@humphrey @humphrey @humphrey Governments all around the world are ramping up surveillance because of a global restructuring that is going on to ake governments and consumers conform to the new global economic governance organizations, like the WTO and their Draconian rules and priorities, which often frustrate to wishes of voters. For example, more than a decade ago the people of South Africa voted overwhelmingly to set up a public healthcare system, however before they departed the previous apartheid government had acted in ways which resulted in the country being locked in to the commitments the apartheid government had made,

See:
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/gats-and-south-af...

The committments were similar
to the ones the US government made in the negotiations for the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, (the Uruguay Round) in 1993-1994.

By serving a pivotal role in the creation of the WTO which completely remade the economic role and vastly increased the role of internaional law in peoples lives by extending its reach into everything that affects trade in services, and services are 80% of any modern economy. See this UN course on WTO and dispute settlement for an idea of how wide the scope is, it effects almost everything governments do, at all levels.

This means we are in the midst of a huge restructuring of our country's most important aspects to people, jobs, money and health care and all kinds of regulation effecting it all. - the ways it interacts economically with our people. (because this might "affect trade in sevices' which is broken down into four modes of supply)

creating and then joining the WTOThese commitments basically took most of the things the government would have been able to do to make healthcare affordable to all off the table, and modifying or withdrawing them is made potentially so expensive, basically the country would need to buy its freedom back, by making equivalent commitments in other sectors. Now its more than a decade later and there still has been no progress on implementing the voters wishes.
In a sense what has happened globally is a silent restructuring of power relations that has the effect of taking the unpredictable voters an most significantly, their problems and concerns totally out of the picture globally in issues of economic value to investors. In a different case, in a different forum, something somewhat similar happened. in 2006 the Slovak Republic , after signing a restrictive trade partnership with Holland, two years of commercial for profit insurance voted for single payer and the candidate who wanted to switch back to a single payer system won by a large margin of votes.

What happened? Immediately before the law was even passed, Slovakia was sued by the Dutch insurer Eureko, (soon to be renamed, Achmea) Beginning a long chain of legal battles that ended up in the highest European court after all of the parties (the countries involved) had joined the European Union.his resulted in a decision that totally did not speak to the issue of whether a countries voters wishes matter at all when deciding issues that conflict with trade agreements.

This document has a factual summary that illustrates the gap between the worlds of voters and investors about what issues were at play It starts I think on Page 13.

; See what I mean about them living in two different worlds, which dont understand one another at all?

http://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/italaw3207.pdf

Instead the case revolved around legal technicalities revolving around the competence of various courts to settle suits between them. It became clear that the issues that matter to most of us were not even at issue. Slovakia likely would have lost had these other issues not resolved in their favor. The entire investment community were all abuzz and I suspect fearful of a decision that went to the issue of whether such agreements had the right to overrule the wishes of an entire country's voters even when rights that were alleged to have become corporate property were involved.

The insurers brought several legal cases - which attempted to recover the profits they claimed entitlement to. Slovakia had attempted to limit their profits, (a numerical limit likely forbidden by Article XVI of GATS A different treaty, but a very important one as it binds practically all WTO Members although they have made different levels of commitments especially in very sensitive service sectos like health, few countries have made them. Financial services like health insurance are actually the sector thats the most important. This is why British voters can be deceived easily by their politicians. They dont think of their NHS as a financial service, but it is because of the likeness rule..Their NGHS will run into problems because they also sell insurance, which is usually only bought by rich British people. But tht means that the NHS itself likely can no longer be subsidized after they leave the EU with its carve out for "public utilities". Or so I suspect.). See this Note from the WTO Secretariat, Page 11, which seems to remove all ambiguity. It also makes it clear that we canot have a single payer or other affordable public healthcare system with tax money as long as we remain in GATS with our commitments active. Those commitments actually commit us to the international globalization of our health care (subsidies may be limited to only those not more burdensome than necessary to ensure the quality of the service. see Skala) We are not allowed to devalue their market as the UK has done.

As it was, the main problem for the Dutch insurers case was that they sued Slovakia (for indirect expropriation, which is basically for enacting laws that stole the insurers property by attempting to limit their profits. But they had not done that yet.) The insurer sued too early, before they had even begun to switch over their health insurance system. This worked in Slovakia's favor. But the ruling also said thathad they waited until Slovakia had actually enacted the law, I think that the insurer likely would have won, bringing the real issue of whether thety had the right to completely nullify the voters wishes intothe case in an unavoidable way. I think they really wanted to avoid that, because public opinion was strongly against voters power being totally usurped by corporate interests, even though that is what is happening.

You can read an interesting summary of the case on the web site italaw dot com. Search on Slovak Republic, Achmea, or Eureko. There are a huge number of legal journal articles on the Achmea case but very few discuss this underlying legal issue. However quite a few touch on an underlying issue which is described with the word "Intra-EU BITS or "intraEUBITS" This subject is worth reading about because these IntraEUBits are about the large number of terrile trade agreements that were in many ways forced on the Eastern European nations after the fall of Communism. The agreements tended to be very disadvantageous to the former Eastern Bloc countries and represent some of the worst aspects of trade and investment agreements. They eventually, with EU guidance signed an agreement terminating all of the IntraEUBITS.

See: EU Member States sign an agreement for the termination of intra-EU bilateral investment treaties- https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/200505-bilateral-investment-treat...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

Pegasus is spyware that can be covertly installed on mobile phones (and other devices) running some versions of Apple's mobile operating system iOS, and Android. It was developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group, which states that it provides "authorized governments with technology that helps them combat terror and crime" has published sections of contracts requiring customers only to use its products for criminal and national security investigations, and stated that it has an industry-leading approach to human rights.[2] The spyware is named after the mythical winged horse Pegasus—it is a Trojan horse that can be sent "flying through the air" to infect phones.[3]

Discovered (other than by its developers and customers) in August 2016 after a failed attempt at installing it on an iPhone belonging to a human rights activist, an investigation revealed details about the spyware, its abilities, and the security vulnerabilities it exploited. Pegasus is capable of reading text messages, tracking calls, collecting passwords, tracking location, accessing the target device's microphone and camera,[4] and harvesting information from apps.

Apple released version 9.3.5 of its iOS software to fix the vulnerabilities. News of the spyware caused significant media coverage. It was called the "most sophisticated" smartphone attack ever, and was the first time that a malicious remote exploit using jailbreak to gain unrestricted access to an iPhone had been detected.[1]

On August 23, 2020, according to intelligence obtained by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the NSO Group was reported to have sold Pegasus spyware software for hundreds of millions of US dollars to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf States, for surveillance of anti-regime activists, journalists and political leaders from rival nations, with Israeli government encouragement and mediation.[5]

Al Jazeera investigation show The Tip of the Iceberg, Spy partners, on December 20, 2020, showed exclusive footage about Pegasus and its penetration into the phones of media professionals and activists, used by Israel to eavesdrop on its opponents and even its allies

@CB
no wonder they are hacked.

The US spooks now saying they have "high confidence" that the Chinese have hired "criminal groups" to do their hacking for them.

U.S. Formally Accuses China of Hacking Microsoft
July 19, 2021

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Monday formally accused the Chinese government of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies, governments and military contractors, as the United States joined a broad group of allies, including all NATO members, to condemn Beijing for cyberattacks around the world.

The United States accused China for the first time of paying criminal groups to conduct large-scale hackings, including ransomware attacks to extort companies for millions of dollars, according to a statement from the White House. Microsoft had pointed to hackers linked to the Chinese Ministry of State Security for exploiting holes in the company’s email systems in March; the U.S. announcement on Monday morning was the first suggestion that the Chinese government hired criminal groups to hack tens of thousands of computers and networks around the world for “significant remediation costs for its mostly private sector victims,” according to the White House.
...
China’s effort was not as sophisticated, but it took advantage of a vulnerability that Microsoft had not discovered and used it to conduct espionage and undercut confidence in the security of systems that companies use for their primary communications. It took the Biden administration months to develop what officials say is “high confidence” that the hacking of the Microsoft email system was done at the behest of the Ministry of State Security, the senior administration official said, and abetted by private actors who had been hired by Chinese intelligence.

@humphrey hacks and ransomware attacks are coming out of the birthplace of computer hacking? Have the techies in China and Russia surpassed the skills of US and EU techies who can no longer compete? (Indian techies aren't slouches but may lack that requisite devious and avaricious gene.) Or are Americans and Europeans too lazy to work this hard?

Don't know if it's a load of US NatSec codswallop, US NatSec false flags, or geeks around the world playing games trying to collect some of that free cybercurrency to purchase some porn.

It all depends if you are the US or one of its allies.