WHY THE SILENCE? What Are They Keeping From Us?
The one thing you can count on these days is you can’t count on those in charge for much of anything.
Photo by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
By day three I asked one of the staff if it was a hacking attack. He looked nervous. His eyes darted back and forth. His voice dropped a little and he replied slowly, “No, it definitely isn’t that.”
Okay, definitely a hacking attack!
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (5/22/25)
It’s been an odd week here in northeast Wisconsin. Late last Wednesday/early Thursday our regional cell phone system — Cellcom — went down. Okay, stuff happens; lightning knocks out a transmission antenna or a drunk plows into a cell tower. (Hey, it’s Wisconsin!)
In the past, when there is a service interruption because of maintenance or storm damage there will be a text message or email letting us know what the problem is and when service will be restored. After a couple hours things are good to go. But this time was different.
Very different.
We have been without cell service for over a week … and counting. Even though text messaging was still working for many, there was no notification from Cellcom. I’ve been to the local Cellcom office several times in the past week and was told a variety of things. First, it was a problem upgrading to 5G service. Then it was “an accident and repair work is being done”.
By day three I asked one of the staff if it was a hacking attack. He looked nervous. His eyes darted back and forth. His voice dropped a little and he replied slowly, “No, it definitely isn’t that.”
Okay, definitely a hacking attack!
They also had a private security guy kitted up like an ICE Gestapo agent nearby to — I‘m guessing — handle understandably frustrated customers.
Finally admitting the obvious
Well, on Tuesday, Cellcom finally admitted the glaringly obvious when the company’s CEO Brighid Riordan said in a short video statement : "We are dealing with a cyber incident. I want to come to you with facts, we simply don't have a lot of facts."
According to other reports, Riordan said the FBI has been involved in the investigation and prevented the company from coming clean about what has happened.
Many businesses throughout the area have been without phone service. Many are tourist-based and loss of a week or two of bookings in a limited tourist season can have huge impacts.
Supposedly, Riordan promises, everything is moving along and service will be restored this Friday — nine days after the shutdown began.
As of today — Friday — late morning, still no service. (UPDATE: As of Saturday morning most of the Cellcom service is still down. Of three test calls I made, only one connected.)
On top of the Cellcom situation, Wednesday afternoon a text message notice went out that a regional bank is under cyber attack! So far, no local media coverage that I am aware of.
One day this week a local coffee shop had it’s WiFi and online payment system go were disrupted for the first time as lights flickered strangely in the kitchen.
Coincidence? Solar flares? Nothing to worry about? Armageddon? These days, who the hell knows.
Reports have been coming in from around the world of power and internet systems under cyber attacks. Spain has recently been whalloped with nationwide phone and online attacks and loss of service just weeks after the electrical system was crashed for most of the country.
British retailer Marks & Spencer estimated Wednesday that a cyberattack that stopped it from processing online orders and left store shelves empty will cost it some $400 million. To make things even worse, the retailer is estimating the attack will continue well into July and cost over a billion dollars in losses.
Phishing attacks skyrocketed by 4,151% since the public release of the AI program ChatGPT in late 2022.
Media blackout
The near total blackout of media coverage we have had here with Cellcom suggests to me there could be a lot more going on across the country and there is a conscious, coordinated effort by the feds to keep things muzzled. What about the electrical, phone and internet providers in your area? Feel free to comment below.
The one thing you can count on these days is you can’t count on those in charge for much of anything. As the empire crumbles and eagerly crawls up the endless butthole of yet another doomed and disastrous Middle East war, truth from the leaders of the corrupt and creaky corporate state is as extinct as a pterodactyl.
Senator Wyden Exposes Which Phone Carriers Don't Notify Customers About Government Surveillance
“…journalists, political activists, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and other law-abiding Americans who could be targeted by the government all have reason to be concerned about secret surveillance of their communications and location data."
By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams (5/21/25)
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden shared the results of his staff's probe into major phone companies in a Wednesday letter to congressional colleagues and also publicly highlighted which carriers disclose government spying to their customers.
"An investigation by my staff revealed that until recently, senators have been kept in the dark about executive branch surveillance of Senate phones, because the three major phone carriers—AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile—failed to establish systems to notify offices about surveillance requests, as required by their Senate contracts," states the letter, published on Wyden's (D-Ore.) congressional website.
"While now rectified for Senate-funded lines, significant gaps remain, especially for the campaign and personal phones used by most senators. I urge your support for legislative changes to allow the sergeant at arms (SAA) to protect senators' phones and accounts from cyber threats, both foreign and domestic," he wrote. "I also urge you to consider switching your campaign and personal phone lines to other carriers that will provide notice of government surveillance."
Wyden noted that "while AT&T and Verizon only provide notice of surveillance of phone lines paid for by the Senate, T-Mobile has informed my staff that it will provide notice for senators' campaign or personal lines flagged as such by the SAA. Three other carriers—Google Fi Wireless, U.S. Mobile, and Cape—have policies of notifying all customers about government demands whenever they are allowed to do so. The latter two companies adopted these policies after outreach from my office."
In a Wednesday statement announcing the letter and the above chart, Wyden's office warned that "beyond members of Congress, journalists, political activists, people seeking reproductive healthcare, and other law-abiding Americans who could be targeted by the government all have reason to be concerned about secret surveillance of their communications and location data."
You could be targeted next
The findings of his staff include details relevant to every American with a cellphone, but much of Wyden's letter is focused on improving protections for lawmakers. He pointed to "two troubling incidents" that "highlight the vulnerability of Senate communications" to foreign adversaries and U.S. law enforcement: Chinese Salt Typhoon hackers and the U.S. Department of Justice, during the first Trump administration, both collected records of lawmakers and their staff.
"Executive branch surveillance poses a significant threat to the Senate's independence and the foundational principle of separation of powers," Wyden argued. "If law enforcement officials, whether at the federal, state, or even local level, can secretly obtain senators' location data or call histories, our ability to perform our constitutional duties is severely threatened."
"This kind of unchecked surveillance can chill critical oversight activities, undermine confidential communications essential for legislative deliberations, and ultimately erode the legislative branch's co-equal status," he continued. Wyden called on senators to support his proposals for the next annual appropriations bill "that would allow the SAA to protect senators' phones and accounts—whether official, campaign, or personal—against cyber threats, just as we have for executive branch employees."
The longtime privacy advocate's letter to fellow senators was first reported by Politico, which noted that T-Mobile did not immediately respond to requests for comment while spokespeople for AT&T and Verizon defended their companies.
"We are complying with our obligations to the Senate sergeant at arms," AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers said in a statement to the outlet. "We have received no legal demands regarding Senate offices under the current contract, which began last June."
Verizon spokesperson Richard Young told Politico that "we respect the senator's view that providers should give notice to senators if we receive legal process regarding their use of their personal devices, but disagree with his policy position."
‘Bright red warning sign’
Meanwhile, Sean Vitka, executive director of Demand Progress—an advocacy group long critical of government spying on lawmakers and warrantless surveillance—said in response to the revelations from Wyden's office that "we now know that Comcast, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other phone companies have followed AT&T's unprecedented efforts to facilitate secret government surveillance of their own customers, with some even allowing the government to secretly spy on senators."
"This is a bright, red warning sign at a time when the Trump administration keeps blowing past constitutional checks on executive power and is siccing the Justice Department on elected lawmakers," Vitka added. "These companies should be shamed and ashamed until they fix this."
Common Dreams work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
⚡WE’RE FKD: Russia Massively Expands War, Trump Declares Nuke Emergency As Israel & Iran Teeter On Edge Of War
Editor’s Note: The Canadian Prepper podcast is a source I follow a couple times a week. The host, Nate Polson, is a very bright guy and does a masterful job of bringing together a lot of information from news reports in foreign newspapers to satellite imaging. He has a business selling prepping items, but generally doesn't do much advertising. Yesterday’s podcast was especially important as multiple tipping points are teetering around the world as yet another American/Israeli manufactured Middle East war is about to ignite. — Mark Taylor
Canadian Prepper (5/22/25)
52-minute video
BERNIE UNFILTERED: Rips Democrats For Identity Politics
Breaking Points (5/21/25)
12-minute video
Never Call The US/Israel Genocide In Gaza & West Bank A ‘War’
Never forget, it is we US taxpayers who have paid for much of that weaponry used to murder infants, toddlers and children.
AMERICAN ‘JUST-US’ — Billionaire Child Predator Slips Away From 40-Year Sentence & Registering As S3X Offender
51/49 With Jame Lei (6/21/25)
James exposes how SC Johnson — the self-described “family company” behind Ziploc — is facing a lawsuit over products linked to microplastic contamination and dementia, while the billionaire heir to the fortune walks free after pleading guilty in a shocking child s3x abuse case — revealing the disturbing intersection of corporate power, public deception, and elite impunity.
5-minute video
Trump’s America…
“Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever.”
— George Orwell, 1984
I keep hoping some talented cyber-criminals will take down the ENTIRE Trump administration, reveal all the secrets of the Epstein files, JFK files, 9/11, etc., and shut down all intelligence and aid to the genocidaires. One can dream!
Hi friends, let's embrace our humanity - who knows, we could be an unique outpost in the whole universe.
I just watched that preppy guy's vid (🫣) and it got me thinking about the *Fermi Paradox again.(*Why we haven't made contact with extraterrestrial life yet)
One idea is called the 'Great Filter Theory', it suggests that there is an extremely difficult evolutionary step that prevents most life from reaching the level of spacefaring civilisation. A catastrophic self-destruction scenario is one version where advanced civilisations consistently destroy themselves through their own technology BEFORE they can expand beyond their home planets.
If you don't mind I'm going to copy and paste this ⬇️
Potential self-destruction mechanisms:
- Nuclear warfare becoming inevitable as civilizations develop atomic weapons
- Environmental collapse from industrialization and resource depletion
- Uncontrolled artificial intelligence development
- Bioweapons or genetic engineering disasters
- Other advanced technologies that prove inherently unstable or dangerous
Implications of this theory:
If true, it suggests humanity is approaching or may have already passed through this critical filter. Some argue we're currently in the danger zone, given our nuclear capabilities, climate challenges, and rapid AI development.
Hi I'm back this is me again anyway I hope this hasn't ruined your day - other theories ARE available.
Just signing off here with the lament that evolution has brought us to this point and I'm wondering if our species has the wherewithal to swerve the filter.
Peace and Love
Baz