[Freedombox-discuss] Fwd: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media

Marshall Clow mclow.lists at gmail.com
Thu Aug 25 08:30:37 PDT 2011


A great (if unintentional) statement of the reasons behind the FreedomBox.

-- Marshall


Begin forwarded message:

> From: privacy at vortex.com
> Date: August 25, 2011 1:27:42 AM PDT
> To: privacy-list at vortex.com
> Subject: [ PRIVACY Forum ] Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media
> Reply-To: PRIVACY Forum mailing list <privacy at vortex.com>
> 
> 
> 
>                 Why Governments Are Terrified of Social Media
> 
>                  http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000891.html
> 
> 
> In Missouri, teachers and others are up in arms over a law that would
> ban most contacts between teachers and students through social media, not
> only via systems like Facebook, but even apparently mechanisms such as
> Google Docs ( http://j.mp/pSqX11 [ABC News] ).
> 
> In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has proposed censoring or
> cutting off BlackBerry and other social media systems based on the
> misguided and false assumption that this would prevent planning and
> communications by potential rioters or other "undesirable" persons.
> 
> And back here in the U.S., BART shut down parts of the cell phone
> network, in an attempt to block communications in advance of a legal
> protest that never took place, though we know full well from history
> that protests -- even of enormous scope -- do not require high
> technology to be organized and deployed ( http://j.mp/rq7SO9 [Lauren's Blog] ).
> 
> Around the world, including here in the U.S., governments are
> demanding unencrypted access to supposedly "secure" communications
> systems.
> 
> The common thread is very clear.  Governments are increasingly
> terrified of the communications abilities that Internet and other
> technologies have provided their citizenry and other residents.
> 
> While usually careful to express their concerns in the context of
> seemingly laudable motives like fighting crime or terrorism, in
> reality these governments have revealed the distrust and contempt with
> which they view their populations at large.
> 
> This is by no means a new phenomenon.
> 
> Throughout human history, governments and many leaders have cast a
> jaundiced eye on virtually every new technological development that
> enabled communications, particularly if that technology made it easier
> for direct person-to-person messages to be exchanged outside the view
> of government services and minders.
> 
> These government efforts to suppress and control communications have
> virtually all failed in the end, though a great deal of damage has
> been done to individuals and groups in the process.
> 
> At one time, even the ability to read and write was considered too
> dangerous a skill set for the commoners.  The invention of the
> printing press threw government and churches alike into convulsions of
> apprehension.
> 
> And now "social media" is the new scapegoat, the whipping boy, the
> technological designated evil that short-sighted politicians of both
> major parties, and their various administrative minions and
> supporters, are demanding be monitored, leashed, and controlled.
> 
> In reality of course, it's not the technology that these persons wish
> to leash -- it's ordinary people.  It's you and me and the vastness of
> other law-abiding persons who have become the targets of the 21st
> century law enforcement mantra: "Screw the Bill of Rights -- treat
> everybody like a suspect, all the time."
> 
> The broad implications of this "guilty until proven innocent" mindset
> are all around us now.  They're at the heart of the newly revealed
> alliance between CIA and the New York Police Department to monitor the
> activities of innocent citizens, using surveillance techniques that
> would have seemed comfortably familiar to the old East German Stasi
> secret police.
> 
> They're seen in the massive government-mandated Internet data
> retention demanded by "The Protecting Children from Internet
> Pornographers Act of 2011" -- now moving rapidly through Congress, and
> disingenuously titled to suggest it only applies to child abuse, when
> in reality its true reach would broadly encompass all manner of
> Internet access activities ( http://j.mp/o13jMO [Atlantic] ).
> 
> Governments seem to increasingly no longer feel that it's necessary or
> desirable to have "probable cause" or court orders before spying on
> individuals, tracking their movements via hidden GPS units, building
> dossiers, or even disrupting communications.  Constitutional
> guarantees are more and more viewed by our leaders as quaint artifacts
> of the past, to be ignored today merely as annoying inconveniences.
> 
> The innocent are now being treated largely as potential "future
> criminals" -- and so subject to many of the same sorts of surveillance
> and other law enforcement techniques that in the past were generally
> limited to specific suspects of specific crimes.
> 
> To the extent that these activities for now appear to be mostly aimed
> at persons with skin colors or religions different from us, it becomes
> easier to "go with the flow" of this new law enforcement mentality, to
> not make waves, to be quiet, to be sheep.
> 
> But the same techniques used today against one group can be easily
> repurposed for others.  Government ordered records of users' Internet
> activities will affect us all, and the infrastructures created to
> support these surveillance-related systems may be be extremely
> long-lived.
> 
> When governments no longer trust the people, when officials make the
> mental and physical leaps to targeting vast numbers of innocent
> persons in the manner of criminal suspects of yesteryear, we have
> embarked on a road that leads to a very dark place indeed.
> 
> Today, social media is the crosshairs.  Governments certainly are
> enthusiastic about using social media for their own investigatory and
> enforcement purposes, but they appear to be desperately seeking ways
> to control and limit the ability of ordinary persons to communicate
> privately and securely on these systems, or to use them at all in some
> cases.
> 
> This is hypocrisy of the highest order.  It is a serious risk to
> innocent individuals being targeted by its adherents today.
> 
> Unchallenged, tomorrow it will be a serious risk to us all.
> 
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein (lauren at vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
> Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org
> Founder:
> - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
> - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org
> - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com
> Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
> Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein 
> Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> privacy mailing list
> http://lists.vortex.com/mailman/listinfo/privacy

-- Marshall

Marshall Clow     Idio Software   <mailto:mclow.lists at gmail.com>

A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
        -- Yu Suzuki


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