Social Media: Faster Way to Spread Evil and Good

Alex Byers @ Politico makes an interesting case that "social media was the kerosene that turned fire in Ferguson into a national blaze." Why?  Because “social networks like Twitter highlight tensions in the moment rather than calm them ... On the ground, social networks have been a key part of how protesters have organized and established a support system. It’s also given a digital megaphone to those who have taken a leading role in the demonstrations…”

Added to ISIL’s video of journalist James Foley’s beheading and Jihadists' successful use of new media to organize globally, it’s a reminder that technology has merely given us a newer, more rapid communications system which, like communications systems of old, can be used to spread evil as well as good.  The question is whether its great speed will diminish, rather than strengthen, our individual and collective capacity for critical thought and problem solving.

See #Ferguson: Social Media More Spark Than Solution

Hold Those Sexy Photos!

"Girls who post 'sexy' pictures on social media sites are seen by their female peers as less pretty, less likely to get a job done and not someone they'd want to be friends with, a new study shows," reports the UK Telegraph.

The Oregon State University asked 58 girls aged 13-18, and 60 women aged 17-25, what they thought of a girl when her Facebook profile picture was 'sexy', and when it was 'conservative'.

Researchers found that the less revealing pictures scored the highest in terms of the girl’s perceived physical attractiveness, social attractiveness and task competence.

The biggest difference was found in task competence - those girls with 'sexy' photos were seen as not able to complete a task.

“This is a clear indictment of sexy social media photos,” said researcher Elizabeth Daniels, an assistant professor of psychology who studies the effect of media on girls’ body image.

“There is so much pressure on teen girls and young women to portray themselves as sexy. But sharing those sexy photos online may have more negative consequences than positive.

The study was published in the journal Psychology of Popular Media Culture.

Silicon Valley Built NSA's Surveillance State

"Some of America's biggest social media and tech companies have been denying in recent days that they were aware of the National Security Agency's recently-exposed "PRISM" and telephone monitoring programs. But these denials obscure a larger truth: The government's massive data collection and surveillance system was largely built not by professional spies or Washington bureaucrats but by Silicon Valley and private defense contractors."

So begins Michael Hirsh's fascinating piece, based on an interview with former CIA Director Michael Hayden, in this week's Atlantic, "Silicon Valley Doesn't Just Help the Surveillance State — It Built It." Among Hirsh's points:

• NSA contracted with America's social media and tech companies to set up and administer these surveillance programs.
• "There isn't a phone or a computer at Fort Meade [NSA headquarters] that the government owns" today.
• "For the tech industry, especially the social-media companies, the controversy over the extent of NSA's domestic data gathering has become an acute embarrassment," with heads of two of the biggest, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Google co-founder Larry Page, issuing "near-identical statements late last week saying neither of them had ever heard 'of a program called PRISM' until the press reports."
• "Yet for Hayden, who was one of the longest-serving NSA directors ever, remaking the stodgy Cold Ward spy agency into a private-tech-sector enterprise was a logical outgrowth of dramatic changes in the nature of both threats and technology."

By the time 9/11 arrived, the American tech industry was building the best stuff and had the best minds, so the NSA no longer had any choice but to enlist Silicon Valley's help. Signals intelligence "has to look like its target. We have to master whatever technology the target is using to turn his beeps and squeaks into something humanly intelligible," Hayden says. Not only was much of this traffic being routed through the United States, but the tech sector knew how to penetrate and "mine" it. He concludes: "Why would we not turn the most powerful telecommunications and computing management structure on the planet to our use?"

The NSA did. But now some of these companies may come to regret what is emerging as a public relations disaster.

Welcome to the 21st Century's military-intelligence complex.