08-16-2020, 07:06 PM
*** 17-Aug-20 World View -- Microsoft's monopolistic practices leave Windows 10 vulnerable to massive hacking attack
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Microsoft's monopolistic practices leave Windows 10 vulnerable to massive hacking attack
****
![[Image: g200816b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g200816b.jpg)
Windows 10 task manager screen showing when Microsoft is downloading crapware (games, ads, trials, teasers) to your computer without asking you. Notice that the C: drive is 100% active, and this can go on for hours, at high priority, sometimes crippling the computer
There was a major news story recently that you may have missed about
an extremely serious hacking breach.
Last month, hackers took control of dozens of Twitter accounts, and
used them to try to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from
millions of Twitter users. The hackers used a very simple "low tech"
technique to gain control: they bribed or extorted or tricked a
Twitter employee to giving them control. There are undoubtedly
hundreds or even thousands of people in Twitter's IT department with
full access to the user databases who could have satisfied the
hackers, although Twitter is now thought to be reducing that number.
When this happened, most people were shocked that this could even
happen. Most thought that it was impossible. In this article, we're
going to show that this and a lot worse can happen to Microsoft and
other online services.
According to Twitter:
<QUOTE>"The attackers successfully manipulated a small number
of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s
internal systems, including getting through our two-factor
protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only
available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter
accounts. For 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to
initiate a password reset, login to the account, and send
Tweets. We are continuing our forensic review of all of the
accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In
addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the
usernames."<END QUOTE>
News reports at the time speculated that the Twitter attack was just a
rehearsal for a much larger attack by Russia or China to be launched
just prior to the November 3 election, to influence the election.
According to press reports, all the hackers wanted was money, but
press reports speculate that they could have been a lot more
malicious, and the recent attack could have been a practice test for a
more extensive attack to manipulate the November 3 elections.
According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.):
<QUOTE>"This hack bodes ill for November balloting. Count
this incident as a near miss or shot across the bow. It could
have been much worse with different targets. So many security red
flags are raised by this criminal attack that the culprits should
be tracked down as quickly as possible."<END QUOTE>
Blumenthal is right about the large number of security red flags. But
he's wrong that the problem can be solved by tracking down the
culprits. The reason he's wrong is that this is a simple, low-tech
attack. There's no super-complex hacking software involved. It's
done the old fashioned way, with bribery and extortion or tricking of
Twitter employees.
And the same low-tech attack could be used on any of the online giants
-- Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft or indeed on any large
online service. A malicious actor, including a country like China or
Russia, could use bribery or extortion to "manipulate" one or more IT
employees to gain access to or control of dozens or hundreds or even
thousands of user accounts or computers. This is what happened at
Twitter, and it can happen at any of the online giants. How the
malicious actor uses that access or control varies from one online
giant to another, but the core technique of using bribery or extortion
to gain control is the same in all cases.
In this article, we're going to focus on Microsoft. According to
Microsoft, there are almost one billion desktop computers running
Windows 10. Microsoft is a monopolist with complete control of
Windows 10 on those one billion computers. Microsoft can update or
modify the Windows 10 software at any time, and there's nothing that
any user can do to stop it because, for almost all users, there's no
other choice but to use Windows 10. Microsoft is the quintessential
monopolist, with total control of a product that one billion people
are forced to use.
We're going to show how Microsoft illegally uses its monopoly power to
extort money from users. The method is obvious from the numbers: If
Microsoft can update or modify the Windows 10 software on computers in
order to "coerce" a million users to pay $100 each for Microsoft apps
or services or upgrades, then Microsoft makes $100 million for doing
essentially nothing. This is the essense of monopoly power.
We're going to show how Microsoft is already doing that, and we're
going to show how a malicious actor, like Russia or China, could use
an attack similar to the Twitter hack to extort money or even to start
a war.
Let's begin by giving three examples of how this has already occurred
in other ways.
****
**** Example #1: Apple's iPhone forced slowdown using 'throttling'
****
It's estimated that some 3 billion iPhones have been sold, and Apple has
the kind of monopolistic control over them that Microsoft has over Windows.
Apple has already used criminal monopolistic behavior to force users
of older iPhones to upgrade.
You may recall from March that Apple was forced to pay up to $500
million to settle a US lawsuit. Apple had used its monopolistic
control over iPhones to slow down old iPhones, in order to coerce
users into upgrading. This is criminal behavior under the antitrust
laws, and that's why Apple was forced to settle, and was anxious to
settle. They were lucky that it cost them only $500 million.
Here are some excerpts from a Reuters news story from March:
<QUOTE>"Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle
U.S. lawsuit over slow iPhones
(Reuters) - Apple Inc has agreed to pay up to $500 million to
settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older
iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy
replacement phones or batteries.
Consumers contended that their phones’ performance suffered after
they installed Apple software updates. They said this misled them
into believing their phones were near the end of their lifecycles,
requiring replacements or new batteries.
Apple attributed the problems mainly to temperature changes, high
usage and other issues, and said its engineers worked quickly and
successfully to address them. Analysts sometimes refer to the
slowing of iPhones as “throttling.”
Following an initial outcry over slow iPhones, Apple apologized
and lowered the price for replacement batteries to $29 from
$79."<END QUOTE>
Apple was committing a crime by using its monopoly control of iPhones
to force iPhones to run more slowly, in order to coerce the user to
upgrade to a new iPhone. That's why Apple was desperate to settle as
quickly as possible.
An important part of Apple's behavior is that it must be as obscure as
possible to the user. If the user knew that Apple was purposely
throttling his iPhone, he might trade it in for an Android. Instead,
slowing the iPhone down is made as obscure and invisible as possible
so that the user doesn't know what's going on, and just buys a new
iPhone.
I realize that many people idolize Tim Cook and Apple, but this is
incredibly sleazy behavior. Apple managers are screwing their own
customers to essentially extort their customers to buy new iPhones.
It's absolutely incredible, but it shows the state of corporate
management these days. Apple managers like Tim Cook and Craig
Federighi are criminals who are totally lacking in morality and
ethics. And this criminal behavior actually happened.
But with 3 billion iPhones under their control, morality and ethics go
out the window, as Cook and Federighi look for ways to extort more
cash from users. The chance to extort billions of dollars from users
is just too tempting.
If anyone reading this wants to argue that Microsoft managers are less
unethical and immoral than Apple managers, then I'd like to hear that
argument.
****
**** Example #2: Microsoft forcing an upgrade to Enterprise edition
****
Example #1 was Apple's illegal throttling hack on iPhones to slow them
down, forcing users to upgrade.
Example #2 is an illegal action in 2016 by Microsoft to force Windows
Pro users to upgrade to Windows Enterprise, costing as much as $200
for each user.
In July 2016, Microsoft updated Windows 10 on its customers' desktop
to make it impossible for Windows Pro users to eliminate Windows
crapware like games, ads, trials and teasers. Users already have to
pay a big premium to run Windows Professional, but they do so because,
well, they're professionals like me, and want a professional version
of Windows, so they want the option of removing things like games.
But that's not good enough for Microsoft. Microsoft wants to force
Pro users to pay $100-200 more per computer to get the professional
features they thought they already had.
Here is a July 28, 2016, post by Russian blogger Sergey Tkachenko on
his Winaero blog:
<QUOTE>"Microsoft locks some Group Policy options to
Enterprise editions in Windows 10 Anniversary Update
Today, we surprisingly discovered that Microsoft has secretly
changed the availability of some Group Policy options in Windows
10 version 1607. Windows 10 version 1607 "Anniversary Update" has
reduced the control via Group Policy that you have in Pro
edition. Pro edition users have lesser options available compared
to version 1511, so many behaviors of the OS cannot be controlled.
If you open the Group Policy management console and read the
description of certain policy settings in Windows 10 build
14393, you will find out that the options mentioned below are NO
LONGER AVAILABLE for Windows 10 Pro users. They are locked down to
Enterprise and Education editions only: ...
[i]Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences. Using this option,
you could prevent Windows 10 from automatically downloading and
installing promoted apps like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipper,
Twitter, NetFlix, Pandora, MSN News and many other potentially
unwanted apps and games. Now you can't prevent these apps from
being automatically downloaded and installed if you are using
Windows 10 Pro or Home editions. The policy setting (or Registry
setting) has no effect in these editions. consumer
experience Starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you
can only control unwanted apps in Enterprise and Educations
editions of Windows 10. This behavior was confirmed when I
upgraded my Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Pro and many
unwanted apps installed automatically from the Store."<END QUOTE>[/i]
A Zdnet article by Mary Jo Foley at that same time explains why
Microsoft did this:
<QUOTE>"Why did Microsoft remove the ability for admins to
change and shut off these apps and settings? I asked and didn't
hear back from company officials.
Some of us cynics believe the change was because Microsoft wants
to get more users to upgrade to the more expensive Enterprise
SKU. ...
Microsoft officials have been very up front about looking for ways
to make money indirectly from Windows 10 in various ways,
including promotional/sponsored app suggestions. ... The Softies
are trying to push more people to go to the Store and download
new/more apps. Microsoft gets a cut of third-party apps
downloaded from the Store."<END QUOTE>
This is pretty much a smoking gun. Microsoft wants to prevent Pro
users from stopping the crapware attacks, so the option to stop them
is disabled in the Pro edition. Foley call the Microsoft execs
"softies," but I would call them hardcore monopolistic criminals.
This is clearly extortionary behavior by Microsoft that's illegal.
There is absolutely no reason to remove these options from the Pro
version, except to extort money from users who are trapped by
Microsoft's monopoly, and have already paid a premium for the
"Professional" version of Windows 10.
****
**** Example #3: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10
****
Like many sophisticated users, I used to love my Windows-7 system. It
worked great, with none of the Microsoft crap that you have to put up
with in Windows-10.
In mid-January 2019, on a Tuesday afternoon, all of a sudden my
Windows 7 computer started getting incredibly slow. Firefox was
brought to its knees, and Chrome was working intermittently.
I spent many days trying to figure out which process was causing the
problem, and then I realized that it was far more sinister: Whenever I
started using Firefox, or a Youtube video on Chrome, or Windows Media
Player, or any of several other programs, then the problem would
occur. What would happen is that that particular program would only
use 15-20% of the cpu, but Windows would magically jack up the CPU
usage of other normally innocuous processes.
So for example, when the system was mostly idling, process explorer
might show the top cpu users as omnipage 1.3%, firefox 0.9%, sidebar
0.9%, emacs 0.1%, acro rd32 0.3%, and so forth, totalling around 10%.
But when I started up a youtube video on chrome, that process would
use 23% of the cpu, which wouldn't be a problem. But all of those
numbers in the last paragraph were now jacked up to 13.1%, 8.4%, 5.6%,
and so forth, totaling 100%, bringing the system to its knees.
In other words, starting up something on Chrome or Media Player or any
of numerous other programs would affect every other process on the
system. For example, I open Media Player, and suddenly Emacs would go
from using 0.1% of the cpu to 13.1% of the cpu, which makes no sense
at all.
So I started searching the internet, and I found that it's happening
to other people. Apparently it was triggered by a particular windows
update. Being a paranoid individual, I took note of the fact that
this problem started occurring the same week that Microsoft reminded
everyone that Windows 7 support would expire in a year, and I wondered
if this was a Microsoft plot to force people to install Windows 10.
What was going on was purposely obscure to 99.9% of the Windows-7
users. I'm one of the few users who could figure out what was going
on, since I spent many years of my career developing operating
systems. I developed three embedded operating systems, and two
mainframe operating systems, so I'm very capable of diagnosing these
situations.
So after a great deal of analysis, I knew that the only way this
problem could be occurring would be is if someone (Microsoft) changed
the operating system in a certain way. There's a process queue in the
core of any timesharing operating system, and there's a core o/s
function that takes the top process off the queue and gives it a time
slice -- let's it execute for a few milliseconds. When the time slice
expires, then that process goes on the bottom of the process queue,
and the new top of queue is allowed to run for a time slice. That's
how the operating system makes it appear that multiple programs are
all running simultaneously when, in fact, they are running in turn, a
few milliseconds at a time.
So the problem I was having could happen only one way: Microsoft had
modified the operating system on my computer to add several
milliseconds of time in a do-nothing loop to each time slice for each
process. This might have been simply a bug, and that's why I was
hoping that it would be corrected in the next Windows update. But it
wasn't corrected in the next update or the one after. It was clear to
me that that Microsoft was doing this on purpose, to force me to
upgrade to Windows 10.
By the way, the only reason I could figure this out was because of my
years of operating system experience. Ordinary users would have no
clue what was going on, and that's how Microsoft wanted it. And if
they called anyone for support, they would simply be told that their
computer was getting too old, and they should upgrade to Windows 10.
I knew what was going on, but it didn't matter. Microsoft is a
powerful monopolist that can screw me or any of its users at any time
of its choosing, to extract money or whatever. After a few weeks of
despair, I bought a new Dell Windows-10 computer. Then, of course,
Microsoft started with crapware downloads on my new computer, which
caused the same kind of performance problem as on my old computer.
****
**** Example #4: Microsoft's crapware (games, ads, trials) downloads
****
I've now given three examples of illegal monopolistic behavior --
Apple throttling iPhones, Microsoft forcing upgrade to Enterprise
edition, and Microsoft forcing upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
All of these are examples are of a monopolistic company illegally
using its monopoly power to extort money from users.
We'll now turn to the particular subject of this article, Microsoft's
illegal monopolistic behavior downloading crapware. However, this
example is much worse because unlike the recent Twitter hack, it's
about more than money.
At any time of the day or night, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes
of data to my computer, essentially crippling my computer. If I'm
trying to get some work done, then I'm screwed. Response time to a
simple command becomes 15-30 seconds, and saving a file in an Emacs
editor can sometimes take as much as 5 minutes.
The crapware downloads are different from the regular Windows Updates
downloads. Those updates occur at scheduled times, and they're
carefully controlled by Microsoft procedures that have been developed
for years.
However, with Windows 10, that hasn't been enough for Microsoft.
Every week, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes of ads, games,
videos and other crapware to your computer in a completely
uncontrolled fashion. These downloads go on for hours, often completely
crippling the desktop computer being targeted.
My experience for the last year is that Microsoft cripples my computer
at any time of the day or night, for any number of hours at a time, to
store more crapware on my computer. To say that this infuriates me
would be a big understatement.
Let me make it clear that I don't care about the ads. I'm used to
seeing ads on tv, on web sites, in magazines, and so forth. That's
not the problem. The problem is that Microsoft is purposely crippling
my computer at any time, for hours at a time, to download their
crapware, preventing me from getting my work done. This is criminal
behavior by a monopolist, designed to force users to upgrade or to
purchase additional Microsoft services.
As a Senior Software Engineer of many decades, I can spot bad software
and sloppy implementations. Here's a list of the characteristics of
these crapware downloads that reveal the intent:
As a software engineer of many decades, I see the above list as proof
that Microsoft is purposely screwing its users for financial gain,
just as Apple did in throttling iPhones. Some of the items in the
above list could be fixed trivially, such as displaying advance
notifications, and allowing the user to reschedule, or lowering the
priority of the process, so that the computer isn't crippled. The
fact that Microsoft designed these downloads to do the greatest
possible harm to its own users in the most chaotic way is proof, in my
opinion, of extreme malice and criminal behavior on the part of
Microsoft.
For most users, it's almost impossible to see what's going on, except
that your computer slows down. The only way that I know of to see
what's happening during a crapware download is to open the Task
Manager, go to the performance tab, and click on the "Disk 0 (C
".
You'll see that disk activity is solid 100% without variation,
sometimes for hours. (By the way, I've gotten into the habit of
leaving the Task Manager window open all the time to that tab. If I'm
suddenly having problems, I can click on that window, and usually I
can see that a new Microsoft crapware attack is just beginning.)
The graphic at the beginning of this article shows what Task Manager
looks like during a crapware attack. Note that the Drive C: activity
is at 100%, and this can go on for minutes or hours. That's on the
Performance tab. If you try to switch back to the Process tab, you'll
see that there's nothing going on -- Microsoft has purposely hidden
the crapware download activity so that you can't plan for it or modify
it, or even know it's going on. Microsoft can do this because it's a
monopoly and it has control of your computer, and can do whatever it
wants to you.
As a Software Engineer, I've always had a very high opinion of
Windows, and Microsoft technology. I started playing around with
Windows version 1 in 1985. Since then, I haven't always agreed with
some of the directions that Windows took, but I always felt that they
were intended to be in the best interest of the users. Until a year
or two ago, Windows was always a gold star product, in my opinion.
I also met Bill Gates two or three times in the 1990s. I thought he
was a really decent, competent guy who, once again, believed in doing
what was in the best interest of the users.
But Bill Gates is gone now, having left Microsoft years ago to save
the world from malaria and coronavirus. The company that he left
behind has turned into a sewer with a corporate culture of young
people who happily sacrifice the best interest of their users for
their own agendas and money.
****
**** Crapware downloads risk global hacking attack
****
I'm now ready to show how Microsoft's policies risk a global hacking
attack on Microsoft that can have much more serious consequences than
the similar attack that's already occurred on Twitter.
I've now shown the following:
With regard to "manipulating" any of the employees of these services,
let's recall that there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese living in
America. Under Chinese law, the Chinese military tracks them and
requires them to provide intelligence or perform other duties as
described by the military. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law
requires all Chinese citizens and businesses to perform such duties,
even when doing so is illegal. I don't blame the Chinese citizens for
this. I blame the Chinese Communist thugs who treat their own
citizens like dirt, as contrast to ethnic Chinese citizens who live in
Taiwan and have much higher standards of living, much more freedom,
and aren't persecuted by a paranoid, desperate government.
The major online services are mostly headquartered in the west, and so
have many Chinese employees. These people are all subject to China's
National Intelligence Law, and so they can be directly "manipulated"
by China's military. If one of these employees has access to the
company's user database -- and I have no doubt that many do -- then
those employees can be "manipulated" into stealing data, stealing
accounts, or taking control of millions of users' accounts, as has
already happened in the case of the Twitter hack.
I have a personal anecdote related to this subject. A few months ago,
I started receiving robocall phone messages in Chinese on my home
phone. So I recorded one of them and asked someone to translate. It
went: "Hello, this is the Chinese embassy. You have a very important
notification. For details please press xxx." So I don't know why my
phone number was called, or what sort of "important notification" was
intended, but this shows one of the ways that the Chinese Commuists
keep Chinese people in America on a short leash, ready to do as
they're told.
****
**** The political power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft
****
On July 29, 2020, the House Judiciary committee held a hearing on
examining the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The
CEOs of all four companies came and testified, and were questioned by
the politicians on the committee.
The hearing began in full-scale farce. The opening statement of
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, began as follows:
<QUOTE>"My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old
high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in
high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was
difficult for her. When they tried to kick her out of school, my
grandfather went to bat for her. After some negotiation, the
principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she
can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a
locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished
high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage
with her classmates to get her diploma."<END QUOTE>
Listening to this, I was soooooooo touched that I almost had tears
streaming down my face. It was just so sad.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Google, took a slightly different
approach:
<QUOTE>"Expanding access to opportunity through technology is
deeply personal to me. I didn’t have much access to a computer
growing up in India. So you can imagine my amazement when I
arrived in the U.S. for graduate school and saw an entire lab of
computers I could use whenever I wanted. Accessing the internet
for the first time in that computer lab set me on a path to bring
technology to as many people as possible. It’s what inspired me to
join Google 16 years ago."<END QUOTE>
Once again, very touching.
So what's going on here? These ridiculous statements are carefully
planned and carefully rehearsed well in advance, in both content and
demeanor, to show that these huge online service monopolies are really
just innocent little businesses, bringing the American dream to
millions of others.
It's as if to say, "We're not like other wicked monopolists -- John
D. Rockefeller in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Venderbilt
in railroads. Those are nasty, mean, old, ancient, out-of-date
monopolies. Not like us. We're sweet, happy, modern, hip, cool
monopolies, and we're different."
The CEOs were playing on the politicians' ignorance and stupidity,
which is trivially easy. The objective of the CEOs was to avoid
answering any real questions from the posturing politicians, who are
too dumb to know what was going on anyway, since they barely know how
to turn on a computer. And it worked.
So what are the questions that the CEOs were afraid to answer?
One of them was the one we've been discussing. This hearing occurred
shortly after the Twitter hack, and the CEOs were undoubtedly all
dreading the question: "Could the same thing happen to you?" They
were dreading that question because the answer would have to have been
"Yes," although they would have buried that answer in multiple
paragraphs of self-excusing verbiage.
****
**** The 'Hate Speech', 'Fake Speech' censorship monopoly
****
The second question the CEOs are afraid to answer is about their
censorship monopoly.
This article has been about illegal abuse of monopoly power and
exposure to data breaches, by the large online services, especially
Microsoft.
However, with the November 3 presidential election approaching, we're
seeing abuse of a different kind of monopoly power. We're seeing
Google, Facebook and Twitter abuse their monopoly power over
censorship to influence the election toward the Democrats by censoring
anything from Trump's 63 million supporters as "hate speech" or "fake
speech." There are many examples of this that are extremely
ridiculous, such as approving support for left-wing protests and
violent riots by antifa, while condemning street protests against
Democratic governors as racist or dangerous.
Ironically, this didn't start with Trump's presidency and actually has
nothing to do with Trump. It was already going on early in the Obama
administration with the vitriolic attacks by Democrats on members of
the conservative Tea Party, referring to Teapartiers with the hate
term "teabaggers," which is as bad as the N-word. In my almost 20
years of developing Generational Dynamics, I've seen many similar
examples of one group hating another group for no reason at all. I
don't know what chromosome or hormone causes this, but I do know that
that chromosome or hormone causing Democrats to hate 63 million
Teapartiers and Trump supporters is exactly the same as the one that
caused the Nazis to hate the Jews, the Hutus to hate the Tutsis, or
the Chinese Communists to hate the Uighurs and Tibetans. This is a
constant of human nature, and we're seeing it played out in America
today in the Democrats' vitriolic hatred of 63 million Teapartiers and
Trump supporters.
So today we have the major online services -- Google, Facebook and
Twitter -- supporting this hatred by classifying anything by
Teapartiers or Trump supporters as "hate speech" or "fake speech."
When confronted with evidence of this, a standard answer is to appeal
to the magic of artificial intelligence. "The decision whether
something is hate speech is made by impersonal AI algorithms in
computers that are non-partisan and not political. Haha."
Politicians who barely know how to turn on a computer just accept this
argument, as if there were some magic involved. Actually, there's no
magic involved. AI algorithms like that are rules-driven, and
programmers would write the rules.
The rules used by Google and others are confidential, of course, but
we can speculate on how some of them work. Let's suppose a tweet
contains the text, "Make America great." That alone wouldn't be
enough to classify it as hate speech, but it would add points in some
sort of point system. If a tweet contains another "racist" phrase
like that, then there might be enough points for the "non-partisan"
algorithms to decide that the tweet is hate speech.
Who decides what these rules are? The deciders are Google employees.
Among the Google employees making the rules there will be women as
well as men, to prevent anti-female bias in the rule-making. And
there will be blacks as well as whites, in order to prevent anti-black
bias in the rule-making. But what do they do about anti-conservative
bias? The answer is NOTHING. We know from various statements and
blogs and leaked meeting videos that all the employees at Google are
far left, and if there are any politically moderate employees at
Google (such as James Damore), they will be fired or marginalized by
the others, and their suggestions for rules will ignored in group code
reviews.
So we have a situation where Google is fully on-board to target 63
million tea partiers and Trump supporters in order to affect the
November 3 election. As I said, for one demographic group to hate
another demographic group is common throughout history and the world,
as in the Nazi hatred of Jews and the Hutu hatred of Tutsis or any of
a million other examples that anyone who studies history can name.
The one good thing we can say about the current situation is that the
hate campaign has not yet degenerated into genocide, although genocide
is the stated objective of the fascist organization antifa.
****
**** The power of monopoly -- and the danger
****
I can't end this article without looping back to the beginning.
There are some important points to be made about the power of
monopoly. I've shown how companies like Apple and Microsoft use their
monopoly power to coerce millions of users to purchase additional
unnecessary services, products and upgrades, making hundreds of
million or billions of dollars for the companies involved, or how
Google, Twitter and Facebook are using their monopoly power over
censorship rules to control the November 3 elections.
But I've also shown the danger of monopoly -- to the companies, to the
country, and even globally. Think of a monopoly as an enormous source
of power that the company can use in many ways to make money. But now
suppose a malicious actor, like Russia or China, finds a way to gain
control of that enormous power, as has already happened in the case of
the Twitter hack. That power then becomes a weapon that can destroy
the company, destroy million of lives or businesses, or destroy a
country.
Right now that monopoly power is being used to make money and to
affect the November 3 election. But we can also be certain that
hackers around the world have learned from the Twitter hack, and are
working 24 hours a day to gain control of an online system for their
own financial or political benefit. It's possible that they've
already succeeded without our knowing it.
In the middle of an election season, it's too late to even think about
fixing this problem this year. But fixing this problem should be
among the highest government priorities next year, no matter who wins
the election.
****
**** Sources
****
****
**** Previous articles about China
****
****
**** Previous articles about financial fraud
****
****
**** Previous articles about the financial crisis
****
****
**** Previous articles about Healthcare.gov disaster
****
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Microsoft, Windows 10, Twitter,
Richard Blumenthal, Apple iPhone, Tim Cook,
Sergey Tkachenko, Mary Jo Foley, Task Manager,
Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise, Windows 7, Bill Gates,
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, James Damore,
antifa, hate speech, fake speech,
China, National Intelligence Law, Russia, Healthcare.gov,
House Judiciary Committe, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai,
John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Venderbilt
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John J. Xenakis
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This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Microsoft's monopolistic practices leave Windows 10 vulnerable to massive hacking attack
- Example #1: Apple's iPhone forced slowdown using 'throttling'
- Example #2: Microsoft forcing an upgrade to Enterprise edition
- Example #3: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10
- Example #4: Microsoft's crapware (games, ads, trials) downloads
- Crapware downloads risk global hacking attack
- The political power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft
- The 'Hate Speech', 'Fake Speech' censorship monopoly
- The power of monopoly -- and the danger
- Sources
- Previous articles about China
- Previous articles about financial fraud
- Previous articles about the financial crisis
- Previous articles about Healthcare.gov disaster
****
**** Microsoft's monopolistic practices leave Windows 10 vulnerable to massive hacking attack
****
Windows 10 task manager screen showing when Microsoft is downloading crapware (games, ads, trials, teasers) to your computer without asking you. Notice that the C: drive is 100% active, and this can go on for hours, at high priority, sometimes crippling the computer
There was a major news story recently that you may have missed about
an extremely serious hacking breach.
Last month, hackers took control of dozens of Twitter accounts, and
used them to try to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from
millions of Twitter users. The hackers used a very simple "low tech"
technique to gain control: they bribed or extorted or tricked a
Twitter employee to giving them control. There are undoubtedly
hundreds or even thousands of people in Twitter's IT department with
full access to the user databases who could have satisfied the
hackers, although Twitter is now thought to be reducing that number.
When this happened, most people were shocked that this could even
happen. Most thought that it was impossible. In this article, we're
going to show that this and a lot worse can happen to Microsoft and
other online services.
According to Twitter:
<QUOTE>"The attackers successfully manipulated a small number
of employees and used their credentials to access Twitter’s
internal systems, including getting through our two-factor
protections. As of now, we know that they accessed tools only
available to our internal support teams to target 130 Twitter
accounts. For 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to
initiate a password reset, login to the account, and send
Tweets. We are continuing our forensic review of all of the
accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In
addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the
usernames."<END QUOTE>
News reports at the time speculated that the Twitter attack was just a
rehearsal for a much larger attack by Russia or China to be launched
just prior to the November 3 election, to influence the election.
According to press reports, all the hackers wanted was money, but
press reports speculate that they could have been a lot more
malicious, and the recent attack could have been a practice test for a
more extensive attack to manipulate the November 3 elections.
According to Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.):
<QUOTE>"This hack bodes ill for November balloting. Count
this incident as a near miss or shot across the bow. It could
have been much worse with different targets. So many security red
flags are raised by this criminal attack that the culprits should
be tracked down as quickly as possible."<END QUOTE>
Blumenthal is right about the large number of security red flags. But
he's wrong that the problem can be solved by tracking down the
culprits. The reason he's wrong is that this is a simple, low-tech
attack. There's no super-complex hacking software involved. It's
done the old fashioned way, with bribery and extortion or tricking of
Twitter employees.
And the same low-tech attack could be used on any of the online giants
-- Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Microsoft or indeed on any large
online service. A malicious actor, including a country like China or
Russia, could use bribery or extortion to "manipulate" one or more IT
employees to gain access to or control of dozens or hundreds or even
thousands of user accounts or computers. This is what happened at
Twitter, and it can happen at any of the online giants. How the
malicious actor uses that access or control varies from one online
giant to another, but the core technique of using bribery or extortion
to gain control is the same in all cases.
In this article, we're going to focus on Microsoft. According to
Microsoft, there are almost one billion desktop computers running
Windows 10. Microsoft is a monopolist with complete control of
Windows 10 on those one billion computers. Microsoft can update or
modify the Windows 10 software at any time, and there's nothing that
any user can do to stop it because, for almost all users, there's no
other choice but to use Windows 10. Microsoft is the quintessential
monopolist, with total control of a product that one billion people
are forced to use.
We're going to show how Microsoft illegally uses its monopoly power to
extort money from users. The method is obvious from the numbers: If
Microsoft can update or modify the Windows 10 software on computers in
order to "coerce" a million users to pay $100 each for Microsoft apps
or services or upgrades, then Microsoft makes $100 million for doing
essentially nothing. This is the essense of monopoly power.
We're going to show how Microsoft is already doing that, and we're
going to show how a malicious actor, like Russia or China, could use
an attack similar to the Twitter hack to extort money or even to start
a war.
Let's begin by giving three examples of how this has already occurred
in other ways.
****
**** Example #1: Apple's iPhone forced slowdown using 'throttling'
****
It's estimated that some 3 billion iPhones have been sold, and Apple has
the kind of monopolistic control over them that Microsoft has over Windows.
Apple has already used criminal monopolistic behavior to force users
of older iPhones to upgrade.
You may recall from March that Apple was forced to pay up to $500
million to settle a US lawsuit. Apple had used its monopolistic
control over iPhones to slow down old iPhones, in order to coerce
users into upgrading. This is criminal behavior under the antitrust
laws, and that's why Apple was forced to settle, and was anxious to
settle. They were lucky that it cost them only $500 million.
Here are some excerpts from a Reuters news story from March:
<QUOTE>"Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle
U.S. lawsuit over slow iPhones
(Reuters) - Apple Inc has agreed to pay up to $500 million to
settle litigation accusing it of quietly slowing down older
iPhones as it launched new models, to induce owners to buy
replacement phones or batteries.
Consumers contended that their phones’ performance suffered after
they installed Apple software updates. They said this misled them
into believing their phones were near the end of their lifecycles,
requiring replacements or new batteries.
Apple attributed the problems mainly to temperature changes, high
usage and other issues, and said its engineers worked quickly and
successfully to address them. Analysts sometimes refer to the
slowing of iPhones as “throttling.”
Following an initial outcry over slow iPhones, Apple apologized
and lowered the price for replacement batteries to $29 from
$79."<END QUOTE>
Apple was committing a crime by using its monopoly control of iPhones
to force iPhones to run more slowly, in order to coerce the user to
upgrade to a new iPhone. That's why Apple was desperate to settle as
quickly as possible.
An important part of Apple's behavior is that it must be as obscure as
possible to the user. If the user knew that Apple was purposely
throttling his iPhone, he might trade it in for an Android. Instead,
slowing the iPhone down is made as obscure and invisible as possible
so that the user doesn't know what's going on, and just buys a new
iPhone.
I realize that many people idolize Tim Cook and Apple, but this is
incredibly sleazy behavior. Apple managers are screwing their own
customers to essentially extort their customers to buy new iPhones.
It's absolutely incredible, but it shows the state of corporate
management these days. Apple managers like Tim Cook and Craig
Federighi are criminals who are totally lacking in morality and
ethics. And this criminal behavior actually happened.
But with 3 billion iPhones under their control, morality and ethics go
out the window, as Cook and Federighi look for ways to extort more
cash from users. The chance to extort billions of dollars from users
is just too tempting.
If anyone reading this wants to argue that Microsoft managers are less
unethical and immoral than Apple managers, then I'd like to hear that
argument.
****
**** Example #2: Microsoft forcing an upgrade to Enterprise edition
****
Example #1 was Apple's illegal throttling hack on iPhones to slow them
down, forcing users to upgrade.
Example #2 is an illegal action in 2016 by Microsoft to force Windows
Pro users to upgrade to Windows Enterprise, costing as much as $200
for each user.
In July 2016, Microsoft updated Windows 10 on its customers' desktop
to make it impossible for Windows Pro users to eliminate Windows
crapware like games, ads, trials and teasers. Users already have to
pay a big premium to run Windows Professional, but they do so because,
well, they're professionals like me, and want a professional version
of Windows, so they want the option of removing things like games.
But that's not good enough for Microsoft. Microsoft wants to force
Pro users to pay $100-200 more per computer to get the professional
features they thought they already had.
Here is a July 28, 2016, post by Russian blogger Sergey Tkachenko on
his Winaero blog:
<QUOTE>"Microsoft locks some Group Policy options to
Enterprise editions in Windows 10 Anniversary Update
Today, we surprisingly discovered that Microsoft has secretly
changed the availability of some Group Policy options in Windows
10 version 1607. Windows 10 version 1607 "Anniversary Update" has
reduced the control via Group Policy that you have in Pro
edition. Pro edition users have lesser options available compared
to version 1511, so many behaviors of the OS cannot be controlled.
If you open the Group Policy management console and read the
description of certain policy settings in Windows 10 build
14393, you will find out that the options mentioned below are NO
LONGER AVAILABLE for Windows 10 Pro users. They are locked down to
Enterprise and Education editions only: ...
[i]Turn off Microsoft consumer experiences. Using this option,
you could prevent Windows 10 from automatically downloading and
installing promoted apps like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipper,
Twitter, NetFlix, Pandora, MSN News and many other potentially
unwanted apps and games. Now you can't prevent these apps from
being automatically downloaded and installed if you are using
Windows 10 Pro or Home editions. The policy setting (or Registry
setting) has no effect in these editions. consumer
experience Starting with Windows 10 Anniversary Update, you
can only control unwanted apps in Enterprise and Educations
editions of Windows 10. This behavior was confirmed when I
upgraded my Windows 7 Professional to Windows 10 Pro and many
unwanted apps installed automatically from the Store."<END QUOTE>[/i]
A Zdnet article by Mary Jo Foley at that same time explains why
Microsoft did this:
<QUOTE>"Why did Microsoft remove the ability for admins to
change and shut off these apps and settings? I asked and didn't
hear back from company officials.
Some of us cynics believe the change was because Microsoft wants
to get more users to upgrade to the more expensive Enterprise
SKU. ...
Microsoft officials have been very up front about looking for ways
to make money indirectly from Windows 10 in various ways,
including promotional/sponsored app suggestions. ... The Softies
are trying to push more people to go to the Store and download
new/more apps. Microsoft gets a cut of third-party apps
downloaded from the Store."<END QUOTE>
This is pretty much a smoking gun. Microsoft wants to prevent Pro
users from stopping the crapware attacks, so the option to stop them
is disabled in the Pro edition. Foley call the Microsoft execs
"softies," but I would call them hardcore monopolistic criminals.
This is clearly extortionary behavior by Microsoft that's illegal.
There is absolutely no reason to remove these options from the Pro
version, except to extort money from users who are trapped by
Microsoft's monopoly, and have already paid a premium for the
"Professional" version of Windows 10.
****
**** Example #3: Upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10
****
Like many sophisticated users, I used to love my Windows-7 system. It
worked great, with none of the Microsoft crap that you have to put up
with in Windows-10.
In mid-January 2019, on a Tuesday afternoon, all of a sudden my
Windows 7 computer started getting incredibly slow. Firefox was
brought to its knees, and Chrome was working intermittently.
I spent many days trying to figure out which process was causing the
problem, and then I realized that it was far more sinister: Whenever I
started using Firefox, or a Youtube video on Chrome, or Windows Media
Player, or any of several other programs, then the problem would
occur. What would happen is that that particular program would only
use 15-20% of the cpu, but Windows would magically jack up the CPU
usage of other normally innocuous processes.
So for example, when the system was mostly idling, process explorer
might show the top cpu users as omnipage 1.3%, firefox 0.9%, sidebar
0.9%, emacs 0.1%, acro rd32 0.3%, and so forth, totalling around 10%.
But when I started up a youtube video on chrome, that process would
use 23% of the cpu, which wouldn't be a problem. But all of those
numbers in the last paragraph were now jacked up to 13.1%, 8.4%, 5.6%,
and so forth, totaling 100%, bringing the system to its knees.
In other words, starting up something on Chrome or Media Player or any
of numerous other programs would affect every other process on the
system. For example, I open Media Player, and suddenly Emacs would go
from using 0.1% of the cpu to 13.1% of the cpu, which makes no sense
at all.
So I started searching the internet, and I found that it's happening
to other people. Apparently it was triggered by a particular windows
update. Being a paranoid individual, I took note of the fact that
this problem started occurring the same week that Microsoft reminded
everyone that Windows 7 support would expire in a year, and I wondered
if this was a Microsoft plot to force people to install Windows 10.
What was going on was purposely obscure to 99.9% of the Windows-7
users. I'm one of the few users who could figure out what was going
on, since I spent many years of my career developing operating
systems. I developed three embedded operating systems, and two
mainframe operating systems, so I'm very capable of diagnosing these
situations.
So after a great deal of analysis, I knew that the only way this
problem could be occurring would be is if someone (Microsoft) changed
the operating system in a certain way. There's a process queue in the
core of any timesharing operating system, and there's a core o/s
function that takes the top process off the queue and gives it a time
slice -- let's it execute for a few milliseconds. When the time slice
expires, then that process goes on the bottom of the process queue,
and the new top of queue is allowed to run for a time slice. That's
how the operating system makes it appear that multiple programs are
all running simultaneously when, in fact, they are running in turn, a
few milliseconds at a time.
So the problem I was having could happen only one way: Microsoft had
modified the operating system on my computer to add several
milliseconds of time in a do-nothing loop to each time slice for each
process. This might have been simply a bug, and that's why I was
hoping that it would be corrected in the next Windows update. But it
wasn't corrected in the next update or the one after. It was clear to
me that that Microsoft was doing this on purpose, to force me to
upgrade to Windows 10.
By the way, the only reason I could figure this out was because of my
years of operating system experience. Ordinary users would have no
clue what was going on, and that's how Microsoft wanted it. And if
they called anyone for support, they would simply be told that their
computer was getting too old, and they should upgrade to Windows 10.
I knew what was going on, but it didn't matter. Microsoft is a
powerful monopolist that can screw me or any of its users at any time
of its choosing, to extract money or whatever. After a few weeks of
despair, I bought a new Dell Windows-10 computer. Then, of course,
Microsoft started with crapware downloads on my new computer, which
caused the same kind of performance problem as on my old computer.
****
**** Example #4: Microsoft's crapware (games, ads, trials) downloads
****
I've now given three examples of illegal monopolistic behavior --
Apple throttling iPhones, Microsoft forcing upgrade to Enterprise
edition, and Microsoft forcing upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
All of these are examples are of a monopolistic company illegally
using its monopoly power to extort money from users.
We'll now turn to the particular subject of this article, Microsoft's
illegal monopolistic behavior downloading crapware. However, this
example is much worse because unlike the recent Twitter hack, it's
about more than money.
At any time of the day or night, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes
of data to my computer, essentially crippling my computer. If I'm
trying to get some work done, then I'm screwed. Response time to a
simple command becomes 15-30 seconds, and saving a file in an Emacs
editor can sometimes take as much as 5 minutes.
The crapware downloads are different from the regular Windows Updates
downloads. Those updates occur at scheduled times, and they're
carefully controlled by Microsoft procedures that have been developed
for years.
However, with Windows 10, that hasn't been enough for Microsoft.
Every week, Microsoft downloads several gigabytes of ads, games,
videos and other crapware to your computer in a completely
uncontrolled fashion. These downloads go on for hours, often completely
crippling the desktop computer being targeted.
My experience for the last year is that Microsoft cripples my computer
at any time of the day or night, for any number of hours at a time, to
store more crapware on my computer. To say that this infuriates me
would be a big understatement.
Let me make it clear that I don't care about the ads. I'm used to
seeing ads on tv, on web sites, in magazines, and so forth. That's
not the problem. The problem is that Microsoft is purposely crippling
my computer at any time, for hours at a time, to download their
crapware, preventing me from getting my work done. This is criminal
behavior by a monopolist, designed to force users to upgrade or to
purchase additional Microsoft services.
As a Senior Software Engineer of many decades, I can spot bad software
and sloppy implementations. Here's a list of the characteristics of
these crapware downloads that reveal the intent:
- There's no advance warning notification, since that would
allow the user to plan for some other activity while the download was
going on.
- Similarly, there's no notification during the download, telling
the user what's going on and how long it will last since, once again,
the user could plan for something else.
- And of course there's no way to cancel or reschedule or slow a
crapware download.
- There's no way to identify what process is doing the download,
since would allow a user to lower its priority or cancel it.
- The download runs at maximum priority, crippling the computer.
Clearly, it could run at a lower priority and accomplish the same
thing over a longer period of time without crippling the computer, so
running at high priority is an intentional choice by Microsoft to harm
the user unnecessarily.
As a software engineer of many decades, I see the above list as proof
that Microsoft is purposely screwing its users for financial gain,
just as Apple did in throttling iPhones. Some of the items in the
above list could be fixed trivially, such as displaying advance
notifications, and allowing the user to reschedule, or lowering the
priority of the process, so that the computer isn't crippled. The
fact that Microsoft designed these downloads to do the greatest
possible harm to its own users in the most chaotic way is proof, in my
opinion, of extreme malice and criminal behavior on the part of
Microsoft.
For most users, it's almost impossible to see what's going on, except
that your computer slows down. The only way that I know of to see
what's happening during a crapware download is to open the Task
Manager, go to the performance tab, and click on the "Disk 0 (C
".You'll see that disk activity is solid 100% without variation,
sometimes for hours. (By the way, I've gotten into the habit of
leaving the Task Manager window open all the time to that tab. If I'm
suddenly having problems, I can click on that window, and usually I
can see that a new Microsoft crapware attack is just beginning.)
The graphic at the beginning of this article shows what Task Manager
looks like during a crapware attack. Note that the Drive C: activity
is at 100%, and this can go on for minutes or hours. That's on the
Performance tab. If you try to switch back to the Process tab, you'll
see that there's nothing going on -- Microsoft has purposely hidden
the crapware download activity so that you can't plan for it or modify
it, or even know it's going on. Microsoft can do this because it's a
monopoly and it has control of your computer, and can do whatever it
wants to you.
As a Software Engineer, I've always had a very high opinion of
Windows, and Microsoft technology. I started playing around with
Windows version 1 in 1985. Since then, I haven't always agreed with
some of the directions that Windows took, but I always felt that they
were intended to be in the best interest of the users. Until a year
or two ago, Windows was always a gold star product, in my opinion.
I also met Bill Gates two or three times in the 1990s. I thought he
was a really decent, competent guy who, once again, believed in doing
what was in the best interest of the users.
But Bill Gates is gone now, having left Microsoft years ago to save
the world from malaria and coronavirus. The company that he left
behind has turned into a sewer with a corporate culture of young
people who happily sacrifice the best interest of their users for
their own agendas and money.
****
**** Crapware downloads risk global hacking attack
****
I'm now ready to show how Microsoft's policies risk a global hacking
attack on Microsoft that can have much more serious consequences than
the similar attack that's already occurred on Twitter.
I've now shown the following:
- The Twitter hack is extremely dangerous, and could happen to
any of the big online services -- Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft.
- A malicious actor, like Russia or China, could gain access or
control of millions of accounts or desktops by using bribery and
extortion or trickery to "manipulate" (Twitter's word) any of their
many employees with access to the company database.
- In the case of Microsoft, a malicious actor has an additional path
to taking control. The crapware being downloaded is full of third
party games and ads. A malicious actor could plant malware in one of
those games and ads, or could "manipulate" an employee of the company
providing the game to do so.
- How the actor makes use of that control depends on the online
service (Google, Microsoft, Twitter, etc.) and the actor's intention.
It could be to extort money, it could be to gather intelligence, it
could be to destroy competitive businesses, it could be to affect the
November 3 election, or it could be some major political objective,
even starting a war.
With regard to "manipulating" any of the employees of these services,
let's recall that there are hundreds of thousands of Chinese living in
America. Under Chinese law, the Chinese military tracks them and
requires them to provide intelligence or perform other duties as
described by the military. China's 2017 National Intelligence Law
requires all Chinese citizens and businesses to perform such duties,
even when doing so is illegal. I don't blame the Chinese citizens for
this. I blame the Chinese Communist thugs who treat their own
citizens like dirt, as contrast to ethnic Chinese citizens who live in
Taiwan and have much higher standards of living, much more freedom,
and aren't persecuted by a paranoid, desperate government.
The major online services are mostly headquartered in the west, and so
have many Chinese employees. These people are all subject to China's
National Intelligence Law, and so they can be directly "manipulated"
by China's military. If one of these employees has access to the
company's user database -- and I have no doubt that many do -- then
those employees can be "manipulated" into stealing data, stealing
accounts, or taking control of millions of users' accounts, as has
already happened in the case of the Twitter hack.
I have a personal anecdote related to this subject. A few months ago,
I started receiving robocall phone messages in Chinese on my home
phone. So I recorded one of them and asked someone to translate. It
went: "Hello, this is the Chinese embassy. You have a very important
notification. For details please press xxx." So I don't know why my
phone number was called, or what sort of "important notification" was
intended, but this shows one of the ways that the Chinese Commuists
keep Chinese people in America on a short leash, ready to do as
they're told.
****
**** The political power of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Microsoft
****
On July 29, 2020, the House Judiciary committee held a hearing on
examining the dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. The
CEOs of all four companies came and testified, and were questioned by
the politicians on the committee.
The hearing began in full-scale farce. The opening statement of
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, began as follows:
<QUOTE>"My mom, Jackie, had me when she was a 17-year-old
high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Being pregnant in
high school was not popular in Albuquerque in 1964. It was
difficult for her. When they tried to kick her out of school, my
grandfather went to bat for her. After some negotiation, the
principal said, “OK, she can stay and finish high school, but she
can’t do any extracurricular activities, and she can’t have a
locker.” My grandfather took the deal, and my mother finished
high school, though she wasn’t allowed to walk across the stage
with her classmates to get her diploma."<END QUOTE>
Listening to this, I was soooooooo touched that I almost had tears
streaming down my face. It was just so sad.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Google, took a slightly different
approach:
<QUOTE>"Expanding access to opportunity through technology is
deeply personal to me. I didn’t have much access to a computer
growing up in India. So you can imagine my amazement when I
arrived in the U.S. for graduate school and saw an entire lab of
computers I could use whenever I wanted. Accessing the internet
for the first time in that computer lab set me on a path to bring
technology to as many people as possible. It’s what inspired me to
join Google 16 years ago."<END QUOTE>
Once again, very touching.
So what's going on here? These ridiculous statements are carefully
planned and carefully rehearsed well in advance, in both content and
demeanor, to show that these huge online service monopolies are really
just innocent little businesses, bringing the American dream to
millions of others.
It's as if to say, "We're not like other wicked monopolists -- John
D. Rockefeller in oil, Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Venderbilt
in railroads. Those are nasty, mean, old, ancient, out-of-date
monopolies. Not like us. We're sweet, happy, modern, hip, cool
monopolies, and we're different."
The CEOs were playing on the politicians' ignorance and stupidity,
which is trivially easy. The objective of the CEOs was to avoid
answering any real questions from the posturing politicians, who are
too dumb to know what was going on anyway, since they barely know how
to turn on a computer. And it worked.
So what are the questions that the CEOs were afraid to answer?
One of them was the one we've been discussing. This hearing occurred
shortly after the Twitter hack, and the CEOs were undoubtedly all
dreading the question: "Could the same thing happen to you?" They
were dreading that question because the answer would have to have been
"Yes," although they would have buried that answer in multiple
paragraphs of self-excusing verbiage.
****
**** The 'Hate Speech', 'Fake Speech' censorship monopoly
****
The second question the CEOs are afraid to answer is about their
censorship monopoly.
This article has been about illegal abuse of monopoly power and
exposure to data breaches, by the large online services, especially
Microsoft.
However, with the November 3 presidential election approaching, we're
seeing abuse of a different kind of monopoly power. We're seeing
Google, Facebook and Twitter abuse their monopoly power over
censorship to influence the election toward the Democrats by censoring
anything from Trump's 63 million supporters as "hate speech" or "fake
speech." There are many examples of this that are extremely
ridiculous, such as approving support for left-wing protests and
violent riots by antifa, while condemning street protests against
Democratic governors as racist or dangerous.
Ironically, this didn't start with Trump's presidency and actually has
nothing to do with Trump. It was already going on early in the Obama
administration with the vitriolic attacks by Democrats on members of
the conservative Tea Party, referring to Teapartiers with the hate
term "teabaggers," which is as bad as the N-word. In my almost 20
years of developing Generational Dynamics, I've seen many similar
examples of one group hating another group for no reason at all. I
don't know what chromosome or hormone causes this, but I do know that
that chromosome or hormone causing Democrats to hate 63 million
Teapartiers and Trump supporters is exactly the same as the one that
caused the Nazis to hate the Jews, the Hutus to hate the Tutsis, or
the Chinese Communists to hate the Uighurs and Tibetans. This is a
constant of human nature, and we're seeing it played out in America
today in the Democrats' vitriolic hatred of 63 million Teapartiers and
Trump supporters.
So today we have the major online services -- Google, Facebook and
Twitter -- supporting this hatred by classifying anything by
Teapartiers or Trump supporters as "hate speech" or "fake speech."
When confronted with evidence of this, a standard answer is to appeal
to the magic of artificial intelligence. "The decision whether
something is hate speech is made by impersonal AI algorithms in
computers that are non-partisan and not political. Haha."
Politicians who barely know how to turn on a computer just accept this
argument, as if there were some magic involved. Actually, there's no
magic involved. AI algorithms like that are rules-driven, and
programmers would write the rules.
The rules used by Google and others are confidential, of course, but
we can speculate on how some of them work. Let's suppose a tweet
contains the text, "Make America great." That alone wouldn't be
enough to classify it as hate speech, but it would add points in some
sort of point system. If a tweet contains another "racist" phrase
like that, then there might be enough points for the "non-partisan"
algorithms to decide that the tweet is hate speech.
Who decides what these rules are? The deciders are Google employees.
Among the Google employees making the rules there will be women as
well as men, to prevent anti-female bias in the rule-making. And
there will be blacks as well as whites, in order to prevent anti-black
bias in the rule-making. But what do they do about anti-conservative
bias? The answer is NOTHING. We know from various statements and
blogs and leaked meeting videos that all the employees at Google are
far left, and if there are any politically moderate employees at
Google (such as James Damore), they will be fired or marginalized by
the others, and their suggestions for rules will ignored in group code
reviews.
So we have a situation where Google is fully on-board to target 63
million tea partiers and Trump supporters in order to affect the
November 3 election. As I said, for one demographic group to hate
another demographic group is common throughout history and the world,
as in the Nazi hatred of Jews and the Hutu hatred of Tutsis or any of
a million other examples that anyone who studies history can name.
The one good thing we can say about the current situation is that the
hate campaign has not yet degenerated into genocide, although genocide
is the stated objective of the fascist organization antifa.
****
**** The power of monopoly -- and the danger
****
I can't end this article without looping back to the beginning.
There are some important points to be made about the power of
monopoly. I've shown how companies like Apple and Microsoft use their
monopoly power to coerce millions of users to purchase additional
unnecessary services, products and upgrades, making hundreds of
million or billions of dollars for the companies involved, or how
Google, Twitter and Facebook are using their monopoly power over
censorship rules to control the November 3 elections.
But I've also shown the danger of monopoly -- to the companies, to the
country, and even globally. Think of a monopoly as an enormous source
of power that the company can use in many ways to make money. But now
suppose a malicious actor, like Russia or China, finds a way to gain
control of that enormous power, as has already happened in the case of
the Twitter hack. That power then becomes a weapon that can destroy
the company, destroy million of lives or businesses, or destroy a
country.
Right now that monopoly power is being used to make money and to
affect the November 3 election. But we can also be certain that
hackers around the world have learned from the Twitter hack, and are
working 24 hours a day to gain control of an online system for their
own financial or political benefit. It's possible that they've
already succeeded without our knowing it.
In the middle of an election season, it's too late to even think about
fixing this problem this year. But fixing this problem should be
among the highest government priorities next year, no matter who wins
the election.
****
**** Sources
****
- Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle U.S. lawsuit over slow iPhones (Reuters, 2-Mar-2020)
- Microsoft locks some Group Policy options to Enterprise editions in Windows 10 Anniversary Update (Winaero blog, 28-Jul-2016)
- Administrators can no longer shut off certain apps, content with Windows 10 Pro Anniversary Update (ZDnet, 1-Aug-2016)
- Lawmakers zero in on Twitter following massive hack (Comer.House.gov, 17-Jul-2020)
- Online Platforms and Market Power, Part 6: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (House Judiciary Comm, 29-Jul-2020)
- An update on our security incident (Twitter, 30-Jul-2020)
- Jonathan Turley: The dangerous liberal ideas for censorship in the United States (The Hill, 2-May-2020)
- Sen. Cruz Slams Google’s Political Bias: Stop Targeting & Censoring Conservatives (Sen. Ted Cruz, 18-Jun-2020)
****
**** Previous articles about China
****
- China hackers collect data on hundreds of millions of Americans and Westerners (21-Dec-2018)
- MIT criticizes 'toxic atmosphere' targeting Chinese students (30-Jun-2019)
</li
- George Soros speech at Davos marks significant global shift against China (27-Jan-2019)
- New book documents extensive Chinese infiltration into Australia's organizations (26-Feb-2018)
- Mike Pence's China 'containment' speech signals more contentious US-China relations (26-Oct-2018)
- Xi Jinping invokes the 1840s Opium Wars to justify military action for China's 'rejuvenation' (21-Mar-2018)
****
**** Previous articles about financial fraud
****
- How Priceline, Orbitz, FTD, 1-800-Flowers, Pizza Hut, and Continental Airlines are scamming you online (24-Nov-2009)
- Scams from the web site FreeCreditReport.com (16-Feb-2010)
- American Express fined $112.5 million over massive consumer fraud (02-Oct-2012)
- Capital One fined $150 million for credit card fraud (20-Jul-2012)
- Orbitz steers Mac users toward pricier hotels (02-Jul-2012)
****
**** Previous articles about the financial crisis
****
- Financial Crisis Inquiry hearings provide 'smoking gun' evidence of widespread criminal fraud (14-Apr-2010)
- A primer on financial engineering and structured finance (23-Jan-2008)
- American xenophobia on the Left and on the Right (07-Nov-2010)
- The nihilism and self-destructiveness of Generation X (21-Jan-2008)
****
**** Previous articles about Healthcare.gov disaster
****
- Obamacare: 500M lines of code, $500M, only 60% completed (01-Dec-2013)
- Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history (23-Aug-2015)
- For academics: Dysfunction, subversion, sabotage and fraud in software development projects (23-Aug-2015)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Microsoft, Windows 10, Twitter,
Richard Blumenthal, Apple iPhone, Tim Cook,
Sergey Tkachenko, Mary Jo Foley, Task Manager,
Windows Pro, Windows Enterprise, Windows 7, Bill Gates,
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, James Damore,
antifa, hate speech, fake speech,
China, National Intelligence Law, Russia, Healthcare.gov,
House Judiciary Committe, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai,
John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Venderbilt
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