THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
The committee hearing was filled with pro-abortion activists.
We quickly learned the House Democrat caucus would be fast tracking a bill to amend the Delaware Constitution.
This attempt was defeated twice, but now it's back with new language but the same intent. Our attorneys got right on it. HB 399, the Equal Rights Amendment, seeks to Amend Delaware's Constitution to read:
Sounds fine, right? But remember: Every legislative battle like this comes down to who gets to decide the meaning of words.
Who decides the meaning of "sex"? Is it biological? Who decides what is a right and if it has been violated based on sex discrimination?
Answer: The very left leaning activist judges in the Delaware Courts based on "the State's value of equality"not our elected legislators.
"Equality of rights" "based on sex" can mean anything in today's political climate, because it isn't defined anywhere else in the Constitution.
The primary sponsors of this bill are radically pro-abortion, they're the same ones who championed Delaware's late term abortion law, and now they want to amend the State Constitution to reflect their "value of equality."
In other states, a so-called Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) like this one has been used to prohibit any regulations or restriction on abortion, because abortion is viewed as a right based on one's sex and provided at tax payer expense on the basis of "sex discrimination."
The argument goes like this: only females seek abortions, so any government policy that restricts access to abortion or that treats abortion differently from procedures performed on men is, on its face, an abridgment of “rights...on account of sex,” which is precisely what the ERA forbids.
In the synopsis,the sponsors state that without this Constitutional correction that women's rights and protections are limited.
How are they defining "what is woman" and what rights and protections are they referring to that are not already covered in our laws? Ask your Legislator. Explain that if they can't answer this clearly, to VOTE NO on HB399 to Amend the State Constitution.
REGULATION 225, remember that?That's why we're calling this bill the "NUCLEAR OPTION,"because if passed, the idea of "sex or gender discrimination" would be cemented in the State Constitution and out of the control of Legislators, whom we elect.
Our attorneys said it this way: If HB399 were to pass, schools would be impacted, and the privacy and safety of children in areas like school locker rooms, restrooms, and showers (as well as overnight accommodations) would be compromised.
The right of parents to direct their childrens' education and upbringing, particularly in when/how their children are exposed to the anatomy of the opposite sex on issues of human sexuality, will likely be impacted.
HB 399 (aka the ERA) is on the agenda for a vote in Delaware's State House TODAY. Your Legislators must hear from you. We've made it easy to take quick and immediate ACTION,click here.
West Chester, PA Anti Gun and Anti Freedom Rally 2018
West Chester, PA –-(Ammoland.com)- A cold wind blew through West Chester, PA that Saturday. It was the day of the so-called March For Our Lives. While the wind was cold the protesters' anger burned and nothing good ever comes from such burning anger.
Reacting to my sign that reads “background checks do not work” this guy was really upset. (I wasn't able to record the first part of the conversation as my camera had shut off.):
This belief in background checks is truly emotional and cult like. It's not surprising though, it's the only way to hold on to that belief in the face of overwhelming evidence that they've failed. No doubt readers noted the cherry picking of examples and denial of contrary facts. The reference to Prof. Cook at the beginning of the video was about me bringing up the article “Study Shows Brady Bill Had No Impact on Gun Homicides“. In it Prof. Cook clearly states that the Brady Bill is a failure, I.E. background checks don't work.
These ladies were much nicer but just as wrong. They seem to think that all ARs (scary black rifles) are capable of fully automatic fire. As usual for gun rights haters they're wrongly convinced that the US has the highest murder rate in the world:
Anyone wondering about my references to social dynamics in the videos is invited to listen to this presentation by Prof. Randolph Roth of Ohio State University on the subject. I also recommend his book “American Homicide”. Both make clear that it is social dynamics, not access to guns, that drive the murder rate up or down.
The sign also lead to a very pleasant conversation with a member of Gun Sense Chester County who remembered me from Mike Weisser's presentation of March 3, 2018. I said that if they were going to claim that we have such a high murder rate in the US then that shows that all the gun control we have, including background checks, has failed. Her answer was that background checks aren't universal that's why they fail. She claimed that according to a RAND Corp study they do help a little in some cases. (This article from Newsweek says that RAND found a lack of evidence on the subject. If that's really the best they can do…)
When I then pointed out that every step of the way advocates of gun control say this measure or that measure will solve the problem yet they never do. Each time gun control fails they only say we need more to make it work. We ended our conversation there.
Since my camera had shut off, again, I wasn't able to video another man who took exception to my sign. Our discussion quickly turned to the meaning of the 2nd Amendment. When I explained that it was about keeping the government disarmed by having a militia rather than standing forces he got really hot and bothered.
He exclaimed that we need the government armed to protect the public from people like me. Maybe it was the hoodie I was wearing, who knows?
The cold wind also blew in a celebrity to promote gun control, Jay Leno. Gun owning members of his fan club may want to reconsider their memberships.
What's the takeaway from covering the march? These people are scared, hurt, and angry but most of all misinformed. Isn't that what enemies of freedom always count on? They think they're doing good but good comes not from reacting emotionally but from having knowledge and thinking things through. One is reminded of the words of Judge Louis D. Brandeis:
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning, but without understanding.”
A quick look at some of their signs tells us that they want to ban all the guns they think they can get away with:
Ban Rifles Sign West Chester, PA Anti Gun and Anti Freedom Rally 2018Guns Are Death Sign West Chester, PA Anti Gun and Anti Freedom Rally 2018
The day didn't end on a sad note though. On the way home I stopped at the massive, 1700 table gun show at Oaks, PA. It sure seemed like there were more people at the gun show than attended the march. That is a good sign.
About Darren Wolfe
Darren Wolfe presently blogs as the International Libertarian (http://theinternationallibertarian.blogspot.com/). He is the former Eastern Vice Chair of the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania. Darren is also an avid shooter and chess player.
Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/IntLibertarian.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
WHAT NEW JERSEY ONCE WAS:
New JerseyNational Rifle Association Institute For Legislative Action (NRA-ILA)
Fairfax, VA –-(Ammoland.com)- On Monday, as many as 2,000 NJ gun owners packed the pavilion around the War Memorial and heard from 23 speakers, including legislators and Second Amendment leaders from around the state.
The NRA and ANJPRC sponsored event had one loud, resounding message for anti-gun politicians in Trenton. “We are going to fight with every tool at our disposal to end Second Amendment infringements in New Jersey.” We want to sincerely thank all of the NRA members who took time out of their busy lives to attend this important event and make it a resounding success.
In typical fashion, the Assembly convened shortly after the rally concluded and voted to pass a package of anti-gun bills. The bills which were approved by the Assembly on Monday included:
A.1217 by Assemblyman Jack McKeon (D) creates extreme risk protection orders. The bill has serious due process issues, including no pre-seizure notification. Ex parte hearings deprive the accused of their right to be heard and make their case.
A.2757 by Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald (D) is a redundant bill that requires background checks on private transactions. This bill is simply political gimmickry as private transactions in New Jersey already require a background check through the FID card process. This bill would do nothing except add another layer of bureaucracy and fees.
A.2758 by Assemblyman Greenwald (D) codifies the “justifiable need” standard for issuance of concealed carry permits. The bill is designed to strike a death blow to concealed carry in a state that already makes it virtually impossible to obtain a carry permit.
A.2761 by Assemblyman Greenwald (D) would ban magazines with a capacity greater than 10 rounds. The bill was amended last week in the Assembly Appropriations Committee. After realizing that the bill would most likely result in litigation, the Committee amended the bill to allow permanent blocking of already owned magazines. However, the amendment does not remove our strenuous opposition to the bill.
This fight is far from over. The Senate has to take action, and nothing has been scheduled in the upper chamber. Please continue to follow NRA-ILA alerts for updates.
About: Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org
Arizona -(Ammoland.com)- Governor Jim Justice of West Virginia has signed a reform bill to ensure that West Virginians can exercise their Second Amendment rights during travel. The Governor signed the bill HB 4187, on Friday, March 23rd. The bill passed the House with 85 Yea votes to 14 Nays, on February 27th. It passed the Senate on 9 March, 32 to 1, then had to return to the House because of two amendments that passed the Senate. It passed the House again, on 10 March, 87-11. From wdtv.com:
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WDTV) — Governor Jim Justice has signed a bill to allow people to keep firearms locked in their vehicles while parked on their employer's property.
Here is the summary of HB 4187. It limits the ability of businesses to forbid firearms in private vehicles that park in their parking lots. The reason for the bill is to ensure that private employers cannot prevent employees from exercising their right to bear arms on the way to and from work. West Virginia joins 22 other states that have enacted similar protections. Summary From HB 4187:
The purpose of this bill is to create the “Business Liability Protection Act”. The bill includes the right to limit possession of firearms on certain premises and definitions. It also provides for misdemeanor criminal offense and penalty. It prohibits employers from certain specific actions against a person when that person possesses a firearm legally, including a condition of employment. The bill provides a duty of care of public and private employers and provides for immunity from liability. The bill authorizes the Attorney General to enforce this statute, including the right to sue or seek injunctive relief; and seek civil fines.
The two amendments added in the Senate addressed concerns from private businesses. From wvgazettemail.com:
In the Senate, legislation that would stop private businesses and associations from prohibiting guns in vehicles parked on their property advanced to passage stage on Friday, after the Senate adopted two amendments Thursday (HB 4187).
One change requires that firearms in vehicles be hidden out of view of passers-by. The second clarifies that the right to have firearms in vehicles does not apply to vehicles owned or leased to a private business or association.
The amendments were adopted on a voice vote, without debate.
Courts have ruled that legislators have the power to make trade-offs between the exercise of rights. The Mississippi Supreme Court found that the Constitution and statutes of Mississippi protected the right to keep and bear arms, including in a person's vehicle. From Swindol v. Aurora Flight Sciences Corp. MS Supreme Court(pdf):
Swindol appealed, and the Fifth Circuit has now certified the following question to this Court:
Whether in Mississippi an employer may be liable for a wrongful discharge of an employee for storing a firearm in a locked vehicle on company property in a manner that is consistent with [Mississippi Code] Section 45-9-55.
Swindol v. Aurora Flight Sciences Corp., 805 F.3d 516, 523 (5th Cir. 2015). The Fifth Circuit also concluded that it “would benefit from [this Court’s] analysis of whether Section 45-9-55(5) bars” Swindol’s suit. Id. at 522.
The Mississippi Supreme Court found that the Constitution and statutes of Mississippi protected the right to keep and bear arms, including in a persons' vehicle.
There is a growing body of state law that holds the right to keep and bear arms as a fundamental right on an equal with others in the Bill of Rights. Federal appeals courts in blue states such as California and Maryland have ruled the right to be of secondary value, that may be infringed with little consequence.
One more appointment by President Trump could break the logjam on the United States Supreme Court. The United States Supreme court has refused to take significant cases on Second Amendment rights beyond the restoration of rights seen in the McDonald decision in 2010.
Dean Weingarten has been a peace officer, a military officer, was on the University of Wisconsin Pistol Team for four years, and was first certified to teach firearms safety in 1973. He taught the Arizona concealed carry course for fifteen years until the goal of constitutional carry was attained. He has degrees in meteorology and mining engineering, and recently retired from the Department of Defense after a 30 year career in Army Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation.
FORGET OR REFUSE AN APPOINTMENT OR PROCEDURE?-THE SNITCHES IN YOUR KIDS' PEDIATRIC DENTAL OFFICE-THE DENTIST, HYGIENIST, ASSISTANT, ETC. WILL REPORT YOU TO THE STATE FOR NEGLECT AND/OR ABUSE
U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a despotic pediatric dentist.
Parents who decide, for whatever reason, that they don't like their children's oral care provider should be forewarned. Empowered by government “mandatory reporter” laws, dental offices are now using their authority to threaten families with child abuse charges if they don't comply with the cavity police.
Mom Trey Hoyumpa shared a letter last week on Facebook from a dental office called Smiles 4 Keeps in Bartonsville, Pennsylvania. It informed her that if she did not make a dental appointment for “regular professional cleanings” for her child, she could be charged with “dental neglect.” Citing a law called Pennsylvania Act 31 on child abuse recognition and reporting, the dental office threatened to report the mom to state authorities if she did not schedule an appointment.
Hoyumpa wrote: “Smiles 4 Keeps bullies the parents, controls the care behind closed doors, and turns parents into villains…and I will not stand for it anymore!!!”
On social media, parents who've encountered the toxic alliance of snoopy medical providers and child welfare agencies shared their own experiences with government bullies who operate on a presumption of guilt.
Brett Darken wrote: “Anyone familiar with ‘family court,' DCF, state probate and guardianship courts know well this story. In any other context, it would be considered a threat, coercion and intimidation under RICO laws. But because it's the government, it's legal.”
This is a menacing threat to have hanging over customers of dental practices, or any medical providers for that matter: If you leave, you better tell us where you are going or we could report you to government child welfare agencies for suspected abuse.
One Twitter commenter wondered: “Is this fake?”
Unfortunately, it's all too real, and the dental office is championing an intrusive practice that is likely to spread.
Smiles 4 Keeps replied to parental criticism on Facebook by quoting the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry definition of “dental neglect” as the “willful failure of parent or guardian to seek and follow through with treatment necessary to ensure a level of oral health essential for adequate function and freedom from pain and infection.”
The dental office also defended its intimidation letter to the mom by explaining that physicians and dentists are “mandated reporters” who are “required to report suspected cases of abuse and neglect to social service or law enforcement agencies in order to prevent such tragedy.”
But as investigative reporter Terri LaPoint at MedicalKidnap.com points out, nowhere has Smiles 4 Keeps provided any evidence that Trey Hoyumpa was neglectful or abusive in any way. Moreover, Smiles 4 Keeps insists that parents provide the name of a new dentist if the family chooses to find a new provider. Hoyumpa was just one of 17 recipients of the threatening Smiles 4 Keeps salvos.
Dr. Ross Wezmar of Smiles 4 Keeps actually boasted to local news station WNEP about the snitch letters' ability “to jar the parent to realize that with a child comes responsibility.” Benevolent Dr. Marcus Welby he is not. Wezmar claimed his bully notes are the first in the nation to be dispatched. With the encroachment of socialized medicine in America, they certainly won't be the last.
Think it can't happen to you? Last year, in Ontario, Canada, mom Melissa Lopez wanted a second opinion on getting fillings for her daughter and decided to change providers. The jilted dentist, as Lenore Skenazy reported on Reason.com, called Child Protective Services to report possible “oral neglect.” The case was dismissed, but CPS refuses to remove Lopez's file from its books — it is part of a permanent record that keeps a permanent cloud of suspicion over her.
Skenazy drills down to the core: “The issue here is how easy it is to drag a family into an abuse investigation, and how hard it is for the family, like an impacted molar, to get itself extracted.”
Indeed, the partnership between medical providers and government child welfare services has threatened innocent families across the country under the guise of “protecting the children.” It is a short hop from cavity-shaming and misdiagnoses to ripping families apart.
Don't forget the case of Justina Pelletier, savagely torn from her family by Boston Children's Hospital after the prestigious medical institution wrongly accused her parents of causing her chronic illness. BCH locked Justina in a mental ward until her sister published an undercover video of Justina pleading to be reunited with her family. Public outrage forced her release and now the Pelletiers are suing BCH.
Big Nanny monitors hostile to family privacy and autonomy are everywhere — in your kids' classrooms, cafeterias, and doctors' and dentists' offices. Eternal vigilance against government intrusion is the price of parenthood.
“Woman, 24, fights for life after being ambushed and stabbed by three child Syrian refugees who followed her after arguing with her at a supermarket in Germany,” by Allan Hall, MailOnline, March 26, 2018 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
A 24-year-old woman is fighting for her life after being stabbed during a fight with a group of Syrian child refugees near Hanover, Germany.
The woman and a friend had gotten into an argument with two boys, aged 13 and 14, in a supermarket in the small town of Burgwedel near Hanover on Saturday evening.
The pair met the teens again on their way home, at which point they had been joined by a 17-year-old and the argument between the woman’s 25-year-old friend and the Syrians escalated.
Local media reports that the 24-year-old had stepped in to calm the combatants down, when she was stabbed by the 17-year-old.
All three teenagers fled the scene, but were soon caught by police.
The 17-year-old appeared before a court on Sunday and has been charged with attempted murder….
One is a Christian migrant who returned to Syria because he found Austria more dangerous. Another is a Croatian man who grew up in Sweden but recently moved to Poland with his wife and kids, saying he doesn’t “recognize the country [he] grew up in anymore.” Yet another, also a part of what has been called the “Swedish Diaspora,” is a woman who moved to Hungary because, she says, “There is no safety at all” in Sweden. They’re all part of the secondary migration caused by Muslim migration.
Many would find it shocking that people would leave the rich West for relatively poor Eastern Europe and even war-torn Syria. But it underlines a reality denied and covered up by Western governments and media: The large influx of Muslim migrants into Europe in recent years has caused burgeoning crime and the exacerbation of the no-go-zone phenomenon. More scandalous still, the cover-up effort is so intense it has led to police ignoring female rape victims, telling others not to mention the ethnicity of their attackers, and to a leftist Dutch mayor‘s attempt to keep her own mugging, in a migrant area, out of the media.
Christian Syrian Spiro Haddad wanted to come to Europe so badly that he spent €3,000 on smugglers to reach Austria. He left his native country because, as he put it in an interview with a German TV broadcaster in Syria, “we are Christians and lost everything in the war.”
Initially optimistic, Haddad’s hopes were quickly dashed, however. “I was scared when I saw how many of the refugees openly pledged to Al-Nusra and ISIS,” he said. Note that this accords with the report by practicing Muslim and fellow refugee Dr. Mudar Zahran, who said in 2015 that he had pictures and “names of terrorists who actually are already in Europe.”
Haddad says that he had to keep his Christian faith secret in Austria to survive, that he had to echo the jihadist types, who “wanted to change churches into mosques,” according to Voice of Europe (VOE). (Note: As reported in 2012, this is already happening.) As he put it, the “people I had once fled from were making the decisions.” Moreover, in what has now become a common pattern, he said that he contacted Austrian authorities, but they didn’t take him seriously (video below). So, €3,000 sadder and wiser, he returned to Syria.
Amazingly, Haddad actually feels safer in Damascus, Syria, than in Europe, a continent for which he has a warning. It’s “not good that Europe is open to all,” he says. “ISIS and Al-Nusra want to destroy everything, even with you. If you do not understand that, I’m pessimistic for the future of Europe.”
No one has to tell this to a woman interviewed recently by Hungarian news channel M1 and identified only as a “member of Swedish Diaspora” (I’ll call her MSD). Born in Sweden to a Hungarian mother, she explained that she left because there “is no safety at all with all those migrants they let into the country.” Saying the situation is only getting worse, the woman states that “you can’t travel during the daytime on the metro in Stockholm where I lived, because the migrants sexually molest the women.”
MSD says that no one helps, not even the police. This is reminiscent of the recent story of Pole Agnieszka Wiśniewska; she moved to Sweden in 2007 seeking a better life only to be raped by Arabs — and then ignored by police. She’s now thinking of returning to Poland.
As for MSD, she states that migrants get jobs before native Swedes do. In fact, she claims that even Swedish doctors have trouble finding positions, saying that while she was lucky enough to land an internship at a hospital, approximately 80 percent of her colleagues were “migrants, Muslims, from the doctors to the nurses, everyone.”
MSD says that many Swedish nurses leave their jobs because they get sexually molested in the workplace (in contrast, a native Swedish man can get in trouble if he even looks at a woman cross-eyed). Yet she says that “these facts are not allowed to come out, but [are] kept quiet.”
This, too, is an old story. Just consider the ordeal of “Emma,” a Brit who was raped by multiple Muslim men when she was 13, only to be told repeatedly by the police “not to mention the ethnicity of the attackers,” as Breitbartput it last year. Emma was one of the victims of the Rotherham, England, Muslim rape gangs, which victimized more than 1,500 British girls but whose crimes were covered up by politically correct authorities for 16 years. In fact, a government official who sought to blow the whistle was forced into diversity training and told “You must never [again] refer to Asian men,” and your “awareness of ethnic issues” needs to be raised. Note that “Asian” is how Muslims are referenced in Britain.
MSD certainly had her awareness of issues raised, in a very tragic way. She related how a migrant attacked her on the Stockholm metro one day; no one intervened, and MSD says, echoing Wiśniewska, that the police will just say they don’t have time for such matters.
In addition, MSD reports that migrant students pulling knives on teachers is a daily occurrence; that it isn’t safe for kids in the schools or on the streets; that migrants have burned down homes with Molotov cocktails, sometimes claiming lives; and that most terrorist-type attacks never even make it into international media. Unsurprisingly, MSD also says that some of her friends and acquaintances have left Sweden as well and that others are planning to follow suit (video below).
Then there is a Croatian man who grew up in Sweden but has moved to Poland. Also unidentified and interviewed by VOE late last year, he explained that he and his siblings were brought to Sweden when he was small. He said he had a “great childhood” and loved growing up in the country, which back then was clean and safe, and enabled him to get an education and a career as an IT/tech-specialist.
So why did he leave? “Sweden has been in decay for quite some time now,” he told VOE. “The schools are terrible, simple medical help takes a long time, the violence is increasing on every level and I simply don’t recognise the country I grew up in anymore.” He now finds Poland vastly preferable and lives there with his wife, children, and parents and will be joined by his wife’s parents in 2019.
Even more significantly, the Croat states that in Poland people can discuss matters like “adults.” Contrasting, he complains of what others have termed the “Soviet Sweden” mentality, where hate-speech laws combined with social stigmatization and career destruction serve to silence Swedes opposed to migration. He says that “people know that migration has led to more crimes, more rapes, more violence, more gangs but the government and media” whitewash the issue. “Swedes KNOW that something is terribly wrong,” he states, “but no one speaks openly about it.”
No doubt. While Sweden has the highest per-capita migration rate in Europe, nonetheless, even “assimilation” is “a Nazi word” in the country, reported Danish journalist Mikael Jalving in the shocking 2014 CBN TV news piece, “Soviet Sweden? Model Nation Sliding to Third World” (below).
The above also reports on a former Swedish radio journalist who left Sweden in 2013 and “returned to her native Somalia,” as CBN’s Dale Hurd relates it. “She told Swedish television that Mogadishu was safer than the immigrant suburbs of Stockholm.”
Of course, as alluded to earlier and as I reported just recently, hate-speech laws, travel bans, and social stigmas are used all over Western Europe to silence critics of immigrationism, as citizens’ needs are routinely subordinated to those of statist-enabling foreigners. It’s an attitude that was summed up very well back in 2001 by Social Democrat politician Mona Sahlin when she brazenly said that “the Swedes must be integrated into the new Sweden; the old Sweden is never coming back.”
Yet more and more Europeans are choosing emigration to somewhere better over integration into something worse — and they’re never coming back to their “new” old lands.
Following the news of Facebook’s data breach that allowed political manipulation of the 2016 election, the social media giant is facing a steady stream of criticism from a variety of sources. Facebook has been called out for the data breach that compromised millions of users, allowing their votes to be manipulated. In particular, the criticism is focused not so much on the breach as on the personal data that Facebook collects on users in the first place.
Some of the people criticizing Facebook are well-known heavy hitters in the tech world. For instance, last Tuesday, Brian Acton — who founded the encrypted messaging app WhatsApp — tweeted, “It is time. #deletefacebook.” And on March 17, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden put Facebook’s claims of being the innocent victims in all of this into perspective when he tweeted, “Facebook makes their money by exploiting and selling intimate details about the private lives of millions, far beyond the scant details you voluntarily post. They are not victims. They are accomplices.” Snowden followed that tweet with another, saying, “Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as ‘surveillance companies.’ Their rebranding as ‘social media’ is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense.”
While Snowden’s tweets address the heart of the issue, i.e., that most of what passes for social media is really just what this writer refers to as “surveillance as a feature,” Acton’s call for people to delete their Facebook accounts is telling. In 2014, Acton was involved in selling WhatsApp to Facebook for $19 billion. He held 20 percent ownership in the company at that time, so his share of the sale — paid out in cash and stock options — was something approaching $4 billion. He continued to work at WhatsApp after the sale, leaving last year to help Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike found the Signal Foundation.
Signal is a competitor of WhatsApp. Since Signal is built on open-source software to accomplish zero-knowledge, end-to-end encryption of texts, voice calls, and video calls, WhatsApp actually uses Signal’s technology to power WhatsApp services. Acton invested $50 million in the Signal Foundation. At the launch of the foundation, Marlinspike said, “Brian left WhatsApp and Facebook last year, and has been thinking about how to best focus his future time and energy on building nonprofit technology for public good,” adding, “The addition of Brian brings an incredibly talented engineer and visionary with decades of experience building successful products to our team.”
That Facebook is taking a well-deserved beating over the leaked personal data of more than 50 million users is obvious. The market responded by shareholders dumping their stocks. In fact, Reuters reported and tweeted on March 19 that Facebook shares are “down 5.6 percent” and the social media giant is “set to lose over $30 billion in market value if losses hold.”
The popularity of #deletefacebook, and the downward direction of Facebook’s financials, have already caused Newsweek to speculate whether this is “the end of the social network.” That is not such a far-fetched question.
So while lawmakers on both sides of the pond are demanding that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (shown) appear before committees as they consider legislation to regulate social media (and Zuckerberg has said he favors some regulation), the free market is already dealing with Facebook without any assistance from government.
In fact, when Acton tweeted it is time to #deletefacebook, tech magnate Elon Musk responded sarcastically, “What’s Facebook?” When another Twitter user pointed out that Musk’s SpaceX project had a Facebook page, Musk replied that he “didn’t realize there was one” and that he would delete it. He then deleted both the SpaceX page and the page for the electric car company, Tesla, which he founded.
Since social-media sites gain credibility from the exposure offered by famous people and companies who use those sites, the deletion of accounts may matter as much as the dumping of stocks. If this evolves into an exodus, the result could be a one/two combination of stock dumping and page deleting that would be so connected that it would be hard to tell which is the chicken and which is the egg.
An example of this is the fact that the Facebook pages for SpaceX and Tesla each had more than 2 million “likes.” That means that the millions of people who were following those pages will have to look to other platforms for news about those companies.
As this continues to take off, #deletefacebook is trending on Twitter, which seems only too happy to make the most of it.
And while Twitter is enjoying its day in the sun over all of this, the truth is that the company collects the same type of data as Facebook. The only difference is that Twitter hasn’t been hit with a data breach. Yet. That we know of. But since the Facebook breach was in 2014 and only came to light because Cambridge Analytica founder Christopher Wylie blew the whistle on what he calls “Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare mindf*ck tool,” it is not beyond the realm of possibility (or even probability) that Twitter users’ data has been similarly used.
And there is the rub. The important point here is not that someone outside of Facebook got the data and used it to manipulate users; it is that — as Snowden said — “Facebook makes their money by exploiting and selling intimate details about the private lives of millions, far beyond the scant details you voluntarily post.” That someone else got their hands on the data and used it only serves to illustrate that the data shouldn’t exist in the first place. Facebook, Twitter, and other social-media platforms routinely use those platforms and the data they collect on users to manipulate those users. Part of that is about profits and part of it is about a political agenda.
And while many social-media platforms are “surveillance companies” masquerading as something else, the free market is already producing competitors that do not harvest users’ data. One such platform is Oneway — a social-media site dedicated to free speech and being “human friendly.” Part of that commitment means no data-harvesting. As Oneway founder Derek Peterson explained to The New American, there would simply be no way for his platform to be manipulated for any purpose, since there is no data to manipulate. “In a world of hackers, intelligence agencies, and corporations, privacy on the Internet is virtually impossible to guarantee. The only way to truly secure a user's data is to never collect it in the first place,” he said, adding, “On oneway.com all we know about our users is their username, e-mail address, and what they publish publicly.” In fact, “passwords are encrypted such that we can't even read them if we wanted to.” This means that “there is no benefit to any government agency, hacker or company in acquiring our user data."
Since even Oneway can’t see a user’s password, and the site does not collect or store data on users, it would even be possible to have a completely anonymous account. All a user would need to do is create an anonymous, encrypted e-mail address (I’m looking at you, Protonmail) using the Tor network, never access that address outside of Tor, and use that address to sign up for a Oneway account. As long as the user — whether a journalist, activist, or average citizen who is concerned about privacy and anonymity — always uses Tor to access both that e-mail address and his Oneway account, it would be virtually impossible to tie that user to those accounts. And since Oneway doesn’t harvest data, there is no data to be leaked.
Facebook could learn a lesson from sites such as Oneway. The free market may insist on it. As for this writer, I have been using Oneway for a few weeks now and — like so many others — the only reason I have even kept a Facebook account is to stay in touch with friends and family. Considering recent revelations, I am compelled to acknowledge that — all of my reasonable complaints about both the surveillance state and the culture of surveillance notwithstanding — I have maintained a relationship with a company that exists primarily to spy on me.
This is my tipping point. I have downloaded all of my photos and videos from Facebook and will be taking Acton’s sound advice to #deletefacebook. Come see me at Oneway. I am there as radix_libertatem.
