#public action

[politijohn]

Source

So this feels important…

[decolonize-the-left]

This is not a drill

This is IMPORTANT especially if you live in the USA or use the internet REGULATED by the USA!!!!

Do not scroll. Signal boost. Reblog.

Reblog WITHOUT reading if you really can't right now, I promise all the links and proof are here. People NEED to know this.

( I tried to make this accessible but you can't cater to EVERYONE so please just try your best to get through this or do your own research 🙏)

TLDR: Homeland Security has been tying our social media to our IPs, licenses, posts, emails, selfies, cloud, apps, location, etc through our phones without a warrant using Babel X and will hold that information gathered for 75 years. Certain aspects of it were hushed because law enforcement will/does/has used it and it would give away confidential information about ongoing operations.

This gets renewed in September.

Between this, Agincourt (a VR simulator for cops Directly related to this project), cop city, and widespread demonization of abortions, sex workers, & queer people mixed with qanon/Trumpism, and fascism in Florida, and the return of child labor, & removed abortion rights fresh on our tails it's time for alarms to be raised and it's time for everyone to stop calling us paranoid and start showing up to protest and mutual aid groups.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

These are the same feds who want to build cop city and recreate civilian houses en masse and use facial recognition. The same feds that want cop city to also be a training ground for police across the country. Cop city where they will build civilian neighborhoods to train in.

Widespread mass surveillance against us.

Now let's cut to some parts of the article. May 17th from Vice:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using an invasive, AI-powered monitoring tool to screen travelers, including U.S. citizens, refugees, and people seeking asylum, which can in some cases link their social media posts to their Social Security number and location data, according to an internal CBP document obtained by Motherboard.

Called Babel X, the system lets a user input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return, according to the document. Results can include their social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. The monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers, according to the document.

“Babel data will be used/captured/stored in support of CBP targeting, vetting, operations and analysis,” the document reads. Babel X will be used to “identify potential derogatory and confirmatory information” associated with travelers, persons of interest, and “persons seeking benefits.” The document then says results from Babel X will be stored in other CBP operated systems for 75 years.

"The U.S. government’s ever-expanding social media dragnet is certain to chill people from engaging in protected speech and association online. And CBP’s use of this social media surveillance technology is especially concerning in connection with existing rules requiring millions of visa applicants each year to register their social media handles with the government. As we’ve argued in a related lawsuit, the government simply has no legitimate interest in collecting and retaining such sensitive information on this immense scale,” Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, told Motherboard in an email.

The full list of information that Babel X may provide to CBP analysts is a target’s name, date of birth, address, usernames, email address, phone number, social media content, images, IP address, Social Security number, driver’s license number, employment history, and location data based on geolocation tags in public posts.

Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor to activist

organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Motherboard in an online chat “the data isn’t limited to public posts made under someone’s real name on Facebook or Twitter.”

The document says CBP also has access to AdID information through an add-on called Locate X, which includes smartphone location data. AdID information is data such as a device’s unique advertising ID, which can act as an useful identifier for tracking a phone and, by extension, a person’s movements. Babel Street obtains location information from a long supply chain of data. Ordinary apps installed on peoples’ smartphones provide data to a company called Gravy Analytics, which repackages that location data and sells it to law enforcement agencies via its related company Venntel. But Babel Street also repackages Venntel’s data for its own Locate X product."

The PTA obtained by Motherboard says that Locate X is covered by a separate “commercial telemetry” PTA. CBP denied Motherboard’s FOIA request for a copy of this document, claiming it “would disclose techniques and/or procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions”.

A former Babel Street employee previously told Motherboard how users of Locate X can draw a shape on a map known as a geofence, see all devices Babel Street has data on for that location, and then follow a specific device to see where else it has been.

Cyphers from the EFF added “most of the people whose location data is collected in this way likely have no idea it’s happening.”

CBP has been purchasing access to location data without a warrant, a practice that critics say violates the Fourth Amendment. Under a ruling from the Supreme Court, law enforcement agencies need court approval before accessing location data generated by a cell phone tower; those critics believe this applies to location data generated by smartphone apps too.

“Homeland Security needs to come clean to the American people about how it believes it can legally purchase and use U.S. location data without any kind of court order. Americans' privacy shouldn't depend on whether the government uses a court order or credit card,” Senator Ron Wyden told Motherboard in a statement. “DHS should stop violating Americans' rights, and Congress should pass my bipartisan legislation to prohibit the government's purchase of Americans' data." CBP has refused to tell Congress what legal authority it is following when using commercially bought smartphone location data to track Americans without a warrant.

Neither CBP or Babel Street responded to a request for comment. Motherboard visited the Babel X section of Babel Street’s website on Tuesday. On Wednesday before publication, that product page was replaced with a message that said “page not found.”

Do you know anything else about how Babel X is being used by government or private clients? Do you work for Babel Street? We'd love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.

Wow that sounds bad right.

Be a shame if it got worse.

.

.

It does.

The software (previously Agincourt Solutions) is sold by AI data company Babel Street, was led by Jeffrey Chapman, a former Treasury Department official,, Navy retiree & Earlier in his career a White House aide and intelligence officer at the Department of Defense, according to LinkedIn.

🙃

So what's Agincourt Solutions then right now?

SO FUCKING SUS IN RELATION TO THIS, THATS WHAT

In essence, synthetic BATTLEVR training is a mixture of all three realities – virtual, augmented and physical. It is flexible enough to allow for mission rehearsals of most types and be intuitive enough to make training effective.

Anyway the new CEO of Babel Street (Babel X) as of April is a guy named Michael Southworth and I couldn't find much more on him than that tbh, it's all very vague and missing. That's the most detail I've seen on him.

And the detail says he has a history of tech startups that scanned paperwork and sent it elsewhere, good with numbers, and has a lot of knowledge about cell networks probably.

Every inch more of this I learn as I continue to Google the names and companies popping up... It gets worse.

Monitor phone use. Quit photobombing and filming strangers and for the love of fucking God quit sending apps photos of your actual legal ID to prove your age. Just don't use that site, you'll be fine I swear. And quit posting your private info online. For activists/leftists NO personally identifiable info at least AND DEFINITELY leave your phone at home to Work™!!!

[reasonsforhope]

"In an unprecedented step to preserve and maintain the most carbon-rich elements of U.S. forests in an era of climate change, President Joe Biden’s administration last week proposed to end commercially driven logging of old-growth trees in National Forests.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, issued a Notice of Intent to amend the land management plans of all 128 National Forests to prioritize old-growth conservation and recognize the oldest trees’ unique role in carbon storage. 

It would be the first nationwide amendment to forest plans in the 118-year history of the Forest Service, where local rangers typically have the final word on how to balance forests’ role in watershed, wildlife and recreation with the agency’s mandate to maintain a “sustained yield” of timber.

“Old-growth forests are a vital part of our ecosystems and a special cultural resource,” Vilsack said in a statement accompanying the notice. “This clear direction will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”

But initial responses from both environmentalists and the logging industry suggest that the plan does not resolve the conflict between the Forest Service’s traditional role of administering the “products and services” of public lands—especially timber—and the challenges the agency now faces due to climate change. National Forests hold most of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees, and therefore, its greatest stores of forest carbon, but that resource is under growing pressure from wildfire, insects, disease and other impacts of warming.

Views could not be more polarized on how the National Forests should be managed in light of the growing risks.

National and local environmental advocates have been urging the Biden administration to adopt a new policy emphasizing preservation in National Forests, treating them as a strategic reserve of carbon. Although they praised the old-growth proposal as an “historic” step, they want to see protection extended to “mature” forests, those dominated by trees roughly 80 to 150 years old, which are a far larger portion of the National Forests. As old-growth trees are lost, which can happen rapidly due to megafires and other assaults, they argue that the Forest Service should be ensuring there are fully developed trees on the landscape to take their place...

The Biden administration’s new proposal seeks to take a middle ground, establishing protection for the oldest trees under its stewardship while allowing exceptions to reduce fuel hazards, protect public health and safety and other purposes. And the Forest Service is seeking public comment through Feb. 2 (Note: That's the official page for the proposed rule, but for some reason you can only submit comments through the forest service website - so do that here!) on the proposal as well as other steps needed to manage its lands to retain mature and old-growth forests over time, particularly in light of climate change.

If the Forest Service were to put in place nationwide protections for both mature and old-growth forests, it would close off most of the National Forests to logging. In an inventory concluded earlier this year in response to a Biden executive order, the Forest Service found that 24.7 million acres, or 17 percent, of its 144.3 million acres of forest are old-growth, while 68.1 million acres, or 47 percent, are mature."

-via Inside Climate News, December 20, 2023

-

Note: This proposed rule is current up for public comment! If you're in the US, you can go here to file an official comment telling the Biden administration how much you support this proposal - and that you think it should be extended to mature forests!

Official public comments really DO matter. You can leave a comment on this proposal here until February 2nd.

[bonefall]

Anyway. Bi and Mspec Lesbians aren't a hotly "debated" topic or even new to queer culture, it's just the newest thing that bullies who REALLY want to be homophobic and even racist use to justify harassing gay people they don't like.

It's the thinnest possible veneer of progressive language wrapped around TERF and reactionary rhetoric so that they can feel righteous for forming an angry mob against vulnerable targets. If you're gullible enough to fall for the newest wave of bigotry within the queer community, and turn on your allies because they're "confusing" or "invading your spaces," the SAME way they turned on bi/pan labels, trans people, xenogenders, neopronouns, and aroace people before this, then get lost.

[yuveim]

The Toronto Public Library has removed "If I Must Die" by Palestinian writer, poet, professor and activist Refaat Alareer from its display.

If you're an author, writer, academic or reader you can contact TPL to voice your opinion on this decision to censor Palestinian poetry. Who to email here and here.

[pucksandpower]

Susie Wolff is officially suing the FIA. Her statement on the matter is especially relevant:

“I feel more than ever it is important to stand up, call out improper behavior and make sure people are held to account.

Whilst some may think silence absolves them from responsibility — it does not.”

[liberaljane]

We need climate action.

Digital illustration of a blonde woman wearing a mask facing the New York City skyline. She is standing on a fire-escape wearing a tan dress that reads, ‘climate change is a public health crisis.’

[laststandx3]

When Jesus pretended to be dead for 3 days it's a miracle and everyone is sympathetic. But when I, James Somerton-

[theactioneer]

Tina Turner, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985)

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

BuT tHe PuBlIc DoNt SuPpOrT tHe StRiKeS

[hedgehog-moss]

French TV journalist having a hard time trying to get woman in the street to comment on Macron's latest speech yesterday

Protesters organised casserolades (aka banging on pots and pans) in front of city halls across the country at 8pm, when Macron was speaking, to symbolically drown out his voice. Later that evening, Macron was filmed singing a song with some 'random people' in a street in Paris, trying to show he can go out and meet people and have fun because protesters don't exist. The people he was singing with (members of a choir, some of whom are 'alt-right-leaning') were using a folk song app created by far-right activists that was criticised a few months ago for hosting a Spanish fascist anthem & Third Reich military marches.

The government's response was that the President "couldn't know the background of the people he met that night." Maybe if he wants to avoid being associated with the far-right (that's a big if, I know), Macron should keep in mind that with the kinds of strategies and positioning his government has adopted lately, people in the street who welcome him with open arms and are proud to be filmed with him have a higher than average likelihood of supporting fascism.

[carlyraejepsans]

i unironically block and avoid anyone who interacts with callout posts btw. unless the post contains information about genuine real harm to real people in unequivocal terms, with solid proof and context that cannot be chalked up to misrepresented friendship drama, i go scorched earth on the notes. the amount of potential harassment and harm they can and HAVE caused in the past, especially to minority groups, trans women in particular, is beyond anything that can ever justify their existence. they're a petty, childish—frequently wrong!—thoughtless and cruel way to "spread awareness". grow up.

[machetelanding]

[ivys-garden]

You know, I'm seeing a lot of love for gay Mickey Mouse (Rightly) but I've seen almost no calls for lesbian Minnie

So yeah, here's my call to action: if you plan on making Mickey gay have Minnie be lesbian so we can have some Mouse lesbian-gay solidarity

[ladymarvel27]

There were two other drivers too who were his teammates but the admin chose only to post their picture together.

In conclusion:

f1 page admin is also a Carlando fan.

[uncanny-tranny]

I love when people complain about dangerous drivers because... there are some dangerous drivers out there! However, the solution isn't, like, a surveillance state. The solution can be found (in part) in actually investing in free public transportation and a variety of transportation. The fact that we often live in a very hostile world for pedestrians and non-motorists is a travesty, and helps contribute to the mess that is driving.

You don't need to ban certain people from being able to drive. You need to pressure your local and state governments to actually invest in trains, buses, trams, taxis, public bicycles, well-maintained sidewalks and trails, and whatever may be best for your community. Banning certain people from driving isn't going to effectively keep drivers safe.