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1984 TO 2021: HOW APPLE LEARNED TO LOVE BIG BROTHER. Some are old enough to remember an iconic commercial from 1984, where a woman at a dystopian gathering of prisoners smashes a telescreen screen showing a “Big Brother” like figure.
That commercial was debuted by Apple (during Superbowl 18) to promote its new MacIntosh personal computer.
A narrative voice-over proclaimed “You’ll see why 1984 won’t be like 1984.”
At the time, Apple was vying with IBM personal computers and nascent rival Microsoft.
It’s surreal enough to contemplate that an upstart computer company would use an evocation Gerorge Orwell’s masterpiece of totalitarian oppression to mass market a product, though the year was certainly right for it.
And the commercial made a huge impression.
But the history didn’t stop there, unfortunately. Apple has literally evolved to become a major cog in the dystopian present of 2021. Their announcement of “NeuralHash”, an initiative that will scan all files in the Apple ecosystem, and report violations to the Government for criminal action, is a culminating step in the growing convergence of a technocracy bent on purging all privacy rights of individuals with respect to the state.
According to Engineering & Technology magazine (https://eandt.theiet.org/), the system has supposed limitations built in, but many privacy advocates say NeuralHash is a shocking precedent that opens the door to abuse and deprivations of human rights.
Matthew Green, a John Hopkins University Security Institute said that Apple “has sent a very clear signal. In their opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content. This will break the dam – governments will demand it from everyone.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) also decried NeurahHash, saying it was a “shocking about-face for users who have relied on the company’s leadership in privacy and security” while the Center for Democracy and Technology called on Apple to abandon the changes, which it said compromise its guarantee of end-to-end encryption.
As the Trends Journal has previously reported in “APPLE BETRAYS CHINESE USERS FOR PROFIT” (1 June 2021), the company has already betrayed its Chinese user base by handing over user iCloud access to Chinese authorities, to cement its opening of a mainland data center in partnership with the state-owned firm Guizhou.
What Does NeuralHash Do?
“NeuralHash,” references images from a database provided by child safety organizations to identify known child pornography, and can identify altered images. It reportedly isn’t designed to detect fresh child abuse material.
The system can block user attempts to upload an image to its servers. It can also trigger a manual review of suspicious content, send a report to law enforcement, and suspend a user’s account.
Apple has stated that NeuralHash would only apply to iCloud Photos, and that no third parties would be able to access or scan images on a user’s camera roll.
Constitutional attorney and legal expert Jonathan Turley is warning about the wider privacy abuses of NerualHash and other Big Tech initiatives:
“Apple will now use its phones to actively spy on over a billion users to see if any have photos that may be CSAM in order to report them. Imagine the post-privacy world unfolding literally before us. People will have no choice if they have an iPhone in allowing a corporation to monitor their photos. Then, when they use their phones on social media, Twitter and Facebook will censor any views that they object to on subjects ranging from Covid to gender identification to Hunter Biden’s laptop to election fraud to even criticism of governments.
“At the same time, the Biden White House has decided that it does not want to deal with the legal or political challenges of seeking to impose a national vaccine mandate. Instead, President Biden has called on corporations to carry out the mandate.”
A Pretext “Key” To Unlock Next Level Surveillance and Suppression
Some might contend that Apple’s move is a noble one meant to fight only egregious criminal activities like child exploitation and pedophilia.
But Big Tech, MSM and extremist LBTQT activists have colluded for years in promoting the normalization of sexualized exposure and treatment of children. They have also excused and suppressed organizations that have opposed extremist agendas sexualizing and abusing children.
They have openly advocated not only for exposing children to sexual content, but for allowing children to undergo hormone treatments and deforming cosmetic surgeries to “transition” to the opposite sex. They have also led the way in propagandizing for boys to use girl bathrooms in schools, under the guise of recognizing those who “self-identify” as a particular gender.
To give only a few other examples:
- In 2018, an 11-year-old boy in drag, “Desmond Is Amazing,” became a media darling for his sexualized, supposedly personally initiated transexual flamboyance. There were viral Youtube videos, and at one point he even danced on stage at the 3 Dollar Bill, a “queer owned & operated” bar in Brooklyn, and had money tossed his way by patrons. As Lifesite news reported at the time, “[Desmond] is barely 11 years old, yet homosexual and mainstream media have thrust him into the spotlight as the face of the growing prepubescent gay/transgender movement.
- In February 2021, Amazon, Chromebook (by Google), Discord and OnlyFans all made an annual “Dirty Dozen” list of entities that profited from sexual exploitation that encompassed minors. The list is compiled by the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). Amazon reportedly made the list because “the world’s titan of e-commerce, logistics, data storage, and media, also peddles endless amounts of sexual exploitation. As a social platform, Amazon’s Twitch is rife with sexual harassment, predatory grooming, and child sexual abuse.” Twitter was also called out for making the list: “Twitter allows countless posts and accounts that function as advertisements for the trading of child sexual abuse materials (i.e. ‘child pornography’), sex trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. Twitter also fails to adequately respond to child abuse and sex trafficking victims when they are being exploited on the platform. Twitter must be held legally accountable”.
- Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, was shielded by the MSM during the 2020 election, despite video from an abandoned laptop showing him sexually consorting with underaged women. The media refused to cover the story, with some claiming the laptop was an invention of the Russians. But just last week, new video surfaced from Hunter. It showed him naked, telling a prostitute “the Russians have videos of me doing crazy f-cking sex!” According to a Daily Mail story on the unearthed video, Hunter can be seen telling the prostitute that he nearly overdosed from drugs while partying in Las Vegas with his drug dealer and two other guys in the summer of 2018. When he awoke from that bender, “there was this Russian 35-year-old, really nice, pure brunette,” he explained. He then discovered his laptop had disappeared.
Clearly, the government, the MSM and Big Tech have been on the bleeding edge of pushing for the sexual exploitation and abuse that Apple suddenly purports to want to guard against.
Anyone who’s been paying any attention shouldn’t buy a word of the dystopian “product” they’re now selling with NeuralHash.
As Jonathan Turley noted in a recent column on his website:
“The current limited function of the NeuralHash is simply the decision of Apple. However, it is a new technology that can be expanded to other images and could potentially be used by the government… We already have ample powers to investigate and prosecute child pornography but this function will now be taken up by the corporatocracy which is not directly controlled any more by the Fourth Amendment than the First Amendment.”
NeuralHash is set to be rolled out later this year as part of updates to Apple’s iOS and iPadOS 15.