Sold down the river by Social Media?

You better think twice as you post your life to Facebook or search away on Google or post on AOL. Although I don't know who posts on AOL anymore. But we now know that the business of information has a nefarious side. It is not all for marketing which is obnoxious in itself that we are tracked for our habits and likes and dislikes and just about anything else  Internet conglomerates can tag us with...but now we know all that data was turned over to the government.

Now there are denials but I don't know who is buying it. Facebook and Google claim they just found  out about Prism. Hmmm. The NSA seems to be saying that everyone turned over the info, Verizon, Facebook, Google and so that means that all the innocence of us just giving up our data is now a real shot ourselves in the foot scenario. We just cant give ourselves away fast enough to these companies and now we know this info was passed on to the NSA.

Now you can say well it is to stop terrorism. Ok. Then keep shoveling out the info and rest assured you just let the government know more about yourself. But if you don't like the idea that your info is being piped to a third party then you better think again. What really should happen is a tech barrier between us and the Social Media Companies. Something like a toll booth. They pay and we get to decide how much they get...for a price.

Can anyone say take back our identifies?

www.williamahazelgrove.com
 

All The Presidents Men

Is Snowden a patriot or a traitor? Was FDR Hitlerian in putting the Japanese in concentration camps or was he a Commander in Chief in War doing what he had to do to keep the country safe. Is the Patriot Act an intrusion on our liberty or is it necessary in the post 9/11 age. Historically our freedoms have always contracted in times of crisis. During WWII there were all sorts of freedoms redacted the most brazen was clearly Roosevelt's shipping the Japanese to the desert. But in WWI there was the same treatment of German Americans with deportations and surveillance against German Americans with the most famous hangover being the Lindbergh case where Bruno Hauptmann was put do death with questions that persist to this day.

But now we have mass surveillance on a scale we cannot fathom. Really it depends on how powerful Prism is.  The computer running though our phone records is looking for triggers and hopefully we are not in the sweep. But we might be and that would bring up the question is the leaker a man of conscience doing what is best for the country or a leaker who has done irreparable damage. Democracy hangs in the balance as we debate the modern state under constant suspicion.

In All The Presidents Men Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post tells Woodward and Bernstein in the final scene that they need to get back to work because the future of the country hangs in the balance. Nixon resigned later that year and of course the rest is history. Are we not at a crossroads that will determine if a Big Brother state is the SOP or if we have somehow veered very close to the type of Police State monitoring one would only find in the old Soviet Union.

And we are in the shadows. Interestingly enough the world was calling for Woodward and Bernstein's head right before they realized they were right and Nixon had obstructed justice and had been running covert ops from the White House against political enemies. Where is Ben Bradley when you need him?

Rocket Man...the Upside Down American Dream