Are Our Laptops And Smartphones Spying On Us? Why? And For Whom?

Beginning a few years ago we began to feel like our laptops could read our mind. We'd be on social media and something we'd talked about recently would pop up in our newsfeed, as if someone creating that newsfeed had been listening in.

Our laptops gave us the tool we needed to investigate this bizarre suspicion and we found articles about it at ComputerWorld, the BBC, and WebProNews. Funny, though, articles relating to this conversation did not begin appearing in our newsfeed. There are some theories and investigations the gods of the internet do not want circulated.

How does our Facebook feed know what we’ve been thinking? It collects all our clicks and our likes and feeds them into computers to create algorithms that organize how the newsfeed works, but it seemed like someone was listening to our conversations too.

Thinking and behavior are the products that Facebook sells to its paying customers. (We are not FB’s paying customers, we are the product FB sells.) Facebook sells their product widely, not just to clothing stores and car dealers and treatment centers and plastic surgery clinics. They sell it to whoever has money to buy that information. How raw is that data? Is it fully targeted? Are that data and the algorithms that sort that data user friendly enough that a 400 lb. man on his bed in Macedonia or Hungary or Belarus or Russia can climb inside the heads of millions of Americans from halfway around the globe? What other players helped Russia and the Trump campaign weaponize our personal computers against our democracy?

Facebook might not be the main spy. They might be the main evidence that spying is going on. Which is the tail and which is the dog? Facebook might only be the weapon the manipulators are using. How firm a hold does Facebook have on how its algorithms are used? The only real criterion it seems to focus on before enabling a manipulation of the newsfeed is this: has the manipulator paid to use the Facebook algorithm; if so they get permission to go ahead.

When Trump happened it seemed creepily possible that a new force was abroad in the world upsetting the usual ways consensus is created and public decisions are made. Surprising upsets had exploded key western alliances. In the months since it became evident that those upsets had been engineered in very cynical, undemocratic ways. Russia had helped hack the Democratic Party in this country, but there were other operators involved.

Multiple bad actors working toward one goal = Conspiracy.

The multinational Big Data corporation Cambridge Analytica began to pop up in news stories from The Guardian, the DailyKos and others. There was concern and speculation about their manipulations of their Big Data because of what was known about the man who owned the company.

Since Brexit and Trump, Russian meddling was evident in the Netherlands and in France, failing in both elections. Then, this summer, the BBC reported Cambridge Analytica has been busy in the Kenyan election.

Cambridge Analytica is just one of the companies devoted to reading our minds and manipulating our behavior for profit. CA is owned by right wing libertarian/authoritarian Robert Mercer, one of the biggest supporters of Trump, a Bannon patron and mentor, a backer of Breitbart, America’s leading purveyor of right wing memes and falsehood. The president’s son-in-law Jared was Trump’s deputy for this kind of online mischief during the campaign. (He may be more puppet than tech wizard, but a puppet is more useful to the Russians than a wizard would be.)

Late this week Vanity Fair reported a story that tried to sort out the relationships between Kushner and Mercer and Russia and how our election was manipulated.

We have big data companies messing with our minds via our laptops which are weaponized to spy on us. What do we do to keep ourselves safe? We buy software from cybersecurity companies. The dominant player in this field is located where?

The world’s leading cybersecurity software company, Kaspersky Labs, is located in Russia, founded and built into a global software giant by a Russian computer wiz. Kaspersky Labs is also cozy with the Russian government’s spy agencies. (No one becomes a billionaire in Russia today without being cozy with Putin and his spy agencies.)

This article from Bloomberg explains some of the worries about the Kaspersky/Putin relationship which Kaspersky says does not exist.

Before we jump to too many conclusions (half of the conclusions would be enough to worry about if they are correct) this article in Wired says it wouldn’t have been necessary for the Russians to have American collaboration to hack our election, but they say they still may have had that collaboration. And a U.S. citizen acting as a co-conspirator is just as culpable if he is only a puppet.

Targeting has been the keyword as the Russian election hack has been reported. For Trump to run the table on an election that every poll said he had no chance of winning required some incredible luck, incredible assistance from bad actors, or else incredible sophistication in operation and targeting, and the best description of the Trump campaign was “seat of the pants” and “ad hoc.” The candidate’s message was undisciplined and bizarre. There were none of the traditional deployments, none of the usual planning, none of the kinds of organization and structure that successful campaigns need to win. This was why the result smelled so fishy. Maybe it required a crib––having all the answers beforehand. The how and by whom part of this story has been unfolding all summer. We know the Russians hacked computers and flooded the voters with falsified news stories, lurid rumors, and counterfeit reporting. But how was it targeted. The targeting required deep understanding of how Americans think and behave and how to manipulate that thinking and behavior.

This is how the picture was coming together in July:

Newsweek: Did Russia use Kushner's data operation to target Democratic voters?

Philadelphia Inquirer: to understand the Russian hacking of our election follow the data

The National Memo reports some of the details of how Trump and Russian election strategies were aligned

I get angry to think that the useful public utility developed with our tax-funded research and launched to make it easier for everyone to participate on a level basis (see Net Neutrality) with quick and easy and fair access has been turned against us, turned into a tool to manipulate us and subvert our democracy, weaponized against us. And that this has happened with the willing and profitable cooperation of our new president and his allies foreign and domestic.

"R" Is For Russian. "R" is for Republican

Important reporting from Reuters shows a strategy of coverup by the Republicans

According to the latest reporting by Reuters, Devin Nunes (the recused chair of the House Intel Committee) is still very unrecusedly busy trying to derail any and all investigations into the ways Russia hacked our election. His approach is very Republican: if he can make sure Americans don’t learn about what happened that will mean nothing happened. Nunes’ strategy is to project blame onto officials in the Obama administration who correctly and in line with standing protocols and procedures, asked a special panel for the names of the Americans who were discovered talking with Russian agents during the campaign. They sought to know because it was their job to protect American democracy and they followed the rules in doing so.

Nunes’ theory is simple and simpleminded: Until it becomes known that Americans were colluding with a foreign enemy Nunes believes he can insist no Americans were colluding. Until the colluding Americans are known by name, Nunes can say they don’t exist and the conversations never took place. And how dare these professionals in the Obama administration seek to learn who those people were! In Nunes’ mind it isn’t criminal to collude with a foreign enemy, but it is criminal to investigate that collusion.

The Republican idea is that wrongdoing isn’t the problem, Americans knowing about the wrongdoing is the problem.

What we don’t know can’t hurt them.

Republicans look back at all previous Republican White House scandals in a different way than most of us do: the faked criteria for the Iraq War; the outing of CIA agent because her husband disclosed the truth; Iran Contra, where the Reagan White House illegally traded weapons with Islamic terrorists to arm our own terrorists in Central America; all the way back to Watergate. They all have one main idea: keeping Americans in the dark.

They see Watergate not as a broad criminal conspiracy and a stain on American democracy; Republicans see Watergate as a failed coverup. If it had been properly covered up there would have been no problem. Undiscovered crimes are not crimes just as covering up industrial causes of climate change means that those causes do not exist. Serious problems are not serious or even problems as long as Americans do not know about them. This is called whitewashing. This is coverup pure and simple.

On the day after 9/11 we need to understand that America is again under attack. Not by terrorists in airliners but by Russians and their American proxies trying to destroy our democracy.

Politico describes what's known as the Gerasimov Doctrine, the Russian attack plan which put Trump into the White House.

"In 2013 General Valery Gerasimov—Russia’s chief of the General Staff, comparable to the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff… took tactics developed by the Soviets, blended them with strategic military thinking about total war, and laid out a new theory of modern warfare—one that looks more like hacking an enemy’s society than attacking it head-on. He wrote: “The very ‘rules of war’ have changed. The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness. … All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character.””

The Daily Beast explains how Trump's and Russia' Facebook strategy had such a powerful cascading effect on the election.

"On Wednesday, Facebook’s chief security officer, Alex Stamos, revealed that Russia had “likely” used 470 fake accounts to buy about $100,000 worth of advertising promoting “divisive social and political messages” to Americans. It was Facebook’s first public acknowledgment of the role it unwittingly played in the Kremlin’s “active measures” campaign. Stamos’ statement was also conspicuous by what it omitted: Facebook has refused to release the ads. More significant, it hasn’t said what kind of reach Russia attained with its ad buy.
"There may be a reason for that. On the surface, $100,000 is small change in contemporary national politics, and 3,000 ads sounds like a drop in the pond when Facebook boasts 2 billion monthly users. But it turns out $100,000 on Facebook can go a surprisingly long way, if it’s used right. On average, Facebook ads run about $6 for 1,000 impressions. By that number, the Kremlin’s $100,000 buy would get its ads seen nearly 17 million times.

"But that average hides a lot of complexity, and the actual rate can range from $1 to $100 for 1,000 impressions on an ad with pinpoint targeting. Virality matters, too. Ads that get more shares, likes, and comments are far cheaper than boring ads that nobody likes, and ads that send users to Facebook posts instead of third-party websites enjoy an additional price break. Finally, there are network effects, which can vastly multiply the number of users who see a promoted Facebook post."


What makes this especially interesting is the striking similarity between Russia’s strategy of relying on Facebook and Trump’s own strategy. Trump’s campaign used ONLY ads on Facebook. Russia and Trump shared that strategic focus.

The question now is: Were Russia’s Facebook attacks guided by Trump’s own intel. Or were they both directed by intel and analysis from another player in the Trump fold? (Was it, perhaps Cambridge Analytica?)

Further analysis from Medium on how the Facebook strategy weaponized social media for the Russians and the Republicans

"There may be some fake news on Facebook, but the power of the Facebook advertising platform to influence voters is very real. This is the story of how the Trump campaign used data to target African Americans and young women with $150 million dollars of Facebook and Instagram advertisements in the final weeks of the election, quietly launching the most successful digital voter suppression operation in American history.

"Throughout the campaign, President-Elect Donald J. Trump shrewdly invested in Facebook advertisements to reach his supporters and raise campaign donations. Facing a short-fall of momentum and voter support in the polls, the Trump campaign deployed its custom database, named Project Alamo, containing detailed identity profiles on 220 million people in America.

“With Project Alamo as ammunition, the Trump digital operations team covertly executed a massive digital last-stand strategy using targeted Facebook ads to ‘discourage’ Hillary Clinton supporters from voting. The Trump campaign poured money and resources into political advertisements on Facebook, Instagram, the Facebook Audience Network, and Facebook data-broker partners."

More analysis from WIRED. Both of these articles came right on the heels of the election when it became clear how the gambit had succeeded but details remained unclear or were undisclosed because they were part of ongoing intelligence investigations.

The Bullying Of American Opinion And How We Let It Happen

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of grade school children the president spoke for most Americans and spoke well and clearly. He decried gun violence, which this was. He expressed sadness that our system was not permitting changes to make Americans safer. But he did it calmly, not as a demagogue. The moment would have been perfect for a demagogue. We are most easily persuaded when we are horrified but we are wise to keep our heads, and a wise leader respects that. Discussing these things calmly is the American Way.

His main points were vehemently opposed and rejected by the Republican Party who were devoted to guns and gun rights and gun manufacturers. Two opposed points of view. We need to choose. Were the two points of view equally valid? Were they equal in light of our values?

Did President Obama fail us here? Should he have whipped up our emotions and forced a change over the violent objections of many Americans? This is exactly what those opponents have warned he would do. They say it so loudly it seems to many that he has done what he has not. Obama did not do what George W. Bush did after 9/11. President Bush exploited our anger to start a war against a nation that had nothing to do with the attack of 9/11. The attackers did not come from Iraq. President Obama did not use Sandy Hook or his considerable oratorical gifts to create a frenzy of anger against the NRA or gun owners, nor did he demonize the sick individual who had perpetrated the attack, he didn’t demonize the mentally ill or gun owners or teenagers or anyone. He did not use the opportunity of national horror to parade his concern for the survivors and their families on national television.

The response among his critics was what it always has been, that he doesn’t care enough, because he doesn’t flaunt his emotions or exploit the emotions of the mourning. Instead he met with the families as they would have wished, as any of us would have wished, away from the prying glare of television and media. There is modesty and decency in this. Of course his critics found fault with modesty and decency. Because he respected their private mourning Republicans and the folks at Fox said he didn’t care enough. Today I saw this article about Obama visiting Sandy Hook. There’s been a decent interval since that horrible day. We now know more about his personal response to the families.

We have two parties in this country, clearly opposed in values and goals. One is an armed camp. The other is less so. One is prone to whipping up violent irrational emotions. One is calmer and more deliberate and is criticized for it. (It took Democrats a few years to determine that the war in Iraq was sold with fraudulent arguments. Deliberations can save you from bad decisions but it can make it harder to oppose them.) One party is a bully, one is quieter. Is quietness the same as weakness? Does it mean the values are not as strong or valid? One party shouts what is on its mind immediately, without thinking things through. The Democratic Party is called dithering because it consults and discusses and listens and doesn’t blurt whatever is on its mind at any given moment, especially at angry moments. The GOP has many angry moments. I have sometimes used the old Goofus and Gallant canard to describe this striking difference.

So I read this article about a quiet respectful president visiting the bereaved out of the public eye.

And this is the top article Facebook recommends I read after I read the article about President Obama's response to Sandy Hook. Point and Counterpoint. It’s implied that both stories are equally true. Facebook is how America sorts its feelings and opinions today. It’s how we sift fact and fiction, right and wrong.

What does this say about us, about what is becoming of us, about what is being done to us?

Are we becoming binary? Either we love and totally believe someone or something or a set of values or we hate them and dismiss them. I think this is the problem Obama has faced from day one: the opposing party decided, its leaders swore a solemn oath on this, to oppose everything he tried to do and everything he said. This filters down to the average person as a command from on high.

When a Republican candidate makes irrational and racist claims and demands it licenses the worst kind of instincts in his followers. Donald Trump’s and Ted Cruz’s and other candidates’ ugly remarks about Muslims and refugees from the chaos we created in the Middle East encourages individuals to confront Muslims they meet on the street and vent their previously suppressed hatred. That hatred was previously unacceptable in public, now it has the Republican seal of approval and everyone who identifies with that party feels he is right to vent those ugly opinions in the faces of anyone they suspect might not be as “American” as they are.

In 2001 President Bush said “You’re either with us or against us.” But he was emphatic that most Muslims are our friends and many are our fellow citizens deserving of respect. Why was that civility and decency discarded? Possibly because of the oppositional nature of the Republican Party that swore to oppose Obama’s presidency at every turn. If this president said peaceable righteous Muslims deserve our respect the Republican attitude needed to be, or at least turned out to be the absolute opposite. Whatever President Obama says has to be disputed and opposed. Binary politics.

Computers are binary, everything reduced to a zero or a one, no ambiguity or nuance. It’s either yes or no. Humans are smarter than that. This Yes/No, either/or evenhandedness expresses itself in different ways. To a computer both zero and one are valid, but Americans increasingly see Yes or No. And the arbiters of the public conversation tend to keep their judgments to themselves. Journalists are barred from having a political affiliation. Which means they must––MUST––write every article in an evenhanded manner… to the point of saying that every point of view, every opinion even an unfactual or unscientific one, is equally valid. Thus articles are built on false equivalencies. If the first paragraph sets out the truth the second paragraph is obligated to set out the opposite, the falsehood, the superstition, and there is no appropriate place for any journalistic judgment. The reader must decide. And that decision is most often made according to team affiliation or inherited prejudice. The reader chooses the version he or she “believes in”––it doesn’t matter which is true or which is a deception or which is paid for by a fossil fuel billionaire or which is cynically expressed by a candidate who wants to harness the hatred in people’s hearts to win power. There is no judgment, only feelings matter. False equivalency, by giving equal status to error and poorly formed opinion encourages that wrongheadedness, endorses it. False equivalency validates falsehood and discredited beliefs by saying they are just as true as truth and enlightened values. So hateful prejudice and fair-mindedness are equally valid today. Right and wrong are equally OK, you get to choose.

And now, it appears, Facebook has embraced this false equivalency laziness. Because they are not a newspaper or broadcast outlet there is no place to point out the flaw in their system. There are no letters to the Facebook editor. There are no retractions of stories they push on us. And Facebook now stands as the absolute standard. This is now how we decide things by giving equal status to our worst instincts and letting the volume of our shouting decide which set of values is valid. This is democracy, of a kind. But absolute majority rule, brute democracy, the democracy of the mob, doesn’t give a damn about the minority. Hitler was elected by a democracy, a German republic, with a congress and parties. His brownshirts hustled and bullied the majority into following its worst instincts, or the worst instincts of its worst members. We know what resulted. Hitler was put in power by powerful men and corporate power who saw a benefit in erasing the individual and creating a mob they could control, but they were unable to control Hitler and his mob. They went along with that mob until the bitter end.