People have long been paranoid of smart speakers, and for good reason, as they are joining the growing list of devices that are being used to spy on us.

However, we may have underestimated just how good they are at it. As ThreatPost has pointed out, smart speakers have microphones that are so sensitive, that they can even pick up and accurately determine strokes on touchscreens, even as far as being able to discern pin numbers entered on the screens of nearby phones.

If you’ve kept one near your bed, you might want to consider moving it.

What was found was that smart speakers have multiple microphones (as many as five to seven), which allows for multidirectional listening in the same sense as human hearing, though with greater effectiveness. Smart speakers were found to be so sensitive that they can determine the location of tapping on a touch screen. But right now, you’re probably dwelling on whether some NSA snoop knows what you’re doing in bed.

Putting aside how you top your chimichanga for a moment, there’s the important matter of whether smart speakers are secure to begin with. If these always-on devices could be accessed remotely by someone who isn’t you, they could use them to determine whether you’re home, your bank login information, and even your activities at home.

…You didn’t put that aside, did you?

Whether it’s drones, smartphones, or even smart speakers, there are a lot of highly-effective ways to spy on us that really get the imagination going. Just the tech that we know about is highly effective in this regard, so one can imagine how far they’ve really gotten with what we don’t know about.

Honestly, I’m not as much concerned with the NSA as I’m concerned about advertisers. While NSA surveillance is creepy in it’s own sense, the continual feedback involved with targeted advertising takes it to another level. It’s not okay if advertisers know what I have for breakfast. I don’t need to know that there are cult-driven fad diets based on it.

By now, you’re likely aware of Amazon’s decision to kick Parler off their servers. This decision would take effect early Monday morning. This doesn’t mean the platform is dead, but there might be a temporary decline in its usage, depending on how long it takes the platform to find a new host.

Amazon’s decision is part of an obvious effort to deplatform alternative social media, in this case under the pretext that Parler can be used to organize violent rallies. While the potential is there, this doesn’t make the platform any different from other social media platforms. There are multiple reasons why Parler is being targeted, among them being that:

• Parler is the most significant challenge to Twitter in years,
• Parler isn’t one of the big three in tech, which includes Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and therefore doesn’t enjoy the same established position,
• Parler has a disproportionate presence of conservatives and political outsiders, making it a natural target for the big three’s efforts to deny them a voice.

Amazon’s behavior is obviously anti-trust, on intellectual, ideological, and market levels.

Sadly, it seems we can expect more of the same, as the traditional tech companies can benefit from their buddy-buddy relationship with the political establishment to ensure that the consequences for their anti-trust behavior can be mitigated. Because the Democrats are poised to assume control of all major branches of U.S. government (except Judicial, unless they pack the courts), it seems as though matters are likely to rapidly accelerate from here.

Kicking up the rhetoric, Mozilla has just stated that site should somehow “go beyond” deplatforming “bigots” (ADVISORY: Gizmodo link, be sure your adblocking and anti-trackers are active if you intend to follow that link), which sounds suspiciously like the dehumanization employed by authoritarians just prior to getting jiggy with the atrocities.

Considering the rampant left-wing censorship, there is a surging demand for free-speech tech, software, and platforms. In any case, it seems like the safer way to go for the average freedom-lover is to explore alternative tech, and break away from the big three, where it’s reasonable to do so.

One huge point to consider is that of operating systems. Currently, we live in an era of operating-systems-as-services, where OSs like Windows, iOS, and Android are offered for “free”, but there’s data collection going on in the background that is being sold to marketers so they can employ targeted ads. Because these OSs are considered services, they can be denied to a person, even if it came pre-installed on a device they purchased.

Imagine how much it would such if some yutz in California were to falsely declare you a bigot, then proceed to ban you from using Windows on your PC, iOS on your iPhone, or Android on your Samsung phone. You’d be instantly shut out of your own phone, and you might not be able to access the data you have stored on it again.

That would suck.

If censorship extends to banning users from OSs, the people who would be best off would be the ones that use open-source OSs. Because of this, it might not be a bad idea to look into Linux for PC. For smartphones, Android seems like the better option. Perhaps not so much the out-of-the-box version, but if you have the ability to install your own version of Android (and know what you’re doing), you can be ahead of the game if you have a version that resists Google’s attempts to interfere with your use.

If you use iPhone, how well off you’d be depends largely on how serious Apple is about honoring their commitment to privacy. They might not be terribly nosy, but if they were to decide to bar you from their services, you might become another Android user, quick.

If this concerns you, when shopping for a smartphone, you might be interested in looking into phones with the capacity for installing your own version of the OS.

Some might be concerned with the open-source nature of Android, reasoning that because it’s open-source, anyone might know how to hack it. However, it’s because it’s open-source that if there’s an exploit, anyone in the world could locate it in the source, and then present a remedy. On the other hand, if an unsavory individual were to find an exploit in a closed-source OS, it has far more potential to be a zero-day disaster, and by the time the owners of the source code discover something is amiss, millions of users could be affected.

There was a famous case a few years back in which government investigators got their hands on a terrorist’s iPhone. The investigators couldn’t crack the encryption, so they appealed to Apple for a backdoor. But Apple wouldn’t comply, because the privacy of the customers mattered to them.

The investigators got a backdoor anyway, but not from Apple. They just did what many hackers do: they purchased information about a backdoor from a hacker who had discovered it, but Apple wasn’t aware of.

This means what it sounds like: The iPhone is compromised.

When it comes to free-speech platforms, there are options. Here are a few that are currently significant:

• Minds.com – This platform is comparable to Facebook in that a person can post quick updates, blog posts, pictures, and video. I have a Minds account.
• Parler – This is the one getting huge media attention. It might be down for a few days, but it’s easy to imagine it’ll surge immediately after it’s back up. I’m on Parler.
• Bitchute – A free-speech alternative to YouTube. Let’s be honest, it’s nowhere near as popular as YouTube. But what makes a platform popular is people, and if you care about low-censorship platforms, it’s easy to join and and to frequent the page. Because of it’s ubiquity, I don’t currently suggest abandoning YouTube altogether.
• Newsmax – It’s not really a social media platform. Newsmax is a news site that’s trusted for its integrity as compared to the three-letter networks of legacy media.

Reducing your use of Google services is a challenge, due to their ubiquity. And considering Mozilla’s recent tendency towards fanaticism, it’s understandable that one would want to drop FireFox like a hot rock. Thankfully, the new Brave browser appears uncompromised. Brave boasts of more speed than Chrome, and better default privacy than Firefox. On top of that, it has ad-blocking software built in, and instantaneous access to private windows through Tor. Or an ordinary private window, if you prefer.

I just switched to Brave, and so far, I’m really liking it!

As far as search engines go, one that I can recommend is Yippy. Yippy is relatively new, so it might be some time before more browsers support it as a default search engine. But on the plus side, it’s high privacy, and provides search results by cluster, which can provide you with far more relevant results.

Tech aside, there are a few more points that can be made about how to improve going forward, on a personal level. These points are general, and there is plenty of information out there that can expand on these points.

Don’t neglect your physical health. In fact, it’s a great idea to become as physically fit as can be reasonably accomplished. Because things can turn dangerous in a hurry, martial prowess may be what saves you and the people you care about.

Don’t neglect your mental health. Remember to take some time off to relax. These times are stressful, even for those who are not directly involved.

Don’t neglect your spiritual health. There is a spiritual aspect to world affairs, and not everyone perceives it.

Keep your living space neat and tidy. That does a surprising amount for your well-being.

Have enough food for a few extra meals, and don’t let yourself entirely run out, in case things go crazy with supply chains.

It’s not a bad idea to be ready to go on a moment’s notice. Keep items like changes of clothes, extra money, flashlights, batteries, and/or other items reasonable to stock in a bug-out bag or in your car.

Don’t overly-indulge in conspiracy theories, even if it seems like so many of them are coming true. It’s hard enough keeping things straight, even keeping things limited to what’s demonstrably true.

Remember that people who disagree with you aren’t necessary stupid, or your enemies. In most cases, they’re just misguided. An enormous psyops campaign is currently underway, and most people are not aware that they are on the battlefield.

Taking up a new hobby may not be a bad idea. It may go a long way in keeping a person sane.

Also, and this is really important: keep your cool. The people around us who think it’s funny to accuse people of racism and bigotry might require quite a bit of patience. It won’t be hard to be better people than they are.

The lack of introspection on the part of those who call other people Nazis while acting like Nazis themselves is rather troubling.

Elon Musk has revealed progress on Neuralink, a brain-computer interface device. In so doing, he has revealed a commercial version of a technology that has been researched over the course of decades.

The device involves a small implantable chip, about the size of a coin, which is implanted in the top of the skull. Tiny cables just a few microns across (about 1/20 as wide as a human hair) connect the chip to various parts of the brain. The chip itself charges inductively, presumably overnight while the bearer is sleeping, and the chip can wirelessly interface with electronics, including possibly Tesla vehicles.

When it comes to any brain-reading devices, count me out.

While there are many potential applications for this technology, there are many, many drawbacks that simply shouldn’t be overlooked.

For one thing, there is the issue of privacy. Everyone has a right to their own thoughts, and those thoughts to be private, remaining in that person’s head until they speak them with agency. The existence of psychotronic technology, whether with an embedded chip or not, allows for the potential to invade privacy on a whole other frontier.

Without privacy for one’s thoughts, there is virtually nothing that’s off-limits, and a violation of one’s privacy can occur on the deepest, most intimate levels. Imagine that a person obtains a device that can somehow read and interpret a person’s brainwaves. Using this, a person can…

• Cheat in a game of cards,
• Determine the passwords that a person uses, such as for their bank account,
• Be presented with that person’s sexual fantasies (perhaps even visually),
• Spoil surprises such as parties and anniversary gifts,
• Sabotage that person’s career plans,
• Destroy that person’s interpersonal relationships,
• Know when to burglarize that person’s house,
• Say just the right thing to distress that person,
• Gaslight the person into believing they have a mental illness,
• And there’s more. The list goes on and on.

The way such technology could be abused is disgusting. And such technology does exist!

Another point to worry about when it comes to this technology is that there may come to be a time in which it would be needed to be competitive.

When the internet first emerged, those who had access to it had an enormous advantage. A person with the internet could easily network with other internet users, and they had access to the summation of human knowledge.

Today, the internet is available to almost everyone at nearly all times, from devices that they carry in their pockets. The internet is considered the bare minimum that’s needed to be competitive in the career world, and if anyone does not have it, they stand almost no chance of getting by.

Psychotronic technology such as Neurolink would likely enhance human ability and perception to the point that, if it were allowed to proliferate, only chipped humans could compete. Enhanced vision, immediate interface with devices, radar-like sound, immediate answers to questions through web searches, and instantaneous communication with other chipped humans would be among the benefits that may be available to those chipped. Those who insist on remaining organic may get left behind.

There is another potential problem, and this is a whopper. If the brain interface is a two-way dealie, then brains can receive signals from the chips, which can receive signals wirelessly. This would mean that brains could be hacked.

Chipped humans would therefore have the potential to go Manchurian Candidate and act on rogue code transmitted to that person’s chip. Why dirty your own hands with murder when you can just hack someone else into doing it? Why risk getting caught stealing when someone can be hacked into buying you an expensive gaming rig? Want someone to destroy a business, beat his wife, start a riot, go streaking, or all of the above? There may soon come a day that it would be possible with just the right code.

Obviously, this would be a nightmare for criminal justice and law enforcement.

This may not be Burger King, but we’re serving up a double whopper. Imagine how horrifically this technology would be abused if it would fall into the hands of a dictatorship.

That gasp of horror probably came from you.

China already has a “social credit system” which provides a person with a score based on their behavior. China has already implemented cameras in cities which recognize faces and is linked to their system. With this, they can automatically adjust a person’s score based on their day-to-day behavior. A person with a low enough score is shamed by having their face appear on electronic displays in public!

Considering this (and the recent genocide of Uighurs), it’s hard to put an abuse of psychotronics past the Chinese Communist Party. If such technology were to be implemented on a society-wide basis, the Chinese Communist Party could use it to track thoughts, seeking out unrest, religious tendencies, and just about anything the Chinese Communist Party might take issue with.

Countries governed by religious fundamentalists could abuse psychotronics in their own way, ensuring complete submission to establishment religious practice, swiftly punishing heresy, determining that prayer times are observed, or perhaps even monitoring the contents of prayers!

It might not be fun to be the guy who steps out of line, as such technology could potentially be used to affect someone’s mood, perhaps causing depression, or it could even be used to induce pain, torturing a person directly and in a way that cannot be resisted, at any given moment!

Though it hasn’t been discussed very often until now, there is a certain portion of the American population that has made the claim to being victims of psychotronic harassment. I suspect that many of them actually have a mental illness of some sort. However, it’s interesting that this complaint has exploded in recent years, including with the infamous Navy Yard shooter who made the claim to being influenced by E.L.F. waves. Personally, I suspect that there might actually be something to the complaints that some of these people have.

With the recent reveal of Neuralink, psychotronic technology is going mainstream, and I suspect that more people will come forward with complaints of psychotronic harassment. It’s reasonable to suspect that there would come with this a push to limit the potential for abuse of psychotronic technology.

Such a push is something I might be getting behind in a hurry.