Freedom of Thought

Freedom of thought (also called freedom of conscience or ideas) is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints. It is different from and not to be confused with the concept of freedom of speech or expression.

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Among other cherished values of free thought is freedom of speech the right to articulate one's opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship, or societal sanction. The term "freedom of expression" is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used.

Freedom of speech no longer exists even on the lands that gave the world the Magna Carta, the Levellers, and John Stuart Mill—three of the key foundation stones of the modern conception of liberty—are now arresting and even jailing people simply for speaking their minds.

When censorship is implemented in any form, it is one’s freedom that is questioned. So when applied to the context of social media, it is the right to freedom of speech and expression that is under threat, though the extent of this threat is debatable. When a particular piece of information is censored, it means that the censoring authority does not want the public to know about it.

Censorship generally comes into play in the light of either foreseen adverse impact or any adverse impact that might have occurred in the past due to sharing of similar information or content. The justification of this kind of censorship is that public consumption of such information might result in disrupting the integrity or harmony of the state, or a particular community or individuals as such.

Privacy concerns with social networking services is a subset of data privacy, involving the right of mandating personal privacy concerning storing, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and displaying of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet.

Figuring out what is legal or not when it comes to government eavesdropping is no easy matter. In many contexts, such as political corruption and organized crime cases, informants and wiretaps are critical crime-fighting tools for government investigators. Most can be used to geolocate people.

Modern day government surveillance is based on the simple concept of “more is more” and “bigger is better”. More emails, more text messages, more phone calls, more screenshots from Skype calls. The bigger the haystack, the more needles we can find.

Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that this fundamental idea drives intelligence agencies like the NSA and GCHQ - the desire to collect it all, to generate gigantic haystacks through which to trawl.

From the documents that Snowden leaked, we can read in GCHQ and NSA’s own words how we are living in a “golden age” of electronic surveillance, an age in which a solitary GCHQ program, TEMPORA, is able to record 39 billion “events” in a 24 hour period, and an NSA program called DISHFIRE collects an average of 194 million text messages a day.

The NSA collects 5,000,000,000 mobile phone location records every day under a set of programs called CO-TRAVELLER. A joint GCHQ/NSA program called MUSCULAR once sent back 181,280,000 records during one 30-day period.

Officials are continuously telling us that governments are “going dark” and need greater and longer access to our information. But the voices from citizens, academics, civil society, tech companies, security experts, and human rights bodies from around the world are not being heard when they say our rights are being completely disregarded.

Governments should not be permitted to collect and store all mass, undigested, non-public personal information about individuals to enable future queries and data-mining for foreign intelligence purposes.

The fight against terrorism can never be a justification for untargeted, secret, or even illegal mass surveillance programmes; takes the view that such programmes are incompatible with the principles of necessity and proportionality in a democratic society.

The very existence of a mass surveillance program thus creates an interference with privacy. The hard truth is that the use of mass surveillance technology effectively does away with the right to privacy of communications on the Internet altogether.

Wiretapping activities and surveillance practices, endanger fundamental human rights, including the rights to privacy, freedom of information and expression, and the rights to a fair trial and freedom of religion - especially when privileged communications of lawyers and religious ministers are intercepted and when digital evidence is manipulated). These rights are cornerstones of democracy. Their infringement without adequate judicial control also jeopardizes the rule of law.

People nowadays people are investigated for hashtags used on Twitter. Never mind speechcrime, or even tweetcrime—now we have hashtagcrime, the criminalisation even of those snarky, ironic asides people pepper the internet with. Something just doesn't add up.

As the internet continues to evolve and with it our privacy continues to be a matter of debate. Our privacy is being challenged again according to a new story from the BBC.

Google started to operate under a new privacy policy that enables the Internet giant to dig even deeper into the lives of more than one billion users. This means Google will track what you search for in its search engine facility and then use that intelligence to its advantage. It may suggest YouTube videos you might like or simply present you with advertisements it thinks are relevant to you.

It’s obvious why Google is doing this, as advertising is its main source of income, boasting $38 billion every year. And it makes complete sense to offer advertisers ‘targeted ads’ to the right audience because in most cases Google only gets paid if someone ‘clicks’ on an ad link. Naturally, the more relevant and successful the advertising program, the more money Google will make.

How could you prevent Google from using your personal data? At the moment, you can’t. Not if you’re a registered user of its products such as Gmail, Google+ and YouTube. But there are some steps you can take to minimize the data collected.

In this digital age we have sacrificed our privacy in order to access all manner of free stuff on the web. It’s a movement that most of us have come to accept. Or have we?

MetaFilter quote: ‘If you’re not paying for it; you are the product’. Not sure how many are fully aware of this sentiment yet or whether anyone even care. But the next time you’re browsing the web or enjoying a video on YouTube for free, remember that Google is also watching your every move; because that’s the price you pay!

In the world of digital information, security and marketing there is unsafe, and there is safer, but rest assured none is hack-proof. Thinkers beware!

Food for thought...