

This is vastly different from traditional broadcast TV ads, which might be targeted broadly based on a city or state, and the show being aired. Now, a campaign can target an ad at one household, but not their neighbor, even if they’re watching the same show. Of the main streaming companies, only Amazon and Netflix don’t accept political ads.

Finally, there are Facebook and Google, two companies that have amassed a mountain of data points about all their users, and which allow campaigns to target based on some of those factors. According to at least one report, political ad spending on Google (mostly through YouTube) is projected to be $552 million, while Facebook is projected at $568 million. Unlike the data brokers discussed above, most of what you see on Facebook and Google is derived from the data collected by the company from its users. This may make it easier to understand why you’re seeing a political ad, for example, if you follow or view content from a specific politician or party, or about a specific political topic.

What You Can Do to Protect Your Privacy

Managing the flow of all this data might feel impossible, but you can take a few important steps to minimize what’s out there. The chances you’ll catch everything is low, but minimizing what is accessible is still a privacy win.

Install Privacy Badger

Considering how much data is collected just from your day-to-day web browsing, it’s a good idea to protect that first. The simplest way to do so is with our own tracking blocker extension, Privacy Badger.

Disable Your Phone Advertising ID and Audit Your Location Settings

Your phone has an ad identifier that makes it simple for advertisers to track and collate everything you do. Thankfully, you can make this much harder for those advertisers by disabling it:

• On iPhone: Head into Settings > Privacy & Security > Tracking, and make sure “Allow Apps to Request to Track” is disabled.
• On Android: Open Settings > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Ads, and select “Delete advertising ID.”

Similarly, as noted above, your location is a valuable asset for campaigns. They can collect your location through data brokers, which usually get it from otherwise unaffiliated apps. This is why it’s a good idea to limit what sorts of apps have access to your location:

• On iPhone: open Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services, and disable access for any apps that do not need it. You can also set location for only “While using,” for certain apps where it’s helpful, but unnecessary to track you all the time. Also, consider disabling “Precise Location” for any apps that don’t need your exact location (for example, your GPS navigation app needs precise location, but no weather app does).
• On Android: Open Settings > Location > App location permissions, and confirm that no apps are accessing your location that you don’t want to. As with iOS, you can set it to “Allow only while using the app,” for apps that don’t need it all the time, and disable “Use precise location,” for any apps that don’t need exact location access.

Opt Out of Tracking on Your TV or Streaming Device, and Any Video Streaming Service

Nearly every brand of TV is connected to the internet these days. Consumer Reports has a guide for disabling what you can on most popular TVs and software platforms. If you use an Apple TV, you can disable the ad identifier following the exact same directions as on your phone.

Since the passage of a number of state privacy laws, streaming services, like other sites, have offered a way for users to opt out of the sale of their info. Many have extended this right outside of states that require it. You’ll need to be logged into your streaming service account to take action on most of these, but TechHive has a list of opt out links for popular streaming services to get you started. Select the “Right to Opt Out” option, when offered.

Don’t Click on Links in (or Respond to) Political Text Messages

You’ve likely been receiving political texts for much of the past year, and that’s not going to let up until election day. It is increasingly difficult to decipher whether they’re legitimate or spam, and with links that often use a URL shortener or odd looking domains, it’s best not to click them. If there’s a campaign you want to donate to, head directly to the site of the candidate or ballot sponsor.

Create an Alternate Email and Phone Number for Campaign Stuff

If you want to keep updated on campaign or ballot initiatives, consider setting up an email specifically for that, and nothing else. Since a phone number is also often required, it’s a good idea to set up a secondary phone number for these same purposes (you can do so for free through services like Google Voice).

Keep an Eye Out for Deceptive Check Boxes

Speaking of signing up for updates, be mindful of when you don’t intend to sign up for emails. Campaigns might use pre-selected options for everything from donation amounts to signing up for a newsletter. So, when you sign up with any campaign, keep an eye on any options you might not intend to opt into.

Mind Your Social Media

Now’s a great time to take any sort of “privacy checkup” available on whatever social media platforms you use to help minimize any accidental data sharing. Even though you can’t completely opt out of behavioral advertising on Facebook, review your ad preferences and opt out whatever you can. Also be sure to disable access to off-site activity. You should also opt out of personalized ads on Google’s services. You cannot disable behavioral ads on TikTok, but the company doesn’t allow political ads.

If you’re curious to learn more about why you’re seeing an ad to begin with, on Facebook you can always click the three-dot icon on an ad, then click “Why am I seeing this ad?” to learn more. For ads on YouTube, you can click the “More” button and then “About this advertiser” to see some information about who placed the ad. Anywhere else you see a Google ad you can click the “Adchoices” button and then “Why this ad?”

You shouldn’t need to spend an afternoon jumping through opt out hoops and tweaking privacy settings on every device you own just so you’re not bombarded with highly targeted ads. That’s why EFF supports comprehensive consumer data privacy legislation, including a ban on online behavioral ads.

Democracy works because we participate, and you should be able to do so without sacrificing your privacy.

Congress apparently hopes to restructure TikTok by force of law. Wednesday the House passed a bill effectively banning the app. Meanwhile, Microsoft records every keystroke on every computer using its operating system and app software. Not only does it collect any data it wishes to collect, Microsoft reviews the user files, manipulates those files for Microsoft’s financial gain, and exposes everyone’s files to governments and to other private users.

Yet many in Congress are upset the Chinese are “poisoning young people’s minds.” Perhaps the Congress ought to apply a constitutional standard to everyone. That would mean we are safe in our homes and in our personal papers from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom of the press is allowed to reign.

Microsoft defaults everything its software touches to OneDrive. Even if the user uninstalls the OneDrive software, the default persists. To file a document on your own computer, you must override OneDrive each and every time, and any attempt to add that same document in a second file defaults back to OneDrive.

OneDrive constantly searches your computer and any external storage devices. Proof of that is demonstrated by its overzealous “Memories of this day” self-promotion. OneDrive collects your personal photographs and randomly drops a few images into a formatted layout. Not only is this an egregious violation of one’s privacy, it is dangerous. Personal photographs are kept personal for reasons known only to the owner.

Microsoft is not protecting your pictures by only sending them to you. Often their “Memories of the day” includes people and photographs that are not in your storage files. Maybe some pervert somewhere is “enjoying” a photograph of your wife as you read this. Microsoft is promoting Microsoft using your photographs and the photographs of your neighbors or those of some Iranian. Who knows?

Let’s consider the obvious. Lots of people have been married more than once. As a consequence, there may be photo files of the ex-wife with children, so do we really want Microsoft constantly sending your spouse photographs of the ex-spouse? Do we want to take a tour of our neighbor’s private pictures courtesy of Microsoft? There may be a photograph in your file taken when you were more than 50 pounds overweight. You keep it as a reminder. Do you need it flashed across the world by a software company?

Another example of the one world controlled by Microsoft is the constant parade of pop-up boxes. A recent pop-up said it tracked the user and found its involuntary inquiries were not used. So it asked if it should be deleted. We are all happy to eliminate computer clutter, but why does Microsoft record and analyze every keystroke on every computer it controls in the world?

The most often heard rebuttal of this and other invasions of privacy is “I’ve got nothing to hide,” and that works until suddenly you do have something to hide, or at a minimum, not promote. That is when you realize you have no choice. It is up to Microsoft … or the government. Microsoft, Google and others have designed a system for their benefit, not yours.

The spectacle of Congress berating TikTok and the Communist Party of China while we allow American companies to steal the same information at will, is offensive. But the legal precedent is important. First control TikTok.

Before we go all self-righteous over TikTok and propaganda aimed at children, let’s look at the propaganda we routinely allow.

After the Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, there was a dramatic shift in television advertising content. Suddenly, it seemed 90% of the actors hired to perform in advertising were black. Homosexual couples in sexual embrace were common, and obese women were preening and bouncing about enthusiastically. The only time a white male actor lands an advertising gig, it is to play the idiot to the ever-suffering, eye-rolling woman in his life. She, of course, will be laboring over a hot computer while he stands before her, spatula in hand, awaiting her dinner order.

There it is. The entire Democrat Party social agenda paraded every 10 minutes on every channel as the epitome of American life. Demur and you are evil, wicked, bad and nasty.

So Congress is going to save us from China’s TikTok – but who is going to save us from the Advertising Council? Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was all in to pass the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.

OK. But America is drowning in propaganda of its own making.

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While many assume that the U.S. Constitution protects property from “unreasonable searches and seizures,” a Supreme Court decision from a century back says private land is not included.

It’s called the “open fields” doctrine and agents use it to enter property whenever they want. However, some states, including Louisiana, have a higher standard built into their state constitutions.

And that’s the focal point of the new dispute being handled by the Institute for Justice.

“Tom Manuel owns land that he uses to grow timber commercially, as well as for recreation. In December, two separate times, game wardens with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) entered Tom’s land without permission in search of possible hunting violations. Both times they left without giving a citation,” the legal team explained.

“The warrantless, permissionless searches by state law enforcers struck Tom as a violation of his rights. The Louisiana Constitution says in stark terms that ‘property’ must be secured from ‘unreasonable searches . . . or invasions of privacy.’ There is no exception for any government official. Now, Tom is suing the LDWF with the Institute for Justice (IJ), which protects property rights nationwide and has several similar suits in other states.”

James Knight, a lawyer for IJ, explained, “The Louisiana Constitution protects all ‘property’ from warrantless searches—and that includes land. That may seem obvious, but misguided U.S. Supreme Court precedent has convinced state officials that they can invade private land at will. This case seeks to put a stop to that and to restore the constitutional protections Louisiana landowners deserve.”

In neighboring Mississippi, the state’s highest court already has held state officials cannot invade private land without a warrant. Other states taking the same position include Montana, New York, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Vermont, and Tennessee.

The “open fields” ideology is used by not just game wardens but also police, inspectors, code enforcement officers, immigration officers and others.

The lawsuit advocates for a common-sense view of property rights in Louisiana.

“I believe Louisiana’s constitution should mean what it says. While it’s important that state hunting laws be maintained, constitutional limits on government power should be upheld too. Protecting wildlife can be accomplished without trampling on our privacy and property rights. From my experience managing land in both Louisiana and Mississippi, I’ve seen that wildlife can thrive where the government must respect property lines,” the landowner said.

Cases providing similar arguments also now are pending in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

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Established in 2006, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) is an organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The information that it gathers is supposedly meant to help the work of the United States’ intelligence community.

IARPA specializes in “high-risk, high-payoff research that delivers innovative technology for future overwhelming intelligence advantage.”

In early February, the organization published a technical draft for its Video Linking and Intelligence from Non-Collaborative Sensors (Video LINCS) research program. (Related: The globalist vision: “15 Minute” prison cities and the end of private property.)

The draft provides very specific information on how the U.S. spy community aims to utilize artificial intelligence to analyze video footage obtained from various sources, including CCTV cameras and drones, maybe even extending to webcams and phones. This autonomous system will also enable the identification, tracking and tracing of individuals and motor vehicles.

According to the draft, the goal is to help with the analysis of “tragic incidents” that require large amounts of “forensic analyses.” Video LINCS will also “analyze patterns for anomalies and threats.” The language is vague, incredibly vague. In a video, IARPA Program Director Reuven Meth said Video LINCS will be used to “facilitate smart city planning.”

Tech to help government surveil people in smart and 15-minute cities

The Sociable editor Tim Hinchliffe wrote that the deployment of the Video LINCS program could be repurposed to spy on dissidents and enforce order in smart and 15-minute cities.

“Ask yourself, why would the U.S. spy agency funding arm want to develop tools for smart city planning?” he wrote.

Smart cities are incredibly similar to 15-minute cities or FMCs. In FMCs and smart cities, every imaginable facility, ranging from coffee shops to schools to gyms, can be conveniently reached within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

At first glance, there may not appear to be many downsides to living in such a place. However, expediency is not always synonymous with positive outcomes; in fact, it can sometimes be perilous. This is particularly true when individuals, whether consciously or unconsciously, sacrifice their freedom in exchange for convenient access to specific services.

While FMCs may enhance the accessibility for citizens to travel between different locations, they also create opportunities for those in positions of authority to invade privacy, exploit personal data and enable an even more intrusive surveillance state.

The Video LINCS program aims to utilize a broad range of technologies to identify and track individuals, vehicles and objects over extended distances and time periods, including AI and soft biometrics (analysis of physical and behavioral traits).

In addition to detecting perceived threats and aiding in the development of smart cities, Video LINCS could also be used to “identify who was present at a rally, protest or riot – such as the one that occurred in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 – and follow their every move as they make their way back home, even when they change their clothes,” warned Hinchliffe.

Of course, such technology “would be invaluable to governments wishing to enforce future lockdowns or low-emission zones in 15-minute smart cities as the authorities would be able to identify who broke protocol while tracking and tracing their every move for law enforcement to hunt them down. All of this would be done autonomously and automatically,” he added.

Watch this video of Brannon Howse warning about the rise of 15 minute cities.

This video is from the Worldview Report channel on Brighteon.com.

More related stories:

• Russia begins construction of prison-style 15-MINUTE CITIES.
• Are Canadians being FORCED by planned ARSON into dystopian “15-minute cities” by Trudeau the Tyrant?
• Rosemount, Minnesota trying to establish 15-minute city with the help of Zuckerberg’s Meta.
• Critics warn of ‘a dragnet of surveillance’ as U.S. pushes ahead with plans for more ‘smart’ cities.
• What life is really like in America’s hellish inner cities.

Sources include:

• TheEpochTimes.com
• Sociable.co
• Brighteon.com

A total of 18 organizations – predominantly comprising providers of encrypted email and messaging services – have voiced concerns about the potential experimental regulation by the European Commission (EC), singling out the “detrimental” effects on children’s privacy and security and the possible dire repercussions for cyber security.

Made public on January 22, 2024, this shared open letter argues that the EC’s draft provision known as “Chat Control,” mandating the comprehensive scanning of encrypted communications, may create cyber vulnerabilities that expose citizens and businesses to increased risk. Further inflating the issue, the letter also addresses a stalemate amongst member states, the EC, and the European Parliament, who haven’t yet reconciled differing views on the proportionality and feasibility of the EC’s mass-scanning strategy in addressing child safety concerns.

Among the signatories are Proton, an encrypted email service from Switzerland; Tuta Mail and NextCloud, specializing in email and cloud storage respectively; as well as Element, a provider of encrypted communications and collaboration services. Together, they implore EU leaders to consider a more balanced version of the mandate, as suggested by the European Parliament, which experts argue to be more potent and efficient than mass scanning of encrypted services.

The proposed version of the regulation by the EC pushes tech companies to inject “backdoors” or leverage “client-side scanning”, to scrutinize the content of all encrypted communications for evidence of child sexual abuse. However, these companies are forceful in their conviction that despite its purpose to combat cybercrime, the mechanism could be swiftly utilized by offenders, “compromising security for everyone.”

The application of client-side scanning – juxtaposing “hash values” of encrypted messages with a “hash value” database of unlawful content residing on personal devices – has met stiff critique from the security community.

In defiance of the EU’s strong standpoint towards data protection, which paved the way for ethical, privacy-centric tech companies to flourish in the European market, these tech firms believe the EC’s proposal could contradict other EU regulations like the Cyber Resilience Act (CSA) and the Cybersecurity Act, which encourage the application of end-to-end encryption to counter cyber risks.

The tech firms propose alternatives to mandatory scanning they believe are more effective and prioritize data protection and security. They argue an approach aligned with the European Parliament’s proposals provides a robust framework for child protection. Moreover, they discuss the danger of such scanning technology being potentially misused by oppressive regimes to squash political dissidents.

They conclude that while they are not solely resistant to solutions, they stress the importance of devising strategies closely aligned to the European Parliament’s proposals. In a statment to Reclaim The Net Matthias Pfau, founder of Tuta, adds that such legislation “to scan every chat message and every email would create a backdoor – one that could and will be abused by criminals.”

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

First unveiled back in 2020, Ballie’s latest hypothetical design is roughly the size of a bowling ball on wheels – previously it was only about the size of a tennis ball. The spying device also now contains a built-in projector that can display a virtual work call, a yoga program, or whatever else the user wants projected on a wall or ceiling – the video below shows what Ballie looks like and what it does:

4. AI Robot companion called 'Ballie' by Samsung pic.twitter.com/dPV9dn9hsl

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) January 9, 2024

(Related: Previously, Amazon’s Echo device was considered to be the ultimate spy machine to listen to and record everything users do and say.)

Does the world really need another in-home spying device?

At the recent CES 2024 event, Samsung showed off the Ballie in a demo, though attendees were not allowed any one-on-one time with the spherical robot device. In the demo, Ballie’s movements were “obviously tightly scripted and controlled,” to quote Engadget‘s Nathan Ingraham.

Ingraham says the demo “at the very least … gave us an idea of how the company envisions Ballie being used.” In other words, Ballie’s real-life use cases are still all hypothetical as the device is still under development.

An actor at CES 2024 asked Ballie to start a workout routine for him, which prompted the machine to project a workout video on the wall for immediate use, along with music to go along with it.

“Sure, you could just use your TV for that, but when one of the exercises called for laying down, Ballie shot the video to the ceiling so the actor could continue following along,” Ingraham explains.

In another demo example, Ballie displayed a visual representation of the air quality of a home to which it was connected via an air purifier. Ballie displayed not only particulate statistics but also a warning that the filter in the air purifier needed changing.

“The idea here is to show that Ballie can talk to all your smart home devices and display info from them, even if they don’t have a dedicated display,” Ingraham says.

Much like a smartphone, Ballie is also able to display a user’s calendar, place phone calls and even show video footage of, say, the inside of one’s “smart” Samsung refrigerator or the front stoop in the pathway of a “smart” doorbell.

“It’s cute, and it was fun to see Ballie confidently rolling around the floor of the demo area, but I can’t help but think that it’s solving exactly zero real world problems either,” Ingraham further notes.

According to Samsung, the first working Ballie devices will be on sale towards the end of the year, but not everyone, including Ingraham, is convinced it will actually materialize.

“I’m not fully convinced, as we’ve seen a lot of similar projects die in the wind, but I am definitely rooting for the little robot,” he writes.

Reports indicate that the latest iteration of Ballie presented at CES 2024 contains a spatial LiDAR sensor and a 1080p projector, the latter of which has two lenses and allows the robot to project movies, video calls and “greetings” on its surrounding surfaces.

A video shown during the device’s keynote depicted Ballie greeting a user who just returned home from work or an errand by projecting the word “Welcome” on the wall.

The latest news about the tech industry’s spying efforts can be found at Watched.news.

Sources for this article include:

• Engadget.com
• Twitter.com
• NaturalNews.com

If you’re wondering which gadgets have the worst user privacy practices, it turns out the answer may be parked outside. According to a report published by the Mozilla Foundation on Wednesday, cars are “the official worst category of products for privacy” that it’s ever reviewed. The global nonprofit found that 92 percent of the reviewed automakers provide drivers with little (if any) control over their personal data, with 84 percent sharing user data with outside parties.

I was stunned when I read that.

Could that possibly be true?

According to Mozilla, automakers are gathering all sorts of data about all of us…

Carmakers have a long list of personal information they say they may track, including employment and purchasing history, education, internet browsing history, location data, music and podcast listening habits, immigration status, religious and philosophical beliefs and health information.

I’m sorry, but there is no way that I want a giant corporation tracking my religious beliefs or my health information.

And I am sure that you feel the same.

But if you plan to purchase a new vehicle, you literally have no choice.

Mozilla examined 25 different vehicle brands, and every single one of them “failed to meet the nonprofit organization’s minimum privacy standards”…

All 25 of the car brands that were researched for the report — including Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, and Tesla — failed to meet the nonprofit organization’s minimum privacy standards and were found to collect more personal data from customers than necessary. The kind of information collected varies from personal information like medical data to how drivers are using the vehicle itself — such as how fast they drive, where they drive, and even the music they listen to. Both Nissan and Kia are noted to allow the collection of information regarding a user’s sex life. By contrast, Mozilla claims that 37 percent of mental health apps (which also have a poor reputation for data privacy) had better practices for collecting and using personal data.

Eighty-four percent of the reviewed car brands share personal user data with service providers, data brokers, and potentially sketchy businesses, according to the report, with 76 percent claiming the right to sell that personal data. Fifty-six percent are willing to share user information with the government and / or law enforcement if requested.

Did you know that you are agreeing to all of this when you buy a new vehicle?

Most purchasers of new vehicles just quickly sign whatever forms are put in front of them because they are eager to get the process over with.

Unfortunately, these big corporations simply cannot be trusted. They are taking advantage of us, and it needs to stop.

Of course I wouldn’t count on that happening any time soon. Instead, I fully expect various forms of highly intrusive technology to become even more integrated into our vehicles.

For example, Volkswagen just announced that it will be installing ChatGPT in new vehicles later this year…

Volkswagen is jumping on the generative AI bandwagon by announcing plans to install OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its vehicles starting in the second quarter of 2024.

The chatbot will be available across VW’s lineup, including in Tiguan, Passat, and Golf as well as the automaker’s ID family of electric vehicles.

No thank you.

I certainly don’t want super intelligent AI technology interacting with me and gathering information about me while I drive.

To me, what they have planned sounds incredibly creepy…

Volkswagen unveiled its first vehicles with a voice assistant that uses the artificial intelligence (AI) technology behind ChatGPT at the CES electronics trade show in Las Vegas on Monday.

The new feature will enable drivers to have researched content read to them while they’re driving Volkswagen models that are equipped with the “IDA” voice assistant, which the automaker says can answer general knowledge questions while also having the ability to control the car’s infotainment, navigation and air conditioning systems.

The company says that in the future, AI will provide additional information in response to questions that go beyond those functions as its capabilities continue to expand. This could include receiving vehicle-specific information as well as interacting in intuitive language, clearing up questions and helping enrich conversations.

A lot of consumers will eagerly embrace this “cool new feature”, but where is all of this ultimately leading?

In the not too distant future, artificial intelligence could literally be all around us every moment of every day.

How will we have any privacy at all once that day arrives?

I have repeatedly warned my readers of the coming “AI invasion”, but the truth is that it is already here.

Given enough time, artificial intelligence really would turn our society completely upside down, and right now only a very small portion of the population is concerned about this looming threat.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.