The US, social media and the beginnings of the surveillance state

[MJK_Anfaenger]

So, as you may know or not know, the US state department proposed that visitors to the US should have their social media accounts vetted. These measures are building up on those introduced during the presidency of Obama and could possibly affect up to 15 million visa-applicants. While some say this could increase security, others say this is a step to inhibit free speech online.

I personally agree with the latter. I don't think the TSA could find out anything that the NSA wouldn't know already anyway. Also, I think people might censor themselves when talking about certain matters online, as nobody knows with certainty what qualifies as offensive content. For example, I wouldn't have started this thread if I had had any plans to visit the US in the foreseeable future.

Even worse, I think this kind of censorship could seep over into everyday life, for average Americans as well as for anyone else. Would you criticize, say the US government if you had reason to believe that any political comment online could somehow affect your personal life or your career? I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the beginnings of a surveillance state to me.

What do you think? Am I overreacting? Do you share my concerns?

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[jackg]

I'm not entirely sure how they'd gather this information and what social media they'd want?

Would they want EVERY social media account you have? I, personally have an account with stack overflow and reddit that I used in 2015 and haven't used since, would they be interested in this?

Would they even be interested in forum accounts or just Facebook/Twitter & other large social media accounts.

As you say what is offensive/suspicious. If I test out assymetric encryption with someone, is that message going to be reviewed and a visa application denied by them because I tested encryption and wouldn't give them the private key (as I'd need the other person's private key to decode it which they might not be willing to submit).

[MJK_Anfaenger]

Yeah, I also wonder what would happen if you didn't have a social media presence at all. Would you have to create one just so you could give the border guards something they can look at?

Pretty good point with the encryption. Just goes to show how poorly planned out this whole thing is.

[aleksej996]

No, I don't think you are overreacting at all. This is quite unacceptable. You personal political views or opinions should not affect your freedom of travel.
Seems like they are just looking for more ways to waste your tax money.

Yeah, I also wonder what would happen if you didn't have a social media presence at all. Would you have to create one just so you could give the border guards something they can look at?

You can always create a new Facebook account and claim that you only have that one and that the other ones are fake.

[charlie137]

i don't think this is a beginning. might be actual end, if social media will move to decentralized platform. but i can't find any downsides besides extra views on your public page. and im pretty sure every single government checking social media for every single visa applicant for idk, last 10 years?

[reality18]

The question is, are you going to provide them with your actual social media account bearing your nickname or different name? Obviously no. What happens if i create a new account with genuine details before my visit to the States and tell them i never had a social media account? Apparently, i don't know how they are going to get actual information if you don't provide them yourself.

[vapourminer]

i don't think this is a beginning. might be actual end, if social media will move to decentralized platform. but i can't find any downsides besides extra views on your public page. and im pretty sure every single government checking social media for every single visa applicant for idk, last 10 years?

actually i believe some jobs (and not government afaik) require applicants to give their facebook (and possibly other) login info so they can look through it from the inside, not just whats publicly viewable. boggles my mine but there it is. might be illegal now, i do remember there was quite the flap about it in the media a few years back.

i would run far from such a company.

as an aside one of my former co employees was fired for calling in sick, then posting on facebook her at a party that day. lol.

EDIT: i have never had, nor will have, a facebook account. been on the net since before facebook etc came out too. BBSing back in the day was my thing, (56k FTW!), never saw the use for facebook myself..

EDIT2: i do find it funny folks are all up in arms about the nsa/whatever snooping on then when they freely give away most of their info on social media anyway.

[BenOnceAgain]

Even worse, I think this kind of censorship could seep over into everyday life, for average Americans as well as for anyone else. Would you criticize, say the US government if you had reason to believe that any political comment online could somehow affect your personal life or your career? I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the beginnings of a surveillance state to me.

What do you think? Am I overreacting? Do you share my concerns?

Hi MJK_Anfaenger,

With all due respect, I believe that the "Subject" that you chose for this thread was in error.  I've corrected it for you in my reply.

Everything we do is capable of being tracked.  Twenty years ago, people talked about being forced to be implanted with a "microchip" and tracked.  There's really no need for that since we've voluntarily submitted to tracking.  We all carry tracking devices, mostly made by Apple and/or Samsung, that can do more than any form of microchipping with today's technology could.  We have Alexa, Siri, Google, and Cortana listening to us, to assist us in our daily tasks.  Our Fitbit's track our every move.  Our watches record our pulse.  Our televisions can listen to and in some cases see us.  Many of us cover our laptop cameras for a reason.  There is no reason to believe that this tracking power has not been used extensively.  In fact, there is much evidence that it already has.

Facebook is just one of many actors that abuse the information that we provide to them.  Google, YouTube, Twitter are others.  There are MANY others as well, consider cloud services such as a Google or Microsoft account.  Also consider cloud infrastructure providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute, etc.  I assume that anything I do online is being profiled by someone for some reason.  There is every incentive for these businesses to cooperate with the three letter agencies.  They often do so without requiring a warrant, usually the "Terms of Service" we agree to give them the right to basically do whatever they want with our data.

Consider the scenario that occurred in Austin, TX last month.  The person that was distributing bombs, how did they locate him?  They filtered through Google searches in the Texas area looking for keywords matching components in the bombs.  That gave them a pool of suspects.  Then they cross-referenced that with payment records showing that the suspect purchased a specific kind of battery from Alibaba that was used in the bombs.  Following that, they began surveillance on the suspect (which I believe was assisted by his phone geolocation records) which led to a confrontation in which he was killed (unclear if it was from one of his bombs detonating, a self-inflicted suicide, or a police kill).  While it is, of course, good that the person that was bombing innocents is no longer doing so, the privacy implications of this are very serious.  Think of how many innocent people had their search histories gone through to hone on in that one suspect.

Is it worth it?  That's a tough call.  I do not want to trade liberty for security.  I also don't want innocent people killed.

What I do know is that centralized 'gatekeeper' platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, etc., etc., are dangerous.  Just as centralized money is dangerous.  Just as centralized 'gatekeeper' news sources are dangerous.  I support next-generation decentralized platforms for social media that cannot be censored.  There are several out there, and several more in development.  My organization is crowdfunding one approach that aims to resolve a number of problems in the space.  What emerges from these will hopefully be services that cannot be censored due to their design.  Obscene and illegal content can be moderated without limiting free speech.  Privacy should be up to each user, with the defaults set on full lockdown.  A way to monetize it without ads that profile you, such as ethical ads, distributed computing, and/or subscription models, need to be developed so that people that produce great content can move off of platforms such as YouTube that can make them penniless by demonetizing their videos.  There's a lot of ideas to improve this.  They all start with decentralized networks, strong encryption, and build from there.  Not everything is ideal to store on a blockchain, but there is certain parts of such a solution that would be best done with a blockchain approach.  When our project begins incubation, it's going to reach out to several different other projects that are working on some of the problems (identity, advertising, distributed computing, and distributed storage projects).  These are the building blocks of next-generation microblogging (obsoleting Twitter/Gab), social networking (obsoleting Facebook/LinkedIn), image/video sharing (obsoleting Instagram and YouTube), messaging (obsoleting Messenger and Telegram), distributed search (obsoleting Google and Bing), and live streaming (obsoleting Periscope).

I am not a fan of social media.  I have it because of my business dealings and now BTRIC.  I would trust it more if I had more control over my own information, and I knew it couldn't be used to track and profile me.  I'll be much happier when these better platforms are the norm.

Best regards,
Ben

[NadiaHel]

True. If you visit the US they can ask you to show them your mobile phone unblocked, and they check your navigation history, your social media and even your recent whats app messages. I don`t have social media and they asked me many times if I deleted it, but I didn`t at all!! I just prefer to stay away from those horrible tools!!
This is really dangerous, and I am sure it to be illegal, as well. But if you say a big NO, then you will be led into a small room where stuff gets way worst...
This is tyranny, and truly something to be aware of. This is against human rights as well.

[MJK_Anfaenger]

Ben, thanks for the informative, yet chilling insight. I'm feeling a bit naive right now, not because I didn't know most of what you posted (I didn't), but because I could have known if I had really bothered to find out.

Do you think that platforms such as those that you described will become a reality in our lifetime? I imagine something drastic has to happen before people reject the convenience of conventional social media and adopt a technology that today is considered somewhat of a nerdy niche-thing. Hmm, then again, so were computers and the internet 20 years back.

[BenOnceAgain]

Ben, thanks for the informative, yet chilling insight. I'm feeling a bit naive right now, not because I didn't know most of what you posted (I didn't), but because I could have known if I had really bothered to find out.

Do you think that platforms such as those that you described will become a reality in our lifetime? I imagine something drastic has to happen before people reject the convenience of conventional social media and adopt a technology that today is considered somewhat of a nerdy niche-thing. Hmm, then again, so were computers and the internet 20 years back.

Hi MJK_Anfaenger,

No need to feel naive -- the large corporate interests that study and track all of us have invested a lot of effort into obfuscation.  However, I do think the phenomenon of realization is similar to those images such as this one here:

Once you see both sides of the image, it is very difficult to "unsee" them.

Usability of social media is a big factor, of course.  Technologies have to be accessible to people of below-average intelligence but yet not be tedious for those on the high end.  Websites of 20 years ago were generally a lot less capable, rough around the edges, and were nowhere near as a ubiquitous as they are today.  Similar leaps will be made in decentralized technology.  Increasing bandwidth, storage, and processing capacity means that less centralized systems can better exist.  Clearly, a distributed ledger is less efficient in terms of the resources that it consumes; however, it is the best tech known to humanity for certain applications.

Decentralized systems, beyond distributed ledgers like blockchain, enable gains in efficiency in other ways.  For example, I often think about how much electricity is lost in transmission and distribution (the amount varies due to various factors but in some cases can be over 30% of power generated).  I also think about the losses from utilities being unable to store unused electricity (well, at least not very much of it).  When you start to combine technologies such as IoT to intelligently monitor power usage, microgeneration plants that could be distributed and spun up and down on demand to respond to near real-time changes in usage, and some good next-generation power storage technology, distributed power generation makes sense and could work to deliver electricity more efficiently than the large power generating plants we use today.  Those plants would still be used, at least through their useful lifetimes, but they would generate the baseline amount of electricity, with microgeneration being used to cover variability.

Concerning social media, in my view, the trick is to build your tech and then make it go viral.  Don't rush, keep iterating and improving, but always be ready to scale.  You will hit the adoption tipping-point.  Make great partnerships with top-tier content creators.  Stay agile and adapt to changes quickly.  Consumer-facing services are always heavily driven by marketing, but new-generation services come in waves.  Think MySpace -> Facebook.  This progress will continue.  I believe the tech we're building in our Disperse.Network project can grow into a great service.  The combination of multiple genres of social media (e.g. like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, Periscope) into a single service has opportunities for interactions that can't meaningfully happen today.  Not everyone will understand the other parts that are the most important to me -- owning your data, strong encryption, better compensation to content creators, ethical revenue models, open source, etc. -- but I do think that most users can understand better privacy and control over how information is shared, the fact that they will not be tracked or profiled, and that content cannot be censored by a central gatekeeper corporation.  "Community consensus" is an interesting challenge when you consider all the variables that need to be taken into account, but it is something that happens in the physical world among groups of people, so I accept that challenge and want to drive the tech forward.  There are some great projects out there that do parts of what I envision.  I'm looking forward to working with them to build a "whole" that is greater than the sum of the parts.  When this project's white paper is written, I hope to be able to communicate the vision more clearly than I can now writing this reply.

I strongly believe that societal attitudes, economic factors, and technological capabilities have combined at this unique time in world history.  Never before did we have the capabilities to communicate with people across the globe instantly.  We've all witnessed things that "didn't feel right" but couldn't tell others about that experience.  We couldn't see the way that, for example, the news media manipulates us, because the process of knowledge sharing and building upon other's discoveries and experiences were hindered by intermediaries.  So even those that did see it and could articulate it were limited unless they were one of the lucky chosen that had a television, newspaper, or radio audience.  (And those people aren't the ones that get chosen.)  We now have an awareness of the flaws in the system as well as the technological means to go about repairing it.  It will happen because it is the only sustainable course of action.  The question is how long will it take, and will we have to sink even deeper before the inevitable recoil?  More than anything, this is what drives me forward.  The chance to truly make a better future for all of humanity, from here in New Jersey all the way to the remote parts of Africa.  Humanity deserves it, and we can do it.  So we shall.

Best regards,
Ben

[laserfocused]

No, I don't think you are overreacting at all. This is quite unacceptable. You personal political views or opinions should not affect your freedom of travel.
Seems like they are just looking for more ways to waste your tax money.

Yeah, I also wonder what would happen if you didn't have a social media presence at all. Would you have to create one just so you could give the border guards something they can look at?

You can always create a new Facebook account and claim that you only have that one and that the other ones are fake.

Agreed

[MJK_Anfaenger]

The amount of work you put into these posts is completely mind-blowing. It's a shame only a few people will get a chance to read them. Thanks for your input once again, it's a pleasure to read and a lot to think about.

I just joined your Telegram group. You seem to have a strong vision and I'm really curious how this will turn out. Hit me up once you have the WP, I'd love to read more. Oh, and if you need a solid German translation of... anything required to get the word out, let me know!!