Privacy Is An Illusion - "Intrusion Marketing"

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If you are not living "off the grid," and you conduct any type of commerce or communication using your computer (laptop, notebook, iPad...it doesn't matter) any of your credit cards, debit cards, mobile devices, automotive GPS navigation system or anything else that operates electrically, magnetically or through any combination of both, your personal information (all of it, from purchasing patterns, to tastes and preferences, to medical history, to relationships, to your daily driving habits, and a myriad of other miniscule details, which, if assembled, give an incredibly comprehensive picture of you) is 1) compromised; 2) being monitored, analyzed, stored, compared and used to 'profile' you as a consumer, a victim or the target of an investigation; and, 3) available for access or sale to innumerable parties without your knowledge or consent.

The use of this information cannot be controlled by law. Technology is invariably several steps ahead of legislation and law enforcement. You might say that Technology is the new artillery. A computer worm or virus can immobilize the entire command and control center of a military operation.

In the interests of technological efficiency, social media sharing, data gathering for market research, expediting the transmission of records, and automating otherwise labor-intensive processes, you are being observed. Your electronic fingerprints, footprints and photographs are everywhere.

Using a combination of satellite technology (i.e., with Google Earth, you can see where I'm standing in my yard and the sun's gleam off of my bald spot, too!), GPS, RFID, electronic tagging and labeling, keystroke logging, telephonic number punching, information-gathering bots and cookies, security cameras, coupon redemptions and electronic card swipes, your personal information, virtually all of it (including your utilities services providers, monthly bills, amounts spent on various categories of commodities).

As this information is processed, you will be categorized and targeted -- if you've bought certain types of things, or exhibit certain consumer patterns, or even made computer information searches about particular subjects -- you should be fully aware that you are giving up information even as you try to find or research information.

Credit card companies are selling your consumer expending information (where you've gone, what you bought, how much you spent, and more) to various marketing companies. Facebook, Google and other communications platforms and social media companies use this information to "filter" the screens you see and the results you find when you go to your favorite sites, pages or search engines to correspond to what they think will be of greatest consumer or ideological interest to you personally.

It is as if your computer were studying you so thoroughly that it was learning to anticipate your every thought and move. It is as if there were a roomful of intelligence analysts on the other side of your computer screen or mobile device watching you.

This is quite frightening, especially as more and more data-gathering technologies and systems become better integrated and interconnected to speed up processing and analysis time. Following is an article excerpt. You might wish to read it and then hit the "BACK" button on your browser to return to this page:

 From BigThink's Daily IdeaFeed:

PRIVACY Targeted Web Ads Tied to Your Credit Card Buys

Pay for a fast food lunch with your credit card then see weight loss ads next time you're online. That kind of outcome is likely under moves Visa and Mastercard are studying.

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You cannot avoid this intrusion, nor can you avoid this "filtration" of what is "selected" for you to see. But you can anticipate it, and have some fun with it by varying your routines; your routes; the stores where you purchase things; the types of things that you purchase and the timing of those purchases -- and especially (you may even laugh) randomizing the sites you view and the subjects you research.

Understand that in taking command of your limited privacy, you can always feed the data aggregators misleading information. If you research important things, break up the time spent on those sites with, for example, time spent (while you're away from your device for a while) on sites which are of either no interest whatsoever to you (randomizing with irrelevant data), or by countering your time investment with something that is the ideological opposite of what you are truly interested in (neutralizing with opposing data).

If you know that you are being observed, and you cannot escape the intrusions which technology has made virtually unavoidable, then put on a show. Feed these voracious data-miners misinformation. This is perhaps the last game left to play (actually an old espionage trick to find "leaks" in security) which can make your profile less about who you are (privately), and more about what you'd like them to think (publicly).

Any good interrogator, prosecutor, soldier or illusionist knows the value of misdirection, or of sensory confusion. It is a low-technology gambit to do a bit (unfortunately not enough) of gaming an increasingly abusive high-technology environment.

Don't worry. I won't tell anybody that you've read this article. It doesn't matter though. They'll already know.

Douglas E. Castle [http://TakingCommand.blogspot.com]
http://TheGlobalFuturist.blogspot.com
http://Braintenance.blogspot.com





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INTELLIGENCE/ PRIVACY - The Game Of Power.

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We are all curious to know the business (and the motivations) of others. As much as we wish to preserve or privacy and keep our secrets, we want to be able to gather instant on anyone and anything, even if this is not for any particular reason, or with any objective in mind at all. You might wish to take a peek at my article of earlier today on IARPA, and then click the "BACK" button on your browser so that you can read this.

As a leader, a soldier, a negotiator or as a strategic planner in business, you are always looking to obtain the "edge" by knowing more about the other parties of interest than they know about you. We like our adversaries (real or imagined) to be transparent to us, while we wish to to be poker-faced and opaque to them.

As a commander, it is often necessary for you to widen the gap to the greatest extent possible between how much you know about others, and how much they know about you.

Knowledge is indeed power (if acted upon). Additionally, it is a quirk of Human Nature that if others think that you know more about them than you actually do, you will start with an advantage in terms of your powers of persuasion, negotiation and interrogation.

Lastly, your mystique (the aspects of you that arouse curiosity and stimulate imagination) adds to your magnetism. The more that people do not quite know about you, the more curious they become. But then, if you don't give them a bit of material about yourself to ponder (hints, references to things, quickly interrupted stories), and to "amp up" the curiosity coefficient, they might think that you are unimportant or simply a bore.

The idea is to drop adequate nuanced hints that those around you become obsessed with knowing more. They will be more attentive to you, will listen more carefully to you, and will be more forthcoming about themselves in hopes of drawing you out. You want those who follow you, or who deal with you in social or business commerce to think that you are a vast storehouse of valuable knowledge and that you already 'have the goods' on them.

A good bluff (i.e., having those around you think that you know much more about them than you actually do, or that you possess information which could be tremendously valuable to them, were they to acquire it from you) gives you a strategic advantage.

Ask any seasoned interrogator how much information others freely give away (to the point of confessing and surrendering all kinds of things) based upon some mere suppositions [hypotheses] on the part of the interrogator which he poses boldly to the subject as if they were indisputable facts, instead of as questions. If one of his hypotheses proves remotely correct, it could serve as the lever to have the subject (or, in your case, your counterpart, your adversary, your charge, or whomever) believe that he or she is merely confirming facts that you already know -- and you are actually acquiring new information.

That is the most interesting and ironic thing about inconspicuously and seemingly effortlessly gathering intelligence as a leader; the more that others think that you already know, the more that they will tell you what you want to find out. The other part of the game is to keep them guessing about you ... who you really are, what you really know, and what your intentions might be. A good bluff can unlock many doors.

Cases-In-Point: How many times has someone told you, with conviction, that "I know exactly what you've been doing," or "I know what you you're thinking, and you might just want to reconsider before you make a big mistake," or, my favorite... "I think that you have something to tell me..."  when you've just come in from somewhere.

Great revelations have come forth as a result of this type of presumptive intelligence gathering -- stating a question as casually and offhandedly as a fact.

These ploys consistently work in the ongoing interpersonal and societal game of Intelligence versus Privacy.

Of course, you would like to have high-quality, reliable and detailed intelligence at your disposal prior to entering into any transaction, negotiation or other interaction, and you should, in playing your role, invest in intelligence-gathering strategies, alliances and technologies. But when you do not have access to the information you truly want, let others believe that you do in order for them to confirm what they assume you already know.

If you appear to be a great "knower of things" as well as a "keeper of very valuable secrets," your power ranking will rise.

And if you just drop hints (intimation instead of information) about where you've been and about needing to leave for your 'next meeting' you ranking will rise further still.

You must learn how to act in order to play any role. And please, make no mistake about it -- you are always on stage. The world in which we live gives you no other option, with the exception of hiding in the shadows.

Practice.

Douglas E Castle

http://TheInternationalistPage.blogspot.com

http://BusinessAndProjectPlanning.blogspot.com

http://InfoSphereBusinessAlerts.blogspot.com
TNNWC Management Consulting Services

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Intelligence Versus Privacy - The Game Of Power. Being a leader requires that you cultivate a tremendous understanding of behavioral psychology, and an accepting the fact that you are constantly on stage, playing a role. The loneliest and perhaps the most strenuous aspect of command may well be the fact that you can never step 'out of character' and into yourself.

THE SHOES OF THE PHISHERMAN - And A Word About Integrity

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Dear Friends:


We all need to be reasonably careful in all of our written and sound communications -- especially when we are working "over the wires" or "over the airwaves." (If you only work Under The Boardwalk, or Somewhere, Beyond The Sea [with apologies to the Drifters and to the Estate of Bobby Darren] thos shouldn't really concern you. But it concerns most of us who are subjected to all manner of computer fraud every single time that we log on.


Three suggestions are in order:


1. Beware any solicitation or notification which you receive, especially if it asks for perwsonal information, and even if it looks quite official. If it is from Nigeria and tells you a sob story about a corrupt bank manager who needs your help to dislodge a sum from a client who died in a terrible plane crash, just toss it. If it says "CONGRATULATIONS - LOTTERY WINNER" toss that one too. There are more legitimate ways for people to authenticate their correspondence and allow you to verify their legitimacy before giving any personal information at all.


Here's an example of a baloney-laden "PayPal" notification which I received earlier (click to download, and to enjoy a laugh at my expense): http://www.mediafire.com/?kz2vqoyvzgn


2. We live in a society where virtually every communication is recorded and analized (for our own protection, of course). whatever you say is on the record, so avoid tasteless terrorist jokes and threatening language, lest you be put in the position of serving coffee to two or more surprise early-morning visitors from some intimidating agency of the federal government. You are always on the record.


3. Something else -- When you write and when you speak to anyone, anywhere and at anytime, speak as if you were making a politically-sensitive statement to Congress or to the press. Avoid subterfuge, backbiting and being insincere. As I have found, anything that you say can be overheard or repeated to the wrong person. As a general policy, speak as if the subject person of your conversation where standing in front of you. Integrity is a rare, but powerful tool. It' worth cultivating.


Faithfully,


Douglas Castle

THINKING ABOUT THE UNTHINKABLE

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Dear Friends:

One can and does, paradoxically, think about the "unthinkable". You have to visualize, at minimum, the terrors which you dare not venture to think about, and in so doing, you have given them the keys to the darkest corridors of your imagination. We often term things"unthinkable" simple because they are unconscionable, terrifying or of consquences that we are unprepared to contend with. Everything, de facto, is thinkable.

Let's exercise our ability to anticipate that which we should not dare to anticipate, discuss it (hypothetically, of course), and address it (either standing upright, or from under the bed).

Join me:

1. Giant computer service providers like Google and Yahoo (to name only two) have access to as much information about every individual computer user, credit card user, property owner, bank account holder, taxpayer, scofflaw, outlaw, porno-downloader, consumer and other person who has transacted something as seemingly inconsequential as filling up his or her gastank or walking into a 7-11 for a Slurpee than the NSA does. And these companies not only have all of our identity information, but they have all of our passcodes. If they chose to, they could literally take over our identities and our entire lives -- we are at their mercy, and we trust them. The government relies upon them, utilizes their systems, and by simple logic, cannot police them -- nor would they be inclined to. We are in a naked society. We are, by a lack of vision and vigilance, targets. As with Samson and Delilah, persons or organizations comprised of persons will always use the power that they are given...it is Human Nature. It is only a matter of time.


2. Your credit rating, long regarded as so precious, so sacred and so crucial to a respectable existence, is a nostalgic farce. Credit card companies are aggressively cutting credit lines without adequate cause or notice, and leaving their cardholders with miniscule credit lines, sudden "overdrafts" and "over limit drafts," and are actually charging them fees, as they deprive them of credit and irreparably blemish the credit reports issued to the three major credit bureaus with unexplained reductions in credit lines, overdrafts and all other manner of default. Your credit rating, if you are like most people in the United states, will be destroyed. But take heart -- the financial institutions are not interested in extending credit to consumers anymore. You credit rating may well become as meaningless and as vestigial as the batting average of a pet shop owner. Remember Mr. Peebles? Magilla Gorilla has been repossessed.


3. The IRS, which is a contractor and not even a righteous government agency, is hell-bent on collecting money from an all-but-destitute society. They are, practically speaking, immune to due process, and charged with the responsiblity of feeding the government so that it may be fruitful and multiply (in size and deficit). They can assess you any tax which they feel "may be due," levy and lien any of your assets without contest, charge you usurious interest and fees on spuriously determined delinquent amounts. In fact, in a soon-to-be cashless society, they will be undoubtedly given the power to directly debit sums, as they judge appropriate, directly from your bank accounts (and the banks are actually an extension of the Executive Branch of government) -- if they are wrong (and they are wrong most of the time), you'll have to retain counsel to fight back...ironically, as your funds have already been depleted, you won't have the money required to retain a lawyer. Talk about irony! Going further, be advised that your cash will all have to be declared and banked before a critical date when paper currency is rendered illegal. This will make things easier for the DEA, the FBI, The Treasury Department, The Secret Service and all of the other agencies that are chartered to investigate, confiscate, eviscerate and incarcerate. We will be afforded the opportunity to commiserate. That will be our only "-ate".

4. Private enterprise will cease to exist as it becomes fused with the government. Any conventional employment will, in effect, be government work. Think of Huricane Katrina on a national level. The only "free enterprise" will be small and entrepreneurial. Genius and spontaneity will become increasingly persecuted, and often forced into hiding by a government and a social establishment in fear of being posed with "dangerous" questions which might lead to "revolutionary" actions.

5. That last sanctuary and sanctum of privacy, your cranial vault, will remain the last repository of original, "unthinkable" thought. The trouble which I foresee, is the most frightening thing that I have ever envisioned -- it may reach a point, within your own mind, when you have become so indoctrinated with "groupthink" and assumption that you are no longer able to determine which thoughts are genuinely your own, and which are deeply implanted through pervasive, invasive external influence.

Have a wonderful day.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

Miasma: Grouply, Yahoo, Google, MSN, command, control, leadership, decisionmaking, The National Networker, Internal Energy Plus, Humanitas Maximus, The Internal Energy Plus Forum, control, public service, inspiration, survival, uniting, dividing, conquest, growth, personal growth, self-improvement, personal development, networking, Mixx, Zimbio, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Associated Press, LA Times, Fox News, Reuters, alpha, beta, theta, education, leadership crisis, personal power, humanitarianism, The Global Futurist, The Internationalist Page, Braintenance, Current Events, blogs, bloggers, news, news releases, Douglas Castle, intelligence, cognitive enhancement, advice, help, psychology, focus, technology, seduction, manipulation, debate, education, hypnosis, NLP, RET, articles, Linked In, Microsoft, SEO, fitness, longevity, creativity, meditation, media, YouTube, organizational engineering, winning, success, telepathy, trends, predictions, commentary, blogosphere, relationships, torture, victory, health, fitness, independence, mind, brain, thought, entrainment, Facebook, Naymz, downloads, CDs, tapes, instruction, competition, martial arts, politics, management, widget, blidget, social networking, nanotechnology, fitness, social Darwinism, humor, alternative energy, philanthropy, not-for-profit organizations, volunteering, interrogation, trade, commerce, personal dynamics, personal coaching, networking, leadership training, mind-body connection, nootropics, longevity, social groups, business groups, marketing, ecommerce, Feedburner, RSS, newsletters, writers, co-operative advertising, leverage, survivalism, viral marketing, public relations, advertising, promotion, image-development, videos, gaming, AI, social awareness, persuasion, theology, logic, alliances, reputation, ratings, polls, standing, positioning, self-help, metrics, design, interactivity, campaign, Wikis, chat rooms, interactive forums, mentoring, modeling, mind expansion, brainwaves, motivation, current events, press releases, keywords, adwords, economics, Wikipedia, Widgetbox, geopolitical economics, conflict resolution, activism, achievement, subconscious, collective mind, webinars, business services, self-growth, control, winning, fail-safe strategies, combat, strength, Internal Energy Plus, self-defense, winning strategies and tactics, improvisation, anti-terrorism, courage, victory, fear, psychological programming,...

YOUR PRIVACY - WHAT REMAINS OF IT

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Dear Friends:

Privacy is a critical issue and a basic Human Right -- or so we would like to think.

Click on the post which follows (courtesy of THE NATIONAL NETWORKER) and read about the current state of your affairs, and the double-edged power of internet technology:

http://thenationalnetworker.blogspot.com/2009/03/goodbad-news-were-all-connected.html.

The only truly safe repository and trustee of your truth is within the confines of your own cranium.

Faithfully,
Douglas Castle

p.s. Subscribe to the National Networker (free) at http://theTNNWOmnigadget.blogspot.com. In fact, first, subscribe (press a button), and then choose either email or RSS (another button).

Miasma: Grouply, Yahoo, Google, MSN, command, control, leadership, decisionmaking, The National Networker, Internal Energy Plus, Humanitas Maximus, The Internal Energy Plus Forum, control, public service, inspiration, survival, uniting, dividing, conquest, growth, personal growth, self-improvement, personal development, networking, Mixx, Zimbio, Digg, Delicious, Technorati, Associated Press, LA Times, Fox News, Reuters, alpha, beta, theta, education, leadership crisis, personal power, humanitarianism, The Global Futurist, The Internationalist Page, Braintenance, Current Events, blogs, bloggers, news, news releases, Douglas Castle, intelligence, cognitive enhancement, advice, help, psychology, focus, technology, seduction, manipulation, debate, education, hypnosis, NLP, RET, articles, Linked In, Microsoft, SEO, fitness, longevity, creativity, meditation, media, YouTube, organizational engineering, winning, success, telepathy, trends, predictions, commentary, blogosphere, relationships, torture, victory, health, fitness, independence, mind, brain, thought, entrainment, Facebook, Naymz, downloads, CDs, tapes, instruction, competition, martial arts, politics, management, widget, blidget, social networking, nanotechnology, fitness, social Darwinism, humor, alternative energy, philanthropy, not-for-profit organizations, volunteering, interrogation, trade, commerce, personal dynamics, personal coaching, networking, leadership training, mind-body connection, nootropics, longevity, social groups, business groups, marketing, ecommerce, Feedburner, RSS, newsletters, writers, co-operative advertising, leverage, survivalism, viral marketing, public relations, advertising, promotion, image-development, videos, gaming, AI, social awareness, persuasion, theology, logic, alliances, reputation, ratings, polls, standing, positioning, self-help, metrics, design, interactivity, campaign, Wikis, chat rooms, interactive forums, mentoring, modeling, mind expansion, brainwaves, motivation, current events, press releases, keywords, adwords, economics, Wikipedia, Widgetbox, geopolitical economics, conflict resolution, activism, achievement, subconscious, collective mind, webinars, business services, self-growth, control, winning, fail-safe strategies, combat, strength, Internal Energy Plus, self-defense, winning strategies and tactics, improvisation, anti-terrorism, courage, victory, fear, psychological programming,...