⚡️Google Retaliates Against Software Engineer and Activist Who Protested Project Nimbus
@takebackourtech

"I'm a Google software engineer and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide or surveillance!"

Its rare for a software engineer to rise up and publicly shame their employer, but that's exactly what a courageous Google Cloud software engineer did last week at an NYC tech conference.

He was quickly thrown out, along with another activist and freelance journalist who's video of the event went viral.

The software engineer referred to project Nimbus, a 1.2B technology contract between the Israeli Occuptation Forces, Amazon, and Google that gives advanced AI from the Google Cloud platform for facial detection, object tracking, and sentiment analysis - of course no doubt will be used against the Palestinian people and even against Israel's own population.

The 'No Tech for Apartheid" organization was protesting the conference that day and has made a statement after the Google Cloud software engineer was fired from their job.

This is the second worker associated with the No Tech For Apartheid campaign that Google has retaliated against for organizing within their workplace, and the latest in a series of cases in which Google has retaliated against workers for speaking up about the corporation’s ethical malpractice in a range of business decisions.
...
While terminating this brave worker, Google HR asked how they were feeling. The worker replied: “proud to be fired for refusing to be complicit in genocide.”

Its inspiring to see other individuals in tech rise up against tech tyranny, they are able to see clearly when it comes to injustice against vulnerable populations. On the other hand, it seems like the activists aren't able to see through the COVID propaganda that's literally muzzling them.

Resources
- Original account by journalist Caroline Haskins
- No Tech For Apartheid Statement

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⚡️Apple Begrudgingly Takes The Smallest Step Towards Freedom of Apps
@takebackourtech

Many of you know that's theres no way to get alternative apps on iPhones, users are locked into Apples ecosystem.

Last week, Apple, in addition to major tech companies operating in the EU, had to begin complying with the EU Digital Markets Act.

These companies were designated 'gatekeepers' or important technology services that serve as gateways between users and businesses.

The EU designated 6 Gatekeepers last September : Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Bytedance, Amazon, Apple - who all met qualitative measures of userbase and revenue.

Now Apple has less than six months to comply with the DMA and in classic Apple fashion they have done their best to maintain their walled garden.

- only opening up third-party application access inside of the EU, not extending it to other countries
- limiting web distribution to companies that have sold more than 1 million app downloads per year for the past two years.
- charging developers to host their app outside of the Apple App Store

Of course this means that Epic games, an app developer that sued Apple for exactly this right cannot have web distribution, because it was banned off of the app store this past year. Any apps that want to have web distribution need to have 1M downloads a year and be in good standing with Apple.

As you can see, it practically changes nothing in the Apple ecosystem although I hope to be proven wrong.

Article here

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⚡️Transferring Email Identities with ImapSync
@takebackourtech

As part of my name change to Hakeem I've had to move 5GBs of email from my old inbox to to a new one. All this to change an email address but keep my emails.

Thankfully, software like imapsync makes it easy. Shout out to the legend Gilles Lamiral from France who developed the software and licensed it under the most software 'free' license that I know of.

"0 No limits to do anything with this work and this license.
1 GOTO 0"

His software also works with transferring Gmail and Office365 accounts - although there are some caveats as these big tech services make it a hell to get your data off of them.

There's also a web interface for the service that he runs completely for free. Please consider donating or getting support time.

With around 75K emails in my inbox, this whole process should take around 8 hours... - I should really get into the habit of cleaning it more often.

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⚡️Freedom of Association
@takebackourtech

Yesterday I forwarded a post about RFK and his support of Israel's actions and the sentiment 'fuck this guy' - which I'm in total agreement with. Inevitably with every political post there's a polarized response. People jumped out of the woodwork asking me my problem with Israel.

If its not obvious to you at this point then we are on completely different bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the chat, a short conversation took place where we went back and forth on what genocide means, and the user on the other end maintained that because only 1% of the population had died, its not genocide.

The IOF hadn't started carpet bombing directly on the civilian populace (although they did air strike people waiting for aid), instead they let starvation and disease do they dirty work, while all they need to do is prevent aid from getting into Palestine.

This is a ridiculous viewpoint and after I understood where they were coming from and that we were going around in circles, they got banned.

I believe in Freedom of Speech, and I also believe that Freedom of Association is just as important. I don't want to associate with warmongers. And they're not the only group - I wouldn't tolerate spammers, violence, racism, supremacism, or pedophilia either. Those groups may exist on their corner of the internet - but no one is obligated to tolerate them.

You may disagree with me for not tolerating these viewpoints, but I am acutely aware of the paid disinformation agents around these issues. They distract from the message, play stupid games, and waste our precious time and energy. Of course not everyone who disagrees is a disinformation agent, there are those who have bought those same viewpoints as well - but with the truth shining this bright, its never been easier to tell the difference.

I highly encourage you to practice your own freedom of association, whether that's in your personal life or in an online community you moderate. What I've found through experience and observation is that communities without boundaries fall apart. A good example of this is the DigDeeper MUC on XMPP which recently disbanded its group after being overrun by spam and abusive material. It was sad because there were a lot of good people on there - but the noise drowned everything out.

I want to finish with saying that life is too short to be constantly arguing. Find your people, find your tribe!

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⚡️5 Startling Technology Leaks from Julian Assange's Wikileaks
@takebackourtech

Today a judgement was passed in Julian Assange’s extradition case, although it drags the case on and gives the possibility for a final rejection. If this happens, Assange will spend up to 175 years in a US maximum security prison.

His crime? Publishing classified documents which corroborated war crimes, covert surveillance programs, and torture. We pray for his release, and we will never forget how Assange and Wikileaks illuminated public awareness of these shadowy programs so we could begin to protect ourselves.

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In honor of Julian Assange, here are 5 published Wikileaks that expanded our awareness on technology surveillance.

1. The Location of 100 Amazon Data Centers

Amazon, the largest cloud computing provider in the world is also one of the largest cloud providers for government and military. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they weren’t protecting the locations of their data centers, unforunately for them - they didn’t see Wikileaks coming. In 2018, Wikileaks published a highly confidential document that listed the IP addresses of one-hundred data centers.

No, there’s no creepy looking Amazon badge on these buildings - these buildings were operated under front companies. The names of these front companies were leaked along with addresses, contact emails, and directions - and a map of their locations.

What secrets lie behind the walls of these unassuming buildings?

https://wikileaks.org/amazon-atlas

2. ELSA, Locating Windows Computers Through WiFi

Leaked in 2017 as part of the Vault 7 CIA hacking tools, ELSA is a geo-location malware project that can detect the location of Windows devices. Once ELSA has infected a target computer, it takes a list of available WiFi access points and cross-references these access points with public geo-location databases supplied by Google or Microsoft. Based on the signal strength it can calculate the position of the device which can be exfiltrated later.

#TBOT Tip: Don’t use Windows. Learn to love Linux.

3. No Isolated Network Is Safe, Brutal Kangaroo

Brutal Kangaroo, also a part of the Vault 7 tools was used to target closed ‘air-gapped’ networks that are not connected to to the outside world. Brutal Kangaroo is deployed using a thumbdrive, and can spread through use of the thumbdrive on other computers. Eventually, controlled computers begin communicating directly with each other to exchange data.

#TBOT Tip: Be watchful over your devices. No external USBs, avoid having USBs delivered.

4. Is your local router a FlyTrap?

CheryBlossom, another tool from Vault 7 is used to capture wireless network devices like wireless routers. Routers can be compromised over the internet through a firmware upgrade, at which point the router becomes a FlyTrap and acts as an ‘Man-In-The-Middle’, manipulating the internet traffic passing through it. It can scan for email addresses, chats, MAC addresses of devices, and VoIP numbers.

#TBOT Tip: Run a VPN on each device to encrypt internet traffic before it reaches a network.

5. Scribbles: Hidden watermarks in printed documents

A tool that has likely been used to catch whistleblowers, Scribbles is yet another Vault 7 project that embeds beacons into Microsoft Office documents. When a whistleblower prints the documents and releases them, the watermark can be restored to discover the source of the leak. Alternative softwares like OpenOffice or LibreOffice made this watermark visible to the target, and it was recommended to make the watermark match the document.

Readers may be reminded of the NSA’s case against whistlerblower Reality Leigh Winner, a former Air Force Linguist who worked for the NSA and sent a printed document to be published at The Intercept. Certain printers use microdots to identify the printer, date and time of printing.

Be careful what you print!