It was August, 2014 and I came across an article which said how an organization called Kno.e.sis had worked with The Bhartiya Janata Party to analyze sentiments on Twitter.It really fascinated me and hence led me to work with the organization for my project. It was a decent exposure, but more importantly it transitioned my career in a completely different direction.
Today, I saw a movie called ‘The Lives of Others’ which illustrates how State Sponsored Surveillance worked in post-WWII era and its effect on common day people, most notably on dissidents. As portrayed in the movie, Operation Lazlo was a mission to monitor activities of a writer and his actress partner. An ideal communist and a nuanced interrogator takes up this assignment and later falls sympathetic to the writer’s cause. The actress was blackmailed to turn into an informer and later commits suicide hence leading to termination of Operation Lazlo. The thrilling movie led me to introspect how we are still being ‘watched’ every day.
State Sponsored surveillance has taken a new form and is called ‘Sentiment Analysis’ today. It’s a technique where people’s action over social media is monitored and personalized content is displayed in-order to promote a false propaganda and for political gains. There are specialized cyber-cells, whose only aim is to deride opposing viewpoints. Democrats started this trend in 2012, BJP followed it in 2014 and it has become a norm today. The Great Firewall of China would not allow you to post incendiary articles against the Communist Party and residents in the Middle East might be whipped for treason.
My very close friend is an officer in the Indian Navy, and he elaborates lengths at which countries go to keep their citizens safe. He says that in today’s age when Social Media is used as a recruiting tool by anti-national elements, it becomes important to filter the medium. The real question is how far they should go and who ensures that the limit is not crossed? Should they eliminate every protester or survey lives of each and every citizen like the case of Operation Prism by NSA?
Sadly, 1984 by George Orwell is more relevant now that it was during the cold war and apparently surveillance programs are reaching new lows day by day. You can watch this really good movie here. It’s in German apparently 🙂
From the vault! 