Vault 7, a massive CIA document leak in 2017, revealed that a third of the CIA's surveillance tools were named after Pokemon. --Eric Hunley
A CIA app used to map the entire globe. Used by spy agencies
InQTell
On November 12th, just one week ago, bragging about how they are collecting? Millions and millions and millions of photos of everyone playing in order to create this 3D AI system that sounds like a dystopian nightmare.
06:00 Pokemon doesn't just map public spaces. It maps your private spaces too. Imagine someone playing the game in your house, scanning rooms, furniture, and even the people inside. All that data is fed into Niantic's servers. The CIA now has access to pedestrian-only areas that satellites and cars can't reach, inside homes, offices, and sensitive locations.
06:26. And it's not just theory anymore. Vault 7, a massive CIA document leak in 2017, revealed that a third of the CIA's surveillance tools were named after Pokemon. Coincidence? Probably not.
06:40. Back in 2016, when Pokemon Go was really taking off, back in those early naive days of smart phoniness, I wrote an article talking about the connections between Pokemon Go, the NSA, and the CIA, and I pointed out to everybody that Pokemon Go really existed because of direct investment by the CIA yes the CIA. [The Lunduke Journal of Technology, Bryan Lunduke.]
07:05. According to Niantic, they process over a million scans per week. That's millions of new images feeding into their AI system every 7 days. They are essentially building a real-time Global surveillance network. And here's the kicker, you don't even need to play the game to get caught in the web. If someone near you is playing and you're in their camera's field of view congratulations you're now part of the data set.
07:30. Like I said, it gets you out here doing stuff, or just talking to a bunch of people on the path doing it . . .
Players say it's also forcing them to be more social outside of the game. This group had only been friends for 5 minutes when we ran into them.
07:45. So why is this a problem? For starters, this level of surveillance raises serious ethical questions. How secure is it? And how is it being used? Niantic insists that their system is for advancing technology but let's not forget who funded them in the first place intelligence agencies aren't exactly known for respecting privacy [ethics or honesty].
08:10. There's a secret sale a surveillance program and it's allegedly been collecting data in bulk including information about lots of Americans.
08:19. The next time you open Pokemon Go or even see someone else playing it remember you're not just catching Pokemon you're feeding a machine, a machine backed by the CIA designed to map and monitor the world. What started as a fun nostalgic game has morphed into a surveillance tool of unprecedented scale. So ask yourself is the convenience of augmented reality worth trading away our privacy or have we been duped into willingly becoming part of the biggest surveillance experiment in history?
