The Trump Administration is considering a very disturbing proposal that would use Big Tech companies including Google, Amazon, and Apple to collect data on users who exhibit characteristics of mental illness that could lead to “violent behavior”.
Supporters see the plan as a way Trump could “move the ball forward” on gun control.
Naturally, a new federal agency will be created to implement this program. The push to create this new agency – called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency or HARPA – began two years ago, reports The Washington Post:
The concept was advanced by the Suzanne Wright Foundation and first discussed by officials on the Domestic Policy Council and senior White House staffers in June 2017. But the idea has gained momentum in the wake of the latest mass shootings that killed 31 people in one weekend in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio.
The Suzanne Wright Foundation re-approached the administration last week and proposed that HARPA include a “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes” — project. Officials discussed the proposal at the White House last week, said two people familiar with the discussions. These people and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversations. (source)
Trump is reportedly a big fan of the HARPA proposal.
HARPA would be part of the Health and Human Services Department. Its director would be appointed by Trump, and the agency would have a separate budget, according to The Post. The agency would be modeled on another controversial federal agency – DARPA.
In Proposed Federal Agency Would Create Criteria to “Identify” Potentially Violent People, Mike Maharrey of the Tenth Amendment Center raises some chilling concerns regarding the new agency:
Coupled with “red flag” laws, this sounds like the beginning of a dystopian nightmare.
You have give the people pushing HARPA credit for their ability to seize on tragedies in order to garner political support for their proposal. The HARPA plan apparently hadn’t really gained much traction since it was initially proposed in 2017. By focusing on gun violence, the supporters of HARPA may have found the political lever they needed to push their plan forward and get the agency created.
The SAFE HOME plan sounds innocent enough, but it would create the foundation for further expansion of the U.S. surveillance state and accelerate the erosion of privacy rights. (source)
Trump reportedly responded “very positively” to the proposal. “Every time this has been brought up inside the White House – even up to the presidential level – it’s been very well-received,” a person familiar with the discussions told The Post.
This project will cost taxpayers an outrageous sum.
Oh, and this four-year project will cost taxpayers an estimated $40 million to $60 million.
I’d like to pause for a moment to remind everyone that the national debt is over $22 TRILLION and is rapidly climbing. Check out the US National Debt Clock (the figures are real-time) to see how much we pay in taxes, how much the government is spending (they are spending far more than they are stealing from us), and unfunded liabilities (kiss your retirement goodbye if you are years away from trying to collect).
All we need is more government spending, right? Collapse is already inevitable, and unnecessary programs that place more financial burden on taxpayers is going to hasten it.
The way data will be collected for the project is very troubling.
The Post spoke to some people who have knowledge of the project. One of them is Geoffrey Ling, who is the lead scientific adviser on HARPA. Ling is also a founding director of DARPA’s Biological Technologies Office. He explained that the project will use “volunteer data” to identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act”.
“Everybody would be a volunteer,” Ling said in an interview. “We’re not inventing new science here. We’re analyzing it so we can develop new approaches.
“This is going to have to be done using scientific rigor,” he said. (source)
Everybody would be a volunteer? What does Ling mean, exactly? The Post article does not clarify, but it does emphasize that the project would not collect an individual’s information without their permission. By “permission” do they mean that because users generally agree to allow companies like Google and Apple to share their private information when they accept terms and conditions, HARPA would have access to your private data whether you want them to or not? Is this some kind of “permission by proxy” scam?
Here’s a bit more about what the proposal states:
The idea is for the agency to develop a “sensor suite” using advanced artificial intelligence to try to identify changes in mental status that could make an individual more prone to violent behavior. The research would ultimately be opened to the public.
HARPA would develop “breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity for early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence,” says a copy of the proposal. “A multi-modality solution, along with real-time data analytics, is needed to achieve such an accurate diagnosis.”
The document goes on to list a number of widely used technologies it suggests could be employed to help collect data, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home. The document also mentions “powerful tools” collected by health-care provides like fMRIs, tractography and image analysis.
“Advanced analytical tools based on artificial intelligence and machine learning are rapidly improving and must be applied to the data,” states the document.
Those familiar with the project stressed it would not collect sensitive health data about individuals without their permission. The government is simply trying to identify risk factors when it comes to mental health that could indicate violent behavior, they said.
“Privacy must be safeguarded. Profiling must be avoided. Data protection capabilities will be the cornerstone of this effort.” (source)
The government and Big Tech continue to invade our privacy and compromise our personal data.
I’m sorry, but does anyone believe the government is going to “safeguard” anyone’s private data? The US government has suffered 443 data breaches since 2014 involving 168,962,628 records, with 2018 being the worst year so far, according to a recent study by Comparitech.
Back in June, it was revealed that – oops! – the NSA improperly collected Americans’ call and text logs in November 2017 and in February and October 2018 – just months after the agency claimed it was going to delete the 620 million-plus call detail records it already had stockpiled.
We can’t do anything without being surveilled and ranked now. The government, private companies, and stores are watching us and collecting all manner of data on our preferences, behaviors, and activities.
While the report uses a lot of weird Orwellian-type Doublespeak straight out of 1984, it is obvious what the goal is: collect an abundance of personal data in order to watch for behavior the government deems concerning (how will this be measured? what criteria will be used?) in order to infringe on individual liberty.
Two experts shared their thoughts on the proposal with Gizmodo:
It’s an approach that strikes George David Annas, deputy director of the Forensic Psychiatry Fellowship Program at SUNY Upstate Medical University, as ridiculous.
“The proposed data collection goes beyond absurdity when they mention the desire to collect FitBit data,” Annas told Gizmodo. “I am unaware of any study linking walking too much and committing mass murder. As for the other technologies, what are these people expecting? ‘Alexa, tell me the best way to kill a lot of people really quickly’? Really?”
Less unusual is the effort to scapegoat people with mental health issues by suggesting their illness is a leading factor in these atrocities—even though that conclusion isn’t supported by data.
“Creating a watchlist of citizens who most likely will never act violently based on their mental health is a very dangerous proposal with major ethical considerations,” Emma Fridel, a doctoral candidate at Northeastern University specializing in mass murder, told Gizmodo in an email. “Doing so to predict the unpredictable is utterly absurd.” (source)
HARPA is another sign that social credit systems and gun confiscation are coming.
This sounds a lot like a component of a social credit system, doesn’t it? Eta Onrish described how this works and the role Big Tech plays in the article Forget 1984, We’re Facing a Brave New World:
The ‘biggest’ problem is that these freedoms that you enjoy will be infringed without due process. The social credit system is a very nebulous and fuzzy system that lacks any sort of transparency. Also, if you happen to speak out against the government or are somehow considered a threat, you could easily find yourself without a job or money and unable to travel – and not only could this be done without any proof that you’ve done anything illegal – this could happen completely behind the scenes. Because there is no legal proceeding, you have no recourse other than to fall back in line and hope they give you your life back.
There are additional concerns to consider, Maharrey says:
One has to ask the question: what will the government do once it identifies these “risk factors?” It won’t simply publish a paper. It will use the information as a basis for action. It seems almost certain the federal government would use the risk factors developed by HARPA as criteria to justify gun confiscation under proposed “red flag” laws.
As Michael Boldin has said, from the income tax to the “PATRIOT” Act, proposals for new federal programs and powers always start small. Then they eventually end up used against everyone. John Dickinson, the “Penman of the American Revolution,” warned us to “Oppose a disease at its beginning.” (source)
.Gun confiscation really is coming, and it doesn’t seem to be a partisan issue anymore.
Red flag gun laws, the NRA being labeled a terrorist organization, the Trump Administration’s support of HARPA’s agenda, and presidential candidates openly admitting they will confiscate guns if elected are all signs that we are truly heading down a terrifying dystopian path.
What do you think?
Do you think HARPA’s agenda will do anything to stop mass shootings? How do you feel about Big Tech working with the government on this project? Do you think mass gun confiscation is coming one way or another? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
About the Author
Dagny Taggart is the pseudonym of an experienced journalist who needs to maintain anonymity to keep her job in the public eye. Dagny is non-partisan and aims to expose the half-truths, misrepresentations, and blatant lies of the MSM.
So Gulagle (Google) really was just pilot-testing Project Dragonfly on the Red Chinese in preparation for imposing an Amerikan version on us…
Can forced organ harvesting from political opponents (for government profit) be far behind? The Chinese have that down to a grisly art.
When the actionable boundary for such a nebulous phrase as “mental illness” can be used by tyrants to deprive anyone of what was a long time ago regarded as constitutional rights, we’d just become the Captive Socialist States of Amerika. It’s worth recalling the ancient fear that Benjamin Franklin was well aware of when he replied to Mrs. Powel in Philadelphia with his famous description of what the Constitutional Convention had produced with “A republic, if you can keep it.” He knew that they had all eventually degenerated into one form or another of tyranny.
This Feb 2018 article shows that using “mental illness” as a poker-like wild card to arbitrarily deprive people of their 2nd Amendment rights has been a tyrant’s wet dream for a long time:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/mental_health_and_gun_control.html
But that article doesn’t go back much before the OBungle era. Stalin was infamous for the practice. So was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (in the case of Ezra Pound). Truman used it as a cover to media-whitewash over the 1949 murder of Secretary of Defense James Forrestal — Arkancide style — complete with a suicide note in a stranger’s handwriting.
If this most recent proposal ever goes into effect, I would predict a sudden increase in popularity of the “ghost gun” DIY how-to knowledge — not that you could expect to find it via the Gulagle search engine. I’m remembering how fedgov tried every strategy possible to shut down the encryption software that Phil Zimmerman had created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy). It was clear that fedgov had the mindset that only they had a right to keep secrets (like the planning communication that two US army crypto operators exposed a couple of weeks before the JFK assassination, but were deemed mentally incompetent and thereby incarcerated — which details the CIA kept classified until Trump declassified them in 2017), but none of us were entitled to that Bill of Rights guarantee regarding our papers and effects.
How do I say to my long gone ancestral uncle who died as a POW aboard a British prison ship in New York harbor during our Revolution that “we tried to preserve what you fought and died for as long as we could, but nothing lasts forever…”?
—Lewis
Forget HARPA, all we need to do is revise HIPPA medical confidentiality regulations so we know for instance who is on psychotropic drugs, etc. Then we need to mandate accountability to update state and national background back check databases.
Once we have the information and the vehicle for timely background back check database updates the system can be assessed before we try some HARPA gun confiscation like The Minority Report./
A social credit system is more than about gun control and should be the focus of public debate.
No social credit system. There. Debate over.
Not. The surveillance state wasn’t up for public debate either. U.S. citizens have guns and the Deep State happens anyway. Guns have been reduced to metal teddy bears.
Ballots hit harder than bullets, but it would be interesting to see how many gun owners vote and are informed, strategic voters.
Remember when in the 70’s a former employee for AT&T testified before congress that the FBI were in the phone center changing the election result numbers. Nothing happened of course to change that. Then John Shull took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court proving that dead people had voted in his election (about 8,000 dead people) in San Antonio, Texas. He won every step of the way but lost at the U.S. Supreme Court, because if he had won it would of changed our election procedures. Elections are rigged.
Look at my county. About four years ago a candidate filed a federal lawsuit in federal court. The case was quickly settled out of court. Why? Because in a county with 935 people (200 are children under 18), plus the individuals who are down here on prison release program and aren’t allowed to vote, not to mention the non-citizens who live here. Explain how we had over 1200 people voting? I say it again… Elections are rigged. Until we go back to the original way we voted when our country was formed we will have election fraud. Before you stood up and were counted. No stuffed ballot boxes, no machines that changes votes, etc. Each person took responsibility for their vote. No secret ballots!! Thank President Lincoln for starting the ballot boxes.
The 1975 Church Committee hearings was the first serious outing of the Deep State and little was done. So what if elections are rigged? Keep pushing for an honest system and at least keep the memory of such an ideal alive.
Cheating in elections is the public version of individuals cheating on exams. How much do the cheats really know, and how long before that deficit of real world knowledge and understanding as opposed to fantasy bites them in the rear… as is happening right now.
Trump’s main advantage versus China and Russia is that he was totally unpredictable insofar as what he did was halfways pragmatic and problem focused as opposed to totally overweighted to special interests, or at least the usual special interests (except for Israel). They weren’t expecting even a halfways intelligent response to the Eurasian century.
“How much do the cheats really know, and how long before that deficit of real world knowledge and understanding as opposed to fantasy bites them in the rear… as is happening right now.”
If it bit only them in the rear, I wouldn’t be worrying. The problem is, it bites all the rest of us in the rear first.
Look at the low information voters who elected AOC – they inflicted her on the rest of the country, and now we have to suffer for it.
This does not surprise me at all. Recently in Arkansas, they have put a clause into the CCHL application that states the state police have the right to check any records at any time they deem nesscessary in order for permit to be approved or kept.
Except where prohibited by federal law. So may any record holder who is asked by AR state police for protected records get on every media platform s/he can. After securing said records that is.
No wonder the population is becoming more and more in mind to become peppers. It makes you wonder how did our nation drop good sense for a false sense of security by destroying real security. How did an organization supporting the second amendment of the US constitution become someone’s idea of a terrorist organization?
By the way I’m enjoying the challenges. I hope were pretty much ready but its good to think about it.
The NRA has many detractors including from the gun community for not going far enough to defend gun rights. Whether true or not, also supporting regional gun rights group more attuned to local challenges can’t hurt.
https://thelibertarianrepublic.com/top-5-gun-rights-organizations-nra/
Also, there’s the phenomenon of regulatory capture; the NRA would be the go-to organization to corrupt by the anti-gun lobby.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/regulatory-capture.asp
Then there’s the usual internal politics gone bad, which anti-gunners can inevitably exploit as that can creep into any large, longstanding popular organization governed by representation.
https://thinkprogress.org/in-response-to-the-latest-mass-shooting-the-nra-goes-after-the-real-enemy-anti-gun-rich-people-44dec169d8ed/
Opt in on medical info? HA, right. The national medical database has been in place for decades. Good luck opting out of that!
I’m sure that anyone who has a “government” job will automatically receive a 100% A+ for a credit score.
Does that mean we should all try to get a government job? Should we try to ruin things for the gun grabbers by working against them from within? Not a bad idea!!
This is just one more reason why I don’t use “social Media”, as if I needed another reason.
Never have. Never will.
.
As to big.gov; they can take a flying leap.
.
There. I kept it polite. LOL
Never have and never will on the social media, either! Glad to hear I am not alone in that!!! Love your politeness and agree 100%!!!
It isn’t just going to be social media – the ability to scan across the web and harvest exists today. VPN, “nom de net”, and being careful about revealing information that *could* be pieced together and used to identify you.
In your personal life, stay under the radar but try to blend in. Use your credit card wisely. Purchases via credit card have been collected for years. So if you don’t want a purchase tied to your name, pay cash. During the great recession, a financial person (in Canada but I may be mistaken as to his location) was convinced that charging groceries was an indication that a person was in financial trouble. Besides putting two and two together to get five, “points” (which I detest) are why so many charge everything s/he can.
The ‘system’ only know what you tell it, so in that regard wherever and whenever you interact with it always give the image or mirage of a sheeple. Yes, we have to use it to get our daily chores and business done but that’s where any type of truth about yourself should begin and end. When dealing with any type of social media never upload anything about yourself or your family if possible, and if you already have be sure to find a way to erase it along with this never use your real name or facts about yourself on anything you don’t have to. The object is be a ‘Grey Man’ or ‘Empty Box’ of information. Social media should be used as a information source to pick up on patterns, trends, and to know or at a minimum have a good grasp on the current rhythm the world and what is yet to come, a very erratic predictor at best. Outside harden business transactions everything else that one may enage in online should be prop or paper target of someone or something that does not exist. Stay hidden and offline as much as possible we don’t always have to ‘sign in’ in order to stay abreast of what going on in the world. God Bless.
Remember kids all we need is a Bible, Beans, Bullets, and Bandaids. Don’t worry about the rest God’s got this.