How gov'ts spy on protestors—how to avoid it

How governments spy on protestors—and how to avoid it | Incognito Mode | WIRED
(WIRED) Law enforcement’s ability to track and profile peaceful political protestors has become increasingly multifaceted and technology-driven.

In this edition of Incognito Mode, WIRED Senior Editor, Security, and Investigations Andrew Couts and WIRED Senior Writer Lily Hay Newman discuss the technologies used by cops that put citizens' privacy at risk — and how to avoid them.

Shop for products discussed in this episode of Incognito Mode: Silent Pocket SLNT Faraday Waterproof Backpack: amzn.to/42ePTOg. Visit the SLNT Storefront: amzn.to/4cA8ub9. When buying something through these affiliate links, WIRED earns a commission.

• 0:00 How governments spy on protestors
• 0:44 Facial recognition
• 5:31 Social media
• 9:24 IMSI catchers
• 12:17 Geofencing
• 13:40 Data brokers
• 16:46 License plate readers
• 18:33 Drones
• 20:10 Emerging tech
• 23:23 How to protect yourself

Director: Efrat Kashai. Director of Photography: Brad Wickham. Editor: Matthew Colby. Host: Andrew Couts. Guest: Lily Newman. Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi. Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas. Production Manager: Peter Brunette. Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark. Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso. Gaffer: Niklas Moller. Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen. Production Assistant: Malaia Simms. Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin. Supervising Editor: Erica DeLeo. Assistant Editor: Justin Symonds. Subscribe to WIRED on YouTube ► wrd.cm/15fP7B7. Listen to the Get WIRED podcast ► link.chtbl.com/wired-ytc-desc. Want more WIRED? Get the magazine ► https://subscribe.wired.com/subscribe... Follow WIRED: Instagram ► wired. Twitter ► wired. Facebook ► wired. Tik Tok ► wired. Get more incredible stories on science and tech with daily newsletter: wrd.cm/DailyYT. Also, check out the free WIRED channel on Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Android TV.

ABOUT: WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. Through thought-provoking stories and videos, WIRED explores the future of business, innovation, and culture.

• WIRED, April 16, 2025; Pfc. Sandoval, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Google, Facebook spying on citizens

Welcome to the Surveillance State, Winston. - I didn't sign up for this, Big Brother! - Don't you remember clicking on the consent form? - That gobbledygook of Legalese? - It's legally binding. We sell your data to government agencies, so they protect us.

.

Big Brother (MZ) is always watching.

Want to freak out? Let’s look at just how much of our information evil corporations like Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook and a corporation's Google scan and store about us without us even realizing it.

Google knows where we’ve been. Google stores our location (if we have location tracking turned on for convenience and functionality) every time we turn on your phone (even though it listens and can hear perfectly well when "off").

We can see a timeline of where we’ve been from the very first day we started using Google on our phone, which does not come as a choice on Android. [Tracking by Apple, Inc. is done with Safari and other programs.]

Google spying: tracking me throughout Ireland

Anyone can click on this link to see his or her own data: google.com/maps/timeline? Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. Spies can see the time of day that I was at each location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one. More: organicallyhuman.com

• Dylan Curran (organicalyhuman.com), Aug. 20, 2024; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

We don't need privacy. We need Meta, FB, AI

The government took my company, embedded FBI agents, and forced us to include "backdoors" so they could spy on citizens. Why? We give them all the private information we collect on our users. (We are the government sort of but not officially). It's our right as a transnational corporation to support government that need to spy. YOU signed the agreement! If it's good enough for Winston Smith, it should be good enough for you. Go to hell. I'm a billionaire, you Proles!

.

(WIRED) Russia. Cambridge Analytica. Hacks. Data breaches. Facebook has a rotten record and reputation when it comes to user privacy and control of personal data.

Mark "Facebook" Zuckerberg has a plan. Facebook is pivoting to privacy, Zuckerberg announced in a 3,200-word screed.

Zuckerberg sets out his [Orwellian] vision for the firm, saying that its future will be more focused on user privacy.

You don't understand what's at stake! My $$$

The shift comes around a year after Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal was first reported by The Observer and could mark a huge shift in how the company is organized, operates, and makes money.

Or it might not change anything at all. WIRED has unpacked what Zuckerberg is really saying in his essay and from subsequent comments given in an interview with WIRED.

"There needs to be two types of platforms in the world [one that collects user data for free, and another to sell it to spying agencies]: one is a more public platform, like the digital equivalent of a town square where you interact with lots of people [and tell them personal things] at once. That’s largely what Facebook and Instagram are. And the other platform is the private space [where we crunch, analyze, and store data, like Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth in the book], the digital equivalent to the living room."

Meta just achieved mind-reading using AI

(ColdFusion) Imagine if our brains could be scanned and the contents of our thoughts could be read. They can, but it was not useful data until A.I. was employed to make sense of the coding. A team of researchers and also Meta (formerly Facebook Corporation) have just achieved this feat by using AI. This episode of ColdFusion takes a look.

Zuckerberg has realized that people are using the main Facebook platform less. Data from the Pew Research Center found that after the Cambridge Analytica scandal 40 per cent of US adults were taking a break from the website.

People are still using other services owned by Facebook. The company is still making plenty of money.

Over the last three years Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger have been growing. The three apps have one big thing in common: messaging is a core part of how they work and that's what Zuckerberg is going to focus on with his bold ambition of [REDEFINING] privacy.

But what exactly does that mean?

AI "models" vs. human influencers: $$$

Where did Z'berg get this Orwellian idea? From

Israel redefining self-defense to mean genocide?

Priscilla is set to become world's richest Chinese woman.

"I'm trying to lay out is a privacy-focused vision for this kind of platform that starts with messaging and making that as secure as possible with end-to-end encryption, and then building all of the other kinds of private and intimate ways that you would want to interact—from calling, to groups, to stories, to payments, to different forms of commerce, to sharing location, to eventually having a more open-ended system to plug in different kinds of tools."

Essentially, Facebook's next focus is making money from messaging. People increasingly using Facebook's apps to talk to friends and family in smaller, private groups.

As a result, Zuckerberg will split the company into two parts that focus on public sharing and private sharing.

Privacy International researcher Frederike Kaltheuner has criticized Zuckerberg's approach for appearing to redefine what privacy means.

Uh-oh, sex with AI robots is coming (and deepfake Os will be included)

"Privacy is not the opposite of public sharing," Kaltheuner wrote on Twitter. Private sharing CAN STILL BE TERRIBLE FOR PRIVACY if the company enabling it is collecting huge quantities of personal data and using it [trade with government and nongovernment surveillance agencies like the FBI, CIA, NSA, NSC, DHS, IRS, SSO, and other "Alphabet" agencies] to target advertising. More

Who needs privacy, freedom, happiness anyway?

• Spy agency issues urgent warning to billions of smartphone users to avoid being spied on (unless you don't mind)
• ColdFusion [11/18/23 (and 2019 for fall in value). Go to brilliant.org/coldfusion for 20% off. Twitter | @ColdFusion_TV]; WIRED.com; Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

CIA against lawsuit approved by judge (TJDS)

Judge approves lawsuit against CIA and Pompeo over Assange illegal surveillance

(The Jimmy Dore Show) Dec. 29, 2023: #TheJimmyDoreShow Richard Roth is the lead attorney suing the CIA and former CIA head Mike Pompeo for spying on journalists and lawyers for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange while he was living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.

A judge recently ruled that the lawsuit can go forward, rejecting the CIA’s contention that illegally copying data from visitors’ electronic devices was perfectly aboveboard and not secretive spying in violation of their right to privacy.

Watch Jimmy Dore’s interview with Roth about the case and the outrageous CIA overreach in the Assange case.

Follow Richard Roth on Twitter: therothlawfirm. Become a premium member: jimmydore.com/premium-membership... Go to a live show: jimmydore.com/tour. Subscribe to newsletter: mailchi.mp/jimmydorecomedy...

CIA does NOT lie. It "dis-informs"

Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

"Lying" is such an ugly word. It's preferable to call it "disinformation." The CIA (the U.S. government's quasi-independent office of propagandists and warlords known as the Central Intelligence Agency) engages in:

• 
  prevarication,
• gaslighting,
• propaganda,
• deception,
• intrigue,
• intelligence,
• codeswitching,
• spin, and, uh,
• euphemistic languaging characteristic of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four style "Newspeak."

George Orwell warned of these things long ago.

But they do not lie! Read Orwell's book. Now don't worry about Project Mockingbird -- where the CIA, now having infiltrated all major media outlets, nudges editors (or hires the "right" ones in the first place so that nudging isn't even necessary) and steers the "official narrative" of everything reported by the news and influencers in the American media landscape.

Good luck finding an outlet not contaminated by disinformation, misinformation, collusion, infiltration, deception, limited hangouts, and good old phony-whistleblowing by agents like the man-of-the-moment David Grusch.

• Jimmy Dore: Comedy News that Tells the Truth

Orwell's 1984 playbook says it all

After all, the only good democracy is the completely controlled democracy that still thinks of itself as free, fair, and open rather than what it really is. Alcohol sales are booming in the U.S. to help if that nuisance known as Truth starts to get in the way of expedients and compromises in integrity and honesty. Even the good Dalai Lama was caught up in the CIA's net to have something on everyone in the media. The Company used the temporal and spiritual leader of Tibet as an operative in a proxy-war against China. It's still going on, while most Buddhists deny it in a kneejerk way. The Dalai Lama doesn't deny it. He's almost certainly been told not to talk about it, but the old Los Angeles Times sure has the [backfilled?] story in their archives.

The government is not allowed to spy on citizens, but private industry (for profit corporations) sure is. So the state buys files on us compiled by Google, Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Yahoo, AOL, Apple, and so on. That was a great loophole they thought up. And the bigger game is to make "privacy" a thing of the past, an anachronism, a farce that could never have been true anyway, so why worry? Drink up, or have your doctor prescribe something.

.

"Don't Panic" (Douglas Adams)

Grim CIA directors like William Colby, William J. Casey, and George Bush are only taking after the NAZIs and Gestapo just as Operation Paperclip allowed them to do. It really is Spy vs. Spy out there, ruling the world while people laugh at the distracting gaffes provided by Donny Trump, Joey Biden, Kami Harris. Ronnie DeSantis, and George's son Georgie W. Junior.

G.W. Bush slipped up recently and told the truth

This was pointed out by the British genius Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where he explains that the role of a political leader is not to wield power so much as to draw attention away from those who really wield the power (said in reference to the ever-entertaining bumbling dimwit Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the galaxy).

US military shoots down China's balloon (SNL)

"Saturday Night Live" kicked off by spoofing latest suspected threat to national security: a balloon

USA spies on its citizens with these devices.

The big white balloon, which the Biden administration says it believes the Chinese government was using for surveillance, became an internet celebrity when people began tracking its travels [high above] U.S. airspace.

China's Foreign Affairs Ministry said the balloon was for meteorological [weather] research and accidentally went adrift.

But its presence led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a trip to Beijing amid rising tensions between the two murderous and increasingly authoritarian nations.

The U.S. shot a missile and has downed a Chinese [weather] balloon off the coast of South Carolina [and it is now scrambling to prove it was for spying to get a propaganda win in the war of words between Beijing and DC]. More

NATIONAL SECURITY: The U.S. military says it has downed a Chinese "spy balloon" off the coast of South Carolina — a move that the Chinese government called an overreaction.

Meanwhile, in more important news from The Swamp:

Republican George "Sociopathic Liar" Santos is a drag queen!

What the George Santos drag queen denial reveals about the Republican party

(MSNBC) Jan. 20, 2023. “While his apparent lie about performing in drag is literally the least consequential of his many lies, it makes sense he feels he has to fight that one,” says Chris Hayes on Rep. George Santos. “Because drag has become this strange, disgusting, bigoted obsession on the right.” #georgesantos #msnbc #republicans

The American New World Order (sci-fi )

THE AMERICAN NEW WORLD ORDER

(V Movies) Oct. 2, 2022. Worldwide tyranny is already in full effect, and the food we eat and the air we breathe are not off limits. Will we be able to stop this madness before we become an electronically surveilled, cashless society where every man, woman, and child is microchipped? Pres. Bush's "New World Order" is upon us. We must preserve our liberty by being prepared.

Not us, my dad the president, G.H. Bush!

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Filmmakers, want a movie featured on V Movies and earn money, too? Drop an email to distribution@vchannelsmedia.com today. V Movies is part of the Greater Fool Network (creators.greaterfool.tv).

How to STOP smart devices from spying

Kim Komando (komand.com, 9/20/21); Pfc. Sandoval, Sheldon S. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

How to stop all your smart devices from listening to you and recording what you say

We were built to spy by alphabet agencies.

Voice recognition is undeniable proof that we live in the future, making daily life dangerous to be more convenient. The downside for always-on devices is that they spy, constantly "listening" for commands.

They’re always listening. Voice-activated technology uses microphones that claim to have to listen for “wake words” or other vocal cues. Corporations like Apple, Facebook (Meta), and Google hear all our commands and can potentially pick up conversations if a device thinks it hears a wake word.

These devices are accidentally activated far more often than you know. If we’re uncomfortable with how much our "smart" devices can hear in our home, we're not to blame.

Smartphones alone contain cameras, microphones, and plenty of other tools misused against us. If we want to take back control of our privacy and keep conversations “behind closed doors,” here’s how to stop smart devices from listening. More

Ex-CIA agents censoring us on Facebook

Jim Dore, Kurt Metzger (jimmydore.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Ex-CIA agents are censoring all of us on Mark Zuckerberg's Meta or Facebook (but actually he's just the artificial face of a much larger spying operation). Facebook Corporation is full of "spooks" (spies) surveilling users.

• The seemingly friendly animal that sharks want nothing to do with (Dolphins)

Julian Assange's sham WikiLeaks trial (video)

Jimmy Dore (jimmydoreshow.com); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly

Reality Winner also got the Manning treatment.

Now that the U.S. government bent over backwards to extradite Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in England with the help of the British government, Assange is being put through the same sort of torturous treatment Pfc. Bradley Chelsea Manning was forced to endure to whistleblowing. Assange is being accused of helping Edward Snowden reveal the NSA and CIA's massive spying program being inflicted on all Americans with a cell phone or Internet presence. What the kangaroo court will do to him can already be predicted. It was exactly this sort of injustice that kept Assange in the embassy for so long. Will Pamela Anderson, Kim Kardashian, Amnesty International, the ACLU, the [sold out] Intercept, Democracy Now!, or any other justice advocates be able to get him any semblance of a fair trial?

(9/11/19) Pam Anderson defends Assange on Megan McCain's The View

Government surveillance (comedy)

John Oliver (HBO, 4/5/15); Jimmy Dore; Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Government Surveillance: Last Week Tonight

There are very few government checks on what the USA’s sweeping surveillance programs are capable of doing. John Oliver sits down with freedom-loving patriotic hero Edward Snowden live in Russia to discuss the NSA (National Spying Association of America), the balance between privacy and security, and dic-pics.

Facial recognition: Last Week Tonight (video)

Snowden: How cell phones spy on us (video)

Edward Snowden (JRE Clips, 10/23/19); Pfc. Sandoval, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

How Your Cell Phone Spies on You

I'm spying on myself and friends for them?

Taken from the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE #1368) with heroic American whistleblower Edward Snowden who outed the NSA, NSC, Google, CIA, FBI, DHS, Apple, and other spying agencies and affiliated forces. Snowden says, when the government or police agencies innocently say "bulk collection," what they are talking about is "mass surveillance."

When you carry a phone, you are spying -- "wearing a wire" -- for the government to collect data on yourself and everyone around you. You are recording live, taking surveillance video and posting it to the cloud where they can access it without your knowledge, permission, or control.

Microwaves are cancerous and dizzying.

You are paying for your own electronic monitor. You are giving away your valuable data to corporations that gladly hand it over to the government for favors. And you are imprisoning yourself with prior restraint of speech and activity. This is not freedom, but we keep calling ourselves "free."

But all my friends are doing it, so what am I supposed to do, think for myself? And now there will be 5G and all of the illness that brings to increase the reach of spying agencies.

Edward Snowden tells all in new book

Amazon.com; Pfc. Sandoval, Pat Macpherson, Crystal Quintero (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Edward Snowden, the man who risked his life and everything to expose the U.S. government’s system of illegal mass surveillance on American civilians, reveals the story of his life for the first time.

He includes how he helped build the U.S. (NSA) secret civilian spying system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

In 2013, 29-year-old Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American spying/intelligence establishment and revealed that the U.S. government has been secretly pursuing the means to collect

• every single U.S. phone call
• text message
• and email.

No Place to Hide (Greenwald)

The result is an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every American and every person on earth.

Six years later Snowden reveals for the first time HOW he helped build this system and WHY he exposed it.

Spanning the green Washington, D.C. Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, the new book Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young American man who grew up online ― a man who became a spy, a whistleblower and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience.

Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic. More

The Pattern app: "1984" or "BNW"? (video)

Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; IQsquared, 2/12/18

Which world do we live in, the Orwellian 1984 or Huxley's happy face world? (FT)

Actor and former Hollywood heartthrob Channing Tatum freaks out over the downloadable Pattern app listening to him in therapy (because he was carrying his own microphone spying device called a cell phone) brought to us by Hot Videos, July 13, 2019. The free "astrology" app works by getting you to identify yourself with your birthdate and time without realizing your are identifying yourself in concordance with government records on you. It then listens in on you by your personal spying device (iPhone or Android), which you pay for and carry around because you are a good little citizen soldier spying on all your friends and acquaintances and being spied on by them for other government and private entities, like you do when you give away your data and talk to Alexa.

(AngelWalks, July 13, 2019) Is the Pattern app spying on us? Idiot tries the app in front of viewers after a moronic cold reading which he identifies with, as most of us would. After declaring, "That's facts, man!" AngelWalks concludes, "after using it [The Pattern app], it seemed like a generic astrology app."

Brave New World versus Nineteen Eighty-Four

Good little children marvel and the unquestioned power of Big Brother (alamy.com)

Debate begins at Minute 7:15

(IQsquared) Dystopian books and films are in the zeitgeist. Reflecting the often dark mood of our times, Intelligence Squared stages a contest between two of the greatest dystopian novels of our time, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Each book captured the nightmares of the 1930s and 40s. But which vision looks more like the 21st century? Are we living in Orwell’s sinister surveillance state? Or in Aldous Huxley’s vapid consumerist culture? To battle it out two celebrated writers, Adam Gopnik and Will Self, take the stage.

After Pres. Trump was elected, it seemed as if 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' had clinched it. The book shot to the top of the bestseller charts. It felt ominously familiar. In Orwell’s dystopia, the corporate state controls the news, insisting that ‘whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.’ That sounds very much like Trump’s "alternative facts," and the war Trump is waging on the "fake news" media.

Orwell imagined two-way SCREENS spying on every citizen. Today we have iPhones and Amazon’s "always listening" Alexa device, while Google, Facebook, and other security agency-controlled companies hoover up our personal data and sell it to the government and each other for their own ends.

Orwell's book also describes an "Inner Party" -- two percent of the population -- enjoying all of the privileges and control of the society.

That is like the "one percent" railed against by the infiltrated, co-opted, and disemboweled Occupy Movement.

The 1% are reviled for their wealth and influence by anti-fascists and anti-capitalists today. No wonder everyone rushed out to read the book anew.

But Orwell’s critics say Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dated dystopia, a vision that died along with the hope and threat of communism.

The novel that better resonates with our present, they say, is Brave New World. Here Aldous Huxley imagined a plastic techno-society where sex is casual, entertainment light, and consumerism rampant.

There are pills to make people happy, virtual reality shows to distract the masses from actual reality, and hook-ups to take the place of love and commitment.

That all hits a bit too close to home. Huxley's book speaks of a caste system created by genetic engineering, from alpha and beta types right down to a slave underclass.

We may not have publicly announced having gone down that road, but gene-editing (CRISPR) may already be enabling Silicon Valley’s super-rich to extend their lifespans and enhance the looks and intelligence of their children. Will we soon witness the birth of a new genetic super-class?

Both novels warn of extraordinary futures, but which better captures our present and offers the keener warning about where we may be heading?

Why everyone's dumping YouTube (video)

Eric Dubay, June 16, 2019; Seth Auberon, Pfc. Sandoval, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Thanks to LBRY there is finally a free-speech guaranteed, de-centralized, monetized, and optimized viable alternative to YouTube -- a place where everyone can view and download ALL of Eric Dubay's content including banned interviews, documentaries, and music.

Consider downloading the LBRY app or bookmarking the following links for access and updates to all of Dubay's latest content:

• beta.lbry.tv/@EricDubay
• spee.ch/@EricDubay:c
• lbry://@EricDubay

After having learned my lesson the hard way, I have one piece of advice for creators posting content online: Own Your Data.

Don't put yourself at the mercy of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, SoundCloud, Snapchat, Tumblr, Vine, Google+, MySpace, or any of these other third parties!

Unlike the more established content-sharing platforms, LBRY is free, open, and decentralized.

This has several benefits over the traditional closed- and centralized-platforms: Content creators on LBRY remain owners of their content. It’s a peer-to-peer platform with no middle-man standing between the creator and audience, and no single entity controls the entire network.

It’s a fairer platform: There is no arbitrary algorithm that decides who gets exposure and who doesn’t. There are no ads, which means subpar content will not get rewarded just because of clickbait titles and thumbnails.

Instead, content is rewarded by the community through tips and purchases.

- Michael Hebo (lbry.com)

In addition to LBRY, Dubay has also backed up his videos at DTube, BitTube, BitChute, and Brighteon:

• d.tube/#!/c/ericdubay 
• bit.tube/Eric%20Dubay 
• bitchute.com/channel/TCgw... 
• brighteon.com/channel/eri...

Watch the original video on NorVegan's channel: youtube.com/user/hannahlo...

Also visit Dubay's website, blog, and forum:

• EricDubay.com
• AtlanteanConspiracy.com
• IFERS.123.st