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In March, the United States Special Operations Command, the section of the Defense Department supervising the US Special Forces, held a conference on the theme of "Sovereignty in the Information Age." The conference brought together Special Forces officers with domestic police forces, including officials from the New York Police Department, and representatives from technology companies such as Microsoft.
This meeting of top military, police and corporate representatives went unreported and unpublicized at the time. However, the Atlantic Council recently published a 21-page document summarizing the orientation of the proceedings. It is authored by John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the US Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.
[...] The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. "Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important.... In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public's increased trust in them as institutions."
But this is only the beginning. Online newspapers should "consider disabling commentary systems—the function of allowing the general public to leave comments beneath a particular media item," while social media companies should "use a grading system akin to that used to rate the cleanliness of restaurants" to rate their users' political statements.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/pers-o05.html
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:14PM (9 children)
This proposal is un-American. It's a clone of what the Chinese are implementing.
Dissent is at the heart of discourse in a democracy. Dialogue instead of monologue is the hallmark of the Information Age. Shutting down conversation because the powers-that-be don't like what the rabble are saying exemplifies tyranny.
People in government who champion this sort of thing should get voted off the island. Champion torture? Bye-bye. Champion police state surveillance? Buh-bye. Champion censorship? So long.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Fluffeh on Tuesday October 09 2018, @10:35PM (1 child)
We can't let the Chinese get better than us at something! We need to play catch-up and quick-smart!
Seriously, do you not think most governments don't look at the state control in places like China and just dream of having even a small fraction of that power? Do you not think they wouldn't do just about anything to have that ability to "do good for the entire country" (as long as that view aligns perfectly with their personal view of what is good and not a sliver more or less).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @12:17PM
It's "terrorism gap"! The word originally meant government violence against its citizens. ref [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 10 2018, @03:36AM (6 children)
Dialogue and discussion between your fellow country peeps is easy. Dialogue and discussion between citizens and several embedded foreign shills/propagandists... that's tough. A moderation system helps eliminate the garbage but it's a kind of censorship.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday October 10 2018, @05:35AM (5 children)
When the US constitution was drafted, it was necessary for the American forefathers to specifically circumvent British political science since it was tainted by the feudal-monarchical values of the British nobility. They referred to French and other European works instead and draw inspiration from the Romans and Greeks. They made many mistakes while they were at it. But they had no other way to get rid of the monarchy.
During the days of civil war, most the industrialized north required college students to learn either French or German since much of science and engineering was conducted in those. The moral opposition to slavery was much to do from being influenced by those foreign thoughts. Especially when you had black artists and journalists in France living in a free society and portraying the US for the barbaric nation it was at the time. Things got twisted around WW1:
( https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-science-come-to-speak-only-english [aeon.co] )
From then on, it only got worse and worse. Now you have idiots 1984-thumping when opposing nationalized health care since they have no idea they're a century behind the rest of the world. It's why the US and Britain still have executions and torture and how Brexit was possible. It's also why the Chinese can get away with so much: If Anglo-Saxons could communicate better with Europeans, the Middle East would have been a done deal 50 years ago and the Chinese wouldn't have been able to divide and conquer us by narrow economic interests.
So no. Less international influences on political discourse is certainly not the way to go about democracy. It is, however, a great way to become the next great authoritarian empire. Which some people would very much like the US to become.
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(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:28AM
It is very common that citizens of nations other than the US are multilingual, enough so that they do just fine living and working in foreign lands.
While foreign languages are commonly taught in US Junior High and High Schools, it is exceedingly uncommon for American-born people to know a foreign language well enough to have so much as a casual conversation in it, let alone use it in their daily work.
I studied German for four years, yet the longest conversation I have ever had in that language was roughly ten minutes, with the German immigrant who interviewed me for MIT. I cannot recall so much as once having a real conversation in any of my German classes, or in my Russian class at Caltech.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Dr Spin on Wednesday October 10 2018, @09:21AM (1 child)
It's why the US and Britain still have executions
The UK has not had executions since the late 1960's after it was discovered that the convictions of the last 13 hanged were all unconvincing, and in about 5 cases, someone else had admitted the offence later.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 10 2018, @02:53PM
With or without court sanctions, regardless of it being public, closed doors or secretive, its own citizens or foreigners, at wartime or during peace, on its own soil or abroad, Britain been executing terrorists and the like for decades. Sometimes its using intelligence agents. Sometimes its by ordering shoot-to-kill. Sometimes its by opening fire on civilian infrastructure during wartime under suspicion of collaboration... The term "execution" simply means someone in government gave the order to kill and it was carried out through the chain of command by this or that branch. The reason it's muddled is because there laws and treaties meant to limit these that the US and Britain been trying to avoid since Agincourt.
It's a long, infamous tradition.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday October 10 2018, @08:42PM (1 child)
Science papers have evidence, citations, and are peer reviewed (moderated). A news site comments section is the wild west and filled with bullshit. Trying to solve nationalized healthcare in the comments section of CNN is a terrible idea. You also completely ignored the point i was trying to make about bad actors who are trying to sabotage or steer discussion.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 11 2018, @08:22AM
Not political science and the law. Look up Machiavelli's works. Discourses on Livy and The Prince were especially referenced by the American forefathers and those are still in-effect despite being provingly wrong by modern works. And the whole US legal frameworks is based on philosophical ass-pulls from 16th century thinkers that just didn't have the sources and were brought up on the kind of "scientific disciplines" Monty Python made fun of in the witch/duck sketch.
No I didn't. That whole post-WW1 censorship of foreign languages came about following the WW1 propaganda which had bad actors all over. And it made more harm than good. The correct way to combat false rumors is with education and regular exposure to multiple opinions. People shouldn't trust their news sources or officials to begin with. They should double check what their religious leaders tell them. They should triple check what their elected officials tell them. They should read their own and the opposition's news sources and compare. It's not recommended. It's mandatory.
Go talk to 16 somethings who grow up on social networks. They don't believe anything without sources. And half the time they'll tell you those are probably photoshoped. It's our generation that having trouble keeping up with the times. Give it another decade and it won't be a problem anymore.
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