Pokémon Go in the News:
US State Department spokesman John Kirby was forced to interrupt a briefing due to a journalist playing the popular Pokemon Go game, media reported Friday.
US State Department Interrupts Briefing Over Reporter Playing Pokemon Go
http://sputniknews.com/us/20160722/1043451613/pokemon-briefing-kirby-reporter.html
Kirby noticed a reporter distracted from the briefing and said "You're playing the Pokemon thing right there, aren't you," according to CNN.
The reporter, who had not been identified, responded that he was just "keeping an eye" on the game. After that, Kirby resumed his speech about the efforts of the US-led coalition to fight Daesh in Syria and Iraq.
As the briefing went on, Kirby asked the reporter if he had caught a Pokemon, to which the reporter responded that he did not, because "the signal's not very good." Kirby said he was "sorry" about that before continuing the briefing.
Pokemon Go is a free augmented reality mobile game where the picture displayed on the smartphone screen is projected onto real-world locations. The main aim of the game is to catch a Pokemon, a pocket monster. It has become a worldwide hit since its launch two weeks ago and has already been blamed for a wave of crimes, traffic violations and complaints in cities around the globe.
The game, first released in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, is now available in more than 30 countries.
He can’t tell a Pikachu from a Bulbasaur, but the city’s top cop wants to make sure his officers aren’t wasting their time hunting Pokémon instead of perps.
NYPD investigating whether cops played Pokémon Go on-duty in Queens; gamer who caught them on video apologizes for 'any headaches this may have caused' (Video)
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-investigating-cops-played-pokemon-on-duty-article-1.2711895
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has launched an investigation into a report that four Queens cops were playing Pokémon Go while on duty.
We’ll take a look at that as to whether there was inappropriate behavior on their part,” Bratton said after swearing in a group of new recruits at the NYPD Police Academy Thursday.
“That craze is one of the stupidest ones that I've seen,” said Bratton, who pronounced the popular franchise “Poke-man.”
“(I) don't understand it... don't intend to understand it,” Bratton said. “It has no appeal to me.”
On Wednesday morning, four cops in Far Rockaway were caught on video talking about the viral game, where people go out searching for Pokémon characters.
Using the game’s mapping system, users go to specific spots to collect the creatures and other goodies in virtual hubs known as PokéStops.
The cops were by the Boardwalk and Beach Ninth St. — one of the game’s PokéStops — but an NYPD spokeswoman said they did not go there to hunt Pokémon.
“They were on a directed patrol after we received several 911 calls about youths throwing rocks at cars,” the spokeswoman said.
Yet in a video taken by Zoli Honig, 27, the cops acted as if they were playing the game — and hunting the elusive digital critters.
“There’s a wild Pikachu!” Honig told the officers. “Have you seen him?”
“I caught it already,” one cop said.
Moments later, another officer chimed in.
“I didn’t catch one yet!” the cop said.
The NYPD spokeswoman would not say if the officers were playing the game while they were at their post or if they were playing on their department-issued cellphones.
Honig wasn’t close enough to see their screens, but believed they were playing the game.
(Article continues.)
The US Govt Has Been Trying to Weaponize Pokemon for Two Decades — They Finally Succeeded
_http://thefreethoughtproject.com/us-government-weaponize-pokemon/
On December 16, 1997, children across Japan plopped down in front of their TVs to watch an episode of Pokemon.
700 of them never saw the end.
Hundreds of children experienced seizures and were rushed to the hospital after witnessing Pikachu use his lightning powers to blow up missiles.
The episode, called ‘Electric Soldier Porygon,’ was banned from airing again, even in edited form.
The effects were so damning to Pokemon that the entire show was removed from the air for four months.
However, while the world was scrambling to understand what could’ve possibly caused this reaction, the US Army quietly began researching the episode — to weaponize it. Seriously.
The Army wanted to blast pulses similar to those used in the episode into the faces of its adversaries to overload their brains and cause them to convulse.
Application of “electromagnetic pulses” could force neurons to all fire at once, causing a “disruption of voluntary muscle control,” reads a description of the ominous “seizure” weapon, contained in a declassified document from the Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center. “It is thought by using a method that would actually trigger nerve synapses directly with an electrical field, essentially 100% of individuals would be susceptible to seizure induction.”
The report was discovered thanks to an activist filing a Freedom of Information Act request. It revealed the Army’s sinister intentions in making electromagnetic weapons — propaganda.
According to a report in Wired, the military needed weapons like these because TV news had hamstrung the military’s traditional proclivities to kill its way to victory: It now lived in a world where “You don’t win unless CNN says you win,” the report lamented. But while the Pentagon still laments the impact of the 24/7 news cycle on the U.S. military, it hardly thinks less-lethal weapons are a solution to it. In fact, the U.S. has kept most of its electromagnetic arsenal off of the battlefield, in part because the idea of invisible pain rays would sound so bad coming out of an anchor’s mouth.
This disturbing Pokemon weapon would disrupt chemicals in the brain and induce an immediate seizure — in 100% of the population.
“The onset of synchony and disruption of muscular control is said to be near instantaneous,” the 1997 Army report reads. “Excitation is directly on the brain.” And “100% of the population” is supposed to be susceptible to the effects — from distances of “up to hundreds of meters” — “[r]ecovery times are expected to be consistent with, or more rapid than, that which is observed in epileptic seizures.”
The report showed how Army officials likely drooled over the notion of inducing seizures in their unwitting victims, specifically mentioning the Pokemon episode.
“The photic-induced seizure phenomenon was borne out demonstrably on December 16, 1997 on Japanese television when hundreds of viewers of a popular cartoon were treated, inadvertently, to photic seizure induction,” the analysis noted.
Naturally, the Army has denied any such weapon exists. However, the Army also has no problem lying.
Now, as a new Pokemon craze sweeps the nation, its ominous app roots are being exposed. While it is not a seizure gun, it’s an Orwellian government’s wet dream.
As Gawker notes:
Pokémon Go comes directly—directly—from the intelligence community.
And it’s not like Pokémon Go itself doesn’t already have a direct(-ish) line to the CIA. After all, Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, which was formed by John Hanke.
Now, Hanke also just so happened to help found Keyhole. What does Keyhole do, you ask? I’d tell you to go to Keyhole’s website—but you can’t. It just takes you straight to Google Earth. That’s because Keyhole was acquired by Google back in 2004.
Before that, though, Keyhole received funding from a firm called In-Q-Tel, a government-controlled venture capital firm that invests in companies that will help beef up Big Brother’s tool belt. What’s more, the funds In-Q-Tel gave Keyhole mostly came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose primary mission is “collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence.”
As Reddit user fight_for_anything explains, the government is likely using the Pokemon players as pawns to make detailed maps from inside private homes, buildings, and other places that Google cars cannot go.
Obviously intelligence agencies have gained a lot of info from google maps and its street view, but this data was collected easily with driving cars. intel agencies may see google maps and street view as just an outline or a skeleton of the whole picture. getting more data, particularly that off the street and inside buildings, requires tons of man hours and foot work. a logistical nightmare.
Enter Pokemon GO, where if you are an intel agency and you want photos of the inside of a home or business, you just spawn desirable pokemon or related objects there, and let totally unaware and distracted citizens take the photos for you, with devices they paid for, and those citizens pay for the experience.
Imagine all these photos going back to some database (with the augmented Pokemon removed obviously. all these photos are probably GPS tagged, as well as having the phones internal gyro embed x/y/z orientation of the camera angle in the phone. these photos could be put together, much like google street view.
The government has come a long way after their attempts at weaponizing the cartoon 19 years ago. Perhaps even more insidious than a seizure inducing ray gun, however, is an app that citizens pay for to unwittingly spy on themselves for the state — all while having fun.
As James Corbett notes, Aldous Huxley would be proud.