The World Economic Forum is getting some attention. I knew elites had their inner-sanctum understanding that human/AI existence is coming at us fast - they're getting ready - they're shaping it. I didn't realize they were quite so bold about verbalizing it.

This is a critical juncture in human development - i agree - the interface era between humans and technology - but we can't have that process run by the same unaccountable global organizations that brought us, then covered up Covid.

When i was watching this video it took me a moment to work out whether the guy was warning us of this dangerous future - or embracing it. It's the latter.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1495805626836201473

I didn't even know this was happening in Aus until i read this article

ABC: Consumer group CHOICE is referring Kmart, Bunnings and The Good Guys to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to investigate potential breaches of the Privacy Act over their use of facial recognition technology.

Kate Bower, CHOICE: Facial recognition (by retailers) is completely inappropriate and unnecessary. .. The technology is capturing highly personal data from customers, including infants and children

To make matters worse, we found 76 per cent of Australians aren't aware that retailers are capturing their unique facial features in this way.

Using facial recognition technology in this way is similar to Kmart, Bunnings or The Good Guys collecting your fingerprints or DNA every time you shop. Businesses using invasive technologies to capture their customers' sensitive biometric information is unethical and is a sure way to erode consumer trust.

There's a tendency to think that the social credit system & invasive biometric surveillance is only something done by totalitarian regimes such as the CCP in China. The fact is it's happening everywhere.

Simon McDowell, Bunnings' CEO: (Facial recognition) is used to identify persons of interest who have previously been involved in incidents of concern in our stores.

This technology is an important measure that helps us to maintain a safe and secure environment for our team and customers.

So creepy! It's no coincidence that the three biggest offenders, Bunnings (hardware), K-mart, and Good Guys (electronic appliances) all have the vast majority of their products manufactured in China.

Shows once again that many powerful corporations, political parties, health/science/drug experts have way more in common with the CCP's world-view than they do with traditional democratic notions of human rights/privacy. In fact they seen the individual's rights as their natural enemy.

This is creepy indeed. And it seems to be silently working its way into our lives.

This whole explosion in surveillance seems to have started with 9/11. We lost most all our rights to privacy after that (at least in public places), and that's just what we experience. Imagine what's going on behind the scenes.

These big shifts seem to follow big negative events. So, 9/11 brought the surveillance state to the west along with an explosion in relevant technologies (i.e., facial recognition). 2008, for which not a single person went to prison, brought us Bitcoin.

We're on the cusp of another socio-economic earthquake that has the potential to increase war and public unrest. I'm wondering what will come out of it besides the predictable human suffering. Will the great recession we're heading into lead to central bank digital currencies in the west, such as China is now testing? As I've pointed out before, such a currency would be the killer app of surveillance and control.

One of Aus's biggest telcos has been hacked - like totally - every personal detail of every customer, past & present, has been taken.

Optus: Information which may have been exposed includes customers’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and, for a subset of customers, addresses, ID document numbers such as driver’s licence or passport numbers.

Great. That's everything. Scammers can/will use that info to prey on those people - especially the elderly.

Another example of a big corporate scraping all your data - then leaking it. Whoops, sorry. But at least we made record profits!

As usual, the data hack was conducted with total impunity. No word of who took it - no hope of ever tracking them down.

Luckily Optus gave some advice on what exposed customers should do:

Ms Rickard said there a number of things people can do to protect themselves if they are concerned their personal details may have been exposed.

Simple steps like enabling two-factor authentication on all banking and regularly checking your accounts to see if any unknown purchases have been made can help keep your details safe.

How does 'two-factor authentication' help? Hand over more data to be hacked? They've already got five factor identification anyway.

The other thing you can do to 'protect yourself' is keep checking you bank account to see if you've been robbed! We won't be able to stop that or anything, coz we lost all your data, but at least you will know how much you've had stolen.

I get maybe 3-4 emails a year from different entities that have my personal info and have been hacked. And it's always, "Sorry! Gee! We'll do better!"

There are small things we can do. I started using https://duckduckgo.com/email/ recently, stuff like that. But ultimately the hackers will get your information.

I get maybe 3-4 emails a year from different entities that have my personal info and have been hacked. And it's always, "Sorry! Gee! We'll do better!"

Keep being reminded of this Roy Orbison classic - could be Optus's new theme song:

Anything you want - you got it - anything at all ....

https://youtu.be/lvR1YgT7QYs?t=42

Roy Orbison is great. I hated him as a teen and thought he was so square. They'd play these commercials in the early 70's selling Orbison hits on TV. He wasn't cool like Aerosmith and Led Zepplin. It was only later in life that I realized how skilled he was. His last album, King of Hearts, was outstanding, maybe his best.

It got me paying attention to bands who's first or last albums really stood out, and there are many. Another last album standout is John Prine's last album Tree of Forgiveness. It's a bit heavy on the Christian references for my tastes, but if anybody can get away with that and still appeal to a mass audience it's John Prine.

I mean, you only have to look at the history of his music to realize he's a cool person.

Here's a timely song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVhA01J0Zsg

9 News: The group allegedly responsible for Medibank's "cyber incident" has threatened to sell customer data unless the insurance company pays a ransom.

Medibank: This is a new development and Medibank understands this news will cause concerns for customers and the protection of their data remains our priority. Medibank is working urgently to establish if the claim is true, although based on our ongoing forensic investigation we are treating the matter seriously at this time.

Exactly like THE Science - deny it black n blue, then when you can't deny it a second longer, say: ongoing investigations have revealed a new development ...

David Koczkar, CEO:
I apologise and understand this latest distressing update will concern our customers. Our team has been working around the clock since we first discovered the unusual activity on our systems, and we will not stop doing that now. We will continue to take decisive action to protect Medibank customers, our people and other stakeholders.

The thing about data-leaks is it's a bit late for decisive action after it's happened. You can be as decisive as you like, you're not get that data toothpaste back in the tube.

We have always said that we will prioritise responding to this matter as transparently as possible.

Always saying & doing are two different things, apparently:

9 News: Medibank announced last week it had been hit by a "cyber incident" but reassured customers their personal data remained safe. No such reassurance was provided by the health insurer to customers today.

This is the sort of event that is going to be used as justification for a move to national digital currencies which will give complete control of all commerce and personal ability to acquire goods and services to the government.

It's coming and sooner than we think. The currency markets right now are in disarray. Look at the Yen, Pound, Euro. The USD is increasing for no reason at all seeing as it's been printed to death. It's the reserve currency, so it's gaining, but what that means is that all the major currencies are losing worth.

And the USD is hopeless. So WTF is going to happen? It's all a house of cards built on debt that's just passed around and built upon. It's very frightening to me. Clearly, these currencies are worthless. So what's going to happen?

I think they're going to do one of two things, or maybe both.

Either a move to national digital currencies, or war. Somehow, they have to wipe the books clean. They have to recreate the money system because it's horribly broken and they can't hide it much longer by fucking around with interest rates one day and printing money the next.

We're in for some heavy shit.

Any advice, financial or otherwise, for us common-folk as to what we can do to prepare for this eventuation?

9 News: The cyber attack on Medibank is worse than first thought, with health records and potentially credit card details exposed just a month after the Optus data breach.

While almost four million Medibank customers could be impacted. .. (A) cyber security investigator said he's not surprised by the targeted cyber attack.

Ahmed Khanji, expert: Cyber attacks are becoming the new normal

Fuck off with your New Normal. All this personal data scrapped up - that's going out there for criminals to use against you - there's no accountability, nothing that can be dome - it's due to the new normal? Don't remember reading that clause in user-agreement

Healthcare is one of the highest targeted industries by cyber criminals. Patient information is some of the most sensitive and private information available. They want to sell data that is valuable.

Yeah we all get that, but what are you doing to stop it? I can't think of a single case in Aus - or anywhere - where a major-data hacker has ever been charged.

The Optus story dropped off - the unsaid assumption is that they paid-up - guess Medibank will too - new normal-style, but the data is all still out there.

Any advice, financial or otherwise, for us common-folk as to what we can do to prepare for this eventuation?

Well, I'm not sure how to prepare, but here's a taste of what to prepare for. I haven't watched the entire video (second link) and the source for the first link looks less than objective, but if this IMF fellow said what the article says he said, well, then he said it. (It's early here.)

From:
IMF Chief says Central Bank Digital Currency should be used alongside Social Credit System to control what people can and cannot buy

The live stream went under the radar for many but our buddy Tim Hinchliffe over at The Sociable kept an eye on what was going on. Tim posted a video of Bi Li, the Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, explaining how CDBSs can be programmed.

He said: “The smart contract would allow targeted policy functions, like welfare payments, consumption coupons, food stamps, etc.”

“With CBDCs, we can precisely control what people can and can’t own. Also, what kind of use this money can be programmed for, like food only.” – Bi Li

The key word he used was programmability.

He went on to say that: “CBDCs can’t solve every financial inclusion challenge, but they can work together with financial literacy and digital literacy.”

So, a CBDC would work with other policies like digital identities and digital wallets.

This goes hand in glove with what the World Bank Group described in November 2021. “Digital identity verification is essential to the operation of CBDCs, particularly in cross-border transactions. “

“Tradable digital assets must be tied to a digital identity system, which in turn should be tied to an automatic KYC and AML/CFT verification system.“

“This is a foundational step to the potential use of CBDCs, and emerging developments in regulatory and compliance technology may benefit central banks’ experiments in the digital currency space.”

Bo li described a CDBC as an eco-system, and that the data it would produce would be very valuable to third parties.

When questioned on how this transactional data could be used, Bo Li explained: “I can give you one example in China, those transaction data can be utilised by service providers in credit underwriting.”

Underwriting is the process by which the lender decides whether an applicant is creditworthy and should receive a loan.

“Those transaction data in terms of how many coffees I drink every day, where I buy coffee, do I use UBER every day and what kind of working hours I have.”

“Those non-traditional data can be very useful for financial service providers to give me a credit score and based on that credit score the service providers can give me a credit line without any face-to-face due diligence.”

He continues to say that this “will create value in addition to finance and that data can be very profitable, and that’s the value we are talking about to make it attractive to private sector players to join this eco system.”

Here's the video:

Central Bank Digital Currencies for Financial Inclusion: Risks and Rewards

After witnessing WHO's disgraceful performance over Covid - for which they were utterly unaccountable - I'm done with globalist bodies.

These bodies:

• are power sucking black-holes
  
• are funded by the public
  
• are not democratic
  
• are controlled by the CCP (or other MOU entities)
  
• don't benefit me in any way whatsoever
  
• don't allow me to participate/influence in any way whatsoever
  
• operate under a moral-free zone of opaqueness
  
• have no accountability mechanism
  

Why on earth would i want to hand that lot of organized criminals access to my spending data?

Another day, another data leak - it's so commonplace that this one didn't even make the Aus news cycle.
Oct 27 (Reuters) - Australian Clinical Labs (ACL.AX) said on Thursday its Medlab Pathology business suffered a data breach that affected health records and credit card information of about 223,000 patients and staff.

This is the latest in a series of hacks to rock corporate Australia, after the country's biggest health insurer Medibank (MPL.AX) and No. 2 telco Optus (STEL.SI) were also hit by breaches that compromised the data of millions of customers

ACL: To date, there is no evidence of misuse of any of the information or any demand made of Medlab or ACL.

Oh, thank God. Guess the hackers were just doing it for fun! Another classic use of the no evidence line by THE Science. What they really mean is that we refuse to look at/accept the evidence - coz we know it's going to be bad for us.

As usual, there has been no head-way, or even mention, of holding anyone to account. In Aus, they don't want to know. What if it's China? God forbid we risk saying anything to upset our biggest trading partner ... No, better to just keep our heads, and everyone else's heads in the sand, and let em have it. It's the new normal ...

You can't really get more sensitive information than people's health records - now it's all flowing out there with total impunity for the those responsible for keeping it safe as well as for those who hack it.

Didn't hear anything about Optus not paying - which means they did - but Medibank Private has taken a different path. They're publicly refusing to negotiate with criminals - a riff on the old refusing to negotiate with terrorists.

David Koczkar, CEO:  We believe there is only a limited chance paying a ransom would ensure the return of our customers' data and prevent it from being published.

In fact, paying could have the opposite effect and encourage the criminal to directly extort our customers, and there is a strong chance that paying puts more people in harm's way by making Australia a bigger target.

It is for these reasons we have decided we will not pay a ransom for this event.

Great - we didn't keep you safe - but don't worry, now we're keeping more people out of harm's way!

Endorsed by Albo, no less: The company has followed the guidelines effectively. The advice is to not engage in a ransom payment.

At first i thought, whoa, we know the hackers are not bluffing, they've released data examples, even Medibank finally admitted as much - you gotta pay - what's your other move? Abandon all your customers personal data to be sold on the dark-web to be used in scams/hacks against them for the rest of their lives? You couldn't do that, surely? What about the elderly? They'll be eaten alive by scammers.

But if i'm the Medibank CEO, its a smart move. What do i care about our customers private data - we already had it collected for free - still got the master copy - why on earth would i pay good money for it? Let's get it all out there and be done with it.

It sets a handy discourse marker for corporations looking to wash their hands of responsibility. The same ones that have been greedily data scraping us - can now say:

Whoops ... ohr, sorry, but you know, the New Normal - who knew we needed to take cyber-security seriously?

But now is not the time to dwell on past mistakes - we'll learn from that and become better leaders going forward - now is the time we all need to unite to fight the criminals!

This will surprise nobody, but Optus (and no doubt all corporations) keep your data for decades once they've scraped you - even if you haven't used their service for 20 years or more.

This is the real criminal activity. Why are corporations allowed to keep data indefinitely from non-customers? They can't protect it, they don't care that they can't protect it, there's no reason for them to have it - so why are they allowed to do it?

We all know the answer to that: it's coz they're big powerful corporations who do whatever to make themselves more powerful - and you're not - you're some meaningless entity whose only function is to supply money for the machine.

New details suggest something even more dastardly than that is going on with many victims reporting that they'd never had anything to do with Optus, but they're still getting notification that they're personal data has been exposed.
9 News: Many people who got letters advising they were victims of the hack had no historical links to Optus or its sub-brands.

The only explanation for that is data-dealing between corporations. It hasn't been admitted but that means nothing - Medibank refused to admit there had even been a hack for two weeks - in normal corpo-gov style they won't admit anything until it's absolutely impossible to continue to deny it. As we saw with Covid, the media (a like-minded corporation) does everything it can to protect its own cohort. The new narrative with data-security is that it's all about blaming the criminals - with no blame whatsoever for the companies that let the hackers in. If the chickens get into my vegetable patch, that's my fault, not the chickens' fault. Chickens will do what chickens do - it's my job to keep the fence in good order and the gate closed. But again, common-sense principles that apply to normal people are not applicable for the MOUs.

This is the horror of the world we live in. We're getting fucked over by corporations/media/govts on a daily basis - yet we've got zero recourse to hold them accountable - we have no influence - it's been stolen from us - along with our data.

Bring on the Revolution ...

I liked that bit at the end of the 9 News: report, "Optus says it's happy to work with investigators."

Well no doubt! And no doubt the investigators are happy to work with Optus! Those perks must be sweet.

I liked that bit at the end of the 9 News: report, "Optus says it's happy to work with investigators."

Well no doubt! And no doubt the investigators are happy to work with Optus! Those perks must be sweet.

Interestingly, in the media now, it's like the Optus hack never happened. We can deduce they paid. There was message from the hackers saying:

Too many eyes. We will not sale data to anyone. We cant if we even want to: personally deleted data from drive (Only copy)

Sorry too 10.200 Australian whos data was leaked.

Deepest apology to Optus for this. Hope all goes well from this.

Ransom not payed but we dont care any more. Was mistake to scrape publish data in first place.

Yeah, right. A cyber-crim hits the jackpot, then, holding all the cards, suddenly has a moral epiphany ...

The ransom was quite reasonable - only US$1mil - nothing to a big Telco. The media is continuing on from their Covid run by not reporting it - it's all about Medibank and refusing to negotiate with The Criminal - who's now been named as Russian. I bet if it was China they wouldn't say boo, but it's easy to vilify Russia at the moment.

AFP (Feds): We know who you are and the AFP has some significant runs on the scoreboard when it comes to bringing overseas offenders back to Australia to face the justice system.

We'll see. I'll be most surprised if Putin hands over any hackers of Aus/western data. Especially if it includes the PM's entire health record. How much is that worth on the open market? It's a absurd to be saying that just coz Medibank won't pay that nobody else will. It doesn't de-incentivize anything.

Medibank CEO: We expect the criminal to continue to release stolen customer data each day. The relentless nature of this tactic being used by the criminal is designed to cause distress and harm.

All made possible by your lack of concern for the security of your customers' data. You still don't give a shit.

9 News: The "smartest and toughest" cybersecurity experts in Australia have been tasked with hunting down hackers in an overhaul of the nation's law enforcement methods.

The federal government today announced a new .. team of 100 officers will seek to "hack the hackers", Home Affairs Minister Clare O'Neil said.

Why there wasn't such a taskforce long ago is a mystery, but it's a positive step. What makes me worried is the public presentation of it - it's like we've got a brand new Enemy to latch onto/vilify/manipulate/blame - when in reality the problem has been around for decades.

Makes me wonder is Cyber-crime the new Bio-terrorism Industry? It has excellent potential to be used as a trigger for the Next Crisis. As with Bio-terrorism researchers, it's workers work in secrecy, so it's an unaccountable, closed society. Also the same is the vested financial interest in heightening fear - the more it's a crisis, the more funding we get. Finally, it's an ideal model for justifying increased internet surveillance/data accumulation. As it did with Bio-terrorism, it can end up causing the very thing it's meant to prevent.

Another worrying aspect is the language being used:

Clare O'Neil, minister: The criminals we are up against have adapted their ways, and so have we. The Australian government .. will day in, day out, hunt down the scumbags who are responsible for these malicious crimes against innocent people.

Not unlike the language deployed against the Vaccine-hesitant &/or Pangolin Deniers who were all scumbags spreading Covid + disinformation to innocent people.

Unlike those scumbags though - who were rounded up, segregated, banned/fined/maced/tasered/jailed - not a single cyber-hacker has ever been caught. We'll follow it, see if the combined power of AusGovCorp.con results in either the Optus or Medibank hackers being brought to justice. They will be the first ones ever if they are. Or will it amount to one more bureaucratic secret empire/money-sink-hole that doesn't catch or stop anyone, but enriches/empowers itself ...

Don't get me wrong - i'm all for cyber-security/privacy - but it's a case of prevention is the best cure. How did they hack Optus & Medibank? We're not allowed to know that. Why not? Due to Security. Actually Insecurity. We so insecure about our security that we need to invoke Security to cover-up our fuck-up - to avoid public panic.

No, it's all about the scumbags. So let's create one more opaque govt body with carte blanche powers ... to keep us safe...?

Yeah, no. I had enough secret Govt safety with Covid, thanks.