The news station received confirmation from Xcel, which stated that 22,000 customers who signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats on Tuesday.
Smartphones, smart meters, and smart thermostats are devices that will eventually be used against us all. It starts with the thermostat. Lou
As the summer heat reaches sweltering levels in Colorado, Xcel customers have found themselves unable to adjust their thermostats to keep temperatures down.
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
As the summer heat reaches sweltering levels in Colorado, Xcel customers have found themselves unable to adjust their thermostats to keep temperatures down.
After temperatures climbed to 90 degrees Fahrenheit on Tuesday, Colorado residents subscribed to Xcel found that they were unable to cool their homes when they were informed by their thermostats that they were locked out from adjusting the air conditioning due to an “energy emergency.”
Xcel Energy is the company that makes these products.
“Normally, when we see a message like that, we’re able to override it,” said Arvada resident Tony Talarico in ABC’s Denver Channel:
In this case, we weren’t. So, our thermostat was locked in at 78 or 79.
Numerous Xcel customers took to Twitter to complain about their experiences, with some complaining that their homes were locked to a scorching 88 degrees.
The news station received confirmation from Xcel, which stated that 22,000 customers who signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were locked out of their thermostats on Tuesday.
Government accidentally sends file on “remote mind control” methods to journalist
When journalist Curtis Waltman filed a Freedom of Information Act request with Washington State Fusion Center (which is partnered with Department of Homeland Security) to obtain information about Antifa and white supremacist groups, he got more than the information he was looking for – he also accidentally received a mysterious file on “psycho-electric weapons” with the label “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file included methods of “remote mind control.”
According to Muckrock, a nonprofit that publishes government information gathered through FOIA requests, the mind-control documents came from the Department of Homeland Security-linked agency in the form of a file called “EM effects on human body.zip.” The file reportedly contained various diagrams detailing the horrors of “psycho-electronic weapon effects.”One diagram lists the various forms of torment supposedly made possible by using remote mind-control methods, from “forced memory blanking” and “sudden violent itching inside eyelids” to “wild flailing” followed by “rigor mortis” and a remotely induced “forced orgasm.” It was not immediately clear how the documents wound up in the agency’s response to a standard FOIA request, but there was reportedly no indication the “remote mind control” files stemmed from any government program.
The federal government has absolutely experimented with mind control in a variety of methods, but the documents here do not appear to be official.
Waltman had no idea why these documents were included in his request and isn’t sure why the government is holding them. The WSFC did not respond to requests for more information.
As fun as conspiracy theories are, Muckrock doesn’t believe the images are “government material.”
One seems to come from a person named “Supratik Saha,” who is identified as a software engineer, the brain mapping slide has no sourcing, and the image of the body being assaulted by psychotronic weapons is sourced from raven1.net, who apparently didn’t renew their domain.
Muckrock put out a call to WSFC but hasn’t yet heard back from them.
A journalist doing routine Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, a way for US citizens to petition the government for information, was sent something he didn’t exactly ask for and probably could not have dreamed of – documents on mind control – and a few other gems.
Journalist Curtis Waltman was researching Washington State’s documents on antifa and white supremacist organizations and decided the best place to inquire would be the Washington State Fusion Center, a state-run hub for counter-terror and cyber security work and other matters ostensibly related to national security.
The government responds electronically to FOIA requests, attaching the requested documents. One can only assume a mistake was made when they sent Waltman a batch of documents entitled “EM effects on human body.zip.”
“EM,” in this case, refers to electromagnetic. More specifically, the documents detail “psycho-electronic” weapons.
The documents show a human diagram with descriptors of the weapon capabilities that correspond to each part of our anatomy.
The psycho-electronic weapon supposedly can effectuate “forced memory blanking and induced erroneous actions,” the reading and broadcasting of thoughts, “forced manipulation of airways, including externally controlled forced speech,” itching in “hard-to-reach areas” and dream control.
The document also claims the weapon can induce a “forced orgasm.” But with great power comes great responsibility, as it can apparently also be used to cause itching and “intense pain” in the genital area.
Other pages in the document depict supposed forms of the technology, including “mass and individual remote mind control via the mobile phone network and mobile phones,” as well as “individual and group remote mind control via ‘black’ helicopter carrying psychotronic weapons.”
The documents show no indication of having originated within the US government. It’s “obviously not government material,” Waltman wrote, adding that it’s “entirely unclear how this ended up in the release.”
Smartphones rule our lives. Having information at our fingertips is the height of convenience. They tell us all sorts of things, but the information we see and receive on our smartphones is just a fraction of the data they generate. By tracking and monitoring our behaviour and activities, smartphones build a digital profile of shockingly intimate information about our personal lives.
These records aren’t just a log of our activities. The digital profiles they create are traded between companies and used to make inferences and decisions that affect the opportunities open to us and our lives. What’s more, this typically happens without our knowledge, consent or control.
New and sophisticated methods built into smartphones make it easy to track and monitor our behaviour. A vast amount of information can be collected from our smartphones, both when being actively used and while running in the background. This information can include our location, internet search history, communications, social media activity, finances and biometric data such as fingerprints or facial features. It can also include metadata – information about the data – such as the time and recipient of a text message.
Your emails can reveal your social network.David Glance
Each type of data can reveal something about our interests and preferences, views, hobbies and social interactions. For example, a study conducted by MIT demonstrated how email metadata can be used to map our lives, showing the changing dynamics of our professional and personal networks. This data can be used to infer personal information including a person’s background, religion or beliefs, political views, sexual orientation and gender identity, social connections, or health. For example, it is possible to deduce our specific health conditions simply by connecting the dots between a series of phone calls.
Different types of data can be consolidated and linked to build a comprehensive profile of us. Companies that buy and sell data – data brokers – already do this. They collect and combine billions of data elements about people to make inferences about them. These inferences may seem innocuous but can reveal sensitive information such as ethnicity, income levels, educational attainment, marital status, and family composition.
A recent study found that seven in ten smartphone apps share data with third-party tracking companies like Google Analytics. Data from numerous apps can be linked within a smartphone to build this more detailed picture of us, even if permissions for individual apps are granted separately. Effectively, smartphones can be converted into surveillance devices.
The result is the creation and amalgamation of digital footprints that provide in-depth knowledge about your life. The most obvious reason for companies collecting information about individuals is for profit, to deliver targeted advertising and personalised services. Some targeted ads, while perhaps creepy, aren’t necessarily a problem, such as an ad for the new trainers you have been eyeing up.
But targeted advertising based on our smartphone data can have real impacts on livelihoods and well-being, beyond influencing purchasing habits. For example, people in financial difficulty might be targeted for ads for payday loans. They might use these loans to pay for unexpected expenses, such as medical bills, car maintenance or court fees, but could also rely on them for recurring living costs such as rent and utility bills. People in financially vulnerable situations can then become trapped in spiralling debt as they struggle to repay loans due to the high cost of credit.
Targeted advertising can also enable companies to discriminate against people and deny them an equal chance of accessing basic human rights, such as housing and employment. Race is not explicitly included in Facebook’s basic profile information, but a user’s “ethnic affinity” can be worked out based on pages they have liked or engaged with. Investigative journalists from ProPublica found that it is possible to exclude those who match certain ethnic affinities from housing ads, and certain age groups from job ads.
This is different to traditional advertising in print and broadcast media, which although targeted is not exclusive. Anyone can still buy a copy of a newspaper, even if they are not the typical reader. Targeted online advertising can completely exclude some people from information without them ever knowing. This is a particular problem because the internet, and social media especially, is now such a common source of information.
Social media data can also be used to calculate creditworthiness, despite its dubious relevance. Indicators such as the level of sophistication in a user’s language on social media, and their friends’ loan repayment histories can now be used for credit checks. This can have a direct impact on the fees and interest rates charged on loans, the ability to buy a house, and even employment prospects.
There’s a similar risk with payment and shopping apps. In China, the government has announced plans to combine data about personal expenditure with official records, such as tax returns and driving offences. This initiative, which is being led by both the government and companies, is currently in the pilot stage. When fully operational, it will produce a social credit score that rates an individual citizen’s trustworthiness. These ratings can then be used to issue rewards or penalties, such as privileges in loan applications or limits on career progression.
These possibilities are not distant or hypothetical – they exist now. Smartphones are effectively surveillance devices, and everyone who uses them is exposed to these risks. What’s more, it is impossible to anticipate and detect the full range of ways smartphone data is collected and used, and to demonstrate the full scale of its impact. What we know could be just the beginning.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 