TRAVELING THE WORLD, WRITING WHAT THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
TRAVELING THE WORLD, WRITING WHAT THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
A seven-year-old Israeli firm founded by three veterans of Israel’s military intelligence unit is raking in millions selling CIA-tier hacking software to governments around the world. With over 200 employees, a sales arm in Bethesda, Maryland, and a long list of clients identified by watchdogs which have dubious civil rights records, the NSO Group – Read More…
The Surveillance State has created an apparatus whose implications are staggering. It’s a different world now. And sometimes it takes a writer of fiction to flesh out the larger landscape. Brad Thor’s novel, Black List, posits the existence of a monster corporation, ATS, which stands alongside the NSA in collecting information on every move we Read More…
Bitcoin $10,000? Already? It seems like just a few months ago that I was writing about the price of one bitcoin surpassing the price of one ounce of gold. Oh wait. I was. “Bitcoin Over Gold: What Does It Mean?” was written in March 2017. Fast forward 8 months and here we are with the Read More…
Imagine police knocking on your door because you posted a ‘troubling comment’ on a social media website. Imagine a judge forcing you to be jailed, sorry I meant “hospitalized,” because a computer program found your comment(s) ‘troubling.’ You can stop imagining, this is really happening. A recent TechCrunch article warns that Facebook’s “Proactive Detection” artificial Read More…
A mere few years ago the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) might be used to analyze and report to law enforcement aberrant human behavior on social media and other online platforms was merely the far out premise of dystopian movies such as Minority Report, but now Facebook proudly brags that it will use AI to “save lives” Read More…
Another day, another major banking scandal. It’s getting to the point where you can practically set your watch to these things. The latest involves our old friend Wells Fargo. The Wall Street Journal reported last night that Wells has been screwing its customers on foreign currency exchange rates. According to the Journal, Wells Fargo conducted an internal review Read More…