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The Pentagon and the Internet

The U.S. military operates 5,000 websites through its Defense Media Activity branch. Nafeez Ahmed reported in Motherboard on October 30, 2018, that “a series of research projects, patent filings, and policy changes indicate that the Pentagon wants to use social media surveillance to quell domestic insurrection and rebellion….The United States government is accelerating efforts to monitor social media to preempt major anti-government protests in the US, according to scientific research, official government documents, and patent filings reviewed by Motherboard. The social media posts of American citizens who don’t like President Donald Trump are the focus of the latest US military-funded research. The research, funded by the US Army and co-authored by a researcher based at the West Point Military Academy, is part of a wider effort by the Trump administration to consolidate the US military’s role and influence on domestic intelligence.”

The Pentagon has spent millions of dollars finding patterns in posts across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and beyond to enable the prediction of major events. Ahmed further reports that “a Pentagon-funded report titled ‘Social Network Structure as a Predictor of Social Behavior: The Case of Protest in the 2016 US Presidential Election’ was funded by the US Army Research Laboratory (ARL), which is part of the US Army’s Research Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM).”

Ahmed continues: “The tool was originally developed under the Obama administration back in 2011 by the US Army Research Laboratory and US Defense Threat Reduction Agency, in partnership with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Illinois, IBM, and Caterva (a social marketing company that in 2013 was folded into a subsidiary of giant US government IT contractor CSC). Past papers associated with the project show that the tool has been largely tested in foreign theaters like Haiti, Egypt, and Syria.

“The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is part of the ARL Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance (NS CTA), a consortium of three industrial research labs and 14 universities which receives multi-million-dollar support from the US Army Research Laboratory. Much of that research has been funded by the US government’s spy research organization, IARPA—the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Government National Business Center.”

To show the extent of the collaboration between the Pentagon, universities and corporations, HRL, a main company involved in this domestic spying, is jointly owned by General Motors and Boeing.

The same technology being used against people in the U.S. was developed to interfere in the use of social media during the lead-up to and during elections of other countries, which the U.S. has been doing for decades.

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Why is Cable/Internet So Damn High?!

By Enigma E

My grandmother is on a fixed income and her Cox bill recently shot up from $100 a month to $190 once her one year promo package ended. That was for the second slowest internet and the basic cable channel package. I have to play the same charade with Cox every time the bill goes up. I call them with intentions to cancel because the bill is so expensive, then they send me to the non-retention department where they then “magically” find a way to lower the bill. This is a sinister business practice, where they take advantage of folks who don’t have the time/patience or the negotiating skills to reach a compromise with the money hungry company.

We have where the City Council is supposed to regulate these companies via the “Utility, Cable, Telecommunications and Technology Committee”, yet they allow them to be a monopoly ripping us off. They don’t really regulate anything; if they did, we would have a higher quality of service at a much lower cost. Much like many other politicians, the utility committee works on behalf of big business instead of the working class people of New Orleans.

Cox offers the slowest internet service for low-income students at a reduced rate. This is merely a tease for the working class families that receive this service because the tier of internet service does not accomplish all that you need in an efficient manner, such as viewing videos for homework help, being able to live chat with someone when dealing with a billing issue, job training or health care assistance.

This problem isn’t unique to just New Orleans either. A Center for Public Integrity analysis of internet prices in five US cities and five comparable French cities found that prices in the US were as much as 3.5 times higher than those in France for similar service. The analysis shows that consumers in France have a choice between a far greater number of providers — seven on average — than those in the US, where most residents can get service from no more than two companies.

So, we as the working class people in this city, state and country must demand that the utility commission boards tell Cox they will lose their franchise unless they roll back the cost. Public pressure can force laws that favor the vast majority of the people and not the greedy pockets of a select few. #AllPowerToThePeople