Surveillance - Good Vs. Bad

Here is an observation by humanitarian Kathy Kelly:

Over the past 7 years, I’ve noted a steady increase in U.S. surveillance of Afghanistan. Drones, tethered blimps, and complex aerial spying systems cost billions of dollars, apparently so that analysts can “better understand patterns of life in Afghanistan.” I think this is a euphemism. The U.S. military wants to better understand patterns of movement for its “High Value Targets” in order to assassinate them.

But my young friends in the Afghan Peace Volunteers, (APV), have shown me a life-giving kind of “surveillance.” They conduct surveys, reaching out to the neediest families in Kabul, trying to establish which families are most likely to be hungry because they have no means to acquire rice and cooking oil.  The APV then work out ways to employ widows to sew heavy blankets, or compensate families that agree to send their child laborers to school for half a day.

You can read the rest @
http://dissidentvoice.org/2017/06/feed-the-hungry-treat-the-sick-a-crucial-training/

Bad surveillance - anything sponsored by the US government, Facebook, Google, and their ilk.

Good surveillance - much of what is done by We The People to keep ourselves alive.

In spite of the vile posturing about philanthropy spewing from Mark Zuckerberg's pie hole, there is daily evidence that Facebook is NOT a force for good in the world. It's just another tool of corporate state oppression.