YEP, IT'S JUST WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE. The NOC's (National Operations Center) Media Monitoring Initiative is a rather scary, rather large leap in the powers that the federal government has with regards to censorship of the media. It is possibly the first step in what could become leaps and bounds towards total censorship of our nation's media, and most likely will be done in the name of fairness and protection. In addition, this new initiative being pursued by an off-shoot of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) seems to be in direct violation of our first amendment right to freedom of the press.
Freedom of the press...total freedom...is essential to our society. Free people must be able to freely express their opinions of leaders, of events and of their society. The press must not be regulated by a government who could manipulate it to serve its own purposes, but be allowed to express the general thoughts of a population. Free press does not mean, then, that the government has all-mighty power to monitor what is said, or who is saying it. That path is a dangerous one, but unfortunately seems to be the one we're on.
That is where this initiative, as I see it, is a direct violation of the constitution of the United States. Unlike SOPA and PIPA, the Media Monitoring Initiative flew under the radar. The initiative grants the power to the NOC and consequently DHS to gather personally identifiable information, or as they call it PII. This information can be gathered by DHS from any publicly viewed source and from any individual who is keeping their audience situationally aware. That could mean anyone from "Joe the plumber" to a suspected terrorist (refer to the NDAA for that definition). The language in the initiative is so broad and so completely vague that there is virtually no limit to the use and purpose of this initiative.
According to the Privacy Compliance Review of the NOC's initiative, the information will be used to provide situational awareness and a common operating picture. What? Something even more alarming is that this initiative was born out of one issued by DHS in the wake of the Haitian earthquake to provide assistance to the people of Haiti. The DHS decided they needed more power, and in turn came up with this. Essentially, information can be attained from any public source or any person who issues a public statement. Under this initiative, the NOC could collect PII for this blog as it is publicly available over the internet.
It's really unclear to me at least, what the real purpose of this initiative is, but it begs the question: what is stopping total censorship of our media? The DHS essentially granted itself the power to gather this information, so what would stop it from granting itself the power to shut down websites or stop individuals from speaking? The FCC has already proposed the Net Neutrality act which proposed "fairness" in the media. What would stop DHS from doing something similar in the interest of safety or national security? At the very least, the prospect of the Department of Homeland Security being able to monitor social-media sites, news broadcasters or blogs and then retain information is scary enough. The idea of what they might do with such power is even more frightening.
Here is the link to the Privacy Compliance Review of the Media Monitoring Initiative:
http://cryptome.org/2012/01/0002.pdf
