The other day, I was quite concerned because I learned of some of the things going on behind the scenes of the Internet. What we have is groups of people who are monitoring the Internet to look for certain types of behavior, and language showing up on Internet forums, blogs, comment posts, and even those little Digg and Facebook like buttons with comments attached. These same people who handle issues of the darkest challenges of the web, also relay that data to the fusion centers. Then they can quickly GPS the individual by their ISP, and if they think it is serious, they will actually have someone go and look into it.
They will also run the criminal records of which individual they think it might be making the comments, and they can even tell if it's someone who was making the comments under a false identity often enough. Now then, this might be very interesting, and perhaps a good way to catch terrorists, but how many people are we really catching, and how many false positives are we creating, and are we really fusing all this important Internet information together to protect the American people, or are we acting more like a bunch of paranoid NAZI Gestapo secret soldiers?
Are these special task forces really necessary, and what do they do when they have nothing to do, when there's nothing going on? Are they harassing people who are going about their lives and exercising their free speech online? Are they collecting all this data to use against these individuals later, just in case something comes up? The answer is yes to all of those things, and as an American this should rub us the wrong way because it is a complete violation of personal privacy. In other words, it is unacceptable and is not cohesively jive with the ideals that we stand for in this great nation. Therefore such activity is extremely problematic, nevertheless our government is doing this.
Now then, it's great that they are able to catch terrorists, follow around the bad guys, catch a few drug dealers here and there, that's all well and fine, but at what expense to our freedom and liberties? Are we using this as some sort of intimidation, are we quelling free speech, are we using this to keep everyone in line while online? And what are the fine lines between becoming someone's red flag, and enjoying your free speech and opinion? And whose agenda are they running, those who work on these teams, which political side of the spectrum are they on, and what sort of politically correct filter, religious connotation, or sexual preference are they endorsing?
You see, when you have humans judging other humans online, they are more apt to red flag someone that they don't agree with. That's human nature, we are not going to be able to stop that. Next, if we are hiring people for these data fusion centers, and we have a shortage of qualified individuals who actually understand what the cost is, what a crime is, and what free speech is all about, then chances are we are going to get people who are working in these facilities who have an axe to grind and are going to take their personal preferences and push them onto the Internet.
How many people have they already falsely flagged? I think the American people have the right to know what the government is up to, and if they're up to no good, whether they mean to or not, or whether there are questionable folks running those systems amongst them makes no difference, if unjust activities taking away the guaranteed rights of our citizens are happening in this country, that is pure and simple unacceptable. It must stop.
If we have a secret group of people who are out there doing this, and we do not have a stated set of rules and laws, and if the users on the Internet don't know what is acceptable and what isn't, then we are engaged with a secret set of laws, and a secret police force enforcing those dictates. This should not happen in the United States, but I now fear that it is. Not necessarily for myself, but rather for my fellow man and fellow American.
We have some ideals to hold up in this country, and I expect each and every single individual involved in the enforcement and protection of the American people against terrorism and crime to do their duty to the best of their ability and not cross that line. We know that all too often enforcement personnel, police officers, and others who are in charge of enforcing that law have overstepped their bounds, it's happened in the past in almost every major city, why would it be any different this time, we are still dealing with humans.
They are the weak link, and not only of the criminal side, and don't kid yourself this isn't a perfect world, nor could we make it perfect by taking away the freedoms and liberties that this great nation stands for. It's time to start asking some tough questions, we must do better than this, and we must hold on to what we have.
If we are going to act like other nations then we are no better, in fact we are worse in that case because we are lying to ourselves and our citizens. This is pretty serious stuff, and it's time that we leveled with the American people. Indeed I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.
Lance Winslow has launched a new provocative series of eBooks on Internet Privacy Issues. Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/
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