EOTO Awareness

    The EOTO group that had "Awareness" was of most interest to me because I did not know a lot of the terms they discussed. These terms also stood out the most to me because of how much impact they have in society today which I did not realize before.

    The first term was the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012. This act made it legal for the US government to directly target its citizens with propaganda. Before the act was put into place, the government was not allowed to push propaganda directly at citizens. It was only allowed to direct propaganda outwards to the rest of the world. This was set in place by the Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (aka the Smith-Mundt Act). But the modernization of that act loosened the restrictions on spreading media such as propaganda. The most common uses of this act are by the mainstream media/news outlets pushing the agendas of the government to the public. 

   

    The second term was propaganda. Propaganda was defined by the team as "information especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view". The use of propaganda is not a new thing and has actually been around since the Ancient Greeks. The invention of the printing press helped the influence of propaganda reach new heights. The most recognizable image of propaganda most people can think of is the classic Rosie the Riveter "We can do it!" poster. But there are also lots of more subtle examples that are present today such as what stories the mainstream media decides to cover.

    The next term was a false flag. A false flag is an operation (usually covert and politically motivated) that includes an intentional disguise of responsibility, pining blame on another party, and misrepresentation. A famous historical example of this is the sinking of the USS Marine. The USS Marine suck mysteriously due to some explosion and the blame was placed on Spain as the cause of this explosion. This caused the relations between Spain and the US to crumble, which then led to the Spanish-American War in 1898. The negative implications of false flags are that the government can tell the public whatever it wants, censor anyone with opposing opinions, pin blame, shift responsibility to achieve ulterior motives, and affect how we view different groups of people. This means that we as a society cannot wholly trust anything the government says and we must do our own research to make educated conclusions. 

    The following term was cancel culture. This was defined by the group as "the act of engaging in mass cancellation as a means of expressing disapproval and exerting social pressure". The term to "cancel" first showed up in the 1980s as a sort of slang term meaning to "break up with someone". But over the years that definition has changed thanks to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. It is now seen as a way to hold people accountable and punish them for their actions that other people decide are wrong (for some reason). This can impact us today because while it can be a good way to punish those who have actually done something wrong, it can also be used just by people who don't like someone else. That person could be canceled for something even if what they did wasn't bad.

    The next terms were discussed together since they were all very similar. These terms were disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.  Disinformation was defined as "a deliberate lie to purposefully mislead". The group gave an example of this being politicians worldwide. Misinformation was defined as "false information that is spread without the intent to mislead". An example of this was uneducated people discussing a topic and spreading wrong information about it, but these people had no clue they were wrong. Finally, malinformation was defined as "information that stems from the truth, but is often exaggerated in a way that misleads and causes potential harm". Examples of this that the group gave were hate speech and harassment. 

    The final term was Five Eyes. Five Eyes is an intelligence alliance between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is considered to be one of the most powerful intelligence-gathering and sharing organizations in the world. All of the countries involved have access to vast amounts of information that is gathered from satellite imagery, electronic communication interceptions, and human intelligence sources. By collecting all this data, each country can provide information on issues such as national security, counter-terrorism efforts, and cyber warfare. Because of this huge swath of information they have, they have been crucial in providing early warnings of potential global threats such as natural disasters, pandemics, and cyber-attacks. 

    

    But there are also dangers to this alliance. Many people are worried about their privacy and civil liberties that may have been violated by the alliance's information collection efforts. There have also been concerns that the countries may be engaging in mass surveillance and indiscriminate data collection, which has people questioning whether their methods are even legal or not. And of course, people are always worried about being mistakenly identified as a threat or what would happen if all that information was to fall into the wrong hands.