Social Media Surveillance: Your Being Watched!

Social Media Surveillance: Your Being Watched!


Non-Fiction/Editorial

It started with fear.  Fear of the government becoming too powerful and telling us who we can and cannot own; government only giving three votes (before the Civil War slave states got representation in congress for slaves owned in their state) for every five slaves.  Then the real fear …negro citizenship, god only knows what that could lead to.  That fear led to the American Civil War.

Over the years fear would be used as a tool of ‘reason’ to start the Spanish American War after the sinking of the ‘Maine’ in Havana Harbor.  Fear would be used as an excuse to fight with the British and French in World War I.  Fear based on race would be a catalyst for stoking the fires of vengeance in the soul of every American during the start of World War II.  Fear would lead to the travesty of Japanese interment.

Fears of asymmetric attack against the United States by terror groups, radicals and other enemies of the United States made Congress give the President unreal power in the surveillance of all ‘citizens and suspects’ that may endanger or seek to damage the United States of America (The Patriot Act).  A noble intent to be sure, but the road to hell (or another form of unlawful American internment) is paved with good intent.

The Department of Homeland Security which channels it’s power through the executive branch (The President) has now announced its surveillance of Social Media of all kinds including Twitter, Facebook, and blogs of all kinds including the Huffington Post and other lesser known blogs that the Department of Homeland Security deem as ‘a threat’.

This week your impotent, hate-filled, hopelessly divided, do nothing Congress is holding hearings on what exactly the Department of Homeland Security is putting under ‘surveillance’ and listening to newly concocted but thoroughly insidious reasons to spy on or ‘watch’ citizens who speak out against the Department of Homeland Security or the government of the United States.

This is just a little bit more than the old time commie witch hunts held by Senator McCarthy and Vice President Richard Nixon back in the 50’s.  This is the wholesale bastardization of American Civil Liberties under the ‘disguise’ of national security.  The Gestapo was the enforcement arm of such a ‘national security act’ for German National Socialists before and during World War II.  We know from history what this did for Germany.  It is my opinion that we don’t need this.

More to the point, Graeme McMillan in an article for Time Magazine titled, “Big Brother Is Watching: Document Reveals Surveillance of Social Media, Blogs, Image-Sharing Sites” writes, “The ‘privacy compliance review’ obtained by Reuters comes from last November, but apparently this surveillance has been ongoing since at least June 2010.

According to the document, it’s designed to ‘collect information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture’ with ‘data published via social media sites [used] solely to provide more accurate situational awareness, a more complete common operating pictures, and more timely information for decision makers.’ In other words, the DHS is using the Internet to find out what’s happening, same as everyone else, but it certainly sounds more disturbing.”

All kinds of blogs are being monitored including the New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Drudge Report, Threat Level and Danger Room.  So be very careful about what you say and do on Facebook, Twitter or blogs because you could be the guinea pig the government uses to put the First Amendment of the Constitution in the shredder.  Yeah, I know, see how fear works?

What you need to do is what you did when the Government was attempting to censor the internet, call your useless Congressman, Congresswoman, and/or Senator to let them know how you feel about being spied on.  

And ‘no’; the new rules and regulations put out by Google and Facebook don’t protect your privacy from the government, or from other Social Media Surveillance companies either.

Fear is a disease that will rip apart this republic faster than any foreign army, any outlet of terror, or avowed enemy of the United States could ever hope to do in a million lifetimes.  So you need to make some decisions.  Your life as you know it today and hopes for what it will be in the future depend on you either submitting to being a subject of fear or the fearless citizen subjugating your government to the will of the people and the Constitution of the United States.

I leave you with some words from men who have dealt with the issue:  “If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.”

Albert Einstein

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.

Gandhi

RJ

Sources and Citations:

Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/01/12/big-brother-is-watching-document-reveals-surveillance-of-social-media-blogs-image-sharing-sites/#ixzz1maUnPhoJ

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/11/us-usa-homelandsecurity-websites-idUSTRE80A1RC20120111

http://techland.time.com/2011/11/07/number-of-the-day-5000000/


http://thehappeningz.blogspot.com/2012/01/new-censorship-and-your-congressperson.html