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Several years ago,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], I watched one of my children IM (for those over 50, IM = instant message) a friend. As a parent, I couldn't help myself. I asked him, "If you are both sitting there doing nothing, why don't you pick up the phone and actually talk with your friend?" Of course, being a teenager, he shrugged his shoulders, shook his head, and told me how out of it I was. I guess it is now considered passé to want to hear someone's voice or look him or her in the eyes when you interact.
Terrorism by definition is the systematic use of violence, propaganda, and lies to coerce for one's own purpose. I am saddened that I received this information from a decent man in my community. He had no idea that he had just participated in an attempt to use lies and fear to manipulate the people of our country. It is a quiet, yet very dangerous, form of terrorism. We must be vigilant not to cast our votes in November based on the information circulated by Internet terrorists. We must remember that free speech is powerful, but it can also be dangerous. So, before you hit Send or Forward or cast your vote, please make sure that you are not unwittingly venturing out into the world of Internet terrorism.
The growth of these methods of communication and the perceived anonymity has brought with it some inherent challenges. We now regularly hear of people finding themselves in trouble for some thoughtless or careless use of one of these methods of electronic reaching out and touching someone (pun intended). Politicians have had e-mails resurface to haunt them. Extremely personal photos have ended up circling the globe on the airwaves. Private information suddenly becomes very public.
Electronic interaction has been laid on us as a way to communicate better with our friends, neighbors, and even strangers. We can share every detail of our lives without ever speaking to a living and breathing human. We text,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook our way through the day. The anonymity of our current methods of so-called communication seems to allow many people to share information more openly than if they had to look at or talk with someone.
As embarrassing as some of these miscues have been to those involved, a much more dangerous practice has developed in these arenas. I recently received two frightening politically inspired e-mails from friends, intended to sway the votes in this midterm election. The content didn't frighten me; I was frightened that little or none of the content was true. My friends asked me to pass the e-mails along to all my friends and family members. The request stopped just shy of telling me that if I didn't forward the message, my right arm would fall off, and I would develop an incurable social disease. The e-mails did say that if I cared about America, I would pass them on.
The first e-mail attacked Obama, using a bill that was already dying a slow death in committee. A congressman of questionable sanity introduced the bill, and not one other representative was willing to be connected to the proposed bill. It was sent,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], as other crazy bills, to committee, so it could die. The e-mail said Obama was pushing this bill. Everything in this e-mail was a lie, except that the bill presented was real.
The second e-mail was much more disturbing. This message impressively presented statistics outlining the makeup of those who voted for Obama versus those who voted for McCain and attributed them to a professor of law at Hamline University in St. Paul,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], Minnesota. The statistics included information about states won, square miles won, and population of counties won by Obama versus McCain. The numbers were used to show that McCain won the votes of people who own most of the land and were,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], therefore, the taxpaying citizens. The worst piece of misinformation added to this was that it stated the murder rate in the counties won by Obama was about six times the rate in McCain land.
The problem with this e-mail is that none of it was true. The information was pure propaganda used to instill fear and manipulate voters. Many people helped these e-mails travel around our country before establishing whether they were true. When the law professor was contacted, he said he had no knowledge of it or connection to it. Upon checking the numbers, they had no connection to truth or reality. Even more disturbing was that the exact e-mail and numbers were circulated with the names changed to Bush and Gore just a few short years ago.