Is Steemit A Dragnet?
Hello Steemians!
Whenever I write an article that may ruffle the feathers of the powers that be, my husband, Jared, warns me that my actions may alert the wrong people. Looking at my post history, these articles are usually about CPS under the @familyprotection tag, or about another subject I periodically try to spread awareness about: gangstalking.
He gets very uncomfortable about it, and asserts that just because I'm posting on Steemit, doesn't mean I'm not being monitored. I've tried to reason with him, saying that Steemit is filled with free-thinkers, libertarians, anarchists, ect. There are no censorship issues here really. It's a place where one can express thoughts and ideas freely, and when on Steemit, I am among friends.
He laughs and asks me, "Why can't you see this? Steemit's a dragnet. The government uses algorithms that detect key words to flag, these articles are saved and categorized in some database somewhere to possibly be used against you someday! It's like you think you're saving the world by poking a beehive!"
These discussions never stop me because when I feel the need to speak out about something I have a one track mind. It's almost like I can't stop, and I don't even care about his warnings.
Do you think it's possible that the government is allowing Steemit to exist right now to attract and monitor people like us in one convenient place. I mean everything we write can be seen by anyone who has internet, so it's not like we're hard to find. If what my husband says is true, do you care? I'd like to know your thoughts.
Yesterday evening he wrote a poem about corrupt governments throughout history, and I had the idea for him to write a poem that would correlate with this subject, thinking it may be an interesting share. He wrote it, and I thought it was awful, so I did some heavy editing, and then he thought my finished product was awful haha! So we sat down, and reworked the whole poem out together, while staying true to his intentions for the poem. Hope you enjoy!
Grass Roots Steem
Some things in life are easily deduced
Seduction of intellect mixed with grass roots
Sharing our lives, a community of truth
We earnestly know that our joy is the proof
We make up a tapestry of true liberty
We revive and surpass our forefather's dreams
The flaws they carried are now washed away
A more perfect union is coming they say
It can catch a bear with a mean steely trap
Better yet, with destraction it preys
Soon we will know as our community grows
All walk into that government maze
Don't you know that the dragnet can't be seen
When an idealist wants to fight through the screen
Twenty-first century spooks need not roam the street
They glean the things they need without jackboots on their feet
You invite spying eyes and a listening ear
Cloaked useful tools, you hold them dear
You've heard "don't invite a vampire in."
Since you have, your defences were lost
Watching and listening by your own consent
It is you who will pay the cost
Tape the cameras,
Remove the microphone
They mock and laugh at you
You really should have known
This matters not, with your keystrokes you'll find
Your words analyzed by a digital mind
Flagged and stored and sent up the tubes
Just like that, they know your moves
They discover your thoughts, find out your demands
But not only you, your family and friends
Passing our files to those who patiently wait out of sight
Trained in assimilation until the timing is right
With each generation they pass the baton
Hiers of victory, having won the fight
The Trojan horse is already here
They're already after you dear
Avatars who aren't what they seem
Appearing benevolent, they study your dreams
Indeed this poem may also be screened
Love, snowpea ❤
My girlfriend worries about the same thing with my VOP writing, and other areas I plan on venturing such as gangstalking. I will tell you what I tell her.
This all might be futile, the darkness always to control and abuse the masses. But the only certainty is that if no one speaks up it will not change. We have gotten this far down into the abyss because so many don't speak up. And if it reaches a point where it goes much further than it has, they will no longer hide what they do. It has become so apparent as everyone compares their stories, their truths it is no longer just some stupid conspiracy theory. To many have experienced the same crap and they can't put this back in the box.
This is one of my worst nightmares...things are getting so bad so quickly.
You're right about how if nobody speaks out, things will surely not change for the better.
After you reason with her does your girlfriend feel better about you being outspoken?
No, she doesn't feel any better. She has a mistrust of the government for personal reasons, ones I understand. However, I have to be part of the solution or I have abandoned all of my brothers and sisters who would see a better world. The best I can give her is my comfort that I understand her fears, and share some of them myself.
The first thing I thought of when I read this is fear for you and especially her when and if you make your gangstalking research public. Often they will attack the one who has a stronger fear response or who they consider the weakest link. Speaking out against it might just be asking for it. You may already have a hunch that it's a possibility, but I thought I'd warn you anyway.
Yes, I understand. Thank you for your concern. :)
Its important not to get confused about the benefits of Steemit (and blockchain in general).
Getting paid for your content: YES
Censorship Resistant: YES
Owning your own content: YES
Anonymous: Only partly and certainly not from government.
Private: NO
NOTHING you post online to any app (Facebook, Medium, Reddit etc) is private.
Unless you use strong end-to-end encryption like ProtonMail, not even you emails are private.
However there is a big difference between your private information being monetised to make someone else rich, and it making money for you.
I think what hubby takes issue with the most is that the content I sometimes create could draw too much attention to myself, yet here on Steemit there's a false sense of security when saying what we want, when in reality I'm sure the government has a special eye on us.
Believe me @apshamilton, I'm not leaving anytime soon lol. There are many benefits, and it's still my favorite online place to be. :)
The only alternative is self censorship. As there is no alternative to Steemit.
Add to this that steemit's wallet is viewable by everyone.
https://staging.busy.org/@bifilarcoil/looking-into-another-man-s-wallet
and the owner of the wallet can't even see WHO has been looking in the wallet.
Steemit is hosted on (amazon?) cloud servers, that for sure can not be monitored by 'strangers'
And then there is this discord thing that is hosted on (google?) cloud servers.
Is not encrypted, uses insecure messaging protocols, uses unencrypted email to send notification emails... to name a few.
Now steemit is still beta, but yeah gmail was also beta for YEARS
If it exists then people will use it...
If we only had privacy aware people building these kinds of systems...
Then there is the point that to be able change things people need to be aware of things first. And that needs communication about the issues. (as we are doing right now)
Someone needs the courage to discuss this else we are all lost...
Until things are fixed we are all screwed anyways.
And as Steemit is still beta NOW is the time to fix things. So now is the time to raise the issues. :-) If they have any ethics at all (and thats also questionable) then they would embrace the feedback, ask questions to US on these issues and find real solutions ASAP as there are privacy law's all over the planet that steemit needs to respect. and sould not be 'done away' with a BS additional policy change. (this is BTW why i'm using busy.org to access the steem blockchain)
Steemit should respect privacy by defauld and should not make 'policy excuses' to do away with privacy
You've really educated me with your comment. Much of the information you mentioned I was unaware of, such as what kind of servers Steemit uses, and more importantly, how they disregarded our privacy with a policy change. I've always been kind of bothered by how everything we post can be accessed by outsiders if they have enough information or type the right subject or word into a search engine.
Once someone found my post because she was looking at pictures of cats online and fell upon an article about CPS. She joined Steemit to make a comment on the post, which was fine, but a bit disconcerting.
The problem with busy.org is that..well...I just don't like it lol.
You should consider making a post with the information in this comment. I wonder how many other people would benefit from it, and perhaps start speaking out too.
Thanks for stopping by! :)
There is no alternative to STEEM. There are alternatives to STEEMIT. Such as busy.org, esteem, etc.
They all look at the blockchain and you are correct that it is transparent and easy to see but really it is not STEEMIT that is transparent. It is the blockchain. This is good, and bad if you are worried about dragnets.
Yet using the internet itself is mostly dragnets all over the place. Unless you go only to encrypted services and sites, you can potentially be exposed.
It is not worth focusing on this dragnet aspect in my opinion. Any of us could end up in trouble so we could waste a lot of time trying not to get in dragnet and thus be silenced. Or we can choose not to speak, because then they can't dragnet us. They are fine with that. Silence is consent.
Mainly I wanted to just correct what you were saying and point out there ARE alternatives to STEEMIT on the STEEM blockchain. There are no alternatives like STEEM yet, but there are blockchains capable of hosting such a thing (EOS) and hopefully one of them will take off at some point.
Thanks for this. As the intelligence agencies around the world are rolling out dragnets this still means that we would need an alternative for STEEM. If STEEM and dragnets fail to respect basic privacy laws STEEM is most likely doomed anyway.
The Dragnets of the intelligence agencies will detect this fault and say: STEEM does not respect our national laws. and they close the door on STEEM.
UNLESS they enjoy the lack of privacy for their own evil purposes. So either way we are screwed and the only solution is to actually fix this...
This is a catch 22
If we choose not to speak then we cannot use Steemit and we can not earn STEEM as it requires us to be social.
thats quiet a few nails in the Steemit coffin... And to me it looks like steem needs to get an upgrade.
Pioneers will own the blockchain
The thing about steem. It is a blockchain not owned by a centralized agency. It is also based on open source code. So it would difficult and near impossible to insure it is completely shut down. That is one of the reasons people want decentralized things.
They could target the websites that allow you to view the blockchain, but those too are open source (at least steemit is) and you could spin up another website to access the blockchain almost anywhere.
So this would be one of the more difficult things in existence for them to just SHUT DOWN. Just like they can't shut down bitcoin.
They could make it difficult to use it, but to completely eliminate it would be difficult.
This is assuming it is actually setup like I think it is. :)
I try and keep my identity separate from the handle. Not like that would fool anyone in power who wanted to find out who I am. Even potentially worse than what we are actively choosing to share with the world on the blockchain is the telemetry and spying tactics introduced with new windows updates for 7, 8, 10 and the way cellular phones operate.
In those instances their is a comfortable illusion of privacy when in fact it's anything but. All of your information is being vacuumed up and sold to the highest bidder. There is a company that has over 4,000 data points on each and every American. Their potential to manipulate people in the future with the AI and various personality profiles built around how well they know us will be staggering.
Society Is Being Programmed By A Black Box
I can't upvote right now recharging VP but you've got a resteem from me. Your man is definitely not wrong, big question is, is how detrimental could it be to your future. I'm sure you can imagine someone like AJ or people the deep state perceives to be their enemy would have much more to be concerned about with respect to how much they know about him.
Nice poem you two!
Nice to find someone else with likemindedness to follow! will watch this vid later :) thanks
Likewise, he's a couple more for ya: link one, link two.
Thanks!
The second one is great that it was on a new channel! I learnt this from the small print of fakebook messenger!
This is frightening...4000 data points?? I don't think I could even come up with 4000 data points about myself, or my entire household hold for that matter...
Thanks for the resteem and the STEEM upvote! :)
Happy to, yeah it's a pretty bold claim they made.
There is the source below. I think they're using it
mainly for predictive analytics and how to sway
the group mind in the direction their client wants.
Probably in the realm of some1 like Edward Bernays.
If you stop talking, they have won.
No need to stifle speech if nobody is doing it.
No need to make you stop, if nobody is listening,...
Eloquently said @freebornangel. Sadly most people aren't listening.
It's an opinion, nobody cares,...
Your husband is smart & correct
He would agree with you. ;)
Every public place we speak may be a dragnet. Yet some things are too important to remain silent about. Those doing evil things would like nothing more than people not to speak about their wrong doings.
So anything that is public which STEEM is can be potentially used as a dragnet.
COURAGE.
A person is only courageous or brave if they are afraid of something and they work up the will to face that fear and o it anyway.
Someone with no fear can never be referred to as either brave or courageous.
Likewise someone forced (by taxes, or other means) to pay for some socialist program to "help" some group can not be referred to as being compassionate. Compassion requires choice.
Stay the course, you do good work. Your husband is correct about the potential dragnet, but I don't think trying to be safe and avoid danger is a wise course in this day and age either.
Do we agree to be a slave, or do we fight? Fighting requires entering places that could be dragnets.
@dwinblood, I don't know what else to say besides your words were exactly what I needed to see. They gave me much needed confidence in the midst of this sea of voices. This is why you're a leader in this community. Thank you for your support, and the resteem. :) Edit: and that's not to say I don't appreciate everyone's addition to the conversation. Just that you have a gift.
Also I am worse off than many of you. My handle here dwinblood is indeed my first initial and last name. So I am far from anonymous. Shrug If they want to kill me, imprison me, etc. they will.
Almost ANYWHERE on the internet or traversing the internet is a dragnet.
Unless it is heavily encrypted it can be gathered by bots. So the only way to truly avoid it is not to use it at all. Yet that like not voting is essentially giving them your okay to continue their actions... silence is consent.
Thanks. There are days I can put my foot in my mouth too. Part of being human. ;)
Highly rEsteemed!
Bladerunning would be way more fun compared to thinking I'm going crazy. 😂 Thanks so much for the resteem!
I really wouldn't bother about this, we are creating as much information as we did in the 20th century every few months now. No government has got time and resource to check everything out.
At worst they have a multipoint algorithm whereby you would have to checklist many, many flags before you became somebody they were actually looking at.
Cg
I respect your opinion. Seeing that this is your opinion, however, I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about what happened to me, because you would probably think I am looney tunes.
Perhaps when they are trying to snag true threats this is the case. There are other programs with different objectives out there though, such as silencing whistleblowers, and conducting social experiments. I have personally been a target of organized stalking for 3 1/2 years now. The hacking of all my devices. My dad is a software engineer, and he told me that remote desktop hacking was happening (even with McAfee protection installed). When we tried to fix my two laptops, the hard drives were destroyed. This is only one aspect of what happened to me. I am no threat, but was targeted nonetheless.
This article was a great conversation starter, and in my opinion of course it's a dragnet! After everything I went through I just don't care anymore, and I will say whatever I want. ;)
I hope they read every word.
I hope 100 potential Edward Snowdens pore over each of my posts.
There is no government, there's only people.
Convince enough people it doesn't exist and it goes away.
They're really good looking guys in the NSA. Clever, handsome, great sense of humour.
I'm sure they'll benefit from reading a whole lot of freedom themed posts all day :)
I love this attitude! Sometimes I feel the same way, thinking If some agent is reads this, maybe he'll be impacted in some way. Wishful thinking for the most part though. For every one Edward Snowden there are 100 handpicked individuals who are programmed and unable to think critically. They do their jobs well. Even if they're good-looking and can tell a joke. ;)