Facebook: an amoral terrorist drop box?

Daily Mail feature writer Steven Glover certainly thinks so, and addresses public concerns in this article.

"Do internet giants have a moral obligation to tell the authorities if they unearth terrorists planning an outrage? Almost everyone would say that of course they do...."

And so here’s a can of the very finest worms that technology can contrive to put together, that goes to the heart of the timeless debate on the nature of freedom: freedom of expression, or freedom to conspire to murder? Where and how are the lines to be drawn. It's intellectually very easy to end up in either camp with an air of self righteousness.

Many people are all too keen to exploit what's left of their freedoms to destroy themselves through there own wilful stupidity (and the Darwin awards are a wonderful journey through this topic) - but where is the point at which intervention is called for (and by whom)? Many would suggest the breaking point is when others are put in jeopardy by the selfish assumptions of the libertarian. And in the case of the UK's NHS, when the individual wilfully damages their own health and expects the public purse to repair the damage.

Should Facebook be taken to task for failing to report blatantly obvious terrorist conversations to the UK security services? Given the way Facebook advertising operates, no one is going to believe for a second that Facebook does not have the means to spot not just the keywords, but the context and surrounding circumstances that scream out - "hey, this person is clearly up to no good!"

So given that Facebook employs the most invasive and inquisitive analysis of every keystroke typed and picture posted on the site, Glover's seems like a perfectly reasonable reaction by the already highly regulated UK press as it faces further controls from misguided busybodies who are keen to assist all those who have something awkward to hide. The sophistication of the surveillance process being carried out is beyond extreme, and a long way beyond a simple keyword scan. It is fast approaching the full panoply of psycho-analytical techniques once featured as science fiction in movies like Minority Report. There is lots of advice out there from the Greats:

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. Abraham Lincoln"

I have long suspected that there is an unholy alliance between the tech behemoths and governments – a series of satanic deals and Mephistophelean arrangements that allows the online behemoths to carry on driving a coach and horses through monopoly, copyright, privacy and tax legislation in return for providing a level of snooping on private citizens' intelligence that all governments secretly crave, but that no democracy could possibly "sell" to the voters. I even suspect this story of being contrived to make it seem as if Facebook doesn't already shop its users as a matter of course.

Edward Snowden's intervention clumsily made an important point about confidentiality of information that applies equally at the personal level: unless you have been through some sort of "Stepford" conditioning and are the most boring person imaginable, we all going to say things in "private" (whatever that means these days) that we would be horrified to find exposed in the "media".

God help any politicians for actually speaking their mind and saying what they really think; it's bound to upset someone - although it should be welcomed as providing a window on the soul of the real person, that is usually hidden behind the spin and carefully managed messages. The complex task of managing expectations around "social mores" tries to define what that maelstrom of confused morality and hypocrisy known as "public opinion" regards is "appropriate" and "inappropriate" - and where and how to operate the ever shifting definitions.

So do you really want to vote for the real person - warts and all? Would you make allowances for candour that offset any uneasiness that you might feel as a result of insights into the inconvenient truth and character insights? Or would you prefer to continue to see only the carefully sanitised and spun version, that focus groups have defined as "safe and electable"? There is a clear implication in life that suggests those who speak candidly in the wrong place and time betray a fundamental flaw of judgement that can never be trusted with any important confidence. A loose canon in the organisation is becoming the greatest fear of our times, now that nothing is ever forgotten or can ever be undone. It means most people of character and opinion fail to make the cut of public life, Winston Churchill would not be electable in these newly puritanical times; mind you, Jimmy Savile would have not have latest very long, either. Swings and roundabouts.

Many celebs of the 60s and 70s bemoan the reality that bedding a 14 year old fan was the "done thing" and no one batted an eyelid; indeed it was expected - but doubtless someone reading this will be tutting that I should even approach the point of seeking to excuse or condone such behaviour. So please excuse me (victims of modern social engineering) if you have been excised of the ability to think and judge for yourselves by the endless propaganda of mind-controllers and nanny statists, who are determined to think for all of us.

Times change, all history in mostly bunk and always spun by the winners. All society moves on and adapts; it should be free to do this in the context of the realities and requirements of current times - and not under the cosh of the bullying political correction that causes people to be dishonest with themselves. Never mind dishonest with those around them - and nowhere is this duplicity more obvious than in the dreadful professional political class that has broken the world. This veil of contrived probity inevitably slips and we occasionally get a candid glimpse of the real person when an unguarded social media moment occurs. Ex cabinet-minister David Mellor's petulant tirade recorded (without his knowledge, of course) in the back of a London cab is a classic. The irony is that such moments of candour and truth then result in the "honest" politician being fired for giving a glimpse of their true selves!

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Ronald Reagan"

Genuine freedom to be yourself - where being yourself involves a trip outside the presently fashionable mores of the moment - is definitely a thing of the past when every one carries a phone camera and digital recorder. The moment of madness when you mooned at the Queen will be around the world in seconds. Those worms in the Facebook can are really wriggling by now!

Facebook's crude invasion of my "privacy" really came home to me a couple of years back when within seconds of being tagged in a photo on someone’s feed, I got weight loss commercials. Bloody cheek. So I now block all tagging and use the magnificent Adblock software.

So does Facebook conflate the notion of freedom of the people and their right to express themselves with its own freedom to exploit every unwitting nuance in a user's interactions with the world for its shareholders' gain..? Yes, of course we know it's all there is small print somewhere, but small print is widely (but unwisely) regarded as joke and few users are ready to spend the same money on having their lawyer check it out that companies like Facebook and Apple spent on getting teams of duplicitous legal hacks to assemble documents of supreme ambiguity and one-sided benefit.

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. George Washington"

If you use Facebook you already are the product, not the customer. You already only have as much choice in the matter as those sheep in George's abattoir!

The matter of being in any way responsible for what Facebook users are saying boils down the The old idea of “common carrier” immunity was devised to absolve postal and other transport services of responsibility for transporting “unlawful” content and cargo by accepting that it would be impractical, impossible and unreasonable to do otherwise. It carried into the world of telecoms - no phone company could reasonably control what was said by its users. It is plainly evident that online companies have easy access to the content they carry and so the ancient defence of Common Carrier is not credible.

Meantime, in many countries the thought police have already transformed freedom of speech into freedom not to offend. And boy, there are a lot of people who are easily offended these days - race and religion and all manner of vociferous minorities have created sanctuaries where only comments that exude tolerance, sweetness and light are permitted. There is no progressively less scope for freedom of expression - but never in the history of human experience has any authority ever handed back or cancelled any ability to suppress any individual freedom, without a bloody struggle.

Automated surveillance of everyone and everything is out of hand, requiring all those engaging in it to pass their discoveries to "government" is probably the thin end of a very big wedge. Maybe the answer is not to require Facebook to pass on terrorist clues to security services, but to ask - then order - Facebook (and the rest!) to desist from any and all automated interception of its users and their content, and rely on the people to report the misdeeds as they are uncovered by real people in the course of real life. It's about being a responsible society, and that should be an opt-in mindset.

If that means they cannot fund from advertising based on stealing identities, then so be. They will have to charge for the services! Meantime, we are all paying for Facebook and Google's so-called "free services" with something that is far more precious than mere money.

"Real freedom is having nothing. I was freer when I didn't have a cent. Mike Tyson"

Governments know this, and are scared of groups like survivalists who simply don't need them. They all want their citizens to have something to lose; it makes keeping them in line under the threat of losing that something, a lot simpler.

Great Myths of Our Time

"Technology gives us time to have fun, get educated etc..."

Only a lucky few.

The big challenge is that the world up to 1995 - managed by (relatively costly) “50 something” managers on the basis of ground-in experience, was progressively handed by “the big boards” over to the 20-something technorati with no baggage of traditional experience where “20 years experience” means one year repeated 20 times, to the new happening, connected, low cost online world with their exciting new techno ways where there was no relevant 20 years of experience to pay for. Instead, the brave new age of globalisation through cheap overseas call centres and manuals printed in 30 languages. And global PSU! Kids also meant lower costs of employment – and frequently obsessively on the job 12+ hours a day ...since they seem mostly have no lives and pesky families to interrupt their zeal for the shiny and new.

Thus we have arrived at a situation where the workers are treated like factory animals, beautifully admitted and illustrated by the desire for Google and Apple to offer to freeze staff embryos… how long before Google and Apple try and clone their outstanding employees? Maybe there's already a mini Steve Jobs or five, lurking in the wings.

The rush into self-service-online-everything (including by government) means everyone is assumed to have computer literacy skills that probably only 20% possess (one per household), and the rest are struggling. So importing kids from the EU (and all over) is helping.

Government expectations are probably that the demographic problem of age and technophobia will literally “die out”. And it’s true to say that if government actually tried to address them, by the time it did, we’ll all be dead anyway.

So meantime, it’s brutal for all those caught in the vortex. The UK struggles on with this transformation of reality in the form of “pseudo employment”, compressed salaries, disappearing pensions.

Challenging times. So for too many “normal people” outside the techno-bubble (of which LinkedIn is probably emblamatic) – which is just as dissonant as far as the punters are concerned as the much discussed and decried political-media bubble, for far too many, he dividend of technology means wondering where the next meal is coming from.

Us techno-bubble dwellers should not kid ourselves; the real people who hate the politicians have the handmaidens of globalisation in their sights as well, and that means us. It’s hardly surprising the excluded masses are now voting in droves for “none of the above”.

The peasants are revolting

There is a real mood to tackle the dissonance with the Westminster/media bubble and a desire to sort out – the peasants are revolting.   I now think UKIP could get 30% next May – and I can see 100+ defections after Reckless romps home.

I also think people are also going to vote for candidates more than parties for the first time ever – and well loved MPs will sense this and gain confidence. There is a lot to be said for standing away from tribal party politics this time.

But there remains the concern that the “vote UKIP wake up with Ed” threat will intervene at the last moment, so maybe stalwart tories sick of Dave’s pseudo Blairism can fend off the traitor overtones of switching parties, but would vote for those stalwart local MPs who have the confidence to stand as an independent conservative/ labour  candidate, representing their voters, and reserving the right to use their judgement on any post election “alignments”. 

And they could also ask the electors to endorse that decision in an instant local referendum. Leading on to also offering their constituents ongoing regular local polling, to keep in sync with their mood – within reason.

Dare we treat the electorate like grown ups? Plenty of our perilously isolated political class will hate the idea, but we are we are now largely because those politicians have failed in so many ways to notice that world is a very different place to their familiar one of expense fiddles, establishment cover ups, and utterly futile foreign adventures that cost billions of pounds and hundreds of lives. 

How is my support?

The process of voting is very different from the days when it took a rider 3 days to go fro London to York. But the current UK parliamentary voting process is pretty much unchanged since that time. The absurdities in order:-

1. Once every five years
2. Can be won "outright" with way less than 50% support
3. Crass (corrupt, even) boundary fixing

Moreover, we now live in a world where if you ever do manage to reach a human in a support role in a company that is looking for any old excuse to pester you, you will be bombarded by email and text to rate the encounter.

Our politicians don't have to go the whole ludicrous CRM hog, just allow us to vote on key issues more than once every 5 years, please. And they do not need to use the usual costly ballot box process - which in its self is all too easily perverted anyway.
Meanwhile, this just in..

Hi, BT Business Complaints here. We'd like to ask 3 questions about your recent call with us. Text your reply at your normal text rate. Text STOP to opt out.

Note the replies are my expense!  
Three are equally keen to waste my time at no cost to themselves;

I could go on and find many more examples - we probably all could. At least the nagging to rate eBay and Amazon transactions results in a useful consumer satisfaction index and rating - most of these "internal surveys" do not see the light of day as they would be too awkward and embarrassing.
All this is just the latest manifestation of the "passing the buck" culture that has overtaken just about every aspect of our lives, and means that modern businesses are managed by a combination of process, statistics and automata, not human beings. It will all have to end in tears eventually, with a return to common sense.

Britain's next Prime Minister?

In a way I hope he is, because it will be universally accepted as such a sham that it must then force a review of the electoral system that was avoided after the AV debacle (although the libdem contrivance of AV is crap). The world is a different place and the representation of the people needs to reflect it.

If our mostly dimwit politicians knew that their smug, dissolute bubble-dwelling follies would be examined and voted on more than once every 5 years, a lot would change.

Exiting the EU in order to return power to the people in the form of a proper democracy - ie much like the form of government almost every other Commonwealth country enjoys, as a result of their very well managed graduation from the Empire - rather than continue to suffer the indignity of being lumped together with the remnants of a defeated Europe after the ambitions of Germany had worked it over in two world wars.

The present political trajectory of posturing and petulance with a theme of "screw-you-frogs/spics/krauts/micks" is not only unedifying, it is wholly unnecessary, and we can command the moral high ground and make the increasing oppressed inmates of Germany's EU empire jealous at the same time. Result.

At the risk of...

..being controversial, I have to question the way that business (and society) has been manoeuvred to adopt various practises that fly in the face of nature in order to pacify vociferous pressure groups and politicians who famously have almost no experience of running a business outside the media/political bubble that keeps them safely away from any trace of common sense.

The politically correct controllers of the various nanny states (rarely elected) have a wide range of impositions that all cost businesses money to implement, but one of the most perverse examples of the law of unintended consequences surrounds parenthood.

Of course employers are less likely to want to employ women of child bearing age in the wake of the flood of legislation and political social engineering that means guaranteed disruption and cost. So the answer is apparently to hand the same disruptive "rights" to fathers. Then these naive nanny-folk wonder why "proper" jobs (outside the shelter of public employment) are scarce in an economy awash with zero hour contracts, "minimum wage" half jobs, and endless internships.

Let's not forget that countless jobs in these nanny societies have been exported to lands where none of these complications and constraints apply. Also let's not dare get anywhere near the inconvenient conclusions of studies of the behaviour of latch key kids, and the overreactions of the guilt tripped absent parents.

What was so wrong with enabling (and expecting) one parent to remain mostly at home, minding the kids? What's more, it's not as if this planet needs any more inhabitants. The one guaranteed factor affecting all the downside issues facing the environment is overpopulation - especially in the over-consuming societies. When asked to suggest the one thing that would best reduce their environmental footprint for posting on a "thought wall" at an exhibition, the wag who wrote "eat the person standing next to you"was easily the most accurate.

The justification most often heard these days for "population enhancement" is that we need more kids to pay for the growing legions of the elderly! Maybe that's why the Daily Mail has an insatiable fascination for medical "advances" that assist the process as artificially as possible, and keep fertility going until after retirement?

Have we all lost the plot?

The new zombie generation (3)

They're out to get you... 

Many of the once basic "growing up skills" - a grasp of common sense, an appreciation of personal responsibility, a sense of adventure and risk taking - have been replaced in the ZG by carefully implanted conditioned reflexes, brought about by the many unholy alliances between Big Government and Big Business, to serve their interests at the expense of the constant erosion of individual freedoms.

This brave new world of "Nanny State meets Nanny Business" is effectively crystallised within the ethos of an organisation called  Common Purpose.  Although disguised in various ways to seem less threatening, Common Purpose is the embodiment of Political Correctness incarnate - it has created an ethos of "conform, or risk being ostracised". Many "traditional" majority views are constantly challenged and dismissed as "populist", and the CP ethos is based around the "progressive" presumptions that have allowed cabals of vociferous minorities to deflect attention from key mainstream matters, and dictate the social agenda to the majority. Any specious lip service paid to "tolerance" has become sacrosanct and dare not be challenged or quesioned. But this seems to be more about intolerance than anything, it is about hijacking and shifting the tolerant moral middle ground of society, to enable control by skilled manipulators at the extremes.

As Edmund Burke observed: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Whereas debates about cockup v. sedition conspiracies always used to assume cockup prevailed, modern communications have changed the rules, and it is a lot more probable that conspiracy is now a credible factor. The Bilderberg organisation is widely reputed to be part of a high level conspiracy to re-engineer society to make it simpler for Big Government and globalised organisations to manipulate and control, and there is plenty of evidence online that is worthy of further study before being dismissed as fringe lunacy. Sure there are a number of loose canons involved who may border on paranoid, but that should not be allowed to distract from the inescapable fact that Bilderberg is a secret club for the world's wealthiest businesses, individuals and most discredited bankers. Remember that Savill, Harris & Co. successfully hid in plain view for 30 years with the assistance of the BBC.

A rather more mundane example is that the Big Brother conditioning of the Zombie Generation (ZG) has lead to the meek acceptance of all manner of apparently simple impositions that the grumpies rightly regard as abominations - such as the meek acceptance of 24 month phone contracts paid by direct debit.

Getting shaken down at any transport hub, thanks to Blair's desire to crusade in the Middle East with Bush, is part of a total submission to men and women in peaked caps who are (well) paid to guard us from the many consequences of various Western follies.  The fact that the odds of death by terrorist is somewhat lower than death by choking on a hobnob, is neither here nor there.

There is now a conditioned/resigned expectation in the ZG that attempts to contact any large business for all but the most mundane matters will be thwarted by call centres, manned by people who barely speak English. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time you got to speak to people who could a) speak English b) deal directly with your questions.

So why not just stop supporting companies that grow fat by exporting UK  jobs overseas - and support businesses that use exclusively UK based staff? The people who gain most by continued compliance with the globalisation agenda and tactics are not the (working, indigenous) people of the UK.

It used to be that way, and it could still be that way if enough people raised hell, and refused to be assimilated into the new hives of globalised business and politics.

Another mundane but telling issue: the ZG meekly accepts that a phone they leased/bought for £500 (but cost <£100 to make) is worthless after 18-24 months, and needs replacing. And thus the ZG offers itself for sacrifice on the altar of Vodafone and the rest for the bi-annual ritual of largely pointless upgrades. Much to the delight of the pushers of these shiny things that have become the fulcrum of so many modern ZG lifestyles... and the means by which "Government" now knows where you are and who you are communicating with. But hell, what have you got to hide..?

As Edmund Burke observed: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."