Government Friend on Facebook

When you receive a friend request from someone in the government, what will you do? The day is coming nearer when the marketing department and pr firm for the White House determine that the most effective way to control and dictate regulations and policies is through the internet. My apprehension is: “I thought the internet represented a virtual freedom, much like the first amendment in the Constitution.” Soon enough, there will be a controversy over this freedom and whether or not we are ever really free from the veil of an expanding government body.

The Obama administration utilized the internet effectively to run a successful campaign for Barack that ultimately succeeded. His virtual campaign was run with the assistance of some of the most powerful social media platforms in the world Facebook and through his Google SEO analytics. For the lamens, SEO is the search engine optimization that ensures you are lead down a pathway that is given to the highest bidder, or in this case the favored candidate.

The campaign presented two ideas about the use of the internet in campaigns for any office, or the marketing of any product: 1. It is the most effective way to reach the widest possible audience (251,290,489 internet users in North America alone), which is about 74% of our population. 2. The content can be controlled and data can be manipulated, which means that no one’s identity is safe unless protected by a serious technology security force like the tech task team Obama recently put together. That’s right, do you think it was just coincidence that he is beefing up his team of internet security advisors?

Considering the administration currently had the company Twitter postpone updates to keep open the channel for Iranian protestors, I can only imagine the next time the government wants Twitter or for that matter Facebook to hand over private data about its users. If all of our information is now in cyberspace, and the government is attempting a massive increase in the size of government, what do you think those new employees jobs will be? Perhaps, identifying revenue opportunities amongst certain demographics, ethnicities, and races? The administration may choose to takeover one of these internet companies and utilize their tools and data to generate a program that runs itself based on our inputs. A system that uses us as test subjects, where leverage comes from personal correspondences, data analysis, and outcomes of new laws are no longer left to chance. Is this a more efficient system, or an opportunity to solidify control of the country by controlling the information?

So when you receive the friend request from a government employee, or are followed on Twitter by some unnamed WH222 user, just remember that it was inevitable.

Sources:
Internet User Data Source:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
Other:
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4892