The Government Is Spying on You... Again

I remember the day my family got a computer.

My dad set it all up. I was too busy playing bat ball in the cul-de-sac with my neighborhood friends. I also didn’t know anything about computers and didn’t really care.

It wasn’t connected to the internet at the time. So we used it for writing word docs and playing games. Remember the days when stores like Target and WalMart sold big clunky computer games that came in big boxes? I still have some them.

Once we got dial-up internet, I mainly used AOL Instant Messenger to chat with school friends and Napster to download music. Those were the days!

With no one quite sure of its power or utility, the internet in its infancy felt like the Wild West: intriguing and dangerous with an almost playful, romantic quality.

I’m dating myself a bit here, but we had things like Xanga, then Myspace, then YouTube, and then Facebook.

It was all free, and things were good.

But somewhere along the way, things changed…

We started seeing advertisements.

It wasn’t much at first, but when greed takes over, you better watch out.

No one batted an eye at first, until we realized how much companies were making from ads.

No one knew what would come next. We simply didn’t understand the capabilities of search engines and websites, mainly because it wasn’t disclosed to the public…

But we were being tracked and targeted.

You’ve surely visited a website and been asked to accept cookies to “enhance your user experience.” A cookie is a text file that’s passed back and forth between a user and a website so the site can remember that user and their preferences. But advertisers quickly learned how to exploit cookies to track users and display targeted ads.

Lou Montulli invented the cookie in 1994 while working at Netscape, one of the internet’s first web browsers. What started as a privacy-conscious solution to the problem of websites being unable to remember the users accessing them has since turned into a privacy nightmare, where websites track and store your information and follow you around the internet.

In a recent interview with Quartz, Montulli said he has misgivings about the abuse of his invention, saying “That wasn’t something that we had really anticipated sites doing — although I guess one could have followed the money and could have imagined this happening.”

Ad tracking and the abuse of user data have picked up steam over the last few years.

And it’s only getting worse.

In 2016, Google changed the way it tracks users by linking personally identifiable information (name, location, IP address, phone number) from Gmail, YouTube, and other Google-linked accounts to internet search histories.

This is the data everyone is so concerned about. And it’s worth its weight in gold.

The 2018 Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal brought to light some more dirty underdealings at tech companies, mainly that they weren’t protecting our data.

When Facebook came along, it promised to create a social network of college students. Just like the internet itself, Facebook was wonderfully innocent at first. But then Zuck Zuck got greedy. Again, just follow the money.

Now every time you load a web page, there’s an ad… and then an ad inside an ad. And now you’re seeing ads for things you talked about with your friends. You even see ads for something you only just thought about. You think to yourself, “Did I even say that out loud?”

The internet is a much different place than it used to be. There’s no more freedom, and it’s basically become unusable.

About five years ago, rumors surfaced that the Facebook Messenger app accessed users’ microphones in order to target ads. Facebook claimed it targets ads based only on age, gender, and location and doesn’t listen to your conversations. Yeah… I’m calling BS.

It’s all part of the larger plan to control you and your money.

We just have to look to Washington to prove the point…

Just last week, the House passed a bill that would allow the government to obtain your data without a warrant.

According to the ACLU:

The House of Representatives passed a bill today that will reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act for two years, expand the federal government’s power to secretly spy on Americans without a warrant, and create a new form of “extreme vetting” of people traveling to the United States.

When the government wants to obtain Americans’ private information, the Fourth Amendment requires it to go to court and obtain a warrant. The government has claimed that the purpose of Section 702 is to allow the government to warrantlessly surveil non-U.S. citizens abroad for foreign intelligence purposes, even as Americans’ communications are routinely swept up. In recent years, the law has morphed into a domestic surveillance tool, with FBI agents using Section 702 databases to conduct millions of invasive searches for Americans’ communications — including those of protesters, racial justice activists, 19,000 donors to a congressional campaign, journalists, and even members of Congress — without a warrant.

And further, “In the last year alone, the FBI conducted over 200,000 warrantless ‘backdoor’ searches of Americans’ communications. The standard for conducting these backdoor searches is so low that, without any clear connection to national security or foreign intelligence, an FBI agent can type in an American’s name, email address, or phone number, and pull up whatever communications the FBI’s Section 702 surveillance has collected over the past five years.”

Is it just me or is this is a privacy nightmare?

But remember, greed is the main factor here.

Here’s what I mean…

My colleague Brian believes all this spying is the groundwork for America’s very own social credit system, much like they have in China.

Here’s what that looks like…

If you look at the wrong thing online, say the wrong thing in a text, buy something “inappropriate,” support the wrong candidate…

Then your social credit score goes down.

And — this is where the greed comes in — if your score gets too low, you might wake up one day and find that your bank account has been “locked.”

I admit this sounds unbelievable…

But a similar system is being built here in America right now… Some banking platforms have already announced a ban on certain legal purchases. PayPal even froze accounts of some of its users for exercising free speech.

In order for this to work, though, the government needs even further control of the money. That’s why it’s keen on exploring a digital dollar, otherwise called “FedCoins.”

You’ve probably heard about this already, but if they can control your money, it’s over.

The point is you can’t ignore what’s staring you right in the face.

And the best way to deal with this reality is to protect yourself.

To learn what you need to do to protect your wealth, we’ve created a special FedCoin survival guide.

Click here to gain access and secure your future… 

Stay frosty,

Alexander Boulden
Editor, Wealth Daily

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After Alexander’s passion for economics and investing drew him to one of the largest financial publishers in the world, where he rubbed elbows with former Chicago Board Options Exchange floor traders, Wall Street hedge fund managers, and International Monetary Fund analysts, he decided to take up the pen and guide others through this new age of investing.

Alexander is the investment director of Insider Stakeout — a weekly investment advisory service dedicated to tracking the smartest money on the planet so that his readers can achieve life-altering, market-beating returns. He also serves at the managing editor for R.I.C.H. Report, a comprehensive service that uses the highest-quality investment research and strategies that guides its members in growing their wealth on top of preserving it.

Check out his editor’s page here.

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