Congress Gets Silicon Valley Cartel To Admit That They Rig Elections

By Jay Warner

Google, Twitter, Facebook and Congress had it out in Washington today. What the world heard is that these companies have built hundreds of tools that actually do affect billions of people.

We learned that Russian lobbyists only spent a few hundred thousand dollars buying ads but that the DNC and Hillary Clinton spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying ads and “media impressions” from them in order to manipulate public perceptions.

The Silicon Valley companies were cagey and evasive.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) took aim at Facebook.

“How did Facebook, which prides itself on being able to process billions of data points and instantly transform them into personal connections for its user[s] somehow not make the connection that electoral ads — paid for in rubles — were coming from Russia?" he said. "Those are two data points: American political ads and Russian money, rubles. How could you not connect those two dots?”

Franken, in his inquiry, exposed the fact that the Silicon Valley companies know exactly what all of of their data is doing but they hide the facts for the sake of profiteering.

The question that Google, Twitter, Facebook and Silicon Valley must now answer is:

“How much did Hillary Clinton, Elon Musk, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s DNC and Barack Obama pay you each to rig election news and public perceptions?”

Facebook also wasn’t willing to offer much in the form of a definitive answer when Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) asked the company if it felt like content on its platform had an effect on the election. “In an election where a total of about 115,000 votes would have changed the outcome, can you say that the false and misleading propaganda people saw on your Facebook didn’t have an impact on the election?” Hirono asked. Stretch dodged in response. “We’re not well-positioned to judge why any one person or an entire electorate voted as it did,” he said, purposefully avoiding answering the question.

Facebook won’t say no to accepting election-related foreign money said Facebook’s executive. Facebook admitted that it can be bought by anybody, anywhere.

Not a single one of the three tech giants would commit to supporting Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.)’s Honest Ads Act, which would require disclosures about political advertising on their platforms

By Brian Fung at the same time, exposed that Google opens, reads and studies every single document you post on Google Docs, no matter how personal or confidential it is.

Imagine you're working on a Google Doc when, seemingly out of nowhere, your ability to edit the online file gets revoked. What you see instead is an error message indicating that you've violated Google's terms of service.

For anyone who stores work in the cloud, suddenly being unable to access your data — especially due to a terms of service violation — may sound scary. And it's really happening to some people, according to reports on Twitter. Rachael Bale, a wildlife crime reporter for National Geographic, said Tuesday that a draft of her story was "frozen" by Google.

Has anyone had @googledocs lock you out of a doc before? My draft of a story about wildlife crime was just frozen for violating their TOS.

— Rachael Bale (@Rachael_Bale) October 31, 2017

Others have reported similar errors.

Tfw your finalizing a piece on E. Europe post-socialist parties in Google Drive and Google removes it because it's in violation of its ToS??

— Bhaskar Sunkara (@sunraysunray) October 31, 2017

In response to some of these reports, a Google employee tweeted that the team handling Google Docs was looking into the matter. Later Tuesday, Google said in a statement that it had "made a code push that incorrectly flagged a small percentage of Google Docs as abusive, which caused those documents to be automatically blocked. A fix is in place and all users should have full access to their docs."

Although the error appeared to be a technical glitch, the fact that Google is capable of identifying "bad" Google Docs at all is a reminder: Much of what you upload, receive or type to Google is monitored. While many people may be aware that Gmail scans your emails — for instance, so that its smart-reply feature can figure out what responses to suggest — this policy extends to other Google products, too.

"Our automated systems analyze your content to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, and spam and malware detection," reads the terms of service for Google Drive, the suite of productivity tools of which Google Docs is a part. "Google’s Privacy Policy explains how we treat your personal data and protect your privacy when you use Google Drive."

If you visit Google's privacy policy, you'll find that Google is up front there, too, about the data it collects.

"We collect information about the services that you use and how you use them, like when you watch a video on YouTube, visit a website that uses our advertising services, or view and interact with our ads and content," it says.

What does it mean when Google says "collect information"? This page says more:

"This includes information like your usage data and preferences, Gmail messages, G+ profile, photos, videos, browsing history, map searches, docs, or other Google-hosted content. Our automated systems analyze this information as it is sent and received and when it is stored."

Google explicitly refers to docs — albeit in a lower-case fashion — as an example of the type of content from which Google extracts information. I've asked Google for clarification on whether they actually read the contents of a person's Google Docs and will update if I get a response.

"This kind of monitoring is creepy," Bale tweeted. Google, clearly, loves to spy on the voters.

Could Google, Facebook and Twitter be any bigger liars?

After tech giants testified before Congress on Tuesday, Americans should realize the richest and most powerful U.S. companies wield power and influence in a way not seen since the railroad tycoons and John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Their ability to affect society and crush any potential competitors is unchallenged.

Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple have a combined market value of $2.6 trillion, which is larger than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. Executives and employees of those companies are also very large donors to the Democrat Party and left-wing causes. They all have vocal Democrats at the helm.

Today’s tech companies are even more powerful than their historical monopoly predecessors because of one key component: data. The information derived from our data is now king in everything from selling a product to shaping the news to—as we are now seeing—electing a president.

The Left is well aware of this power. After losing to President Trump, they are determined to shut down conservatives and not lose again.

Google just announced it would partner with the George Soros-backed Poynter Institute to provide “fact-checking” for its search functions. In other words, Google and Soros (by proxy) will determine what is factual and whether it will appear in search results. This suppression of views is occurring even as Google is being sued by conservative radio host Dennis Prager over censorship of his Prager University educational videos.

In other not-fake news:

Apple recently removed a pro-life prayer app from its App Store after left-wing bloggers complained about it.
Amazon admitted to taking down negative reviews of Hillary Clinton’s book.
Former Facebook employees admitted they were instructed to remove positive news stories that were trending about conservatives to reduce their reach.

And let’s not forget Twitter, which has now openly set itself up as the arbiter of acceptable speech. Twitter recently removed U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s video announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Senate because it expressed her pro-life position. After considerable backlash, Twitter relented and reinstated the Tennessee Republican’s ad.

These companies are so big and powerful that they have no fear of blatantly censoring conservative speech—they will even censor Blackburn, who chairs the communications and technology subcommittee in the House of Representatives! Just imagine how they can use opaque computer algorithms and terabytes of data to exploit the views of the average person.

It is important to recognize that these companies can do this because they have special protections not afforded other industries. In 1996, to spur growth during the early years of the Internet, Congress passed Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act to protect “interactive computer services” from lawsuits based on what users say or do on their systems. Section 230 also immunizes Internet companies from liability for removing content they deem “objectionable,” even if it is constitutionally protected content.

With the protections of Section 230 of the Community Decency Act, Silicon Valley executives can undermine the First Amendment rights of all Americans with no accountability.

Helping foster the growth and economic development of the Internet with particular—and extraordinary—legal protections might have made sense in the 1990s. In 2017, however, extraordinarily wealthy and powerful companies are abusing those particular provisions. Congress never intended to give a handful of Silicon Valley executives the keys to the First Amendment when it adopted Section 230.

Technology companies cannot simultaneously claim special legal status and pose as speech arbiters censoring conservative views. They are run by some of the most vocal left-wing executives that are actively pushing their ideology on the country. Allowing these same companies to silence opposing views is dangerous.

The most immediate legislative solution would be to remove the legal protections of Section 230 should an “interactive computer service” be found to practice viewpoint discrimination. Opening these companies to full legal liability for censorship is essential to ensure Americans keep free speech rights.

It is time for Congress to act to protect the First Amendment and the values fundamental to the republic.

If you've been paying attention the last week or so there's been some pretty convincingHookTube real world examples of facebook's atrocious data mining activities. The way that they may be able to use this data has is raising some serious red flags for me and I think it warrants an investigation of massive proportions.

It's pretty clear that at some point along the assembly line real people are coming in contact with raw data. Who specifically has access to this data and to what extent are they personally allowed to analyze it? What makes them qualified to handle it? Are they able to access it on demand? Do advertisers have access to raw data or just compiled statistics? Are they being compiled by people or computers? Are these people's financials being monitored for compliance with federal law?

If real people do have access to data on demand, is access being administered through a secure facility? aka Can a fresh college grad walk out with a thumb drive full of intel to the highest bidder?

Picture this: Mr. ______ - CEO of [insert dod contractor] might be smart enough not to have facebook on his phone but his daughter might not be. Visitors to his home might not be.

Depending on the volume of an individuals voice, facebook could have access to some seriously sensitive information. If someone was able to analyze enough of the data that they fully admit to gathering, and they learned information that they believed to be sensitive in nature what happens? Does it go in some vault at the bottom of silicon valley or was our national security just breached?

Tech Giants Are Biggest Threat Facing Trump Supporters