President Trump Calls for Big Tech to Detect Pre-Crime on Social Media
Shane Trejo
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President Donald Trump seems to be listening to his daughter, Ivanka, following mass shootings in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH over the weekend. He is now asking his Big Tech enemies to institute more Draconian censorship on their social media platforms.
Trump gave a speech earlier today urging tech oligarch platforms like Google, Facebook and Twitter to develop new Big Brother mechanisms to crack down on dangerous hate speech. These are the exact talking points used by the Left to justify arbitrarily tossing Trump supporters and right-wing individuals off these same platforms.
He announced he will be ordering the federal government to encourage local and state governments to assist these tech giants in developing more of these restrictive tools.
“I am directing the Department of Justice to work in partnership with local state and federal agencies, as well as social media companies, to develop tools that can detect mass shooters before they strike,” Trump said in a speech today.
Technology blog The Verge noted that Trump’s proposal is essentially a call for the development of pre-crime technology, giving powers to the Big Tech thought police that Orwell could not have even imagined:
After two recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump said his administration would ask social media companies to develop tools that could detect potential mass shooters.
While delivering a speech on the recent violence, Trump said “we must do a better job of identifying and acting on early warning signs,” and he suggested social media companies could develop new ways of catching “red flags.” …
While the president did not specify what those “tools” might look like, Trump seemed to be suggesting that companies could use predictive software to single out potential shooters based on their activity on a platform. Crucially, this would mean taking action before a person commits violent crimes. Data-mining tools are in wide use, but creating a detection system for violence would inevitably raise a host of privacy and accountability issues.
Journalist Michael Tracey noted that Trump is facilitating the process that is always used by the swamp to destroy the Bill of Rights and Constitution.
Trump: “We must shine light on the dark recesses of the internet” — which means state censorship, regulation, and surveillance in the name of “safety”
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 5, 2019
“Terrorist attack” + calls to “do something” = curtailment of civil liberties. It’s the same pattern every single time
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 5, 2019
Trump and Democrats seem to be on the same page in terms of surveilling the internet and enacting “domestic terrorism” statutes, so get ready for some glorious “bipartisan solutions”
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 5, 2019
How do people think a state-backed campaign to purge the internet of all “radicalization” and “extremism” is going to work out for independent media?
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 5, 2019
In addition to enabling Big Brother, President Trump is also proposing additional federal gun control measures as a response to the shootings.
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