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THIS is terrifying, because it’s already here, now.
If you’ve not been paying attention for the last few decades, it’s about the data they’ve taken from us in exchange for cheap apps and easier service, and all the other convenience reasons we can list.
If we wanted to keep track of our friends on FaceBook, we had to let “them” see our data.
If we wanted the best deals on Amazon, “they” requireded our data.
If we wanted to be able to ask our phones to answer questions or call numbers for us, “they” would record not only our voices but our conversations with others – for the data they are now turning into AI.
20 years ago there was a wonderful film, The Lives of Others, about the East German government’s relentless spying on every aspect of its own citizens lives:
If you haven’t seen it, watch it this weekend. You can rent it on YouTube (and they’ll make note of your choice).
That was small potatoes compared to what we face today.
Once Elon Musk paid a few hundred million dollars to buy his way into the Trump Administration, he was granted access to every bit of data on every American citizen, under the guise of improving efficiency.
Of course, he immediately began firing thousands of federal workers. But he – and the Trump administration – now know how much money you contributed to which political candidates.
They know every opinion you posted, every piece you liked and shared, on every portal on social media. And they don’t want this information so they can target different ads to you.
They want to make you more irrelevant than you already are, just as ordinary Russians, ordinary Hungarians, ordinary Chinese citizens in Hong Kong already are.
Those governments don’t care what their citizens think.
They can arrest them, detain them, expel them, imprison them, probably kill them, any time they want.
This is the direction our country is now going.
This is an important talk.
Pay attention.
We are not powerless. But we have to take this seriously.
And begin to change what we allow right now!
Maybe, watch it again, and email it to those closest to you.
This has to become a movement.
We definitely won’t win if we don’t fight.