The American Conundrum

The “Great Experiment” that is the United States has presented society with a conundrum. A lot of Americans wish to be gainfully employed while at the same time wish to exercise their constitutional rights to free speech but these two things are in conflict. This is especially true when the United States government is the target of the free speech. It matter not whether the speech is pro or anti government policy, personnel, or stance. If a potential employment candidate openly speaks about politics or criticizes the ‘wrong’ person or issue the employment candidate may be disqualified from consideration for hire without being provided more reasoning than the organization has determined other candidates are a better fit. So why the disqualification? Any candidate that is willing to publicly post their views about ‘hot button’ topics is deemed confrontational and/or unfit for the culture. So how do Americans publicly raise issues, bring attention to problems, and/or support political candidates without punishment? There was a time when people could anonymously congregate online, in-person, or in private but those days are long past. With the lightning speed the US Department of Homeland Security has rolled-out and subsidized the use of phony cell phone towers by local government agencies privacy is all but guaranteed to be a myth. A mass-surveillance dragnet extends from coast-to-coast intercepting all private cellphone calls, text messages, web browsing, and other cellular use. Facial recognition is increasingly pervasive across the country as well even though it continues to be repeatedly shown to be flawed, biased, and abused. For full disclosure, there are a limited number of local areas that have outlawed the use of facial recognition (best case) or banned the use of facial recognition without disclosure (which is still riddled with issues). With this massive aggregation of deeply personal and private data being legally permissible (until someone asks the supreme court to decide constitutionality) this mass aggregation of your data by the United States government can be leveraged to undermine and discredit all potential federal (and honestly, non-federal) employees. Just a hypothetical question, would the NSA have needed a meta data collection program if DHS had rolled-out the facial recognition and spoofed cell-phone tower programs both of which collect actual data and not just meta-data? If this sounds a bit conspiracy theory and only related to federal employees consider this, non-federal employees experience very similar intrusions on privacy by way of social credit scores, financial credit scores, who-you-know background checks, social media account searches, and so forth. Potential candidates for hire in the United States have two choices, become extremely passive about all things publicly or risk being without enduring employment. Exercise the constitutional rights of an American or be an employed American. Privacy currently has no place in the United States, Europe is horrified and cancelled all privacy sharing agreements and clauses, and Russia is asking to be cyber allies. If you want to get hired by a standard employer you need to be a standard citizen by keeping your views private and your data public.