"It Always Feel Like Someone Is..."

[BIAD]

Google ADMITS employees listen to conversations recorded by Google Assistant even without a user’s ‘Hey Google’ trigger

'Google allegedly admitted to listening to conversations recorded by Google Assistant even without a user's "Hey Google" trigger.
The tech giant made the admission during a closed-door meeting with Indian government officials, according to a report, though
Google has attempted to clarify the claims.



Sources also told IndiaToday the company admitted that its AI assistant will at times record audio on a smartphone or smart speaker
even when it hasn't been summoned. Google clarified how the assistant system works in a statement to Android Authority.

"In standby mode, the device processes short snippets of audio (a few seconds) to detect an activation -- like when you say, 'Hey Google.'
"If no activation is detected, then those audio snippets won't be sent or saved to Google."

The statement also noted that when the Assistant detects its wake word, "the recording can include a few seconds before you activate
your Assistant to catch your request at the right time."

Google has previously admitted that employees listen to short recordings to improve language comprehension in its products...'

(More in link.) Archived Sun Source:

Revealed: leak uncovers global abuse of cyber-surveillance weapon

Spyware sold to authoritarian regimes used to target activists, politicians and journalists, data suggests



'Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments
using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, according to an investigation into a
massive data leak.

The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse
of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and
terrorists.

Pegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages,
photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.

The leak contains a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people
of interest by clients of NSO since 2016. Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based nonprofit media organisation, and Amnesty
International initially had access to the leaked list and shared access with media partners as part of the Pegasus project,
a reporting consortium.

The presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to
an attempted hack. However, the consortium believes the data is indicative of the potential targets NSO’s government
clients identified in advance of possible surveillance attempts.

What is in the Pegasus project data?
What is in the data leak?

The data leak is a list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that, since 2016, are believed to have been selected as those
of people of interest by government clients of NSO Group, which sells surveillance software. The data also contains the
time and date that numbers were selected, or entered on to a system.

Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based nonprofit journalism organisation, and Amnesty International initially had access to the
list and shared access with 16 media organisations including the Guardian. More than 80 journalists have worked together
over several months as part of the Pegasus project.
Amnesty’s Security Lab, a technical partner on the project, did the forensic analyses.

What does the leak indicate?

The consortium believes the data indicates the potential targets NSO’s government clients identified in advance of possible
surveillance. While the data is an indication of intent, the presence of a number in the data does not reveal whether there was
an attempt to infect the phone with spyware such as Pegasus, the company’s signature surveillance tool, or whether any
attempt succeeded.

The presence in the data of a very small number of landlines and US numbers, which NSO says are “technically impossible”
to access with its tools, reveals some targets were selected by NSO clients even though they could not be infected with
Pegasus.

However, forensic examinations of a small sample of mobile phones with numbers on the list found tight correlations between
the time and date of a number in the data and the start of Pegasus activity – in some cases as little as a few seconds...'

(More in link) Archived Guardian Article:

China accused of cyber-attack on Microsoft Exchange servers



'The UK, US and EU have accused China of carrying out a major cyber-attack earlier this year.
The attack targeted Microsoft Exchange servers, affecting at least 30,000 organisations globally.

Western security services believe it signals a shift from a targeted espionage campaign to a smash-and-grab raid,
leading to concerns Chinese cyber-behaviour is escalating. The Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS) has also
been accused of wider espionage activity and a broader pattern of "reckless" behaviour.

China has previously denied allegations of hacking and says it opposes all forms of cyber-crime.
The unified call-out of Beijing shows the gravity with which this case has been taken. Western intelligence officials say
aspects are markedly more serious than anything they have seen before.

It began in January when hackers from a Chinese-linked group known as Hafnium began exploiting a vulnerability in
Microsoft Exchange. They used the vulnerability to insert backdoors into systems which they could return to later.

The UK said the attack was likely to enable large-scale espionage, including the acquisition of personal information
and intellectual property. It was mainly carried out against specific systems which aligned with Hafnium's previous targets,
such as defence contractors, think tanks and universities.

"We believe that cyber-operators working under the control of Chinese intelligence learned about the Microsoft vulnerability
in early January, and were racing to exploit the vulnerability before [it] was widely identified in the public domain," a security
source told the BBC.

If this had been all, it would have been just another espionage operation. But in late February something significant changed.
The targeted attack became a mass pile-in when other China-based groups began to exploit the vulnerability. The targets
scaled up to encompass key industries and governments worldwide.
It had turned from targeted espionage to a massive smash-and-grab raid.

Western security sources believe Hafnium obtained advance knowledge that Microsoft intended to patch or close the vulnerability,
and so shared it with other China-based groups to maximise the benefit before it became obsolete. It was the recklessness of the
decision to spread the vulnerability that helped drive the decision to call out the Chinese publicly, officials say.

The UK is also understood to have raised the issue of Chinese cyber-activity in private with Beijing over an extended period, including
handing over dossiers of evidence. Microsoft went public about the vulnerability on 2 March and offered a patch to close it. At this point,
more hackers around the world had realised its value and piled in.

Around a quarter of a million systems globally were left exposed - often small or medium-sized businesses and organisations - and at
least 30,000 were compromised...'

(More in link) Archived BBC Article:

[NightskyeB4Dawn]

 

It reminds me of the movie Metropia. You never know who is listening. Or if they are "just listening.

The protagonist of the film is Roger (voiced by Vincent Gallo), a normal guy (as he repeatedly reminds us) living in Stockholm. Roger has a crummy job, a girlfriend he suspects of cheating and a crush on the girl in the commercials for Dangst shampoo. He’s also plagued by a voice in his head that constantly tells him what to do. His quest to find out where the voice in his head is coming from leads him to a conspiracy involving the government, corporations and brainwashing in the most literal sense.http://www.bloodygoodhorror.com/bgh/reviews/metropia

If you have time for it, it is not a bad movie.

[Ninurta]

Big Brother is watching you.

My experience in this area leans more heavily towards computers than it does cell phones. A couple years ago, I did catch my cell phone activating it's microphone and just sitting listening twice, The first time I figured it was a fluke, a glitch in the matrix, but the second time I was pretty sure it was a targeted attack. It sat there listening for about 2 1/2 hours. After that incident, I "de-Googled" the phone, and it cured that problem. I deleted all location services, and anything that was connected with Google other than the Android OS itself. It didn't inconvenience me at all, since I use my phone to, you know, make calls and stuff, and never try to pretend that it's some kind of computer. I have computers to do computer things, and a phone to do phone things, and the two do not intersect.

I rarely ever take my phone with me when I am out and about. As far as the Privacy Invaders are concerned, I'm just sitting at home, minding my own business, because that is where my phone is. Turning it off to carry it with me when I move about would send up red flags, and indicate to them that I may be up to something they want to know about, so I just don't do that - I leave it on and harmless instead.

This phone has sensors that my previous phones did not have, so I do make use of them for things like direction finding (compass and mapping software), and one neat little program that tells me what stars I'm looking at when I hold it up to the sky - it knows where it is pointed, and it's orientation with respect to the Earth, so it pops in a picture of the stars in that section of sky, labelled in whatever direction it is "looking".

I bought this particular laptop specifically because it has neither a camera nor a microphone. They cannot access and exploit what is not there.

The following excerpt is telling:

The presence in the data of a very small number of landlines and US numbers, which NSO says are “technically impossible” to access with its tools, reveals some targets were selected by NSO clients even though they could not be infected with Pegasus.

While the article does not say so explicitly, the hilighted portion indicates that the US government is one of the clients of that company in it's quest to spy on citizens. There is no need for US numbers to be in there unless they are being spied upon, and the NSO company contracts to governments... so, you do the math on that revelation.

Big Brother is Watching You.

.

[BIAD]

It reminds me of the movie Metropia. You never know who is listening. Or if they are "just listening.
If you have time for it, it is not a bad movie.

[BIAD]

Big Brother is watching you.

...I rarely ever take my phone with me when I am out and about. As far as the Privacy Invaders are concerned, I'm just sitting at home,
minding my own business, because that is where my phone is. Turning it off to carry it with me when I move about would send up red
flags, and indicate to them that I may be up to something they want to know about, so I just don't do that - I leave it on and harmless
instead...

I won't touch them, my wife has one and I'm always wary to speak if I'm in any proximity of it.
My laptop has tape over the camera and its listener-pores (although I don't think the cover stops it), but my admiration
is for how these phone-microphones/cameras/computer-listeners were sold to the world.

Maybe I'm too paranoid!

[Ninurta]

Big Brother is watching you.

...I rarely ever take my phone with me when I am out and about. As far as the Privacy Invaders are concerned, I'm just sitting at home,
minding my own business, because that is where my phone is. Turning it off to carry it with me when I move about would send up red
flags, and indicate to them that I may be up to something they want to know about, so I just don't do that - I leave it on and harmless
instead...

I won't touch them, my wife has one and I'm always wary to speak if I'm in any proximity of it.
My laptop has tape over the camera and its listener-pores (although I don't think the cover stops it), but my admiration
is for how these phone-microphones/cameras/computer-listeners were sold to the world.

Maybe I'm too paranoid!

Very true . They sold THEIR surveillance systems, that benefit THEM, to us, and convinced us to pay for THEIR surveillance over us! THEY got US to pay for our own damned surveillance! It was a stroke of genius!





.

[F2d5thCav]

... dude gets up off the toilet.

Alexis:  "STOP"

Dude:  "Huh?"

Alexis: "You must wipe at least four times.  You only wiped three times."



Cheers

[BIAD]

We have a landline purely for concern of my elderly and half-blind mother-in-law.

For years, we've been getting potential scammers trying to con us out of our money.
My wife is more pragmatic than me and attempts (and usually succeeds) in pulling them away from their
scripted narrative and getting to ridicule themselves through their own bent logic.

Me when they call...? I'm the half-deaf frisky clergyman or the paranoid old man who's underwear smells of fish
or the odd smooth-voiced person who constantly says 'theth methaleth' after two minutes of the caller's babbling.
(Tongue sticking out throughout the call.)


A couple of weeks ago, when an Indian chap named 'Allen' or 'Simon' rang to explain about an expired warranty on an
appliance we didn't have, my better-half used a ruse she'd resisted up until now. She explained to Al -or whatever western
name he was using, that the effects of these types of phone-calls on her mental health were becoming just too much!

Her trembling voice -that she struggled to maintain, was excellent and the tones hinting at supplication would be admired
by anyone who sucked the dick of BLM or any other virtue-signalling organisation. The scammer became flustered, humbly
apologised and then hung-up.


The result was astounding! We may get the odd automatic voice-call from Amazon telling us we owe £1.99 on a package
we didn't order, but the annoying personal human-to-human calls have stopped!
*Taps wood as I type that!*

[Kenzo]

Since i moved to new place, i have keep my phone most of the time offline or flight mode, i opened it only if i need to call someone and then shut it down again.....i am the master of my domain


We dont need mobile phones.....there is internet phones too, which i may get it later, if need it.


I remember the old times....where no one had yet mobile phones.....before World started to go really nuts with all this technology .

[F2d5thCav]

@"Kenzo" 

I remember the old times....where no one had yet mobile phones

Roger that.

DECADES ago I was in Europe as I am today.  Back then, "calling home" was a big deal, and besides snail mail, it was the ONLY means of communicating with people back in the USA.  Living as an expatriate then, the feeling of "being away from home" was palpable.

Today ... sh**.  I am in constant internet contact with friends and family the world over.  Yeah, it is still a long trip to physically set foot in the USA again, but I don't feel the distance anymore.

And the above is precisely why the new migrants in Europe don't have to, and won't, assimilate into the societies in which they've settled.  The "old country" is just a few keystrokes away.  There is hardly a break with the old way of living and doing things.

Cheers

[Kenzo]

@"Kenzo" 

I remember the old times....where no one had yet mobile phones

Roger that.

DECADES ago I was in Europe as I am today.  Back then, "calling home" was a big deal, and besides snail mail, it was the ONLY means of communicating with people back in the USA.  Living as an expatriate then, the feeling of "being away from home" was palpable.

Today ... sh**.  I am in constant internet contact with friends and family the world over.  Yeah, it is still a long trip to physically set foot in the USA again, but I don't feel the distance anymore.

And the above is precisely why the new migrants in Europe don't have to, and won't, assimilate into the societies in which they've settled.  The "old country" is just a few keystrokes away.  There is hardly a break with the old way of living and doing things.

Cheers

Good point, yeeh big difference, no need to assimilate  when internet keep them mentally in the old country.


Once they succeed hack our brains, the big brother will call us allways , and that`s the point of using tinfoil hat