The CIA’s ‘Pokémon Go’ App is Doing What the Patriot Act Can’t

by James Corbett TheInternationalForecaster.com 07/13/2016

Privacy advocates (that’s establishment speak for “normal human beings”) celebrated earlier this week as the House rejected yet another attempt to expand the Patriot Act’s snooping provisions. House Resolution 5606, better known by its Orwellian name, the “Anti-terrorism Information Sharing is Strength Act,” would have allowed Big Brother to access Americans’ financial information based on what the government deems to be “suspicious activity.” Given that the DHS has labeled such things as using binoculars, paying with cash, or even “appearing normal” as “possible terrorist activity” in the past (thus making pretty much every human being a possible terrorist), everyone can breathe a sigh of relief that the bill failed.

But don’t breathe that sigh too deeply, because exactly as that threat to privacy was being extinguished, another one was rising to take its place. It goes by the name of “Pokémon Go” and it is a so-called “augmented reality” game that allows users to capture, train and battle virtual Pokémon by chasing them around through real world environments with your smart phone.

Full disclosure: Although I live in the land of anime and video games, I have never played any Pokémon games, watched any of the shows, read any of the comics or bought any of the toys associated with the franchise. I don’t know anything about it except for the name of that ubiquitous yellow Pikachu character. So if you are an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy like me, you may be surprised to learn that the “Pokémon Go” app, launched just one week ago, is the hottest thing on the planet right now.

To put into perspective just how popular this game is, it topped the App Store’s “Top Grossing” category within 24 hours of its release. Now, just one week out, it has been downloaded an estimated 7.5 million times in the US alone and is generating an estimated $1.6 million a day for Nintendo. But here’s the truly mind-boggling part: In just the first two trading days after the game’s release, Nintendo’s market value rose a staggering $7.5 billion. That’s right, folks, this is not merely a game, it is a phenomenon.

For those unfamiliar with “augmented reality” gaming, it’s a type of game where one tracks virtual characters or objects that appear on their smart phones through real world environments. The Pokémon Go game is prompting scores of people out into the streets to go chasing for wild Pokémon to capture.

It is also prompting heists, violence, hoaxes and hysteria.

On the more innocuous side, some restaurants and businesses are already trying to cash in on their proximity to spots with a lot of in-game activity. On the less innocuous side, robbers are now using “Lures” (which attract Pokémon to a certain spot) to lure gamers in to be mugged. One 19-year-old hunting for water Pokémon in a rural river ended up uncovering a dead body, one IT executive got fired from his job after an online Facebook tirade inspired by frustration at the game, and one YouTuber who was live streaming the game while out Ubering allegedly saw someone get murdered right in front of him…but that turned out to be a hoax.

If you’re wondering what’s going on here, you’re not the only one. It seems the internet is flipping its collective lid over this app as the line between gaming and the real world gets blurrier. But perhaps all of this pales in comparison to the game’s terms and conditions.

Firstly, the app requires an excessive amount of permissions on a user’s device, including the ability to read your contacts, find accounts on your device, and access your camera. The app even requires full access to a user’s Google account, which it can then use to read your emails, send emails from your account, browse your Google Drive documents and photos, etc. But apparently that’s just “a mistake” and will be “corrected soon.”

Secondly, the game’s privacy policy contains such gems as: “We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties.” What could go wrong?

But wait, it gets worse!

The maker of the app? Niantic Labs. Never heard of them? That’s because until last year they were an internal start-up of none other than Google, the NSA-linked Big Brother company. Even now Google remains one of Niantic’s major backers. Niantic was founded by John Hanke, who also founded Keyhole, Inc., the mapping company which was created with seed money from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm, and which was eventually rolled into Google Maps.

So yes, the Pokémon game currently taking the internet by storm (and scooping up all their data, including activities, movements and communications) was created by a CIA-linked businessman who gestated his company at Google.

Feeling safe yet?

As it turns out, the big, bad Big Brother Spies of the NSA and the DHS and the CIA don’t really need their Patriot Act powers, after all. All the powers-that-shouldn’t-be need to do is create a fun, shiny trinket for the people to play with and they will literally pay for their own surveillance.

Welcome to the “Matrix Economy,” where people pay to spy on themselves…and have fun doing it!

Huxley would be proud.                       CorbettReport

Computer scientists have developed a device using wifi that can map a nearby room in 3D while scanning for human bodies.

Mac Slavo
October 29th, 2015

The implications for privacy under a big brother police state are obvious.
Researchers at MIT have come up with a way to use WiFi signals to see behind walls, and map a room in 3-D. By reflecting the signal, it can also locate the movements of people or objects in the room. The Daily Mail reports:

Using a wireless transmitter fitted behind a wall, computer scientists have developed a device that can map a nearby room in 3D while scanning for human bodies.
Using the signals that bounce and reflect off these people, the device creates an accurate silhouette and can even use this silhouette to identify who that person is.
The device is called RF Capture and it was developed by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL). 
The RF Capture device transmits wireless signals that travel through a wall and reflect off a person’s body back to the device.
[…]
Since only a small number of body parts reflect the signal back at any given point in time, the device monitors how these reflections vary as someone moves and walks.

Not even your four walls and a roof are to be private if this technology is used for surveillance purposes. And make no mistake, it will be. There are clearly privacy implications to this, but chances are that objections will be kept to a dull roar, with so many other tracking and surveillance activities descending upon society. There are many other related and overlapping technologies, like the radar sweep devices some police are now using to look through walls and locate suspects before going inside. However, the use of WiFi to achieve this make it even easier.
As SHTF previously reported, a new application of WiFi known as Wi-Vi could take surveillance to the next level:

MIT tech geeks have found a way to pinpoint location and track complex movement patterns with far greater accuracy – and what’s more, it can track people’s steps through walls, and the individuals or groups don’t even need to carry a cell phone! MIT professor Dina Katabi and graduate student Fadel Adib:

“Show that Wi-Fi can also extend our senses, enabling us to see moving objects through walls and behind closed doors. In particular, we can use such signals to identify the number of people in a closed room and their relative locations. We can also identify simple gestures made behind a wall, and combine a sequence of gestures to communicate messages to a wireless receiver without carrying any transmitting device. […] It shows how one can track a human by treating the motion of a human body as an antenna array and tracking the resulting RF beam.

The system is interested furthering its control, and fishing for pretexts to cite infractions, collect revenue and play nanny over the lives of the population.
Judging from the comments, many people are at least aware of this. Here are just a few:

BadSull: “The government already has it.”
Greg: “Drones, smart tvs watching you, laptops listening to you, traffic lights tracking your last 10,000 locations and now we look through walls. Gonna have to spend a lot more resources on mental health in the future.”

James Rustles: “So, how do you defeat it to maintain your privacy? That’s the question that needs to be asked.”

JaneDoeRKBA: “Mylar faced foam house insulation , Mylar lined draperies, Mylar under a metal roof….all should work in largely defeating this technology.”

Jeffrey S.Gee: “Using a faraday cage!”

James OD: “For a multitude of reasons, it’s starting to seem like a good idea to add a layer of aluminum foil under the drywall when building a house. What’s the world coming to when the disheveled guy living out of the shopping cart under a bridge starts to make sense?”

Technology is changing the tone of reference to tin foil from one of ridicule to one of acknowledgement that these forms of spying are real science, and applicable to the methods used by various agencies and organizations who are investigating, instigating or intimidating.
Many are taking notice of the extreme intrusion the technology represents.
Hanni Fakhoury, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation said “Your location is something that’s worthy of privacy. We know that, even within your house, where you go can reveal a lot about yourself.”
Is there anywhere left just to be left alone?
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