Under Constant Surveillance

(Under Constant Surveillance)

One can begin today with "things that should never happen. As one might have recalled. in the FIFA Tournament held in Qatar, the U.S. team was victorious over Iran, winning 1-nil. That was not supposed to happen. An infidel prevailing over a Muslim country, in another Muslim country. There is supposed to be an understanding. One can participate in a league but that participation does not mean one can win. There are two franchises from Toronto, the Blue Jays in the National League and the NBA organization Raptors. However, the Blue Jays took the Fall Classic a number of years ago while the Raptors were NBA Champions. Canadian teams cannot be American champions ! Similarly, an American soccer club should not be able to defeat the Iranians in Qatar. Beat by the Great Satan ? How embarrassing.


Now, so-called "Big Tech" was one of the mechanisms that had put President Biden into office. It had been their control of information in the immediate period preceding the 2020 Election that the results to evolve as they did. Between Meta (previously Facebook) and Twitter, the ostensibly critical Hunter Biden story. It had been a team effort and there was collusion to attain the end result.


But Twitter is no longer a friendly environment for the President and Democrats. Twitter under the leadership of founder Jack Dorsey, who still needs to shave, proved a willing partner in the ouster of Trump. It comported its configuration where Democrat input was encouraged, and otherwise Republican contributions were not as evident. But, with Musk's acquisition of the platform, and his promised Twitter independence and a renewed commitment to "free speech."


Said speech is not necessarily White House speech. Losing Twitter to Musk is akin to the Democrats losing the House. Therefore, the Biden White House has announced that it will begin to monitor Twitter product to see that so called "dis-information" not be widely disseminated. What would qualify ? There can be so much variance with government policy and people can express an opinion without repercussions. It's just free speech, right ?


If there is an un-fettered and un-edited release of information into the public square, any sense of broader control becomes problematic. Authorities have their own messaging but if that gets diluted by non-authorized points of view, the government's powers of persuasion are similarly diminished.


Twitter has a lot is skeletons that all will need to be identified and that will have the potential to identify patterns of censorship in the previous Twitter regime. How many members of the Platform's pre-Musk era have left because of Musk's promise to open expression, the antithesis of what been Twitter's mission statement before. There is now new blood. And the White House needs to test it.

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