Birgitta Jonsdottir: My Twitter case and 'thoughtcrime'

All of who care for freedom of information, speech and expression should be thankful for the recent ruling in my Twitter case. Thankful because it exposes the reality in which we live. The judge’s ruling exposed the blatant truth: that users of the Internet and social media sites hosted in the USA do NOT have any rights as individuals to defend themselves against the tyranny of authorities wanting to use the information we share and often consider private. Emails, conversations, messaging and social networking are now fair game for the “thought police.” It is good that we know that this is how the court system in the land of the free views our rights, because now we can do something about regaining those rights!
We are at critical point when it comes to freedom of information and speech. If we don’t act now it might be too late in a years’ time. Everything happens so fast in the realm of the Internet -- our rights are eroding every day at an alarming speed. I urgently suggest and call upon everyone who cares for their rights to their content online to join me in fighting for these rights.
I am calling for a joint action to demand that all social media sites that host our information in the USA will notify all of their users that they don’t have any rights to defend themselves except through these sites but not as individuals. I want to know if Facebook, Google and Twitter are willing battle for every one of us against unwarranted and sometimes secret demands to our information from the U.S. government. If they can’t make that pledge we will either leave them or ask them to change users’ terms or demand that authorities recognize our rights to defend ourselves.
Here are a few examples that I find unsettling:
Google hosts our entire history of searching and they create a profile of every one of us as consumers so that they can make us targeted costumers for individually directed ads. This is why Google can maintain their services for free.
If authorities get access to this profiling – do you feel comfortable that they do? Consider this scenario: You are doing research on terrorists or the drug culture for an article or essay – all of your searching is now part of your profile. It is easy to build a very damning and erroneous profile of you simply based on your innocent research.
Many users do not understand that they are giving away all control of their web usage statistics. Personal data can be used against you in secret! This is very dangerous to those, like me, who are activists, journalists and researchers. It equally endangers the merely curious.
All our emails can be exposed and handed over. Every email you write is an open postcard for authorities to read whenever they choose.Every move you make on Facebook can be used against you and as my case proved – we now know we have no right whatsoever to stop it even if we were to stop using these sites today. All our information is already stored there.
In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a “thoughtcrime” was an illegal type of thought.Have we finally reached the sad state of affairs where our written communication, indeed our very thoughts are seen by an increasingly surveillance-obsessed totalitarian state as “thoughtcrimes”? Is this the kind of world we would wish for our children?
In the next few days I will work to gather as many as supporters as possible to be part of this joint action for our rights as users of social media. It will be an effort to our privacy rights and the right to defend our personal content online. Drop me an email if you have ideas on how to take this further so we may make a shockwave of change.
Together we can stop this unjust development.
Birgitta Jonsdottir