The phase about minorities may reveal how minorities are perceived by government. If you are not a minority then it may not be obvious or immediate for you to understand the psychology of a minority. A minority in any governance system has for historical reasons the constant threat and or fear of being put under surveillance, monitored, spied on, etc. In most societies the people who are the least connected socially are the least trusted by the government.
What about minorities in cyberspace?
A minority in cyberspace is an individual who holds an unpopular opinion about any subject matter. Political minorities as many know are clearly targeted. But also if you think in a way which is considered obscene and others find out, or if you have an unpopular opinion which you make the mistake of sharing, then your school of thought becomes at risk of being the minority school of thought, and this could put you the individual in the position of minority opinion.
We see this all the time. Twitter trends reveal public sentiment. Sentiment analysis is one of the most important ways of determining the majority opinion on any topic. The majority or people who have the majority opinion may seek to put under surveillance all who have opinions which diverge too far from what they consider as normal. In addition, the majority will often censor, ban, or remove access to and of individuals or entities which fail to conform.
What should cyber minorities do?
Cyber minorities likely are monitored on the basis of what they post, tweet, etc. There are bots which monitor social media and which look for specific key words, phrases, etc, that indicate a certain sentiment. When those key words or phrases are triggered the spying agencies can put under surveillance the persons and groups behind those accounts. In fact that is likely what does happen.
What can cyber minorities do? Even on Steemit, if a person posts something too unpopular the post will be voted down, the poster may even be put under surveillance offline if they posted under their true identity. Do we really value free speech and do minorities have a right to share their unpopular opinions? Unfortunately it seems like the answer is no, even on Steemit.
The purpose of surveillance/total transparency is to enforce censorship
Surveillance may have security purposes if it is merely collected and never used for anything political but how can we know this? At the same time the trend away from anonymity, privacy, toward transparency and openness, leads to increased censorship. You can say what you truly think and feel only if you don't mind being demonetized, either by being fired, or lawsuits, or losing sponsors. Is this the true purpose behind openness? Is it the true purpose behind surveillance or is it the mission creep corruption of that purpose?
In one of my classses we were talking about how in public spaces we don’t have any freedom anymore we either have to choose between security or freedom and what you would choose. I feel like when people are watched they act better
This is why the trend is to expand the public space to mean everywhere and include as much as cyberspace as possible. Steemit, is it s public space? What about Facebook? Where can people go to have a private conversation in cyberspace? Well this might not exist at all in the near future.
What about anonymity? This is not encouraged. What about pseudo anonymity?
People who are watched do not "act better". They are made to act how "they are supposed to", which isn't always better. You can be lawfully evil. Security and freedom aren't at the opposite ends of a spectrum. If you have no freedom then you are a slave, and at what in history were slaves more secure than the nobility?
Of course most people think being controlled is being protected. In reality being controlled is just being controlled and you never know how your controllers will use or abuse you. I do think there is value in public spaces and agree that sometimes such as if you are at work, or in a place where you are around other people, that you do need a camera to protect everyone from each other. I do not think that there is a need to put cameras in homes or on people who aren't even around other people.
Like in cyberspace for example what do we gain from "public space" vs "pseudo-anonymity"? We don't really gain any additional trust if I know your real name or your pseudonym because either can reveal a reputation. We don't increase safety because people can now be stalked in the real world because they give out so much information. Blockchain technology and smart contracts allow business to take place without the need for people to expose their identities.
Do I need to agree with the political preferences of every business partner? In the open web where everything is under everyone's real name then I would have to be more concerned about how my associations are viewed politically than the impact it has on the bottom line.
I feel like it’s already happens what the government sees as a threat they keep under check like listening to phone calls , being on peoples fb or other social media . Whatever is put online you give the government the ability to see it as well . Makes me wonder if those applications have have encrypted conversations actually work or is it just a mind game ?
So as long as you are as normal as possible in how you look, think, act, feel, live, you'll reduce your risk of being abused by the state surveillance? Is this the way it works?
Your background , color of your skin, your religion impacts how and when you will be watched . It is as if the white minority’s have a pathway than blacks or Arab Muslims . Then how are we necessarily free ? What so freedom when we are all not treated the same
The more of a minority you are, the more at risk you are from the surveillance state. So if you are black, gay, an atheist, etc, you'll probably be watched anywhere you go. People who more naturally fit into the common group do not understand what it is like to be an outsider until they say something unpopular on social media.
Agreed !
good
When you post something online, there is always a risk that you will trigger someone somewhere.. in my own country, speaking against the elected government is banned and comes under the umbrella of cyber harrasment .. can you believe it...
So yeah all the "cyber surveillance" is there to actually provide censorship services to protect the truth..
What if by triggering someone it gets all your accounts put under cyber surveillance from that point forward?
thats what actually happens..
The more technology develops, the more new ways of monitoring emerge, along with the emergence of new ways of breaking out of the law.
So do you want a society where breaking the law is impossible to get away with?
I know that reaching an ideal society is difficult and perhaps impossible.But my intention was to say that the development of technology has positive results. There are also negative results if technology is misused. For this reason, keeping up with the legal process with the development of technology is necessary even if society does not reach zero degrees of crime. Otherwise, will end up with non regulated society.
If you haven't done anything wrong then there is no need to worry if someone is watching you. CCTV is placed around cities to protect people against criminals and others that may want to cause you harm, rob you etc.
To someone somewhere in the world you are doing something wrong. Beauty is subjective. Cyberspace is global.
Big Brother is watching. Always watching! And privacy is dead. But never go unspoken. Single rain drops flow down mountains that go into streams that in turn flow into mighty rivers. You might be a minority today but with voice not tommorrow.
The "intelligence" community has had at its disposal, for quite some time, tools that overlap both the physical and cyber realms in terms of surveillance.
A short term solution is to remain such a small fish, that you're not worth catching.
So don't speak and avoid being too successful?
A good analogy would be to not piss off a whale unless you've got a lot of SP to weather the shitstorm (or you just don't give a shit anymore).
Well that's me screwed then.
Apparently I'm in a minority of only 3% of the world (ultra-runners), I'm also left handed (minority) dyslexic (minority) short (minority) and married to a Greek Goddess (definite minority) :-)
You raise the very issue I have been struggling with. I likely would fit into the category of a cyber minority; I had an experience on Facebook a while back where I raised the issue of the importance of maintaining freedom of speech. I didn't agree with mass labelling of websites as "fake news", merely because they offered opinions different than the mainstream media. I like to look at the issues from all sides before I form my own opinion, and who could be qualified to decide what's real and what's fake without actually providing any evidence. I was tarred and feathered, and now unlikely to share my thoughts in the future.
If cyber minorities are established with remedies for people, not only just monitoring then it will be useful. Otherwise, it will be a new trash of technology.