Pokmon Go, the CIA, Totalitarianism and the Future of SurveillanceBy Steven MacMillan Pokmon describes the game on their website in the following way: Travel between the real world and the virtual world of Pokmon with Pokmon GO for iPhone and Android devices. With Pokmon GO, youll discover Pokmon in a whole new worldyour own! Pokmon GO is built on Niantics Real World Gaming Platform and will use real locations to encourage players to search far and wide in the real world to discover Pokmon In Pokmon GO, the real world will be the setting! The company behind Pokmon Go is a San Francisco software developer called Niantic, Inc, which was formed in 2010 as an internal startup at Google. The founder and current CEO of Niantic is John Hanke, a man who has connections both to the State Department and the CIA. Before moving to San Francisco to study at the University of California, Hanke previously worked for the US State Department in Myanmar. Hanke also founded Keyhole, Inc in 2001, a company which specialized in geospatial data visualization applications. Google acquired the company in 2004, with many of the applications developed by Keyhole being instrumental in Google Maps and Earth. In 2003, the CIAs venture-capitalist firm, In-Q-Tel, invested in Keyhole, with the CIAs own website proudly detailing this investment: One of the other intelligence organizations the CIA worked alongside was the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which is partly under the control of the US Department of Defense (DoD). So we have a somewhat enigmatic former State Department employee with connections to the CIA and the DoD, being the CEO of a company that created what seems to be a silly, harmless game. Whats going on? Like so many new technologies in our digital age, Pokmon Go is constantly gathering information on the user and then openly admitting that they will share this data with anyone who wants it. As James Corbett pointed out in his article titled: The CIAs Pokmon Go App is Doing What the Patriot Act Cant, the privacy policy of the app states that Niantic will share all the information they gather (which is a lot) with the state and private organizations: We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials or private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We may disclose any information about you (or your authorized child) that is in our possession or control to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we, in our sole discretion, believe necessary or appropriate. Corbett also details how the game requires the user to give excessive access to Niantic/CIA/NGA/DoD (including access to the users Google account and camera). Speaking at this years Comic-Con, Oliver Stone the award winning filmmaker and director of the new film on Edward Snowden had some very insightful views on the new craze and the growing business of data-mining. As Vulture magazine reported in a recent article, Stone denounced the game as a new level of invasion and a new form of totalitarianism: Im hearing about it too; its a new level of invasion. Once the government had been hounded by Snowden, of course the corporations went into encryption, because they had to for survival, right? But the search for profits is enormous. Nobody has ever seen, in the history of the world, something like Google ever! Its the fastest-growing business ever, and they have invested huge amounts of money into what surveillance is; which is data-mining. Stone continues: Theyre data-mining every person in this room for information as to what youre buying, what it is you like, and above all, your behavior. Pokmon Go kicks into that. Its everywhere. Its what some people call surveillance capitalism; its the newest stage. Youll see a new form of, frankly, a robot society, where they will know how you want to behave and they will make the mockup that matches how you behave and feed you. Its what they call totalitarianism. It is interesting that Stone doesnt just warn about the commercial aspect of data-mining, but the fact that the more data governments and private corporations collect on the citizens of the world, the easier it becomes to predict their behavior. It is not just Stone that is warning about this reality, however. At the start of last year, the UK governments own surveillance commissioner, Tony Porter, revealed how data obtained from CCTV cameras can be used to predict behavior. As we progress through the 21st century and more advanced algorithmic systems are developed to process the tsunami of data, intelligence agencies and governments will increasingly be able to predict (and manipulate) the behavior of their populations and the populations of foreign countries. We are already far along this path, will the trajectory for the future heading straight towards levels of surveillance far beyond even what George Orwell envisaged; with the fight for digital privacy being a major battleground in this century for those who value freedom. Pokmon Go looks more like a Trojan horse of the CIA and the wider intelligence-security-data-mining-Big-Brother complex, than just a silly, innocent game. With all these connections to the State Department, the CIA and the DoD, no wonder some countries are reportedly considering banning the game. Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook. another step in the zombie apocalypse. The technocrats are using P-Go to develop brain mapping algorithms, compiling programming data for robots to move around in time/space like real humans do. All the guinea pigs playing it are being used to further the transhumanist agenda. BTW, you can say this about the Internet and Smartphones too, but P-Go is the penultimate piece of the robotics puzzle. I might also add, for anyone who thinks this is all hyperbole or just another dumb game, bear in mind that the ultimate endgame to transhumanism is immortality. A lot of people think dying is a bad idea and are eager for the science that will let them live forever. Once you sign up for this, you will be a prisoner on Battleship Earth forever and ever. You wont even be able to end your own life if you want to. Think on that. Excellent analysis, OldeSoul. Thanks blue. It all sounds so grim, but apparently there are children being born now who desire to be a part of this transition. Penre calls them Machine Riders. Im so glad Im olde. LOL. I just read Penres The Machine Riders versus our Inner Divinity, or The Ultimate Hijack!. Mind blowing and some of it is very clear the engineering of the hive community and hive mind, slave souls, etc. Regarding the former, the timing to read that description is stunning for me personally given earlier today I was taken aback to come across a new Financial Times article on how the Chinese government is methodically destroying all dissent and independent thought via complete capture of technologically based communication. Russia is going this route too at hyper speed, judging from a recent article on the return of the practice of exiling peaceful government critics to serve sentences in Siberia, gulags next. Europe is going haywire on several levels. We have the Illumi-naughty witch ready to take to her throne in the US. Beam me up Scotty! Fast!! LOL BTW, thanks for the tip. Thanks for your review on this. I knew about what China was up to but totally missed the boat on Russia. Gulags? So then change can only be accomplished on an etheric level from here on out. Yeah, Beam. Me. Up. I hope you and I on the same ship outta here before she blows ! Im givin her all shes got, captain! Still working my way through Penres inciteful but disturbing book. So far the most compelling aspect, to me at least, is that children are being born here for the soul purpose of becoming cyborg and helping transition this planet toward that end. So its not going help much if humans say No thanks, because organic humans will simply go the way of the dinosaur. and we have ring-side seats. Yay us! 