Surveillance Nation: Statistics

Surveillance• More than 2.5 trillion images are shared or stored on the internet annually.
• By 2020, it is estimated that 6.1 billion people will have phones with cameras.
• In a single year, approximately 106 million new surveillance cameras are sold.
• Worldwide, more than 3 million ATMs have cameras that watch its users.
• There are billions of pictures of citizens unknowingly captured on face-recognition technology and stored on databases, both private and governmental.
• In 2016, 2.5 million drones were purchased by American citizens.
• More than 1,700 satellites monitor the Earth.
• Manhattan has approximately 20,000 officially run cameras connected to its CCTV network. Chicago has approximately 32,000.
• High numbers of surveillance cameras can also be found in U.S. cities that have low crime rates and no history of terrorist attacks.
• Approximately 150,000 British police officers are equipped with body cams. It is reported that some British teachers have also tested out the use of body cameras.

[SOURCE: National Geographic February 2018]

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Book Bits: “Brave” By: Rose McGowan

Brave Rose McGowanHere are some interesting tidbits from, “Brave” By: Rose McGowan:

• She faced great opposition to the publication of this book. She said she had parts of her manuscript stolen, and was hacked, stalked, and spied on.
• The cover of the book is a picture of her getting her hair shaved off. After reading the preface of the book, you understand why she made this image the cover of her book.
• She was born in Italy. She was also born into a cult.
• As a child, she escaped the cult with her father and her siblings, but her mother was left behind. She eventually was reunited with her mother, in America, at the age of 10.
• As a child, she was sent to live in America. She immediately hated the food in America, and the aggressiveness of the people.
• For part of her teen years, she was a runaway.
• She suffered through a lot of abuse growing up, including parental abuse, and a beating by a police officer.
• She was sexually assaulted by a Hollywood executive as a very young teen. However, being a naïve child, she didn’t see it as an assault at the time that it happened.
• She was in an abusive “relationship” with a grown man as a child. This relationship was the catalyst to her eating disorder.
• She was randomly “discovered” to be in a Hollywood movie on the street, while waiting for a friend. She went through a humiliating audition to get the role.
• She describes what it was like working on movies such as: The Doom Generation, Scream, Jawbreaker, Phantoms, and on the television show Charmed.
• She went to an arranged meet-up with a high-powered Hollywood executive, who was unbeknownst to her, a predator. She calls the meeting, “the day [her] life got hijacked by evil.” The response she got from others after the rape included: An actor saying, “I told him to stop doing that.” Her manager telling her to think of it as something that would help her in the long run. Her management company’s power player saying, “I just had an expose about him killed in the LA Times; he owes it to me not to do this.” A criminal attorney she consulted telling her, “You’re an actress. You’ve done a sex scene. You’ll never win. You’re done.”
• She describes what it was like being in a relationship with Marilyn Manson.
• She talks about the effects of being trolled online.
• She astutely describes how Hollywood and the entertainment industry fosters bad behavior in society and an obsession with the frivolous and unnatural.
• Her Rolling Stone cover-shoot was her breaking point with Hollywood.

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Quote Of The Day

“As a group, African-Americans have virtually no power or influence. Those who appear to have mainstream power, enjoy the appearance of power only as long as their circumscribed influence is not directed toward fundamentally altering social and economic conditions for a black community whence they sprang, at home and abroad. To make the point more broadly, blacks at rarefied levels can maintain altitude only as long as they accept, without unseemly exception, a national policy agenda to which they have made no real shaping contribution.” -Randall Robinson

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Book Bits: “Up Till Now: The Autobiography” By: William Shatner

Up Till Now William ShatnerHere are some interesting tidbits from, “Up Till Now: The Autobiography” By: William Shatner:
• He discusses the start of his love for acting.
• He has a strong friendship with Leonard Nimoy, who played Spock on Star Trek.
• He has acted in a variety of mediums: theater, television, movies.
• He has dealt with the perils of Hollywood; including being “propositioned” as a teenager, and being grossly unpaid.
• He is originally from Canada. He moved to New York City to pursue an acting career.
• He began a television career during a time when people thought television was a gimmick and would fizzle out.
• He’s been married several times. He discusses his marriages, including what it’s like to be married to another actor.
• When he was co-acting on a project with Yule Brynner, Yule Brynner continuously kicked him while they were filming. He was too intimidated to put a stop to it.
• He hunted and killed a bear on the Aleutian Islands for a TV show. He felt so guilty about it, he decided to never hunt again.
• He made up a story about being rescued by an alien after he was in a motorcycle accident in the desert. The story was picked up by the tabloids.
• He discussed making the classic episode of the Twilight Zone, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.”
• He discusses eking out a living as an actor in a profession where “talent didn’t seem to make a difference between success and failure.”
• He discusses starring on Star Trek and the impact it had on his career. He also discusses Star Trek conventions.
• He has worked as a director in all of the mediums he has acted in.
• He discusses starring as T.J. Hooker, hosting Rescue 911, working with the WWF, being a spokesperson for priceline.com, playing the Big Giant Head on 3rd Rock, and playing the award-winning part of Denny Crane.
• His wife tragically drowned in their pool.
• He has a love for horses, and owns a ranch in Kentucky.
• He discusses his often mocked singing career.

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Quote Of The Day

“Mythology is important, essential even, to a national psyche. And Americans in particular are desperate in their pursuit of national myth. This is understandable, to a point: coating an elemental truth with the bright gloss of heroism and national sacrifice is the prerogative of the nation-state. But to carry the same lies forward, generation after generation, so that our collective sense of the American experiment is better and more comforting than it ought to be- this is where mythology has its cost, and a cost not only to the United States but to the world as a whole.” -David Simon

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The Fly Or Die Commerce Report: Google To Purchase NYC’s Chelsea Market

In the near future, Google will reportedly close a deal that will garner it ownership of Chelsea Market. According to the New York Daily News, the company has shelled out $2 billion to purchase the 1.2 million square-foot property.

Google is already a tenant at the popular location, where the Oreo cookie was invented. Chelsea Market also contains offices for Major League Baseball and the Food Network. In addition to this, the building contains a bevy of eateries in its food hall which attracts millions of visitors annually.

There is no official word on whether or not Google will continue to share the space with the building’s other tenants after the deal goes through.

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