Politicized Social Media Platforms [or Why I Dumped Twitter]

“Some” social media accounts are more American than US citizens?

By Sheila Dean

On October 18th, 2017 Twitter joined a small league of American social media companies who decided to monitor naturalized US citizens.  In 2013, Twitter distanced itself from National Security agencies, denouncing NSA PRISM program surveillance of its social media accounts.  So what changed? 

Come to think of it, not much has changed at all. We should readily realize virtually no single social media platform or US media company has consistent integrity conforming to US public Constitutional protections. The general rule is if you have to agree to a Terms of Service agreement to do anything online you are paying with your private data; which may used with or without your consent.

For instance, Comcast believes it has the right to demand the last four of your SSN#. If they never overtly asked you for permission to use the last-4 of your Social Security Number via a customer service rep in the Philippines or Latin America; they have zero right to ask you for it for account verification purposes. If a company asks for the last 4 of your SSN and you never gave it to them in the first place for credit approvals, treat it like a phishing attack.  Hang up the phone and visit a store in person to administrate your account.  

Companies may ask for verification of identity, but they never have the right to use your personal information without your permission. There has to be a specific purpose for the use of your information. For that purpose, they need documented consent. They’re not in a position to really make demands for government mandated identity.

The SSN# is especially sensitive information. It is even more so now due to the Equifax breach. You can ask for a passcode or 2-factor authentication number to be generated for your online accounts.  I have also included an example letter to  help request your SSN removal for customer authorization purposes at the end of this blog. 

CONVENIENCE VS. PERSONAL SOVEREIGNTY

You are in the drivers seat.  If convenience is more important than privacy - keep doing what you’re doing. Just know you are developing media companies’ private data sales kiosk of You; which they do in fact readily sell to any paying government customer who will purchase your information. Media companies like Twitter and Xfinity aren’t picky.

When DHS or the NSA won’t obey US agency legal compliance, neither will media companies.  You can enter in a civil suit to sue both.  You might lose; but you also might win. They brought the Constitutional fight to you.  You didn’t beg Twitter, a social media company, to treat your citizenship like a subjective matter and as a personal speech surveillance tool.

I think the messages from US media companies are pretty clear: US citizens don’t have any observable rights we need to care about.  They may as well be China, Russia or any other totalitarian regime on earth completely forfeited from the value of US Constitutional protections.  We all know there is no US Embassy in Cyberspace. 

Actions at Twitter now work to exclude naturalized US citizens from those who would have lawful protections under the US government.  Both Bush and Obama presidencies put unsecured access to mass surveillance ahead of domestic information security interests.  Trump, who is only informed by precedent, thinks readily some citizens are more protected than others.

When citizens aren’t really citizens in the United States for personal rights in protected speech and 4th Amendment limits, either we are not living in America or America isn’t really a Constitutional Republic with equal protections under the law.  In reality, both of these ideas are parasitic falsehoods hooked up by corrupt interests to siphon off resources of your labor, your money, your family and your freedom.

When a US soldier dies for US Constitutional freedoms and guaranteed rights, they don’t get to pick which citizens get the benefit of their sacrifice.  So no social media company should decide whose US citizenship rights and protections are denied. You are either a US citizen or you are not. If you are, it definitely means more than having someone parse your rights from a corrupt legal ivory tower in Silicon Valley.

So I scheduled deletion of all of my Twitter accounts.

Certain media denizens will decry it’s a “chilling effect”. They think far too much of global online services. Twitter only has the information power you give it. They need you to farm information.  If you stop giving them information, they will develop similar problems to Facebook's “news shortage”.  

US identity is only for approved use by the worthy.

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EU's Safe Harbor Invalidation means 'You are free to do better.'

Europe’s privacy offices are now empowered to do more than look the other way at compromised data transfers.

Data transfer practice at US companies have reputedly poor standards facing the rest of the globe, particularly developed countries in the EU. The plain sense of the Safe Harbor agreement was to create a protected data pipeline to and from countries across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, actions conducted by US and UK intelligence authorities really victimized Europe’s data partnerships in the vagaries, compromising the intent and integrity of Safe Harbor agreement.  This is has led to an Irish based uprising to successfully invalidate a law that provided no useful protections for data transfers.   The ruling will impact the way e-commerce is conducted nearly immediately.

Privacy officers are scrambling to gird themselves under Article 25, EU privacy law. The are throwing out ‘model contracts’  as life savers, now they have been dumped overboard.  They are consulting each other on the would-be Safe Harbor 2.0.  Some coming in the form of binding contract resolutions, deferring to the standards of third party countries (Switzerland), auditing the existing data transfer priorities in order to produce a legal, viable alternative to continue commerce and trading.  Some are even still standing on the sinking ship saying, “You may still honor the Safe Harbor stand… BLUB, BLUB…*!”

There is enormous potential for good to come from an upset; that privacy counsel, Daniel Solove, attributed to “cavalier attitudes” of US governance toward EU data protections.  The legal privacy vacuum opened up by the Safe Harbor invalidation can now be filled with far better standards for the human rights of computer users in Europe. 

The EU has initiated an atmosphere of conditional embargo with some potential for US-EU commerce based on practice that has failed to protect consumers. Unlawful smash & grabs of non-criminal data based on US laws conducted by the Five Eyes/ECHELON group violates computer users everywhere. The EU now has an opportunity to impose standardized consumer data protections with some real teeth on countries in violation of UNHRC privacy rights. They have cause to cease business relations with any county that doesn’t honor its agreements and violates the human rights of its citizens.  While no country wants to pause commercial relations for long, the standards erected now could influence the way US companies collect and distribute data in a global economy respecting privacy.

There are terrific, diverse solutions for a higher global privacy standards. Almost instantly, the Snowden Treaty became a relevant goto for trade reform standard discussions. This suggests trade relations standards would not be harmed or frozen indefinitely over government spying, if companies assume socially responsible protections that do far better than existing law and governance policy. Privacy officials can now bring their most ethical and use friendly solutions for data management to the table to reform conventional business practices that even the most lazy and apathetic corporate counsels would be forced to conform to. US businesses may see the the data protections as a legal relief to require company wide adoption of encryption for all of their consumer and company products. Socially responsible privacy practice has legal means to flourish now the Safe Harbor falsehood has fallen apart.  Finally, they are free to do better.


Reports have indicated that at least 4,500 US companies will be impacted by the Safe Harbor ruling. US businesses will sustain some suffering under drafting of Safe Harbor 2.0 scaffolds, but it’s really for the best.