This is a classic disinformation tactic: Suggesting that the person who identified the problem must also solve the problem, otherwise they should not be taken seriously. This is called “deflection.” Often solutions to economic and social decline require that masses of people become educated on the threats so that they can organize to make changes, and that requires talking about the problems. Talking about the danger IS the solution (to a point).

In terms of direct conspiracy and tyranny, the solution is usually war and the elimination of the cabal behind the agenda. That requires talking about the problem and inspiring people to organize for the fight.

But what happens when you finally have the numbers to do something? I would partially agree that the conservatives, libertarians, independents and moderates that make up what I call the “Liberty Movement” tend to talk a lot more about the problems, to the point that solutions become lost in the fervor of discussion.

After nearly 20 years writing for the movement I have noticed a consistent pattern – When I publish an article identifying a concerted attack on the US economy, for example, the audience numbers run high. When I write an article about methods for preventing collapse, such as independent barter markets and localized production, the traffic is cut in half. The truth is, real solutions are not sexy, they are scary.

People can become addicted to watching the system break down and I realize it’s hard to look away from a train wreck. But when it comes time to doing something about the mess and make some hard decisions a lot of people run away. This has to change.

It is with this issue in mind that I am launching a series of articles focusing ONLY on solutions. These are not silver bullet solutions; they will not save people from struggle or hardship. They will not end the globalist empire with a single calculated social shift or technological innovation. Such solutions do not exist and anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or a fraud trying to lure you into complacency. The real solutions require hard work, sacrifice, courage, tenacity and above all, risk.

If a solution to tyranny and collapse doesn’t scare you at least a little, then it’s probably not a legitimate solution.

And, if there is one solution that has been demonized more than any other in our modern era, it’s the citizen militia. It’s hard to think of a greater taboo, a more sneered at and disdained concept than the militia, and that’s on both sides of the political aisle. Many leftists hate the militia because they fear it; many Republicans hate the militia because they think it makes them look “extreme.” Sorry sunshine patriots, but if there was ever a time for extreme measures, it is now.

Maybe it’s a matter of public conditioning? Militias are the villains in every movie, every TV show, every book and comic book. Articles in every major publication warn year after year of militias as the dark underbelly of American culture; a mode of organization for “racists” and “fascists” and most of all “terrorists.” They are the bad guys, right? Who wants to be seen as a bad guy?

So, conservatives and libertarians stumble around trying to come up with ways to organize a physical defense against the encroachment of authoritarianism without actually calling these efforts a militia. It’s understandable; the M-word has a stigma that was carefully crafted by the media over the course of decades.

Say you are starting a “neighborhood watch” and people listen with an open mind. Say you are starting a militia, and people see images of fat rednecks playing Batman in the woods with their buttcracks hanging out (rednecks are some of my favorite people, by the way). They shut down immediately, and they might not even know why. It’s because they have been trained to react this way.

There’s a reason why civilian militias were one of the first constitutional protections dismantled and rearranged by our government. Sadly, starting with giving the president the ability to call on state militias as a means of suppressing domestic rebellion through the 1800s, then slowly erasing militias altogether and replacing them with the modern National Guard though the Dick Act of 1903 (The NG is now nothing more than another branch of standing military and not a true militia).

An armed and most importantly TRAINED civilian population operating outside of federal oversight is a threat that no oligarchy would ever voluntarily allow. It is the ultimate wrecking ball against government corruption. This is why the 2nd Amendment has already, to some extent, been neutered.  It has lost one of two vital parts: Gun rights are still present, but citizen organization is gone. Without both elements the country will never be truly secure and free.

The reason the modern establishment media has been so hostile to the militia concept is because they fear patriot organization more than anything else. They want people isolated from each other, focused only on their own preparedness efforts but constantly vulnerable due to their limited ability to project defense or offense. If you are alone, your circle of security is your house and your front door – you are doomed. If you are part of a militia, your circle of security is your town, or your county, or perhaps even your entire state. You now have a chance to survive and stay free.

There will be people who argue that a militia solution is impossible because in order for such groups to be constitutionally legal they must be approved by the state government they reside in and operate at the whim of the White House. This is only if we were pursuing a “constitutional” militia; I think that ship sailed a long time ago. If the establishment has no respect for the original intent of the constitution, then we can no longer play by the same rules as our forebears. We have to organize outside of the lines.

Militias need to exist whether they are approved or not. Cooperation at the state or county level should be pursued, but this is dependent on the honor of that particular local government. If they are not cooperative and are not honorable then citizens will have to organize anyway.

I do foresee some red state governors taking action to form militias. I’m not the type of person that thinks every single political leader is “controlled.” If that were true then all the red states would have continued the covid lockdowns and tried to enforced vaccine passports as the blue states did. Instead, they fought back. I’ll give credit where credit is due.

If any liberty minded governors are reading this now, I would suggest that they seriously consider stepping up efforts to bring back the militia system in their state. These groups are going to form eventually anyway, adding some legitimacy through the state would defuse a lot of conflicts in the future. And I’ll tell you this, if you truly believe in freedom and the American ideal, there WILL come a time when you will have to lean on the common citizenry to maintain the security of your state. Not just from corrupt adversaries at the federal level, but from foreign invasion (or illegal immigration) as well as rioting and looting by leftist groups within your own cities. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

If a state government is not willing to back legally recognized militias, then it may be possible to organize at the county level. I would even say that the first county government to do this will start a firestorm and hundred of other counties will follow their example. All it takes is one to step forward. The same goes for state militias.

What would be the purpose of these militias? To act as a deterrent to forces with ill intent, first and foremost. We cannot allow the federal government and establishment elites to hold a monopoly on the ability to project power. If we do, then the country will be enslaved. And though I have faith in the power of asymmetric tactics, the 50 million+ gun owners now active in the US could be far more effective if they were working together to utilize those tactics. They would certainly offer a much more imposing obstacle to the elites.

Deterrence is the best possible defense. When that fails, better to have friends than to be alone.

Secondly, there is ample defense training going on all over America and there are millions of serious shooters here. Dare I say, there are more serious shooters here than in all other countries combined. And by “serious shooters” I mean skilled and dangerous shooters that can do extensive damage to an enemy. However, there is virtually no large unit training going on right now; everything is aimed at personal defense and sometimes small unit tactics. Militias would be useful in teaching Americans how to fight as a larger force if necessary.

Of course, that would be “paramilitary training” and that would be “bad,” but who cares? The optics are becoming less and less important as the system degrades and crisis rises. Finally, I think it’s time to draw the line in terms of the course our country is going, and establishing militias is a solid way to send a message.

For those waiting on civic solutions, I’ll just say that political efforts rarely bear fruit. One surprising exception was the resistance to covid mandates – It’s a good thing we had so many conservative governors willing to end the mandates and stop the madness at the state level. So yes, voting can do some good, but it should not be relied upon to save us. There needs to be organization beyond political parties into the realm of active problem solving and security. Millions of citizens sitting around doing nothing while waiting 2-4 years to drop a ballot in a box is NOT a solution to our current predicament.

The old disinformation arguments will surely surface in response to the militia idea – They will say that a militia wouldn’t stand a chance against a tyrannical government backed by a modern military and that your “AR-15 is useless against an F-16.” The Taliban in Afghanistan has something to say about that delusion, just as guerrilla groups have had something to say about it for generations. There’s not a military on the planet that can take on 50 million+ gun owners, they would run out of ordnance long before patriots ran out of people.

But beyond that, we have to ask the question yet again: Why are they so intent on removing 2nd Amendment rights and stopping the return of militias if these things are not a threat to their power? If gun owners could be wiped out by a handful of drones and tanks, then why haven’t they done this already and rounded us all up? The reason is clear – Because if the establishment starts that fight, they know there’s a chance they could lose. If they are afraid of unorganized and isolated patriots now, imagine how afraid the technocrats would be if we reestablished militias.

Article cross-posted from Alt-Market.

The service, in collaboration with Iris ID’s technology, has amassed a staggering 2.5 million identities and is burgeoning at an astonishing rate of around 100,000 new identities monthly. In addition to this, the service has access to fifteen million identities present in other federal government databases.

While this might seem like a boon for law enforcement agencies in tracking down criminals, it raises serious questions about the extent of surveillance and the potential misuse of biometric data.

The fusion of Iris ID’s technology with the FBI’s program has been ongoing since 2014. The service allows access to an enormous repository of iris biometric data coupled with fingerprint and face biometrics.

In a world where data breaches are not uncommon, the protection and ethical use of this sensitive biometric data become paramount.

There is a potential risk of this information falling into the wrong hands or being exploited in ways that infringe upon civil liberties.

The recent integration of presentation attack detection capabilities into the FBI’s service is also worthy of examination. Though intended to thwart deceptive attempts against biometric systems, the wide-reaching surveillance capabilities have tremendous downsides. There is a thin line between safeguarding national security and creating a surveillance state, which could be detrimental to the freedoms and privacy of individuals.

What’s more, Iris ID is working on mobile capabilities, which may extend the reach of this biometric data collection.

While this may be beneficial in high-volume scenarios like prisoner transportation or border control management, it also opens the door for sweeping surveillance that may not be justifiable. The accessibility and mobility of such data collection tools should be weighed carefully against the right to privacy.

Mohammed Murad, Iris ID VP of Global Business & Development, claims that the adoption of the technology is an indicator of the increasing appeal of iris recognition. However, one must ponder whether this appeal is blurring the crucial distinction between security and invasion of privacy.

Article cross-posted from Reclaim The Net.

The United States government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago.

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members. -Wired

“This report reveals what we feared most,” according to attorney Sean Vitka of the Demand Progress nonprofit. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

The government has been using ‘craven interpretations of aging laws’ to bypass privacy rights, as prosecutors have increasingly ignored limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance.

“I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

During a March 8 hearing, Wyden pressed Haines to release the panel’s report – after Haines said it should “absolutely” be read by the public. On Friday, that’s exactly what happened after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released it amid a battle with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) over various related documents.

“This report makes it clear that the government continues to think it can buy its way out of constitutional protections using taxpayers’ own money,” said EPIC law fellow, Chris Baumohl. “Congress must tackle the government’s data broker pipeline this year, before it considers any reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,” he said (referring to the ongoing political fight over the so-called “crown jewel” of US surveillance, per Wired).

The ODNI’s own panel of advisers makes clear that the government’s static interpretations of what constitutes “publicly available information” poses a significant threat to the public. The advisers decry existing policies that automatically conflate, in the first place, being able to buy information with it being considered “public.” The information being commercially sold about Americans today is “more revealing, available on more people (in bulk), less possible to avoid, and less well understood” than that which is traditionally thought of as being “publicly available.”

Perhaps most controversially, the report states that the government believes it can “persistently” track the phones of “millions of Americans” without a warrant, so long as it pays for the information. Were the government to simply demand access to a device’s location instead, it would be considered a Fourth Amendment “search” and would require a judge’s sign-off. But because companies are willing to sell the information—not only to the US government but to other companies as well—the government considers it “publicly available” and therefore asserts that it “can purchase it.” -Wired

What’s more, the report notes that it’s relatively easy to “deanonymize and identify individuals” based on data that was originally been anonymized prior to its commercial sale. According to the report, the data can do things like “identify every person who attended a protest or rally based on their smartphone location or ad-tracking records,” posing serious civil liberty concerns over how “large quantities of nominally ‘public’ information can result in sensitive aggregations.”

The report goes on to say that in times past, access to sensitive information about a person was part of a “targeted” and “predicated” investigation. That’s no longer the case.

“Today, in a way that far fewer Americans seem to understand, and even fewer of them can avoid, [commercially available information] includes information on nearly everyone,” it reads, adding that both the “volume and sensitivity” of information available for the government to purchase has exploded in recent years thanks to “location-tracking and other features of smartphones” as well as the “advertising-based monetization model” that underpins much of the internet.

According to the ODNI, this data “in the wrong hands” could be used against Americans “facilitate blackmail, stalking, harassment, and public shaming” – all offenses that have been committed by intelligence agencies and the White House in the past.

“The government would never have been permitted to compel billions of people to carry location tracking devices on their persons at all times, to log and track most of their social interactions, or to keep flawless records of all their reading habits. Yet smartphones, connected cars, web tracking technologies, the Internet of Things, and other innovations have had this effect without government participation,” reads the report.

Read the report below:

Odni Declassified Report on… by Zerohedge Janitor

Article cross-posted from Zero Hedge.