Tag Archives: Google

News

Google Win “Right-to-br Forgotten Case in Europe

Google have won the battle against tougher right-be-be-forgotten legislation in France. The case was a test to see if a nations legislation could be enforced across borders; and whether personal data could be removed without the stifling of free speech.

“Currently, there is no obligation under EU law, for a search engine operator who grants a request for de-referencing made by a data subject… to carry out such a de-referencing on all the versions of its search engine,” the European Court of Justice (CJEU) said.

“However, EU law requires a search engine operator to carry out such a de-referencing on the versions of its search engine corresponding to all the (EU) member states,” it added.

The case arose after google refused to delist sensitive data from global search results.

Read More: CBC

News, Science And Technology

Project Veritas Uncovers Google’s Plans for Social Engineering and To Stop Trump in 2020

Project Veritas has received confidential documents from a Google insider. The documents and information, from the insider, show that since the 2016 election Google have been training their learning algorithms to ensure the narrative fed to those using the platform contains the content they [Google]  want to be heard.

The “Fairness” algorithms are being trained to return searching that fit with the narrative and idea of society they wish to create, thus programming the thinking of their users to agree with that narrative. This also affects YouTube, also owned by Google.

Furthermore Project Veritas has secretly filmed an interview with top Google executive, Jen Gennai, Head of Responsible Innovation, at Google. In the interview she is heard saying:

We all got screwed over in 2016, again it wasn’t just us, it was, the people got screwed over, the news media got screwed over, like, everybody got screwed over so we’re rapidly been like, happened there and how do we prevent it from happening again.

We’re also training our algorithms, like, if 2016 happened again, would we have, would the outcome be different?

Read More: Breitbart

News, Science And Technology

Big Techs Economic Goals: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

In her new book Shoshana Zuboff, Professor at Harvard Business School, outlines the goals of the tech giants like Google and Facebook. Zuboff argues that their “goal is to automate us” by trading in our personal experiences as their raw material. She says we are now in an age of surveillance capitalism.

In an interview with Democracy Now Zuboff explains what this means:

Read More: The Guardian 

Science And Technology

Google and Other Tech Giants Move Business Out of China

Google and other tech giants are making moves to move their business out of China in order to avoid the 25% tariffs being introduced.

Google is reportedly moving the production of servers and motherboards out of the nation.

Wistron Corp, a Taiwanese firm which produces hardware for tech giants like Facebook and Microsoft are also looking to move operations out of China, and perhaps to the U.S.

Read More: The Daily Caller

News

Google Engineer Writes Open Letter Detailing Companies “Mob Outrage” and “Witch Hunts”

Google Engineer Mike Wacker has sent an open letter to Medium describing a culture of left-wing “witch hunts” and “mob outrage” through their anonymous reporting channels. He describes a culture where any comments or behaviour that does not fall in line with the companies left-wing ideologies are not tolerated.

“If left unchecked,” Wacker wrote, “these outrage mobs will hunt down any conservative, any Christian, and any independent free thinker at Google who does not bow down to their agenda.”

Read More: The Daily Caller

Uncategorized

Tech Companies Apple, Twitter, Google, and Instagram Collude to Defeat Trump

There is no such thing as Pro-Trump free speech as Clinton corporate allies serve up a carefully curated view of the campaign

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Voters expect CNN and others to tilt American elections. What’s new is that social media and even video games are getting in on the act.

My dad always told me that conservative candidates have to work twice as hard as their liberal opponents to win elections because they’re fighting two opponents: the Democratic Party and the media.

The usual suspects from left-leaning major media outlets like The New York Times, MSNBC, CNN and even entertainment networks are doing everything in their power to ensure a Clinton victory. Look no further than to Wolf Blitzer mincing around and drinking wine at the Democratic convention, celebrating Hillary’s nomination. But the propaganda skewing this election runs much deeper than just the media: our iPhones, iPads, social media networks, Google and even video games are all in the tank for Hillary Clinton—and it’s chilling.

I began looking into how strong the bias and censorship runs in these forums after I did an interview on the pro-Trump podcast, MAGA. The show’s host, Mark Hammond, was disappointed Apple wouldn’t run his show without an “explicit” warning. Hammond’s podcast didn’t contain content that would be deemed explicit under Apple’s policy, and most other shows in the News & Politics category aren’t labeled as such.

On June 18, Hammond talked to Sandra, a representative from Apple. She explained that, since the description of his show is pro-Trump, his show is explicit in nature—because the subject matter is Donald Trump. So, an Apple employee concluded the Republican presidential candidate is explicit.

iTunes has dozens of podcasts discussing Osama Bin Laden and Adolf Hitler—none of which is marked explicit. I encouraged Hammond to contact Apple again, via email to their podcast support team. Within 48 hours he received a response from “Tim,” who informed Hammond that his podcast would be updated to “clean” within 24 hours.

Further digging on Apple revealed more evidence that the computer giant is feeding users pro-Hillary and anti-Trump propaganda.

Over the past year, Apple twice refused to publish a satirical Clinton Emailgate game, “Capitol HillAwry,” claiming it was “offensive” and “mean spirited” even though the game’s developer, John Matze, cited in communications with Apple that the game fits the standards of Apple’s own satire policy. Apple has, however, approved dozens of games poking fun at Donald Trump—including a game called “Dump Trump,” which depicts the GOP nominee as a giant turd.

On July 25, Breitbart exposed this blatant double standard and favoritism toward Clinton. A few days after the article was released, Apple caved and published Capitol HillAwry, 15 months after Matze’s first attempt to go live.

While it’s commendable that Apple resolved both situations, Trump supporters and conservative users should never have faced such biased treatment in the first place.

Around the same time I was a guest on MAGA, a friend complained to me about how biased his Apple News feed is against Trump. I set up an Apple News account on my iPhone.

First step: select an outlet. Fox News. Conservative. But my news feed? Liberal.

And if there are articles above the fold from more right-leaning sites? They paint Trump in a negative light and Hillary in a positive light. Of all the channels listed in the Apple News politics section, only two of the 16 arguably lean right—the rest are reliably left-wing.

This has, of course, been pointed out before, and anyone with an iPhone or iPad can go to Apple News to determine on his or her own if Apple is pushing leftist propaganda. Apple claims not to endorse candidates, but their actions suggest otherwise, and some of their executives—including CEO Tim Cook—actively support Clinton’s campaign. Buzzfeed recently obtained an invitation to a private $50,000-per-plate fundraiser Cook is hosting for Clinton with his Apple colleague, Lisa Jackson, at the end of this month.

Apple isn’t the only corporation doing Clinton’s bidding. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said Clinton made a deal with Google and that the tech giant is “directly engaged” in her campaign. It’s been widely reported Clinton hired Eric Schmidt—chairman of Alphabet, the parent company of Google—to set up a tech company called The Groundwork. Assange claims this was to ensure Clinton had the “engineering talent to win the election.” He also pointed out that many members of Clinton’s staff have worked for Google, and some of her former employees now work at Google.

So it should come as no surprise that there have been multiple reports accusing Google of manipulating searches to bury negative stories about Clinton. SourceFed details how Google alters its auto-complete functions to paint Clinton in a positive light.

For example, when you type “Hillary Clinton cri” into other engines like Yahoo! or Bing, the most popular autofills are “Hillary Clinton criminal charges” but in Google it’s “Hillary Clinton crime reform.” Google denies they changed their algorithm to help Clinton, and insists the company does not favor any candidate. They also claim their algorithms don’t show predicted queries that are offensive or disparaging.

But Google has gotten into hot water on multiple occasions for connecting Trump to Adolf Hitler. In June, when users searched “when Hitler was born” it generated the expected information on Hitler but also an image of Trump. In July, searches for Trump’s book, Crippled America, returned images of Adolf Hitler’s manifesto Mein Kempf. Google has since fixed both—but again, why do these issues always conveniently disparage Trump and help Clinton?

Twitter is another culprit. The company has gotten a lot of slack for banning conservatives and Trump supporters such as Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos and, most recently, rapper Azealia Banks after she came out in support of Trump. Twitter has provided vague answers as to why conservative voices have been banned while they’ve allowed other users to call for the killing of cops.

Just yesterday, Buzzfeed revealed that the social media giant’s top executive personally protected the President from seeing critical messages last year. “In 2015, then-Twitter CEO Dick Costolo secretly ordered employees to filter out abusive and hateful replies to President Barack Obama.”

This year, Twitter isn’t just banning conservatives—the platform also changed its algorithms to promote Clinton while giving negative exposure to Trump.

The founders of some of the most popular pro-Trump Twitter handles—including @USAforTrump2016 and @WeNeedTrump—insist Twitter is censoring their content. They’ve pointed out that Twitter changes trending hashtags associated with negative tweets about Clinton (which has been reported before). On August 4, shortly after the hashtag “HillaryAccomplishment” began trending, it was taken over by anti-Clinton users, who used it to mention Benghazi or Emailgate. Eric Spracklen, @USAforTrump2016 founder, noticed the hashtag was quickly changed—pluralized to #HillarysAccomplishments.

“They take away the hashtag that has negative tweets for Clinton and replace it with something that doesn’t so the average person doesn’t see what was really trending,” Spracklen said. “This happens every day.”

Jack Murphy, founder of @WeNeedTrump, says followers complain they often aren’t able to retweet his pro-Trump tweets.

Instagram has also banned accounts that depict Clinton in a negative light. In June, a conservative comedy group called Toughen Up America was banned with no warning or explanation. Last week, the popular Australian-based graffiti artist, Lushsux, was banned from Instagram after he posted photos of a bikini-clad Clinton mural he painted.

“I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist with a tin foil hat, but the timing of the Hillary Clinton mural posting and the deletion that ensued can’t just be a coincidence,” he told the Daily Mail Australia. Lushsux has posted photos of way more graphic murals, including a topless Melania Trump and a naked Donald with his package in full sight. These images did not trigger any censorship from Instagram.

Facebook has a long history of shutting down pages and blocking conservative users while promoting progressive voices like Black Lives Matter activists. The problem became so transparent that Sen. John Thune sent a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to explain their practices.

Facebook denies it discriminates against “any sources of ideological origin” and Zuckerberg did meet with conservatives in an attempt to resolve this issue. While some walked away from the meeting encouraged that Zuckerberg wants to repair their relationship, other prominent conservatives rejected the invitation as a publicity stunt. It should be noted that Facebook employees have donated more to Clinton than to any other candidate.

Many conservatives have come to expect this kind of thing from the mainstream media. CNN, which paints itself as the centrist antidote to right-leaning Fox News and left-leaning MSNBC, has actually been among the most disingenuous offenders during this cycle, fully earning its derisive nickname “Clinton News Network.” For example, as NewsBusters pointed out for just one day, “CNN set aside nearly half of its air time on Wednesday’s New Day to various recent controversies involving the Trump campaign — 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 18 seconds over three hours. By contrast, the program clearly didn’t think much of the Wall Street Journal‘s revelation that the Obama administration secretly airlifted $400 million in cash to Iran. John Berman gave a 27-second news brief to the report, but didn’t mention that the payment was sent on “an unmarked cargo plane.” New Day, therefore, devoted over 187 times more coverage to Trump than to the millions to Iran.”

Another favored CNN trick is to present a “balanced” panel comprised of two Republicans, two Democrats and a host, as they did on the afternoon of July 29, just to name one instance of a hundred. However, the Republican side always features one Trump supporter and one “Never Trump” Republican, with the host grilling the Trump Supporter—often a beleaguered Jeffrey Lord—in what amounts to a 4-on-1. So much for balance.

Right now, CNN has a story on its site called “Which Republicans oppose Trump and why?” There’s no corresponding story about Democrats who oppose Clinton, even though her underdog challenger in the primary lasted far longer and received far more votes than any of Trump’s Republican challengers.

No Republican willing to criticize Trump is too insignificant to merit coverage on CNN. When a minor Christie staffer announced on her personal Facebook that she’d be backing Hillary, she somehow merited a 1200 word story on CNN’s website and euphoric coverage on the air by Brooke Baldwin for “splitting with her party.”

So that’s the traditional media. But this new strand, where one cannot even search for alternative viewpoints amid technology companies who stand to benefit from the free-trade policies and eased immigration regulations of a Clinton presidence, represents a dangerous sea change. There’s absolutely no question the digital forums we use every day are censoring conservatives and favoring Clinton. You can’t simply scroll through photos on Instagram, look for a video game in the App Store or do a quick Google search without being fed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton propaganda.

These companies are engaging in activity that can quickly lead down a very dangerous slippery slope and this should concern all freedom-loving Americans—not just conservatives. If you don’t know when the election is, no problem! Just Google it and see for yourself what comes up…

Google
Google, before adjustments were made to the ‘when is the election’ search. (Screenshot: Google)
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.

Liz Crokin is an award-winning author, journalist, political pundit and an advocate for sex crime victims. Her work has appeared in the RedEye Edition of the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times: Splash, Townhall, Elite Daily, Marie Claire and Us Weekly. Follower her on Twitter and Instagram @LizCrokin.

UN FU__G BELIVEABLE

News

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCIES DATA MINING FROM INTERNET COMPANIES AS WELL AS PHONE DATA


It has now emerged the government has been mining data from the internet as well as phone data from Verizon. Leaked documents appear to show that a government spying program, called Prism, has been in place for years. Prism has allegedly allowed access to the the US and UK security services to the servers of the biggest internet companies: Google, Apple, Skype, Microsoft, YouTube, and Facebook.

However the internet companies in question have denied the claims. Google has issued a statement, “We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government – or any other government – direct access to our servers.

“Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centres. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

“Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

“We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.

“Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period.”

Facebook and Apple have also denied knowledge of the Prism program.

Read More: The Telegraph

Uncategorized

FBI SECRETLY SPYING ON GOOGLE USERS, COMPANY REVEALS

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The FBI used National Security Letters — a form of surveillance that privacy watchdogs call “frightening and invasive” — to surreptitiously seek information on Google users, the web giant has just revealed.

Google’s disclosure is “an unprecedented win for transparency,” privacy experts said Wednesday. But it’s just one small step forward. “Serious concerns and questions remain about the use of NSLs,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Dan Auerbach and Eva Galperin wrote. For one thing, the agency issued 16,511 National Security Letters in 2011, the last year for which data was available. But Google was gagged from saying just how many letters it received — leaving key questions unanswered. “The terrorists apparently would win if Google told you the exact number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked a secret process to extract data about the media giant’s customers,” Wired’s David Kravets wrote. He described the FBIs use of NSLs as a way of “secretly spying” on Googles customers.National Security Letters are a means for the FBI to obtain information on people from telecommunications companies, authorized by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act ECPA and expanded under the Patriot Act.

It lets the agency seek information on a subscriber to a wire or electronic communications service, although not things like the content of their emails or search queries, Google said.And thanks to secrecy constraints built into NSLs, companies that receive them usually aren’t even allowed to acknowledge the request for information. Citing such extreme secrecy, privacy experts have decried the use of these letters in the past.“Of all the dangerous government surveillance powers that were expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act, the National Security Letter NSL power … is one of the most frightening and invasive,” the EFF wrote. “These letters … allow the FBI to secretly demand data about ordinary American citizens private communications and Internet activity without any meaningful oversight or prior judicial review.”

Thanks to negotiations with the government, Google finally opened the smallest chink in the armor, allowing the search giant to reveal the fact that it had received these requests for data, as well as some general information about them.

“Visit our page on user data requests in the U.S. and you’ll see, in broad strokes, how many NSLs for user data Google receives, as well as the number of accounts in question,” Richard Salgado, Google’s legal director of law enforcement and information security, wrote in a Tuesday blog post.A new table posted to Google’s Transparency Report site outlines the details; it tabulates how many requests for information the company has received over each of the past four years: some undisclosed number between 0 and 999.

With those NSLs, the FBI sought information on somewhere between 1,000 and 1,999 users/accounts.“People don’t always use our services for good, and it’s important that law enforcement be able to investigate illegal activity,” Salgado wrote.

No other technology company presently disclose such basic information about government requests, experts noted.

more at FBI secretly spying on Google users, company reveals | Fox News.

News

The Interesting World of Hi-Tech Patents

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Microsoft have just filed for a patent that could potentially turn their best selling X-Box accessory, Kinect, into Big Brother.  Microsoft have developed software that can detect the number of people in the room partaking of the game or movie.  If the number exceeds that allowed by the license, then your x-box reports you to Microsoft and action taken.  To quote Microsoft, “The users consuming the content on a display device are monitored so that if the number of user-views licensed is exceeded, remedial action may be taken.”

Apple also filed for a patent in September for “Apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device”. This means they would be able to remotely disable mobiles or tablets over a particular area.

Also Google have a number of patents in the area of facial recognition.  Eric Schmidt has publicly admitted the company has held back from applying some of their technology, as it “crosses the line of creepy”.

As we share more and more of our personal information online, and as we become more comfortable with the types of surveillance that are common, is it only a matter of time before we begin to accept these technologies as part of every day life? We are already comfortable with Google, Facebook, Twitter etc., compiling huge files of information about our lives – at which point do we say enough? And do we want governments having control of these types of technology?

News

Google threatens to stop linking to French media sites – INTERNET – FRANCE 24

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Internet giant Google has threatened to stop linking to French media sites to protest against a proposed French law that would force search engines to pay for content, sparking an angry reaction from the Socialist government in return. Internet giant Google has warned it would exclude French media sites from its search results if France adopts a law forcing search engines to pay for content, in the latest confrontation with European governments.

A letter sent by Google to several French ministerial offices this month said it “cannot accept” such a move and the company “as a consequence would be required to no longer reference French sites,” according to a copy obtained by AFP.

The French new Socialist government, which is open to helping struggling media companies, warned Google that it should not threaten democratic governments. Google said a law which would require it to make payments to media sites for displaying links to their content, would “threaten Googles very existence”.

It also noted that Google “redirects four billion clicks per month towards the Internet pages” of French media. However, the media have had difficulty benefitting from the Google traffic, as online readers resist paying for access when so much content is free on the Internet.  Newspapers around the world have seen their bottom line come under pressure, as their print advertising revenues slide with more people reading news online.

Google takes in tens of billions of dollars annually as companies seek to advertise their wares as Internet users search for content.  Leading French newspaper publishers last month called on the government to adopt a law imposing a settlement in the long-running dispute with Google, forcing it and other search engines to share some of the advertising revenue from user searches for news contained on media websites.  Their demand follows the German government approval in August of draft legislation that would force search engines to pay commissions to German media websites.

via Google threatens to stop linking to French media sites – INTERNET – FRANCE 24.

News

Muslims protest ‘age of mockery’ as thousands descend on Google HQ – Telegraph

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Muslims Protest outside Google HQ LondonMuslims protest ‘age of mockery’ as thousands descend on Google HQ – Telegraph.

Muslim’s from across the United Kingdom have descended on London to protest outside the British Head Quarters of Google.

The protesters are demanding Google remove the anti-Muslim movie, “The Innocence of Muslims”, off YouTube. The organiser of the rally, Masound Alam has warned of further protests outside Google offices world wide until the movie is banned, adding “This is not freedom of expression, there is a limit for that. This insult of the Prophet will not be allowed.”

Protests held up banners saying “Freedom of Speech = Hatred to Muslims?”, and are arguing that we are in an “Age of Mockery”.

One of the speakers, Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui, told The Daily Telegraph: “Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorised 1.6 billion people.

“Organisations like Google are key players and have to take responsibility for civility. You can’t just say it doesn’t matter that it’s freedom of speech. It’s anarchy.”

YouTube have responded saying the video does not violate any of their terms of usage, and will therefore stay on their site. What is offensive to one person, or in one country is not in another.

 

News

Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay form lobbying group

A new lobbying group is being formed according to the Washington Post today.

Google, Facebook, Amazon and eBay will make up the group which will be called The Internet Association and as stated by them, will be “the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of Americas leading Internet companies and their global community of users.”

It will be led by Michael Beckerman who is the former deputy staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and former advisor to United States Representative, Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican.

See Report: Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay form lobbying group – Pulse of the Bay – The Bay Citizen.