Paranoia Is Now A Survival Attribute
They are listening, they have always been listening ... but now they listen really good.
When I was in the military in Europe I saw Dachau and a small controlled access part of East Germany firsthand. I decided that Communism was very evil judging from what I saw. The East Germany I saw was a Potemkin village set up to convince visitors it wasn’t such a bad place. Of course it was and you could tell because of the fear you could see in the eyes of people pretending nonchalance and trying to imitate cheerfulness.
Hitler’s rapid rise to power was entirely based on his pitch to the German people that only his regime could protect them from the Bolshevists in Russia. The German people knew what was happening over there and they voted for him, particularly the women who did not want to end up getting gang raped by party officials just to feed their children. Hitler warned them they would all end up in concentration camps run by Russians and their nation would be raped and dragged off for forced labor.
What happened was Hitler got the entire country levelled, millions of people starved to death in Allied concentration camps and millions of women raped. The Russians still got half of the country when it was over and they were as bad as Hitler had warned them they would be. It is hard to tell who was worse in the end. Despite his assurances, when his own staff asked him for guidance in the final days of his regime, Adolph declared that the German people had failed him and they should all be exterminated. It’s difficult to believe he had ever had any feeling for his countrymen at all judging him by these final actions alone.
I read a lot about the Stasi in East Germany before I ever went there. They said these people were always at your elbow. You couldn’t go in an alleyway and whisper something in anger that would not make it to their ears and eventually to the party officials who were constantly sifting for people who were thinking. I doubt if I would have lasted long in East Germany if I had been born there. Somebody like me would almost certainly have been confined, lobotomized or shot on some pretense at a very young age.
Of course, these people were everywhere and all appeared to be just ordinary folks like you trying to live and work and maybe relax at times. They would see to it you couldn’t do much of any of these things.
Throughout the Cold War, the West was told unceasingly that our superior way of life was under threat by Communism and pointed out we did not have to live our lives in fear and suspect our neighbors of being informants and dread exposure of our thoughts if they were not in sync with official policy.
We didn’t know then that the Western governments could take our analog phones off the hook and listen to our conversations remotely without a warrant in almost every single Western nation. We only found out later through FOIA documents that this was possible remotely and built-in to the Ma Bell telephone networks deliberately as a feature. It may even have helped to subsidize phone service in order to make sure everybody had a government microphone installed in their own home. The same was true in Australia, the UK and Canada.
We only found out recently that both the FBI and CIA have run a paid organization for informants that blankets the country. This is the exact same case in many Western nations. There is a hidden contingent on nearly every block in America who work for organizations and long term ends that are so mindboggingly complex that most of us would be shocked at the existence of another secret society that parallels the one we thought we lived in. This has often come out in secret trials and secret testimony in which informants are permitted to witness to the court without revealing their identities or faces to the jury. All of this is forbidden by our Constitition but that has never stopped anybody.
If we did an honest appraisal we would concede that we have all lived in East Germany and didn’t know it. The reason we weren’t as scared as East Germans is that most of us believed our society was different. In fact, it was all the same with one difference … the technology in the West has always been more sophisticated for spying on their own citizens. It formerly thrived on secrecy but nowadays has gotten so bold it scarcely even bothers with denial any more. The Patriot Act following 9/11 and the Twin Towers collapse threw the barn doors open for everybody to break with the Constitution and engage in abuses that even the Stasi would have feared making public. There is no more reserve there. They confess to these things openly now.
With the coming of artificial intelligence, this nightmare is going to become worse than most people can comprehend. The elimination of the need for others to listen and vet your conversations means universal surveillance becomes possible. The machines can listen to all 300 million people in America and maybe soon billions worldwide simultaneously and sort through that data with none of the constraints that have limited malign agents previously.
The AI will be able to flag you in microseconds, figure out a reasonable justification for your arrest and internment, arrange your legal representation so you lose no matter who you consult with and keep you in special constructed gulags where your fellows may forget you ever existed anywhere.
The AI will be able to speak with you personally, explain to you why your pre-emptive confinement or execution is better for the group by limiting your ability to disrupt normal operations. It will argue you into mute compliance with arguments so compelling even you will agree with them. In a way, it will be correct … melting you down into slurry for agriculture is justified since you interfere with the system it has created. When you complained about your mealworm bars, you sealed your own fate.
I sometimes eat lunch out nowadays. They have an Alexa in the bar sitting against the back wall. I am convinced this device was heavily promoted to public restaurants and bars for the very reason I am going to describe.
On three different occasions I have heard the people around me at tables whisper under their breath they wish Alexa would play this or that song. “Purple Rain, by Prince. I haven’t heard that in a while.” They never addressed this as a request to Alexa out loud. It was said in a private conversation in a voice so low I could barely pick it up sitting with my back to them at the bar.
“Purple Rain” is the very next song Alexa plays when the current one ends. This is not anecdotal. I’ve heard it happen three times. With “White Wedding” by Billy Idol and once it was “Every breath you take” by Sting.
As a programmer I can tell you exactly what is happening here. It’s science fiction.
The Alexa is listening to and recording every single conversation going on in that restaurant simultaneously.
It is recognizing all speakers no matter what accent, dialect or conversational style.
It is streaming all conversations back to the cloud at Amazon for permanent storage and archiving.
It is distinguishing between a request and a comment or reminiscence.
It is matching the song requested with it’s database and scheduling it for next play slot after it completes the current one.
It is probably storing that preference as linked to that particular voice. It may even be able to identify that person using their voice alone from a database that is collated from millions of files gathered by other Alexas which in turn is connected to massive cloud storage of related data.
Now, if it is doing all these things … do you really believe all it is trying to do is to satisfy song requests?
8 Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: 9 Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.
10 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: 11 Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it. 12 For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
13 And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? 14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; 15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: 16 Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. 17 For it is better, if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.
Peter 3:8-17 KJV
Regards, Tex
A few weeks ago I spoke Spanish to a neighbor. Suddenly ads appeared on my smartphone in Spanish and YouTube was recommending Spanish language videos.
My friend, it was ALWAYS such an attribute. The Demons are REAL folks; and so is every folklore from Humanity’s earliest days speaking about them with paranoia.