Can Privacy and Free Speech Coexist in a Surveillance Society?

In a post that argues that surveillance is not the only problem faced by those who live under authoritarian governments, Yemeni activist Walid Al-Saqaf makes an interesting distinction. He draws a line between Western nations where free speech is a constitutionally-protected right and countries where censorship is a reality. It is easy to accept the primacy of the surveillance problem when free speech is protected.


In Arab countries, he says, people are still trying to find their own voices. He finds it harder to draw a line there between surveillance and censorship, finding that surveillance often leads to censorship.

In the profile linked to the post, the author is described as "one of a few Arab cyber activists working on censorship circumventing technologies." Both his activities and his perspectives are worthy of attention.

Snow in Atlanta—on Facebook and Twitter

It’s late morning on Thursday, January 30—two days after the paralyzing snow storm in the South. Atlanta, of course, is the poster child. I’ve been looking around, and there is plenty of both good and bad social media to go around.

First on the “good list” has to be the SnowedInAtlanta Facebook page. It was started by an experienced Facebook user, Michelle Sollicito who lives in Marietta, GA. Looking at her page, it looks like she started it about 4:45 p.m. on Tuesday.  As I write this Thursday morning the page has over 55 thousand followers.

At this moment it is still quite active, much of it with people inquiring about road conditions. Over the past 2 days it has been filled with requests for information and help but also with people offering to help people stranded in nearby areas, people who have welcomed children home or found missing relatives, even a lost cat who wandered into someone’s home. 

Notice that Michelle has pinned today’s emergency management report to the top of the page. If you read further you find that the page has spawned a large number of neighborhood-specific pages to systematize the process of getting the right type of help to the people who need it. Also note the petition (on the White House site) to honor Michelle for her unstinting effort over the last almost-48 hours.

There is also “plenty of blame to go around” on social media. Can we have civility—not northerners goading southerners for not being able to handle the rare ice or snow storm? And government officials like Mayor Reed certainly should not respond to uncivil and ill-informed posts from outside his city/state.

Mayor Reed @KasimReed may never recover from his post on Monday that says that Atlanta is ready for the snow storm. Both government officials and corporate execs take note! His tweets have changed their tone in the past two days—some informative, more retweeting information from state and local agencies. He (or more probably his staff) have also been careful to retweet items (from political followers?) who are reporting what great shape some parts of the city are in!

Governor Deal @GovernorDeal doesn’t score any higher on my “good use of twitter” scale. He will have a hard time living down the tweet at 3:05 p.m. on January 28 touting his introduction of Mayor Reed as he won the Georgian of the Year award. The next tweet was the twitter page announcement of the emergency declaration at 7:42 p.m. that evening.  Beginning on January 29 there are an uncountable number of retweets mostly from the Georgia DOT and the 511 reporting line. Those are useful information, but putting all them on the governor’s page makes it hard to find anything of value.  Michelle’s solution of links to area-specific information makes a lot more sense (quel surprise!!!).

We all owe a great debt of gratitude to citizens like Michelle, especially those who jump in to provide important services when our government fails us.

Politicians should train their staffs in the effective use of social platforms. It might also be wise to train them in what improves the politician’s brand image and what makes them look venal and self-serving.