Abandon Ship

Source: https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/35268956/

                Yeah… so after seeing the other students SAP ideas, I think I want to jump-ship to Connor’s [http://digitalmediaandsocialjustice.tumblr.com/ ]. To be honest, I feel more “at-home” working with the topic of surveillance than trying to scrape something together on eWaste. Easily half of the class’s ideas are involving eWaste already, in more interesting and creative ways [art projects and the like]. I already have a decent background on the surveillance subject from a unit in my “World Affairs/Current Events” course that I took in my last semester of high school, as well as research on my own. I did not right up a project idea on the topic because I did not have an idea as to what to do with it. Connor’s poster idea sounds great, and could be used alongside something along the lines of what I was planning to do with eWaste. Attach a video clip screening/discussion part to it, with the poster giving information as to when and where that discussion would be taking place.

            Government surveillance is not exactly something that is new. Nations have long had censorship systems acting against the spread of literature and ideas. However, in our evolving information age, where much of our communication relies on indirect, non-person-to-person methods, the power censorship and surveillance has [and continues to] grown exponentially. Just think about how much of your own personal communication is done by impersonal methods on a daily basis, all of which is subject to what amount to wiretappings.

            The whole issue of bulk surveillance violating personal privacy is already a social justice issue in itself, yet that is just the beginning… The one who controls the message controls the conversation, will control the “facts” and “definitions” of a phenomenon, which leads to mass public opinion/thought shaping and controls, especially when the propagandists appear legitimate [or even are legitimate but have fallen into the same thought trap as the rest of us]. I remember how I found out last year that the NSA surveillance programs had already been reveled once around the time the Iraq occupation started, but were ignored because of event priority in the news. Of course, it is hard to say whether discovering the programs earlier would have changed anything, given the war climate in the USA at the time and the lack of mobile, internet-accessing devices, as well as constraints on the practicality of video streaming at the time.

            Regardless, surveillance is a major social justice issue once one realizes how censorship--and even more so, indirect censorship by psychological warfare--instilling fears of surveillance--is able to dictate the entire conversation on a topic. So, for that reason, I am jumping off this eWaste WALL-E-class tugboat to jump onto Connor’s all-seeing-eye-class surveillance aircraft carrier.