by Jack Davis
Google can always find you.
Contrary to claims Google was making to consumers, The Associated Press reported that some Google apps “automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.”
According to the AP, when a user simply opens the Maps app, that
user’s location is stored. Asking for weather updates means that a
phone will note where the user was when the request was made.
Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton computer scientist, had his lab test and verify the AP’s findings. The AP reported that whether the apps were installed on iPhones of Android phones, the results were the same. Mayer said that’s a problem.
“If you’re going to allow users to turn off something called ‘Location History,’ then all the places where you maintain location history should be turned off,” Mayer said. “That seems like a pretty straightforward position to have.”The company said users are informed of what their phones are up to.
“Location History is a Google product that is entirely opt in, and users have the controls to edit, delete, or turn it off at any time,” the company said in a statement, Bloomberg News reported.
.“… we make sure Location History users know that when they disable the product, we continue to use location to improve the Google experience when they do things like perform a Google search or use Google for driving directions.”
Google needs to know where users are, one commentator said.“They build advertising information out of data,” said Peter Lenz, the senior geospatial analyst at Dstillery, an advertising technology company. “More data for them presumably means more profit.”
If you use Google Maps, Google is tracking you right now. Even if you turned off Location History, the search giant still tracks and stores your location. There's a way to stop it—but it takes a lot of digging. Here’s a handy step-by-step guide Here
Google also responded to the report by making a change in what it told consumers, according to a follow-up AP report
Google formerly told users that “with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
Google now says, “This setting does not affect other location services on your device.” It adds that “some location data may be saved as part of your activity on other services, like Search and Maps.”
Google is owned by Alphabet Inc.
cienceSharing of information is probably the most powerful influence there is among human beings. Perhaps social media giants know this better than anyone. They’ve made fortunes from their internet empires, collecting data and luring the public into their information hubs.
Of late we have seen just how these internet moguls have used their power to control information, and discriminate against those with whom they disagree.
Barack Obama’s 2008 election was probably the first time we saw the power social media had at influencing a nation, politically. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Obama and his team correctly identified social media as an effective platform with which to reach a badly needed demographic to put him over the top in his presidential race.
And President Trump has managed to keep the liberal media in a
tailspin with his use of Twitter to directly reach his audience and
circumvent their ability to spin news coverage.
Could they have already known what Pew Research
just released in their latest round of polling? Americans are highly
influenced by social media. At least 14 percent will flip on an idea or
previously held beliefs based on what they see on social media
platforms.
According to the poll, men 18 to 29 are an easier flip than women on political or social views due to social media influence. Race and ethnicity reportedly also have a role to play.
“Certain groups, particularly young men, are more likely than others to say they’ve modified their views because of social media. Around three-in-ten men ages 18 to 29 (29%) say their views on a political or social issue changed in the past year due to social media. This is roughly twice the share saying this among all Americans and more than double the shares among men and women ages 30 and older (12% and 11%, respectively).”
“There are also differences by race and ethnicity, according to the new survey. Around one-in-five black (19%) and Hispanic (22%) Americans say their views changed due to social media, compared with 11% of whites.”And it’s got to be the data on how those folks flip within their own parties that is the most troubling to companies, for example, like Google and Facebook.
“Social media prompted views to change more among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (17%) than among Republicans and Republican leaners (9%). Within these party groups, there are also some differences by gender, at least among Democrats. Men who are Democrats or lean Democratic (21%) are more likely than their female counterparts (14%) to say they’ve changed their minds. However, equal shares of Republican and Republican-leaning men and women say the same (9% each).”Breitbart reported last year that 67 percent of Americans get their news through social media. That’s a huge percentage of the population focused on a targeted information source. Is it any wonder why social media giants are fighting conservative speech to the degree with which we see today?
Can you imagine what kind of damage a message like #WalkAway could do to the progressive narrative from someone like Brandon Straka, a former liberal?Straka started the social media #WalkAway movement this year after he left the Democratic Party. The young, formerly liberal male speaks quite effectively to the left about why liberal agendas have fallen short of their promises because he walked lockstep within its platform his entire life. Now he’s using social media to get that message out to the 29 percent of men and 18 percent of women who are black, hispanic and white before the midterms in November.
His Facebook page has grown to more than 75,000 followers in just a few months and a grassroots movement has expanded to Canada. All this, through the power of social media.
I’m going to go out on a limb here to guess this isn’t quite what Zuckerberg planned when he started Facebook. But here’s hoping the latest polling results and campaigns like #WalkAway are a bigger testament to the power of American exceptionalism than it is to social media influence and power.
By Cillian Zeal
Michael
Avenatti is either telling a very salacious tale or is a very connected
man, because he seems to appear on cable news about as often as I eat
meals. I’m going to assume it’s probably some confluence between the
two, since Stormy Daniels’ lawyer has been a ubiquitous presence on
television since early this year. But it appears as if Avenatti’s connections don’t
stop with the media. They go well beyond that, and they tie him to a
major Clinton Foundation donor and one of the professors that the Trump
dossier hinges upon.
While
rich and connected people tend to also know other rich and connected
people, this isn’t just guilt by association. There’s currently a great deal of speculation
about where Avenatti got the money to represent Daniels — and while he
claims he got it from crowdfunding and Daniels herself, there’s a fair
amount of doubt regarding this.
Avenatti, 47, is known
to be an avid sports car racer, even having raced at the 24 Hours of Le
Mans in 2015. One of his co-drivers in that event was none other than
Abdulaziz bin Turki Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family:
And
Al Saud is not just any member of the royal family. He is the son of
Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, who led Saudi Arabia’s intelligence at
the time of the 9/11 attacks. Turki also a big fan of the Clinton
Foundation, as foreign eminences tended to be before Nov. 8, 2016.
“Prince
Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the U.S. and member of the
Saudi royal family who has attended annual meetings of the Clinton
Global Initiative, made donations in 2013 and 2014, though exact dates
aren’t available,” the Wall Street Journal
reported in 2015. The Journal also reported that Turki had met Bill
Clinton when both were studying at Georgetown. At the time of the
article, Turki’s staff declined to comment on the donations or his
relationship with either Clinton. We also now know that Clinton’s
campaign had paid for Fusion GPS to assemble the Trump dossier. Part of
the dossier focused on Joseph Mifsud,
a mysterious Maltese professor who allegedly has links to the Kremlin
and told former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos about “dirt” Russia
may have on Hillary Clinton.
A relatively flamboyant
figure during his time in academia (particularly given a dearth of
intelligent work on his part), Mifsud has gone into hiding since the Trump dossier was released. During a long and sketchy academic career, the BBC
reports that one of Mifsud’s jobs was in Riyadh, where he was under a
Saudi think-tank led by none other than Prince Turki al Faisal.
Interesting
connection: The Saudi Prince tied to Avenatti is also connected to
Joseph Misfud, who is the professor linked to the supposed origins of
the "Trump-Russia" dossier. Mifsud worked for al-Faisal's Riyadh-based
think tank.https://t.co/ArRHCI0UnThttps://t.co/pHXE3Vvmca
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) May 13, 2018
This doesn’t necessarily link Avenatti directly to the Clinton Foundation nor does it link the Clinton Foundation to Mifsud’s participation in the Trump dossier. But it raises serious questions about when Avenatti was the recipient of an awful lot of data that your average lawyer wouldn’t know.
In a piece for The Hill last week, Op-Ed contributor Mark Penn questioned just how Avenatti had come across the “detailed financial information” to file a report on money received by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, arguing that “he didn’t find it on Google.” “This is the kind of information that would have been known only by the Treasury Department, his banks or by prosecutors, raising some serious questions about what kind of operation Avenatti is running. Is there a team of people digging this up? Are they paying off sources? Is Fusion GPS involved?” Penn wrote.
An awful lot of questions about Avenatti’s sudden rise to media cynosure need to be answered, and they don’t stop with where his money came from. Avenatti claims he’s received payment for the Daniels case from the porn star herself and from crowdfunding, although Daniels has previously said she isn’t paying for her representation and crowdfunding generally doesn’t buy the kind of enthusiasm and omnipresence Avenatti has brought to the case.
Is there any connection to the Clinton Foundation or Fusion GPS? It could simply be randomness, but some sort of legitimate connection is far from out of the question, especially given the quality of opposition research Avenatti — heretofore mostly a high-end cultural ambulance chaser — seems to have been able to dredge up. For all of his loquaciousness, Avenatti seems loath to discuss details about how he got involved in the case and who’s paying for him.
Those are questions we wouldn’t mind having answered in a little more detail the next time that he makes one of his many appearances on CNN. If this were a lawyer associated with Trump and these kind of connections had surfaced regarding the Saudi royal family and Mifsud, the mainstream media would be all over this, particularly if said lawyer was practically camping out on their newsroom floor.
It’s time for the media to step up and do its job.