Scroll down to read this post.

 

Readers!

 

The time has come for my annual short Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind The Black. I must do this every year in order to make sure I have earned enough money to pay my bills.

 

For this two-week campaign, I am offering a special deal to encourage donations. Donations of $200 will get a free autographed copy of the new paperback edition of Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, while donations of $250 will get a free autographed copy of the new hardback edition. If you desire a copy, make sure you provide me your address with your donation.

 

As I noted in July, the support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.

 

In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.

 

Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.

 

Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:

 

4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Google and Amazon patent 1984-style devices that spy on you in your home

Another reason to dump these companies: Google and Amazon have both patented devices that are designed to spy on you at all times in your home.

The description of Google’s devices is particularly vile, and almost matches precisely the spying devices George Orwell created in 1984 that allowed the government to monitor its citizens 24 hours a day.

Google’s patent application outlines how audio and visual signals could be used to better understand a speaker’s mood or medical condition, according to the New York Times. The devices could listen to the ‘volume of the user’s voice, detected breathing rate, crying’. They could also detect a user’s coughing and sneezing.

The same patent applications reveals a device that could ‘recognize a T-shirt on a floor of the user’s closet’ with Will Smith’s face. It could then combine this with a browser history that shows searches for Mr Smith. This would allow Google to ‘provide a movie recommendation that displays, ‘You seem to like Will Smith. His new movie is playing in a theatre near you.’

In a separate patent application, Google describes a device that would give advice to parents for ‘areas of improvement’ such as spending more time with their children at supper. When children are near a drinks cabinet or are in their parents’ bedroom alone, the system may infer that mischief is likely to be occurring’, the patent read. On detecting mischievous behaviour, the smart device could even hand out punishments such as restricting mobile phone use.

Both Google and Amazon have made it clear in the past year that they are are increasingly partisan, strongly leftist with agendas favoring the Democratic Party. You therefore have to be a simpleton to think that this information will never be used by them for political reasons someday.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

18 comments

  • wayne

    A Scanner Darkly 2006
    – Alex Jones Scene
    https://youtu.be/EN_VBc98dzg
    (1:00)
    -language alert-

  • Cotour

    Yesterday I ate Easter Dinner at a friends house who at a point was showing off that he has connected his “Alexa” all over his house to the point that he was standing in the dining room with everyone around him and said, Alexa, turn the dinning room lights on. And the lights came on.

    It was kind of chilling to me.

    I would get into political / legal / Constitutional conversations with him on such things as an Alexa constantly monitoring and recording every sound made in your house like an argument or even an amorous encounter and the information we are all coming to understand how these company’s are operating. His reaction, “I don’t care, I have nothing to hide”. Same thing with the police searching his phone. He unknowingly believes that he is the property of the government.

    I just shake my head and tell him that he just does not get it.

    Google, spying on us all.

    Facebook, spying and selling our personal information to whom ever will pay even though they specifically said they would not.

    The Russians and other actors in both political party’s are consumed with finding ways to manipulate social media in an attempt to disrupt or leverage our election process.

    And I am certain that they all from Apple on down have done and will continue to do the same.

    A.I. / “smart” driver less cars have begun to kill people. Telsa has recently revealed that a recent fatal accident happened while the auto pilot was engaged. At this rate people will be banned from driving if their technology is to be full implemented.

    Amazon has just signed a $600 million dollar deal with the CIA, really, $600 million.

    Someone is going to have to draw some knowable and enforceable lines, if that is actually possible, we are not in Kansas any more.

  • Ted

    Do these items work without power? Pull the batteries, pull the plug, disconnect the various routers etc.

    Do you leave your car engine running 24×7 (ok maybe in Siberia or Alaska) just so that’s it ready to go when ever?? As my dad said “Don’t buy the washer or dryer with electronic controls and button. Good old fashioned timer still get ’em clean.”

    He was right – although trying to find a washer or dryer without one is tough. There are still manufacturers who make simple machines.

    I would not even think of having an Alexa or Google home pod thing in my home. If I am so lazy I can’t get my sorry self up to turn something on or off…………. ok I confess I did buy a Clapper once (clap on clap off) it broke after a week.

    Yeah I do FB. I have family all over the place and that does make things easier in some cases. It was nice to see the grandkids in their Easter finery but I have just about had it with “Try my new nonGMO Split pea soup with wheat free crackers in a hand made hand fired clay bowel” postings I seem to get all the time… That and hot Russian babes are looking for ME~!

  • Who wants to bet against home monitoring systems becoming mandatory for ‘safety’?

  • Max

    WOW, “the patent read. On detecting mischievous behaviour, the smart device could even hand out punishments such as restricting mobile phone use”
    Or calling social services and the police if you do not use corrective action immediately.
    If you use politically incorrect or insensitive language in front of a child, that child could be taken from you and given to a Progressive liberal, with only minor felonys, to be in a proper home. Your kidneys lungs and heart will be given to a good liberal also. (when the state owns you, and you’re unfit for reeducation, this is the best way for political minorities/entitled whites to make a satisfying contribution to our new society)

    In Stallings Russia, if you had a nice house or property it’s because you stole from your neighbors. The well to do was sent to the Gulag concentration camps. If you spoke out, they will come to your bunkhouse, gag you, tie you up and throw you in the back of a truck telling others that woke up that he/she is being reassigned to a different work camp. At which point they would take them out with the others they collected that night, dump them in a hole alive and bury them.
    “The CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies enlisted Amazon Web Services in 2013 to build a computing cloud on CIA premises through a 10-year, $600 million contract”. It is just a down payment, seed money for a future long-term commitment.

    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/the-military-may-offer-amazon-a-5-billion-contract-without-accepting-outside-bids

    The president has other offers that can do the job for a lot less. He is not committed to Obama’s wishes or supporters. He was also not wrong to point out that Amazon made 5 billion in profit last year and paid zero federal tax. Crony capitalism with the most secure data the country has, managed by private corporation in the business of buying and selling. What could possibly go wrong? (Like getting purchased by ALABABA.com?)
    Perhaps all of the most important government functions can be subcontracted out, just like the management of the money to the federal reserve 100 years ago. Which has never been audited.

    Cotour,
    When someone tells me they have nothing to hide, I respond with; everyone has something to hide… That’s why we wear clothes!

  • Jason

    George Orwell was a prophet. Unfortunately society might have to discover this the hard way. The dark age is coming, indeed, it is coming…

  • pzatchok

    It used to be God watched over our childrens shoulders.

    The good teachings from the Bible helping give our children a concious.
    The left has kicked out God only to replace him with Alexa and who is to say Alexa will not eventually tell your children to watch you.

  • BSJ

    Many read Orwell’s writings as a warning.

    Others saw them as instruction manuals…

  • Chris

    An anecdote that may be of some insight…
    I used to work for a woman whose husband was a high official in the federal government in some sort of intelligence. Several times at the office where we worked and where there were cameras in various places (entrances, hallways,..etc) she would have us duck into a noisy lab (lots of fans on servers) where there supposedly no cameras to have a conversation.
    There wasn’t supposed to be listening devices nor monitoring of video there for development security. She was very aware of where cameras were and were not.
    I wonder if these sorts of things were being worked on back then.

  • Max

    pzatchok;
    Your words reminded me of another prophetic author.
    http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_copybook.htm

    For some reason, I can’t help but get emotional. Particularly on the last line.
    Such a powerful words and reason. Proverbs from a child’s practice spelling book. The arrogance of man, to be seduced by a fantasy/lies, always repeating the same mistakes.
    Then comes the wrath of the “gods of the copybook headings”
    We’ve seen this brave new world before …

  • Edward

    Max wrote: “When someone tells me they have nothing to hide, I respond with; everyone has something to hide… That’s why we wear clothes!

    When someone tells me that they have nothing to hide, I tell them I can have a webcam in their shower the next morning. I add all the personal information that I can include in the webcast, such as home address, phone number, social (in)security number, date of birth, various accounts and their passwords, etc. Everyone has something to hide, and they should keep it hidden.

  • Laurie

    It’s not even a question of hiding; always requiring an audience is immature. What continues to astound me is how ignorant or ambivalent the masses seem to be about subsidizing the technology that is enslaving us.

    Wouldn’t it be nice to take your child’s or your spouse’s hand in your own, instead of the phone?

    Anyway, while I’m here, my apologies for being so negative lately.

  • franklin

    MAX the RK poem is very spooky, gave me shivers.

  • Cotour

    The most violent and self delusional people on the planet are Democrats who identify as Liberals and are lead by Leftists.

    What would they propose in order to solve the gun problem in America and the world?

    Kill everyone that they disagreed with with a gun. (And that is not hyperbole or sarcasm)

  • Max

    Cotour;
    “We can no longer tolerate the intolerant, we must kill the killers!”
    Sounds familiar? Here is a brief synopsis of socialism and why it must kill.

    https://jim.com/killingfields.html

    Conclusion from the link;
    “Under socialism it is necessary to use negative incentives, to punish people for “parasitism” “hoarding”, “black marketeering”, and suchlike “crimes”, “crimes” which are unknown in capitalism, or rather honored as virtues.

    A socialist economy must employ negative incentives, the kind of incentives that law abiding people apply only to muggers and the like, in order to get light bulbs in the light sockets and toilet paper in the toilets. Thus the entire socialist country must be run as a prison, and all the citizens are lifers, and the nomenclatura are merely trusties.

    Needless to say, when this system is introduced, a great many people misbehave. You cannot send them to prison, they already are in prison.

    You have to murder them.

    Hence the need for efficient methods for the mass production of murder.”

    This on going process of control must be reproduced every generation. Even the founding fathers of the US Constitution had mentioned that the blood of patriots must be spilled, to prevent future tyrants that would seek to subdue us, every 20 year’s or so. They underestimated the document they produced, and the crafty ways government workers have undermined it. Giving us the illusion of freedom to set themselves above us, outside the rule of law.

    Now Washington DC is getting their own version of Alexa whether they like it or not.
    https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/04/04/world/u-s-admits-rogue-cellphone-spying-devices-present-d-c-area-hasnt-identified-whos-using/#.WsVpKjROKnM
    New (to us) spy devices, developed for police, technology enhanced by Russia and China, able to take control of your phone remotely, installing/activating functions you didn’t know you had. (everything made in China knows who it’s real master is, of course in the terms of service agreement, the phone company is monitoring us anyway for their own reasons)
    Recording peoples voices in the rooms were signals can’t get out. Extracting data, installing fake evidence. Changing keywords in documents and voicemails. Listening for passwords, voice patterns, or as the Z man posted above;
    “Google’s patent application outlines how audio and visual signals could be used to better understand a speaker’s mood or medical condition, according to the New York Times. The devices could listen to the ‘volume of the user’s voice, detected breathing rate, crying’. They could also detect a user’s coughing and sneezing.”

    And they have been using these devices for years all around Washington DC, state capitals, and other secure locations. Also mounted on drones for remote locations.
    Using encrypted phones is a good idea… Unless the memory chip is foreign made. It has of way of recording and transmitting bypassing safety protocols. It’s built into the chip… It’s 1984, do you know where your children are? Alexa knows…

  • Cotour

    From top to bottom, this is how many of the Left talk and think, because they are so self evidently correct.

    https://ntknetwork.com/kamala-harris-jokes-on-being-in-elevator-with-trump-does-one-of-us-have-to-come-out-alive/

  • ZZMike

    But surely, these will be used only for Good…..

  • Cotour

    Big brother and the problem with social media.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-17/big-brother-police-raid-home-man-who-posted-pictures-his-mushroom-dinner-facebook

    The first problem here is that they innocently invited the police into their home and agreed to answer their questions instead of asking: Why are you the police here at my door? The second was that they thought that they had to explain themselves to the police.

    Social media, Lucifers living room, as the internet becomes more and more ubiquitous throughout the entire world Big Brother can do nothing other than monitor all communications and interactions (read: Potential Evidence) for everyone’s “good”.

    The other edge of the sword cuts deep.

Readers: the rules for commenting!

 

No registration is required. I welcome all opinions, even those that strongly criticize my commentary.

 

However, name-calling and obscenities will not be tolerated. First time offenders who are new to the site will be warned. Second time offenders or first time offenders who have been here awhile will be suspended for a week. After that, I will ban you. Period.

 

Note also that first time commenters as well as any comment with more than one link will be placed in moderation for my approval. Be patient, I will get to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *