Facebook Coin will reach 1 in every 3 people alive today… Why it’s a big win for the Surveillance Society… In the mailbag: “Socialism is the bane of creativity and invention”…
That was the bold claim we made when we launched The Daily Cut last August.
So far, we’ve showed you how Google and Facebook have built the world’s most powerful surveillance machines… and how the data they harvest gets picked up by the National Security Agency (NSA).
And we warned you that Big Tech and Big Government are laying the foundations for a Surveillance Society incompatible with human liberty.
But even we didn’t see how fast the walls would close in.
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As we showed you yesterday, Facebook is launching its own digital currency, Facebook Coin.
And before it rolls it out, it’s going to integrate WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger. This new mega messaging platform will reach roughly 2.7 billion users… which means so will Facebook Coin.
Here’s more from our tech expert here at Legacy Research, Jeff Brown…
What other company can you think of that has 2.7 billion customers worldwide?
It’s a product that everyone carries with them all of their waking hours. And on average, people use the Facebook suite of products for more than an hour a day.
This is easily one of the most powerful networks on Earth… and maybe the most powerful today. This will allow Facebook to create the world’s largest purely digital currency network – almost overnight.
And digital money is perfect for the Surveillance Society.
When you transact with it, nobody but the other people in the deal need to know about it.
But digital money – unless it’s a truly decentralized and truly anonymous cryptocurrency – always leaves a trace.
So in a cashless society, corporations and governments could roll back the clock of your life and see a timeline of everything you ever earned and everything you ever spent that money on.
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In 2015, the French government outlawed cash purchases above €1,000 ($1,129).
A year later, the Indian government banned nearly all of the cash in circulation almost overnight.
And in the U.S., if you try to withdraw, deposit, or convert more than $10,000 to a foreign currency in cash, your bank automatically reports the transaction to the Department of the Treasury as suspicious.
Harvard economist and former International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief economist Ken Rogoff has even called for banning the U.S. $100 bill.
Now, people are starting to wake up to the idea that if cash goes away, they’re at the mercy of online snoops – whether those snoops are in Washington, D.C., and its hinterland, or in Silicon Valley.
Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care about privacy.
He’s built the world’s biggest and most sophisticated surveillance machine. And it’s made him as rich as Croesus.
Back in 2010 at a tech awards ceremony in San Francisco, he even went so far as to say that privacy was no longer a “social norm” we need to be concerned about. As he put it at the time…
People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.
Last Wednesday, he wrote a 3,200-word blog post titled “A Privacy-Focused Vision for Social Networking.”
It laid out his case for turning Facebook from a public “town square” model to a private “living room” model. Zuckerberg…
Over the last 15 years, Facebook and Instagram have helped people connect with friends, communities, and interests in the digital equivalent of a town square. But people increasingly also want to connect privately in the digital equivalent of the living room.
As I think about the future of the internet, I believe a privacy-focused communications platform will become even more important than today’s open platforms. Privacy gives people the freedom to be themselves and connect more naturally, which is why we build social networks.
We’d love to see Facebook take its users’ privacy seriously. The problem is The Zuck’s pivot to privacy is typical smoke and mirrors.
That means that the company won’t be able to read the content of people’s messages.
But that doesn’t mean that it won’t be spying on you. Jeff again…
The headline is, “We’re going to secure your messages.” But it’s irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
Facebook is really good at this. It knows that politicians and regulators are not literate in technology. So at the surface, it seems great. Facebook is going to make messages on its platform private.
But that’s just a drop in the ocean of all the data Facebook collects.
Facebook doesn’t just collect data from people on its platforms. It plants digital trackers called “cookies” on all the top websites around the world. It also plants cookies on all your devices. It knows what emails you’re sending. It knows all the websites you’re looking at. It knows what you post, whether that’s images or text.
That goes for Facebook Coin, too. Facebook will track, record, store, and parse every transaction you make using its network.
And if you think this data won’t end up in the hands of the Deep State… we have a bridge to sell you.
Legacy Research regulars will know what we mean.
As Bill Bonner Letter coauthor Dan Denning put it…
The Deep State is not a tightly run conspiracy. It’s a cartel of interests brought together for the sake of wealth, power, privilege, and self-preservation.
And this isn’t just true in America. It’s the same almost anywhere you go in the world.
Take Tencent, the Chinese company behind the WeChat payments app.
It has 1.1 billion users. It handles about $17 billion in payments a day. And its owner, Ma Huateng, is known to be close to the Communist Party bosses in Beijing.
WeChat users simply assume anything they do on the app is subject to state surveillance.
There’s no reason why it would be any different with Facebook Coin.
As you know, Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013 revealed that the NSA secretly hoovers up people’s data without their knowledge. Do you think it would let all that juicy financial information Facebook gathered on its users to stay private?
Until the feds stop printing it, physical cash is one of the best ways to preserve your financial privacy.
We also recommend you hold plenty of gold – the kind of money that has stood the test of time… and bitcoin – which is truly decentralized digital money.
And as a final precaution, we urge you to review the four steps Dan Denning laid out for what he calls “going dark” – aka, getting yourself off Big Tech’s radar as much as possible.
It’s the best way to shore up your privacy and check out permanently from the Surveillance Society that’s taking root in the U.S.
Check out Dan’s four steps right here.
The back-and-forth on the rising tide of socialism – and whether it’s a boon or a disaster for America – shows no sign of slowing down…
We now live in a time when socialism is considered chic, cool, and oh so caring of others. However, I believe it would be an eye-opening experience if the individuals who support socialism today were subjected to the medical systems of those countries that currently use social medicine.
Why don’t people realize that governmental bureaucracy is one of the most inefficient methods of running anything? Having worked in government for over 25 years only reinforced the above opinion. Do people not realize that without the profit incentive, all the wonderful advancements in medicine and society would be nonexistent? Socialism is the bane of creativity and invention.
I can sort of understand the under-29 crowd. They haven’t earned enough to appreciate that charity should always be voluntary, as opposed to enforced by government. But, I say shame on those Republicans and the more mature members of society who want to embrace any form of socialism.
– David H.
I often wondered why all the politicians wanted to spend all this money on developing a universal health care program when one already exists.
Medicaid and Medicare programs already have the basis to implement a national health care system. With a few tweaks, it seems it would have been a better option to look into than Obamacare. We are already taxed for them. Not that I’m for all these social programs.
My guess is they spent billions on research on all this. I’m sure a lot of people lined their pockets. I’m sure the companies that sell health care wouldn’t have liked to see Medicare or Medicaid become the national health care.
– Kevin E.
Therese H. makes a good point. Everyone should have a little skin in the game. Taxes should absolutely be the same percentage for every income-producing person in the U.S.
Sorry, I cannot have any sympathy for those without. I am not rich, nor am I poor. I admire those who have worked diligently to achieve comfort, security, and wealth. They would generally be someone moving through time with intent and determination.
As a young person starting out, my goal was to have a greater amount of success than my parents. So far, at 67, I have achieved that goal. Most disadvantaged people are in the same exact lot as their parents because an honest effort is not made to make a change. Success takes years, and sometimes, generations to achieve. You have to want it for yourself, and it has to be instilled in your children. Enrichment doesn’t come by the wave of a wand.
– Robert S.
Is David H. right that socialism is the bane of creativity and invention? Will you be using Facebook Coin when it launches?
Write us at [email protected]. We read every email you send in.
Regards,
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Chris Lowe
March 12, 2019
Dublin, Ireland