Tag: individuals

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Ethical Concerns Raised Over Elon Musk’s Neuralink

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Interesting segment on ABC’s GMA show delved into billionaire Elon Musk’s cutting edge brain technology–Neuralink implants–that are supposed to revolutionize how we deal with neurological disorders. The GMA segment came against the backdrop of news reports that the first Neuralink implant on a human had taken place.

The guest, Dr Leah Croll described Neuralink technology thus (0:38): “Basically this is the concept of using a brain machine interface to help people. Neuralink is a device that gets implanted within the brain, and then reads the electrical signals that our brain cells are constantly sending to one another, and then it can translate those signals into actions outside of the body, in this case the ability to control a computer or smartphone.”

Dr Croll added that this is by no means novel technology saying, “It [Neuralink] is absolutely not the first player on this field. This area of research really started back in the 90s but in recent years the pace of that research has just accelerated immensely…”

But as we know all too well, with every cutting edge technology, there are bound to be negative effects, and to that, Dr Jen Ashton popped this million dollar question (1:50): “Physically, what are the risks, and ethically, what are the risks that you can see with this type of technology?”

Dr Croll responded that because we are dealing with brain implants here, we should treat Neuralink procedures as any other brain surgery, and worry about all the physical risks we normally associate with such surgeries–bleeding, damage to brain tissue etc. As for the ethical concerns raised by Neuralink, she said (2:26): “When we get into the ethical realm, that raises so many questions because we are in completely uncharted territory here. There’s concerns about the data that this device is collecting and how secure it might be, there’s potential for privacy concerns to come into play, bad actors could potentially come into play and hack these devices. So there’s a lot of discussions that the medical community is going to have to have with the legal community, the ethical community, the technological community, so we can work together to figure out how we regulate something like this.”

Any reasonable person watching this GMA segment would conclude that even though Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology, on its face,exhibits the potential for significantly improving how we treat neurological disorders, the technology comes with serious ethical concerns that necessitate guardrails before proceeding.

This also means time has finally come for the government to come clean regarding the plight of targeted individuals, who have complained for decades about being the subjects of these “mind reading” technologies while being laughed out of the room as some crazy conspiracy theorists. This GMA segment establishes conclusively that we do indeed have technology that can read minds and more importantly, that this research has been going on since the 90s. It’s also worth pointing out that while Dr Croll correctly insists that there must be guardrails put in place before this technology is deployed to the public, targeted individuals have endured this very invasive technology with zero ethical guardrails. Should they be compensated for the irreparable harm this invasive technology has subjected them to? Should Congress hold hearings into government research projects in this field such as DARPA, to ensure that there have not been abuses? These are the questions one hopes the media will pose to the government as we delve deeper into the Neuralink era.

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Targeted Individuals Hold Rally At Historic Houston Courthouse Steps

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Attorney Ana Toledo Addresses A Targeted Individuals Rally From The Steps Of The Historic Houston Courthouse On 301 Fannin Street (01/12/2024)

On Friday 01/12/24, in commemoration of the one year anniversary of the filing of TJ v Garland lawsuit, Attorney Ana Toledo led a targeted individuals rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse on 301 Fannin Street. The lawsuit seeks to have 18 plaintiffs, who Ana alleges have been placed there by the FBI under an unconstitutional “secret criteria”, removed from the terrorism watchlist.

Ana Toledo(0:02): “The FBI has abused the watchlist, what’s known as the terrorism watchlist for a long time…and 400,000 targeted individuals in the United States, and indeed around the world, have been put on this list. Today marks one year anniversary since we filed TJ v Garland, an extraordinary lawsuit that seeks to remove the names of innocent listed individuals from the terrorist screening database (TSDB) in two secret categories that are not known to the public, and not even to the people that are in them, because the FBI has admitted, they don’t represent a terrorist threat and they are not screened as such. Therefore these innocent Americans, and innocent civilians around the world, don’t encounter problems when traveling...[the list] of all those innocent people that are labeled as suspected terrorists…is distributed through the national crime information center (NCIC), to 18,000 law enforcement agencies, which translates to over 100,000 agents, to over 532 private corporations such as Air BnB, Western Union and many others that retaliate against people that don’t even know are on the list, and 1440 organizations such as universities that could very well deny entrance to somebody to a university of higher education just because unbeknownst to them, they are on this nefarious watchlist.”

Speaking specifically about the TJ v Garland lawsuit, Ana said(2:21): “We urge you to look at the appeal pending before the 5th Circuit[Court of Appeal], TJ v Garland case. It’s case #23-23402. It’s fully briefed and we’re ready for oral argumentation…The single remedy we seek, is the removal of the 18 plaintiffs from the TSDB categories 3 & 4, that are secret categories that the FBI has admitted, they put people on that list under secret criteria. That is not the America we were born into. That is not what the constitution provides. Please be aware, the watchlist in not the entire list. Pursuant to DOJ, the watchlist–the known and suspected terrorist list–comprises 0.5% of the entire list, so if that list is at two million, we don’t want to know how many innocent civilians have been placed secretly under codes 3 & 4, which represents 97% of the terrorist screening database pursuant to DOJ, not pursuant to Targeted Justice.”

Apparently, per Ana, an investigation by the DOJ Inspector-General recently found that the FBI doesn’t even follow its own regulations regarding watchlisting. Ana specifically said: “One of the most nefarious conclusions of an audit report by DOJ Inspector-General, report 08-16, is that the FBI field offices nominate and place people on the terrorist screening database without complying with agency regulations, now let that sink in. Innocent Americans that have never been arrested, tried, or convicted of any terrorist offense, and that by FBI’s own admission, do not meet the reasonable suspicion criteria, are secretly placed on this list. The labeling of innocent Americans, and people around the world, as suspected terrorists, deprives them of basic rights, constitutional and human rights. This has got to stop.”

Ana also took issue with the mainstream media’s strange silence regarding this issue, saying(6:34): “The evidence that the U.S. government is suppressing any dialogue about this, [targeted individuals], any discussion about it, is that despite the distribution of the press release on social media and through email, the press did not come here today. They are not interested in the freedom that second class citizens, targeted individuals, have a right to.”

It’s important to note that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has recently expressed similar watchlisting concerns, and is asking President Biden and the DOJ to address these problems.

No reasonable person looking at the people standing behind Attorney Ana Toledo at the downtown Houston courthouse steps, would conclude that these were the kind of people the terrorist screening database was originally meant to weed out. Sadly, however, it’s normal people like these–your mother, sister, uncle, cousin, who maybe said the wrong/inflammatory thing on social media or elsewhere, or complained about some corruption in high places–who end up getting ensnared by these watchlists/targeting lists, and are then punished in ways regular Americans will never comprehend, up to and including using military assets. Its a total travesty that needs to be fixed and those responsible held to account. In other words, the grave injustice here is not just the malicious watchlisting, but also, the unconstitutional torture that goes with it–organized stalking, financial sabotage, assaults/experiments using DEWs, remote neuromonitoring…the quintessential weaponization of government, which in many cases, constitute violations of the Geneva Conventions against Torture(CAT)

Bottom line folks, this rally at the steps of the historic Houston courthouse marks a watershed moment for the struggle to free targeted individuals in that it officially takes the fight from the dark corners of social media, where often severely shadowbanned TIs anonymously scream from X(formerly Twitter), Facebook, Reddit, Tik Tok and other social media platforms, to real life activism. Put another way, it is very different, much more effective when real, normal people show up and cogently make their grievances known in public. It becomes very hard for the abusers to use their tried and true defense–“Oh, TIs are just a bunch of loons on social media.”

Hopefully we get to see more of these rallies and importantly, a meaningful response from authorities regarding the serious allegations Attorney Ana Toledo and her Targeted Justice are making. Oh and the mainstream media, both nationally and locally(Houston), it’s about time you started doing your jobs. The public deserves to get answers to these serious questions regarding the abuse of the watchlisting system.

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