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| Humanity on Our Beautiful Earth Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia |
Should I add Facebook and Twitter to this blog? I have been pondering this question since I began this project. "How to blog" books advise that social networks are essential for building a virtual Internet community and driving traffic to a site.
Similarly, for 10 years, professionals have been told that visibility on Linked In is essential for job hunting and being seen the "right" people. I don't know if the many experts making such recommendations are speaking from sound data or if we were "all just breathing each other's fumes"!
Perhaps it was a synchronicity of events this past week but suddenly my decision became quite easy. Several articles appeared on news sites I frequent discussing the frenzy over government and corporate snooping and the fact that electronic spying is increasing. A little research quickly uncovered the whole ugly mess.
Now, first of all, let's get real! We all have a "snooping-lying-gossip-cheating" gene lurking somewhere on our rudimentary two-stranded DNA. I am sure it has been there even before our species learned to babble. We can only hope that if and when the other 10 strands are (re)-activated during Ascension from all the supposedly nonsense DNA we carry now, that perhaps the "snooping" gene will be rendered unnecessary.
In the few decades I worked in industry, I certainly did enough of my own competitive intelligence, deemed essential in the dog-eat-dog corporate world. You never, however, would have found me in an alley snooping through dumpsters for tossed corporate secrets, a common practice then. Trash snooping was a lucrative industry that spawned another industry involving confidential document shredders and off-site document warehouses.
Unless you have been living a Utopian existence under a toadstool somewhere, you must know that governmental agencies have been spying on our telephone and electronic communications for years. Our phone conversations are taped and monitored. Every key click of Internet activity is available for scrutiny. Satellites circling the earth can hear what we say and even read the newspaper over our shoulder as we sit in our lawn chairs.
Unmanned military drones that used to fly only over foreign countries shooting photographs and missiles of/at whatever targets were deemed strategic are now flying over our United States, codified by recent legislation. Thanks to the President, Congress, and the comatose sheeple in this country, our constitutional rights and privacy have taken another hit!
What is alarming these days is the sheer number of agencies engaged in snooping. It is likely that their efforts (paid for by our fiat tax dollars) are probably overlapping because they are all keeping secrets from one another.
Unmanned military drones that used to fly only over foreign countries shooting photographs and missiles of/at whatever targets were deemed strategic are now flying over our United States, codified by recent legislation. Thanks to the President, Congress, and the comatose sheeple in this country, our constitutional rights and privacy have taken another hit!
What is alarming these days is the sheer number of agencies engaged in snooping. It is likely that their efforts (paid for by our fiat tax dollars) are probably overlapping because they are all keeping secrets from one another.
In George Orwell's 1984, a fictional work now morphing into reality, people were encouraged to tattle on each other and parents were afraid of their own children. This is exactly the scenario that Janet Napolitano and the DHS are promoting in her recent campaign on public vigilance. "If you see something, say something".
The criteria are nebulous. The effort to collect evidence of citizen discontent with the government that encourages citizens to spy and snitch on each other to police and agencies will create an atmosphere of paranoia.
It is hard to know who is more paranoid, the snoopers or those snooped upon. I am certain, however, that the motives of the snoopers are more about control than information gathering.
The criteria are nebulous. The effort to collect evidence of citizen discontent with the government that encourages citizens to spy and snitch on each other to police and agencies will create an atmosphere of paranoia.
It is hard to know who is more paranoid, the snoopers or those snooped upon. I am certain, however, that the motives of the snoopers are more about control than information gathering.
What does this have to do with Facebook, Twitter, and the other social networks? The bottom line is that social networks are the most recent targets of the so-called alphabet agencies, i.e., CIA, DOD, DHS, NSA, IRS, to name just a few, all of whom are involved in surveillance of mom, pop, the kids, grandma, and grandpa.
The justification for such invasion of our privacy and the abrogation of our constitutional rights, of course, is to fight terrorism and keep us safe. That has been the excuse for all the destruction of our liberties since 9/11, the reason, after all, for 9/11! We have no actual proof (not contrived for the MSM to create fear) that the loss of our liberties has actually bought us additional security, if any is really needed. No amount of surveillance will find every lone "crazy" hiding in plain site.
The justification for such invasion of our privacy and the abrogation of our constitutional rights, of course, is to fight terrorism and keep us safe. That has been the excuse for all the destruction of our liberties since 9/11, the reason, after all, for 9/11! We have no actual proof (not contrived for the MSM to create fear) that the loss of our liberties has actually bought us additional security, if any is really needed. No amount of surveillance will find every lone "crazy" hiding in plain site.
I have never had a Facebook or Twitter account but acquaintances tell me they make attempts to hide their identify by falsifying profile information. That effort is probably useless given the interconnectedness of our electronic systems.
The social network providers encourage honesty in profiles, touting their security methods. But this seems disingenuous because these companies appear to be "in bed" with the agencies that are snooping on us.
Not to be out done, corporations are also in the spying business, sometimes even asking desperate job applicants to reveal social network user names and passwords during the interview and vetting processes.
People thoughtlessly post private information on social networks they should never share online. Such online "relationships" have little depth. Much of the communication is inane, reflecting poorly on the writer, a waste of time for everyone.
I will acknowledge two benefits of social networks, however. The first is that they provide a mechanism for spreading information rapidly and widely. The phenomenal growth of the Occupy Movement is an example of that fact.
The second benefit lies in the thousands of jobs that snooping has created. Many people are needed to program the computer processes and to manage the copious amount of communication churned out by sophisticated programs searching for the keywords and phases that set off alarm bells.
The social network providers encourage honesty in profiles, touting their security methods. But this seems disingenuous because these companies appear to be "in bed" with the agencies that are snooping on us.
Not to be out done, corporations are also in the spying business, sometimes even asking desperate job applicants to reveal social network user names and passwords during the interview and vetting processes.
People thoughtlessly post private information on social networks they should never share online. Such online "relationships" have little depth. Much of the communication is inane, reflecting poorly on the writer, a waste of time for everyone.
I will acknowledge two benefits of social networks, however. The first is that they provide a mechanism for spreading information rapidly and widely. The phenomenal growth of the Occupy Movement is an example of that fact.
The second benefit lies in the thousands of jobs that snooping has created. Many people are needed to program the computer processes and to manage the copious amount of communication churned out by sophisticated programs searching for the keywords and phases that set off alarm bells.
Therefore, I will not be signing up for Facebook and Twitter accounts. Given the subject matter of this blog, I think it likely that I am or will be "surveilled" continuously because anyone who discusses the "no-no" subjects listed in my categories is often subject to scrutiny, "hacking", or service interruption. Communication difficulties are common for those of us discussing Alternative News. No one assumes that such problems are all accidental.
We each make choices in this life. There will be no Facebook or Twitter on this blog. I have chosen not to make it any easier for the snoopers to get additional information on me or my site visitors. This my own little private boycott against Facebook and Twitter whose upper management has undoubtedly joined the 1% based on the loyalty of "unsuspecting little people" in the 99%. Furthermore, they are now in collusion with those who have raided our constitutional rights.
One of my favorite Aussie "philosophers" is Max Igan at Crowhouse. His web site, full-length videos (search YouTube for Max Igan or his channel aodscarecrow), and radio programs are a source of uplifting information that I highly recommend.
Max advocates peaceful resistance, non-compliance with the system, and just "not going along". That doesn't mean we quit our jobs and withdraw. It means that we must recognize that together we are very powerful, we are all connected, and we can make a significant positive impact simply by doing the right thing by our thoughts and actions, operating from the heart.
Max advocates peaceful resistance, non-compliance with the system, and just "not going along". That doesn't mean we quit our jobs and withdraw. It means that we must recognize that together we are very powerful, we are all connected, and we can make a significant positive impact simply by doing the right thing by our thoughts and actions, operating from the heart.
Finally, most, if not all, surveillance programs operate by use of search keywords or phrases. I read a comment online the other day suggesting that we acquire a list of likely keywords and then use them as often as possible in all of our communications. Such action might overload the snooping computers and create jobs for even more human snoopers. I think Max Igan might approve of that great idea.
Love and Light.
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