by Dr.Harald Wiesendanger– Klartext
What the mainstream media is hiding
In order to combat “disinformation” more effectively worldwide, Bill Gates has just forged a new alliance of major media and tech companies. The “Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity” (C2PA) is intended to create the technical conditions to clean the Internet of “fake news” and “conspiracy theories” – comprehensively and once and for all. No lateral thinker will escape this perfected censorship.
According to a press release released by Gates’ Microsoft on February 22nd, 2021, the founders of this large coalition of veracity certifiers initially include the New York Times, the BBC, and the software giants Adobe, ARM, Intel, and Truepic. Across the World Wide Web, the corporate Alliance is intended to “preserve the integrity of the content” and ensure “that the original information has not been manipulated along the way.”
To do this, Microsoft will develop software that gives any content – be it a text, image, video, or document – a unique digital fingerprint: a so-called hash, a unique code sequence. Each hash should be as specific as the content it is attached to; “the probability of two pieces of content having the same hash is virtually zero.” Among other things, a hash automatically detects whether the content in question was created by a recognized quality medium such as the New York Times, an alternative digital medium, or even an individual user. If the content comes from a medium that differs from information published in the Times, an algorithm will immediately classify it as fake.
What does this mean for statements about Covid vaccines, for example? The “integrity,” famously “reliable” Times explains: “mRNA vaccines are effective and safe.” If a lateral thinker posts the opposite claim, he is not simply representing a different point of view, possibly for valid reasons – he is “modifying” the trustworthy information the Times said he “falsified” it. And then?
Then, no debate begins, no weighing up of reasons for and against. Instead, it ends immediately. C2PA promotes selected leading media, such as the New York Times, to the Holy See of the news world – in the future, they will provide the gold standard of absolute truth, so to speak. Other digital media, as well as every simple user, will soon have to be measured against it. If they are guilty of “modifying” the original content, they will be hit with the cyber guillotine of censorship. By “modify,” the C2PA creators mean that “the authorship was stolen” and the original information was “manipulated,” possibly “with malicious intent.” In this case, they lack “authenticity.” Microsoft software should then ensure that such messages are automatically marked as “misleading” and banned from the Internet.
Objection pointless, resistance impossible
Any medium whose content contradicts the New York Times and its sources and offers a different version risks digital banishment by the grand coalition of Microsoft and its partners. Anywhere, immediately and permanently. The objection is pointless, the discussion is impossible, and resistance is impossible – because the censor is an artificial intelligence that continues to perfect itself independently using machine learning. It is unlikely that the fundamental freedoms of Western democracies will be programmed into it.
The keyword “provenance” stands for another new function of Bill Gates’ C2PA: It aims to trace the path of “falsified” content throughout its entire journey through the Internet, even if it originates from an anonymous user. Gates wants Microsoft to develop software that can track any information his coalition deems “misleading,” whether it’s an article on a blog, a video on a platform, a post on a social network, or a meme. In any case, both the author and those who “consumed” fake news are reliably identified. For the “end consumer” of disinformation, every view, every comment, every “follow” and “share,” even a smiley, can be recorded.
To achieve this, Microsoft explains, “collaborating with chip makers, news organizations, and software and platform companies is critical to enable a comprehensive provenance standard and promote broad adoption across the content ecosystem.”
“Protecting Trustworthy Media”
In the C2PA, three forerunners work together.
(1.) Already in 2019, over a dozen big players had come together to form the “Trusted News Initiative” (TNI): in addition to the three market leaders among news agencies – AP, AFP, and Reuters – the BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Facebook, Google/YouTube, Twitter, the Financial Times, the Washington Post. First Draft, The Hindu and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. And, of course, Microsoft. TNI partners “alert each other to disinformation that poses an imminent threat to life. This allows platforms to promptly review content while publishers ensure they are not unwittingly publishing dangerous falsehoods.”
This “rapid warning system” was first used in the 2019/20 parliamentary elections in Great Britain, Myanmar, and Taiwan, as well as in the American presidential elections. In the pandemic year, the joint “combat of dangerous disinformation about the coronavirus” came to the fore. In December 2020, at a summit in London led by the BBC Director General, the Alliance decided to focus on the issue of vaccines. “Examples include widespread memes that associate falsehoods about vaccines with freedom (…). Other posts attempt to downplay the dangers of coronavirus and suggest there is an ulterior motive behind the development of a vaccine.”
And what about articles in which the leading media exaggerates the Corona dangers, downplays restrictions on freedom and other collateral damage, and refrains from questioning vaccination campaigns? The C2PA initiators certainly do not plan to “combat” such disinformation.
(2.) “Project Origin” (1), operated by Microsoft since autumn 2020 together with the “information leaders” BBC, the New York Times, the Canadian state broadcasters CBC and Radio-Canada, had the motto “Protecting Trusted Media” – “Protecting trustworthy media.” It aimed to “combat disinformation in the digital news ecosystem by attaching signals to a piece of content to demonstrate its integrity and make that information available to users.” The consumer receives “automated warning signals about manipulated or fake media.”
And who sets the standards for integrity and trustworthiness? Who ensures that the “information leaders” fulfill them?
(3.) At the same time, Adobe had already launched a “Content Authenticity Initiative” (CAI). She aimed to determine the origin of digital image content, which would allow “consumers to judge whether what they see is trustworthy,” i.e., depicts a visual reality.
What’s in store for us?
What’s wrong with C2PA soon giving every content that reaches the Internet a “digital fingerprint”: a signal that makes it possible to recognize its origin and thus identify its author?
To understand this, it is enough to look closely at three of Gates’ coalition partners. When we create a doc or jpeg file, some Microsoft service is probably involved, be it Word or the rest of the Office suite, Notepad, Paint, or Edge. Before publishing photos, videos, and documents, we will most likely turn to Adobe, the company behind Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat, Premiere, and other market-leading applications. Truepic, a vertical startup, has developed a method to determine the origin of photos as soon as they are taken with a smartphone.
And then there is Intel, which dominates the market for CPUs: the central processing units of all data processing devices. Whether you type a sentence, send an email, copy an image file, or take a screenshot, it is always the CPU that processes these files. Access to the CPU opens up the ultimate form of digital surveillance. Even if you’re not connected to the Internet, the CPU still “knows” what your computer is doing.
Together, these technologies open the possibility of tracking and de-anonymizing all types of information from the moment it is created on a computer, laptop, or any other computing device. Those who want to control them provide them with signals to ensure that they are censored and suppressed at all times, wherever they travel online. At the same time, the signals make it possible to identify the author of the content that the censor classifies as “untrustworthy.”
What scenarios do we have to prepare for as a result?
1. The ARD broadcasts an extremely sympathetic report about Angela Merkel. You know it’s not entirely true. So you produce a satirical short video debunking the story and share it with a few friends, who in turn spread the word. As it goes viral, artificial intelligence finds “disinformation” in it and identifies you as the author. You will then be punished. Maybe your internet access will be blocked for a week, or if it happens again, for a month. Maybe the sanction will be more drastic.
2. The online magazine Rubikon publishes an article about Lothar Wieler that, although factual, puts him in a bad light. The text is illustrated by a graphic that you want to post and share elsewhere. But this doesn’t work anywhere, no matter which browser you use. Because the C2PA technology classified the post as “hate speech.”
3. Reitschuster.de provides a podcast on its website. The C2PA software immediately classifies it as fake news. After that, no one can download it anymore. If you make it, you can no longer play the podcast on your device. Instead, a window may pop up saying: “This post has been identified as misinformation. Please use C2PA-certified sources instead. These are …”
4. Tens of thousands have saved a television report showing that vaccine skepticism is reaching record levels. The C2PA technology recognizes fake news – and deletes the film file from all computers that are “infected” with it.
5. Lateral thinkers, as well as everyone who even partially sympathizes with their ideas, are described as spreaders of “constitutionally relevant delegitimization of the state,” if not even as “domestic terrorists.” As a result, all of their online activities must be monitored, covertly if necessary, without warning or permission. Whatever comes from them – be it a text, a video, a voice message, or an image – state security officers with C2PA support can trace it back to them via the IP addresses of CPUs. The thought criminals can then prepare for a visit from the authorities.
Here are a few “conspiracy theories” that C2PA would have prevented from spreading:
Didn’t a “trusted source,” the Federal Ministry of Health, post the official tweet on March 14th, 2020?: “Attention, fake news! It is claimed and quickly spread that the Federal Ministry of Health/the Federal Government would soon announce massive restrictions on public life. That’s not true! Please help to stop its spread.” C2PA would certainly have helped. Not eight months later, not even eight weeks later, but eight days (!) later, the first lockdown began.
Until recently, C2PA suppressed the fact that the federal government wanted to privilege vaccinated people as “disinformation.” Finally, on December 28th, 2020, Jens Spahn spoke out clearly against special rights. On April 4th, 2021, the same minister announced just such privileges.
Are Germany’s shop owners facing a second shutdown? Fake news. “With today’s knowledge (…) you would no longer close hairdressers and no longer close retail stores,” clarified Jens Spahn on September 1st, 2020. But a good three months later, on December 16th, most of the retail sector had to close again.
“Another nationwide school closure is out of the question,” assured Federal Education Minister Anja Karliczek on September 22nd, 2020. Anyone who predicted the opposite would have been labeled a “disinformer” by C2PA. Almost three months later, on December 16th, 2020, the schools closed again, and compulsory attendance was suspended. This should only last until January 10th, 2021. It still applies.
Get rid of “that stuff” –
What does Gates mean by “the truth”?
Why C2PA when an army of fact-checkers is already “cleaning” the Internet en masse? As Bill Gates complained at the Wall Street Journal Summit in London in October 2020 (2), the measures taken so far to suppress conspiracy theories and “misinformation” on the Internet are “less creative than we need at this point.” He misses and demands “intelligent solutions.”
The tech platforms have so far failed to take into account human “weakness” for “titillating things”. For example, “claims that the coronavirus was created by humans or ‘There is a conspiracy.'”
Social media, Gates complained, continues to allow such content to make the rounds at lightning speed. “This stuff spreads much faster than the truth. That’s, you know, it comes from a bat, you know, we’re still trying to figure out the exact route of transmission.” (3)
In this example, the self-proclaimed guardian of pure truth demonstrates in an exemplary manner how he envisages how to deal with unpopular opinions for the future of humanity. In fact, the zoonotic hypothesis of the origin of the pandemic remains highly controversial, while evidence for a biotechnical laboratory construct is accumulating. There is no “scientific consensus” on this, at least if one considers the assessments of independent experts instead of trusting the two-legged conflicts of interest that support the official narrative for transparent motives. (4) Gates apparently wants to prevent overdue research and discussions about it as “stuff.”
“Disinformation”: This is what truth guards like Gates mean by information that questions the establishment’s narrative. The translation “dissident information” would be more accurate.
C2PA goes far beyond the control of opinions that already takes place on social media platforms and search engines. It goes deeper, at the level of offline software and hardware, probably down to the most basic unit: the CPU. The aim is to prevent the spread of “unverified” information before it even goes online.
Failed gold standard
The fact that Gates promotes a newspaper like the New York Times as a standard of truthfulness is sufficiently absurd to embarrass his censorship project prenatally. With her record of journalistic misconduct going back decades, it would be possible to fill a documentary that would have trouble fitting between two book covers.
The “most respected newspaper in the world” (5) trivialized the “Holodomor,” Stalin’s genocide of millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s (6), as well as Hitler’s persecution of the Jews (7). Even according to the retrospective assessment of its own editor, the paper dealt with controversial issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage in a biased manner. (8) She supported the invasion of Iraq. (9) In the Middle East conflict, according to a Harvard study, she is more likely to take the Israeli perspective than the Palestinian one. (10) – with a bias “reflected (…) in the use of headlines, photos, graphics, sourcing practices, and lead paragraphs.” (11)
The New York Times was involved by the CIA in “Operation Mockingbird,” a covert media infiltration campaign that began in 1948. The Secret Service recruited thousands of journalists for this purpose. (12)
The American public is now considerably less convinced of the credibility of the New York Times than its richest fan. One in two US citizens no longer trusts its reporting only partially or not at all. (13)
The reputation of Gates’ second major media partner, the BBC, is hardly better. The British state broadcaster has always consistently confirmed the accusation of left-liberal bias. (14)
The BBC has also allowed itself to be used by secret services for propaganda purposes. Leaked documents reveal that BBC News, as well as Reuters, were involved in a covert program by Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to weaken Russia’s influence over its neighbors. “The BBC and Reuters promote themselves as unimpeachable, impartial, and authoritative world news sources,” says former British Labor MP Chris Williamson. “But both are hugely compromised by these revelations. Such double standards (…) only bring the media companies’ writers into further disrepute.” (15)
This was not the first time that Reuters and the BBC had been involved in a Mockingbird-like campaign. As documents declassified in January 2020 show, the British government paid the agency giant Reuters “in the 1960s and 1970s to support an anti-Soviet propaganda organization run by the secret service MI6,” reports the information portal GrayZone. The BBC allowed itself to be “used as a pass-through” to conceal payments to Reuters.
So, are these “gold standards” of veracity we must be prepared for in Gates’ brave new normal?
It’s here to stay.
From the World Health Organization to the European Union to GAFTA, the Alliance of the tech giants Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon justified the serious interventions in the freedom of the press and freedom of expression that they initiated from spring 2020 onwards with the Covid -Emergency. So, censorship will disappear once the pandemic is over?
Edward Snowden, the intrepid NSA whistleblower, warned at the end of March 2020, shortly after the first wave of lockdowns began: The surveillance state that is now emerging will outlast the corona crisis. The current restrictions on freedom, the loss of our fundamental rights, and the censorship instruments installed could be irreversible. “States tend to prolong dangerous situations,” he warned. Or they invent new threats. Suddenly, emergency measures could become permanent – for example, to permanently eliminate opposition. (16)
Gates’ C2PA proposal confirms Snowden’s worst fears. Because it’s not just about defending the official Corona narrative. Nor is it limited to vaccination propaganda, Gates’ most urgent passion. C2PA is about nothing less than everything – about “disinformation” in general, about the hunt for fake news spreaders and conspiracy theorists of all kinds. Once the Microsoft software is implemented worldwide, it will bring the entire cyberspace into line in no time bring. It will “clean up” the whole Internet. Any content that runs counter to the interests of the political and economic elites will disappear without a trace and forever. It will seem to future generations as if there were never any concerns, dissenting voices, or protests. If resistance arises from time to time, it will be clear from countless “trustworthy” sources: The authors are crazy people who are far removed from science, unscrupulous thought criminals and mentally disturbed public pests.
Technically perfected censorship
The C2PA project will greatly facilitate absolute control over the global flow of information and the elimination of all criticism. To do this, it is enough to get a grip on the few leading media outlets that elevate Gates & Co. to the standard of “trustworthiness.” The fact that the world’s largest media companies and news agencies are getting involved in this raises concerns about their inglorious past. (See Klartext “The Trust Paradox” and “How Do Scissors Get into Your Head?”)
Totalitarian surveillance regimes like Red China will be delighted with the planned C2PA software. The comprehensive control of opinion that Gates’ censorship alliance aims for can be fabulously combined with a sophisticated social points system. The more fake news you produce, save, edit, secrete, consume, comment on in approval or forward, the more points you risk deducted – and with it disadvantages and sanctions of all kinds.
Making the WWW the world’s truth watchdog has long been important to Gates. He has a hand in almost everywhere where there is work being done to restrict and eliminate freedom of expression. Financially dependent on Gates organizations, the WHO has been coordinating the increasingly bold deletion orgies of the dominant social media companies since the spring of 2020. The Poynter Institute, which “certifies” fact-checkers from around the world, relies on Gates donations. With C2PA, the greatest bill of all time is just taking the logical next step. There is no one in sight who could stop megalomaniacal pseudo-philanthropists like him.
What will happen to lateral thinkers in the next pandemic? At least they will remain locked entirely out of cyberspace. Even your Telegram ghetto will be empty, as will this blog here.
Harald Wiesendanger
Remarks
1) https://www.originproject.info/; https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthebbc/entries/46f5eb33-b7b8-4a9b-a24e-2c38e0cf8c2a
(2) https://www.wsj.com/video/watch-bill-gates-at-wsj-ceo-council-summit/031C310C-128B-4229-BC1D-660B99BDA759.html; https://ceocouncil.wsj.com/event/ceo-council/
(3) Zit. nach https://reclaimthenet.org/microsoft-forms-coalition-to-censor-disinformation-online/
(4) Siehe Harald Wiesendanger: Corona-Rätsel, Schönbrunn 2020, E-Book, https://stiftung-auswege-shop.gambiocloud.com/corona-raetsel-pdf.html
(5) Jessica Bennett, “Inside the New York Times Photo Morgue, A Possible New Life for Print “, WNYC News, 7.5.2012, http://www.wnyc.org/story/206643-wnyc-tumblr/
(6) Eugene Lyons, Eugene (1938). Assignment in Utopia (1938), https://books.google.com/books?id=ZXLhwVJvfXMC&q=The+food+shortage+which+has+affected+almost+the+whole+population+in+the+last+year%2C+and+particularly+in+the+grain-producing+provinces&pg=PA573; R. Conquest: Reflections on a Ravaged Century, New York 2000; Andrew Stuttaford: “Prize Specimen – The Campaign to Revoke Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer,” National Review, 7.5.2003, https://web.archive.org/web/20030519230426/http:/www.nationalreview.com/stuttaford/stuttaford050703.asp; “The Foreign Office and the famine: British documents on Ukraine and the Great Famine of 1932–1933”, Studies in East European Nationalisms, https://books.google.com/books?id=jQcPAQAAMAAJ; “N.Y. Times Urged to Rescind 1932 Pulitzer”, USA Today, 2.2.2008, https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-10-22-ny-times-pulitzer_x.htm
(7) Max Frankel: “Turning Away From the Holocaust,” New York Times, 14.11.2001, https://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/14/specials/onefifty/20FRAN.html
(8) Daniel Okrent: “Opinion – THE PUBLIC EDITOR; Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? “, New York Times, 25.7.2004.
(9) Antony Loewenstein: “The New York Times’s role in promoting war on Iraq,” Sydney Morning Herald, 23.3.2004, https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/23/1079939624187.html; NYTimes Editors: “FROM THE EDITORS; The Times and Iraq,” New York Times, 26.5.2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html
(10) Matt Viser: “Attempted Objectivity: An Analysis of the New York Times and Ha’aretz and their Portrayals of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” International Journal of Press/Politics 8 (4), September 2003, S. 114–120, doi:10.1177/1081180X03256999. S2CID 145209853.
(11) Barbie Zelizer u.a.: “How Bias Shapes the News: Challenging the New York Times’ Status as a Newspaper of Record on the Middle East”. Journalism 3 (3), Dezember 2002, S. 283–307. doi:10.1177/146488490200300305. S2CID 15153383.
(12) https://freepress.org/article/operation-mockingbird-new-york-times-confesses-role-subverting-first-amendment; https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/03/10/reuters-bbc-were-paid-for-propaganda-campaign.aspx?ui=d503235325038e7b4f1f46eb68a48ff02ee0b104fe815572e6d5504e6da7c48e&sd=20200215&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1ReadMore&cid=20210310&mid=DM825991&rid=1103708474
(13) “Further Decline in Credibility Ratings for Most News Organizations,” Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 16.8.2012, http://www.people-press.org/2012/08/16/further-decline-in-credibility-ratings-for-most-news-organizations/
(14) Josh Halliday: “BBC reporting scrutinized after accusations of liberal bias,” The Guardian, 10.10.2012, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/oct/10/bbc-review-liberal-bias
(15) Zit. nach https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
(16) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9we6t2nObbw; https://t3n.de/news/edward-snowden-warnt-virus-1266408/; https://thenextweb.com/news/snowden-warns-the-surveillance-states-were-creating-now-will-outlast-the-coronavirus; https://apps.derstandard.at/privacywall/story/2000116169370/snowden-warnt-ueberwachungsstaat-den-wir-jetzt-schaffen-wird-corona-ueberstehen
Porträtfoto Gates: By United States Department of Health and Human Services – https://www.flickr.com/photos/hhsgov/39912162735/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69351594
Bild „truth“: PDPics/Pixabay