In what may be a really bad idea, a news article in the Guardian details that the United States is starting a new trend of asking for social media identities prior to granting VISAs. As a US Citizen you may not think much of this right now but if you consider where this might lead then you may become concerned. We already know people get fired for what they post on social media. We also know people on Steem can get downvoted into oblivion if they insult or hurt the minds of certain whales. We know in China the citizens with bad social credit are being punished. Is this a sign that the United States is going with a similar model?
What is your social media credit score?
So while it's not the exact same kind of social credit we see in China it may in fact evolve into something much worse. The private sector doesn't have the same kind of restrictions and regulations that the government would have when dealing with our data. We already know Facebook and other companies have enough data to know us better than we know ourselves. We also know this data can be analyzed by artificial intelligence now and going into the future as the AI capabilities get better. We have no idea what score our social media posts will produce and how it will rank us in the databases that various government agencies may be keeping.
Now extrapolate this globally where every government is working with these data sets or can access these databases? Considering governments do share information it can become another problem.
Why is it a problem if government scores our social media activity?
Some might wonder why it is a problem if our Twitter, Facebook and other accounts are studied to determine if we are friendly to the United States or other countries? Couldn't it be used to stop or keep out terrorists and hardcore criminals? In theory this sort of idea might keep some terrorists and criminals out but the bigger problem is that there is no guarantee it will only ever be used on criminals and terrorists. Also with regard to criminals we cannot predict in the future what will or will not be a crime with great enough accuracy to guarantee we will not someday be seen by some government somewhere in the world as a "criminal".
The more important thing this will do is it will create an atmosphere where potentially everyone will be afraid to speak out about any government activities anywhere in the world. You disagree with Chinese social credit? Well if you want to someday have a VISA from China you better be careful what you say on social media. You don't agree with some politician in Europe somewhere? You better be careful because you never know how powerful that politician could be or may become and what impact it could have on your ability to get a VISA someday. In other words, if you are critical of government policies that you disagree with you have no way to know for sure if that could someday restrict your ability to get a VISA.
I think this policy of checking social media accounts in this way is not a good idea. My reasoning being (the biggest reason) is that people say a lot of stupid stuff on social media without thinking or that they do not really mean. People may be drunk or tired one day and say some really stupid stuff in posts. These posts could then be saved forever and used to keep that person from getting a VISA. In fact, because of how social media is set up, it is possible for others to deliberately try to bait people into saying controversial stuff with the specific intent of getting their social media scores lower or to get them a bad perception by a foreign government. The majority of these people probably will not be terrorists but we do not yet know how much weight social media scores will have on the decision process of whether to grant a VISA. For example if someone says something on Steemit which could be perceived as racist will this damage their social media score and have a huge impact on their ability to be granted a VISA?
Two red flags with this news. First, anytime the U.S. or any other government says it needs to reduce individual liberties it does so under the guise of fighting terrorism, money laundering, and criminals. It does none of these things effectively.
2nd red flag is that requests would actually be made to individuals applying for Visas. This is just cover for activities that have been happening for decades including U.S. citizens that obtain certain Visas that the U.S. deems "at risk". Some examples are the Russia, China, Iran, and Syria. Any citizen that has access to reality in these countries is a potential dissident.
The Soviet Union used the same sort of tactics long before we had FB. If your read the wrong things and repeated them, bad things would happen to you. If your neighbor wanted your apartment, they claimed you read and said bad things.
...and we inch closer to a Brave New World. ;)
The New World Order is knocking on the door.
Greetings from my brother @dana-edwards in Aceh
Any everyone that he surveyed and masterly before he said anything.
Not good. I'm surprised that they ask for the information to be volunteered.. I thought their web of surveillance was supposed to be so all encompassing that they already have joined all of the dots.
But I am not surprised that they ARE doing it.
They were already doing it and for several years now. The problem that consular services (aka security services) have been running into is that many names are the same in several countries so identifying which account belongs to whom is difficult. Also, many people (much like here on Steemit) use a pseudonym making it difficult to match social media with applicants. This information will just streamline the process.
Yes, but many sites, including Steemit, now require a mobile phone number to register. With all of the spying apps (Facebook ect) on your phone, then, I would have thought, easy.
Perhaps it is more of a trap. If you don't willingly provide the profiles, and their records indicate this, they have an automatic reason to deny you the visa, or have you under surveillance while in the country.
I think you are on to something there with the consent issue. Giving them your social media, I think, just streamlines the process for them by eliminating some steps. Of course, if you don't consent, they have a reason for visa denial.
The US government is becoming more like the Politburo under the Soviets every day.
Government has been working with social media, (read: strong-arming them when they find it "necessary") for as long as there have been social media platforms, to mine their data for information.
Yes, some have balked, like Twitter, but in the end, all have acquiesced.
I have personally been a privacy advocate since long before Edward Snowden's revelations of ongoing systemic misconduct, including massive illegal data collecting.
I immediately ditched Gmail, since Google was on record as willingly complying with their illegal requests, and switched to Protonmail.com, which is end-to-end encrypted by default.
Protonmail was started by data scientists and engineers from MIT and CERN, shortly following Snowden's disclosures, who felt that everyone deserves access to secure email. Protonmail is hosted in Switzerland, which has among the strongest privacy laws, and has the legal teeth to enforce them.
Protonmail has both free and paid levels; for most casual users, the free version will work just fine.
Recently, they have added ProtonVPN, which allows your internet activity to be far more secure as well. They have free and paid versions of ProtonVPN as well, but in this case I highly recommend the paid version, which is far faster.
Protonmail neither logs user activity nor keeps user passwords, so if they get a request for a user's data, they literally have nothing to hand over.
I have paid versions of both, which allows me to connect up to 5 devices to the VPN, and gives me five email addresses, all for $12 per month, which is far cheaper than some substandard VPNs out there.
And no, I'm not affiliated with the company, I am just a VERY satisfied customer.
Bottom line, I love my country, but distrust ALL governments. And they keep proving me correct in that assessment.
As George Carlin correctly noted, if it comes from the government, it's probably bullshit.
Haha, i talked about some of this issues in this post about Black Mirror:
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@metalmag25/how-watching-black-mirror-helped-me-understand-steemit-and-the-not-so-crazy-future-of-social-media