Inside One Of Big Brother's 'Location Harvesting' Contractors, Which Tracks 'Hundreds Of Millions' Of Phones

A Virginia-based software company founded by two US military veterans with backgrounds in intelligence has been tracking hundreds of millions of mobile phones across the world, according to documents reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

The company, Anomaly Six LLC, draws location data from over 500 apps - partly through their proprietary software development kit (SDK) which they've paid to embed directly in some of the apps, while the company gets location data from partner providers. The SDK allows the company to obtain a user's location if they have allowed the apps in question to access the phone's GPS coordinates.

App publishers often allow third-party companies, for a fee, to insert SDKs into their apps. The SDK maker then sells the consumer data harvested from the app, and the app publisher gets a chunk of revenue. But consumers have no way to know whether SDKs are embedded in apps; most privacy policies don’t disclose that information. Anomaly Six says it embeds its own SDK in some apps, and in other cases gets location data from other partners. -Wall Street Journal

Anomaly Six holds contracts with several branches of the US Government - although they told the Journal that they 'restrict the sale of US mobile phone movement data to nongovernmental, private sector clients,' according to the report. Private sector clients - typically marketing companies or others in the advertising space - buy and sell geolocation data, sometimes 'reselling it to government agencies or contractors' according to the report.

And as the Journal notes, in the case of Anomaly Six, "the direct collection of such data by a business closely linked to US national security agencies is unusual."

Founded by defense-contracting veterans who spent most of their careers in close contact with government agencies, tailored their operation to interface with national-security, according to interviews and court records.

"Anomaly Six is a veteran-owned small business that processes and visualizes location data sourced from mobile devices for analytics and insights," the company told The Journal in response to questions for the article. "We leverage detailed location data from numerous first-party sources to provide insights into groups, behaviors, and patterns."

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/inside-one-big-brothers-location-harvesting-contractors-tracking-hundreds-millions

Donald Trump: Democrats Want to Use Coronavirus Aid Bill to Steal the Election

President Donald Trump criticized Democrats Saturday for trying to use the coronavirus aid bill to steal the election, by making major changes to election laws.

The president said that Democrats had proposed changes in voting laws that would open up voting in 2020 to fraud, including eliminating voter ID and signature verification and enacting universal mail-in voting.

“You [know] what it’s about? Fraud,” Trump said. “They want to try and steal this election, because frankly, it’s the only way they can win the election.”

The president also warned that Democrats wanted to include stimulus payment checks for illegal aliens, the release of inmates, and the release of illegal aliens in custody.

“What does this have to do with stimulus of the economy?” Trump asked in disbelief. “What does this have to do with the coronavirus?”

Trump spoke about the measures he did favor, including support for schools so they can open, additional funding for the paycheck protection program, hospitals, testing, vaccines, direct payments for families, child and mental health care, and even funding for broadband internet, agriculture, and airports infrastructure.

“This is what we’re talking about,” Trump said. “Democrats are actively blocking the things we want, and what we want is good for people,” he said.

The president signed a payroll tax holiday, $400 federal and state-funded unemployment checks, a moratorium on evictions, and student loan payment deferments.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/08/donald-trump-democrats-want-to-use-coronavirus-aid-bill-to-steal-the-election/

CIA Stuns In Saying "No Evidence" TikTok Giving Its Data To China

Chinese app TikTok remains under fire by President Trump, with allegations that their being Chinese means China could access their user data, making it a serious problem. President Trump is set to ban TikTok next month.

US officials see this as something China is bound to do with their apps, because Edward Snowden’s leaks showed this is exactly what the US did with its many apps and their user data. And yet did it happen?

The latest report out of the CIA says no. While they said it is possible for China to access such user data, because of course it is, they confirmed that there is no evidence that any such things ever happened with TikTok.

According to The New York Times on Friday:

But when the C.I.A. was asked recently to assess whether it was also a national security problem, the answer that came back was highly equivocal.

Yes, the agency’s analysts told the White House, it is possible that the Chinese intelligence authorities could intercept data or use the app to bore into smartphones. But there is no evidence they have done so, despite the calls from President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to neutralize a threat from the app’s presence on millions of American devices.

TikTok had already said they’d done nothing wrong, faulting Trump’s ban as denying them due process.

They promise to “pursue all remedies available to us.” With US tensions toward China growing, it’s likely they’ll try to limit remedies.

https://news.antiwar.com/2020/08/07/as-trump-advances-ban-cia-says-no-evidence-of-tiktok-giving-data-to-china/

Baxter admits flu product contained live bird flu virus

Published Friday, February 27, 2009

TORONTO - The company that released contaminated flu virus material from a plant in Austria confirmed Friday that the experimental product contained live H5N1 avian flu viruses.

And an official of the World Health Organization's European operation said the body is closely monitoring the investigation into the events that took place at Baxter International's research facility in Orth-Donau, Austria.

"At this juncture we are confident in saying that public health and occupational risk is minimal at present," medical officer Roberta Andraghetti said from Copenhagen, Denmark.

"But what remains unanswered are the circumstances surrounding the incident in the Baxter facility in Orth-Donau."

The contaminated product, a mix of H3N2 seasonal flu viruses and unlabelled H5N1 viruses, was supplied to an Austrian research company. The Austrian firm, Avir Green Hills Biotechnology, then sent portions of it to sub-contractors in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Germany.

The contamination incident, which is being investigated by the four European countries, came to light when the subcontractor in the Czech Republic inoculated ferrets with the product and they died. Ferrets shouldn't die from exposure to human H3N2 flu viruses.

Public health authorities concerned about what has been described as a "serious error" on Baxter's part have assumed the death of the ferrets meant the H5N1 virus in the product was live. But the company, Baxter International Inc., has been parsimonious about the amount of information it has released about the event.

On Friday, the company's director of global bioscience communications confirmed what scientists have suspected.

"It was live," Christopher Bona said in an email.

The contaminated product, which Baxter calls "experimental virus material," was made at the Orth-Donau research facility. Baxter makes its flu vaccine including a human H5N1 vaccine for which a licence is expected shortly at a facility in the Czech Republic.

People familiar with biosecurity rules are dismayed by evidence that human H3N2 and avian H5N1 viruses somehow co-mingled in the Orth-Donau facility. That is a dangerous practice that should not be allowed to happen, a number of experts insisted.

Accidental release of a mixture of live H5N1 and H3N2 viruses could have resulted in dire consequences.

While H5N1 doesn't easily infect people, H3N2 viruses do. If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people.

That mixing process, called reassortment, is one of two ways pandemic viruses are created.

There is no suggestion that happened because of this accident, however.

"We have no evidence of any reassortment, that any reassortment may have occurred," said Andraghetti.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/baxter-admits-flu-product-contained-live-bird-flu-virus-1.374503

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