As if there were not enough really good reasons to jettison the so called “evil genius,” Dominic Cummings, from his unelected command position as master puppeteer controlling our part-time Prime Minister, his personal obsession with, commitment to and unsavoury connections that involve delving into our personal data, “data mining,” should seriously alarm us all. In this Canary Article they reveal how our Covid blind-spot will be manipulated to gain access to our credit details and so much more. Boris Johnson’s lazy narcissistic craving for the glory of sham rule allowed this malevolent arch proponent of surveillance capitalism to grab the ghoulies of Government in a vice grip that now threatens to eviscerate our democracy in a dystopian nightmare scenario. The loud and very angry rant to get Cummings removed cannot be drowned out by the naked emperors appeals for us to “Move On.”
According to the Canary, “The artificial intelligence (AI) firm employed by Dominic Cummings on the Vote Leave project is now working directly with the government on a highly sensitive data-matching project.” The Canary say that they have, “obtained a partly redacted version of the project’s contact and the details are scary. In short, according to the contract, the government will be able to match someone’s credit details with their social media accounts and their utilities payments. All, apparently, to assist in coronavirus (Covid-19) intelligence gathering.” This is our dangerous Covid blind-spot, in reality the Government is authorizing this company to spy on UK citizens obtaining personal information that doesn’t have the remotest connection to tracking and tracing infected individuals for Public Health reasons or securing their isolation to halt the spread of the disease.
This corrupt Tory Government that was leveraged into office through the military grade PsyOps propaganda and manipulation of illegally obtained data are rewarding a company that was proactively involved in that fraudulent campaign to engage in acquiring our private, highly sensitive, personal information under false pretexts! We already know that the Social Media data was used to target and spread fear among suggestive and vulnerable people to brainwash them into voting against their own best interests. Vote Leave’s ‘Voter Intention Collection System,’ VICS, functioned by accumulating a massive amount of data and Social Media preferences from a huge number of people to help them selectively target the fears, anxieties and prejudices of the most susceptible individuals who would then be bombarded with fake news. Military style Situation Awareness helped Cummings stay in control of the big picture so that fear and prejudice dominated over pragmatic thinking.
I used to navigate with a sextant on long ocean passages, trust me this illustrates a really important point about data. While other Captains were happy to fix their position with just a noon sun sight I preferred to take star sights. I would sometimes take sights from as many as ten stars all around the horizon, each one providing a separate line of position; when all those lines crossed on a point there was absolutely no question I knew my exact position. All of those disparate pieces of data, seemingly unrelated nuggets of personal information that the Government obtains via this “highly sensitive data-matching project,” will make us more vulnerable as unwitting victims of this unnecessary intrusion. It will provide a virtual window into your mind, leaving you super susceptible to Big Brother manipulations and the type of total mind control that Demonic Cummings craves; it is the VICS program on Steroids!.
The Canary offer details on which Department offered the contract, the projected budget a start date, but the duration is less clear with the potential for continuing beyond a few months to two years. Like many of the generous Government contracts being raced through the procurement process, the Covid 19 crisis has provided an excuse for awarding lavishly funded contracts without any opportunity for competitive bidding. This allows for typical Tory rewarding of cronies and selection of shady operators who have won the approval of Dominic Cummings.
The Canary quotes from the project details, “Provision of data scientist capability to develop and support data sources and analysis to support MHCLG response to Covid-19”. Documenting, “The stated aim is to organise data-matching technologies and provide specialist support. Specifically, the remit (redacted) is described as…” Here three objectives are taken directly from the document the Canary obtained:
1. Identification, exploration and setup of alternative data sources (e.g. social media, utility providers and telecom bills, credit rating agencies, etc.) as well as data provided by MHCLG for monitoring and forecasting.
2. Application of data science and machine learning across data provided by MHCLG and alternative data sources.
3. Development of interactive dashboards which summarise the above activities into an easily consumable interface to inform policy makers.
So if you are wondering what your chosen utility provider and whether you pay your credit card off in full each month has to do with the likelihood you might become infected with Covid 19 and pass the virus on to someone else the simple answer is big fat ZERO! Does the Government need to know if you are on Facebook or comment regularly on Twitter? Absolutely not, and this information Big Brother should be excluded from documenting even if they cannot by prevented from discovering your Online presence. There is an added piece of information that as an inventor I would refer to as “creeping featurism” where the Canary note that, “the contract adds that supplier staff will ‘work with the Buyer on any ongoing work’. There appears to be nothing in the contract that specifically refers to anonymisation of data. The contract also makes it clear that Faculty staff working on the project are subject to security vetting.” This last point is hardly reassuring given who will gain access to your personal data.
The Canary document the dubious progression of the company who secured the contract, “From Vote Leave to coronavirus datasets to data-matching.” The add further details about Faculty saying, “Faculty was formerly known as Advanced Skills Initiative (ASI). In its earlier form, it worked on the Vote Leave project, whose director was Dominic Cummings (now chief political adviser to prime minister Boris Johnson). A search of the Electoral Commission database reveals that five invoices for five sets of work for Vote Leave, including ‘advertising’, were provided by ASI to Vote Leave.”
The Canary add information that I wrote about the other day that, “According to the Guardian, Faculty is run: by Marc Warner, whose brother Ben Warner, a data scientist, was reportedly recruited to Downing Street last year by [Downing Street special advisor Dominic] Cummings after running the data modelling for the Conservative party’s general election campaign. Moreover, and significantly: Ben Warner is a former senior employee at Faculty and is also said to have worked on Vote Leave. Neither Ben Warner nor Downing Street special adviser and Vote Leave mastermind Cummings are medical scientists. Yet both attended meetings by the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), set up to provide the government with advice on the coronavirus crisis.”
Apparently, Marc Warner admitted via an Article in the Sunday Times that he too attended Sage meetings. Carol Cadwalladr tweeted, “ This is unbelievable. Marc Warner – brother of No 10 advisor, Ben, & head of firm that worked with Vote Leave – outs himself as another attendee of SAGE.” This Scientific Advisory Group is damaging their own credibility by turning into an “anything but the science” political party support group. Mark Warner claims that, “Data can save us from Covid – The ethical use of data is a force for good and never more so than in this pandemic. Indeed this is, in many ways, the first data driven public health emergency.” Really? This would be a totally spurious claim for Tory Party since despite the WHO warning “Test, Test, Test,” the UK decided to bring community testing to a screeching halt and rely on guesstimates based on retrospective figures for Hospital admissions and deaths When the UK stopped testing we abandoned critical data to “wing it” with the “Herd Immunity” theory!
The Canary note that, “Marc and Ben Warner attended SAGE meetings, were directly involved in the campaign that helped Johnson come to power, and Ben is now working for Downing Street.” These key guys were the architects behind the Covert 2019 Rigged Election that installed the corrupt Government we are all suffering under right now; the world-beating laughing stock nation with the second highest Covid 19 mortality rate globally that Boris Johnson is so proud of. They say that, “Altogether, Faculty has been awarded seven other government contracts over the last year and a half. This includes, alongside controversial multi-billion-dollar firm Palantir, the coronavirus datasets projects.” The Canary warn that, “Serious questions should be asked about the suitability of companies that appeared to work on dubious advertising campaigns or were contracted to intelligence organisations, such as GCHQ, to now work on government data-matching projects.”
We should be deeply concerned that such highly suspect individuals and companies are in a position to manipulate this shambolic, weak and corrupt Government. The immense power that untrammelled access to all that valuable data could deliver for Dominic Cummings is in serious jeopardy if he is removed from his job in command and control of the PM. Boris Johnson has no more commitment to colleagues, friends, promises or loyalty than he has to the truth, I have no doubt Cumming would have known that and factored it into his plan; carefully covered his tracks and secured a way to exert extreme pressure on the PM to prevent being tossed aside when he was no longer needed. This is why we must keep demanding his removal since, in a final act of revenge for being ousted from his powerful position in control, Dominic Cummings could fully expose the industrial scale fraud of the Covert 2019 Rigged Election and bring down this corrupt Government; it would be not a second too soon.