Activists, Terrorists, and Vegetarians (Oh My)
Wired currently has an amazing article in the November issue on how some young Egyptian activists are utilizing Facebook as a means of organizing political protests. David Wolman tells the story of Ahmed Maher, from the beginning and explosion of his Facebook group, to his arrest by Cairo police and his continual commitment to the “April 6″ group. While bloggers have been facing intimidation Facebook created an alternative outlet and, “State security was aware of online dissidents but was completely caught off guard by the popularity of the Facebook group.” Ahmed Maher was eventually taken into custody and tortured until he agreed to handover his password to the Cairo police. I highly suggest you read the article in its entirety (link at the top) to get the full story and to understand the political implications of sites like Facebook.
This leads me to the flutter of Twitter as terrorist tool stories that have popped up surrounding the Army’s 304 Military Intelligence Battalion Open Source Intelligence Team report. Here is a taste:
Twitter has also become a social activism tool for socialists, human rights groups, communists, vegetarians, anarchists, religious communities, atheists, political enthusiasts, hacktivists and others to communicate with each other and to send messages to broader audience.
If you are interested, you can read their full report here, and for the visually inclined a summary from Rachel Maddow.
The attention these sites have been receiving by governmental agencies concerns me in terms of the future forms of censorship in regards to new methods and channels of communication. Facebook is already blocked or banned in certain countries, is Twitter next? And if so where will all the vegetarians tweet?!
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2 Comments, Comment or Ping
jen.huss
Vegetarians, eh? I have yet to use social media to engage with other vegetarians, but I can totally see how we are a threat to mankind.
What the government’s really has a problem with is our newly enabled need to group… and how easily all these social websites make it. Take, for example, the two young white supremacists caught earlier this week who intended to kill Barack Obama and other African Americans. Myspace allowed these two crazies to find each other… without it their paths would have never crossed.
So be it for good or bad, social media allows us to connect to people and group instantly. The government doesn’t fear individuals, it fears groups… groups make change. Tweet on vegetarians!
Oct 29th, 2008
jaysh
Due to government and social constraints the local flavours of other facebook-like applications allows for some anonymity. There is a lot of organizing potential for social media, but an option of anonymity is sometimes desperately needed.
Although even if facebook added privacy settings that hid your identity within groups, there is no guarantee they will not cooperate with oppressive governments to make sure they get unblocked. Google, Yahoo, Skype and others are already complacent with goverment censorship across the globe.
Oct 29th, 2008
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