Source: Google

In the present portion of "I'm Not Terrified, You Are," Bloomberg Law provides details regarding a FedBizOpps.gov posting by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with the generally generous sounding subject "Media Monitoring Services."

The points of interest of the connected Request for Information, be that as it may, layout an arrangement to accumulate and screen people in general exercises of media experts and influencers and are sufficient to cause bad dreams of established extents, especially as the flexibility of the press is under assault around the world.

What's more, "assault" isn't hyperbolic.

Consistently, columnists confront genuine outcomes including physical savagery, detainment and demise. A couple of days back, the Committee to Protect Journalists propelled its yearly Free The Press battle to bring issues to light about detained columnists all through the world. On May 3, UNESCO will by and by stamp World Press Freedom Day "to advise subjects of infringement of press opportunity — an update that in many nations around the globe, productions are blue-penciled, fined, suspended and shut down, while columnists, editors and distributers are bugged, assaulted, confined and even killed."

In the mean time, the United States government, customarily one of the bastions of press opportunity, is going to incorporate a rundown of expert writers and "best media influencers," which would appear to incorporate bloggers and podcasters, and screen what they're putting out to the general population.

What could turn out badly? A great deal.

DHS's "Media Monitoring" Plan

As a major aspect of its "media checking," the DHS looks to track in excess of 290,000 worldwide news sources and also web-based social networking in more than 100 dialects, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for moment interpretation into English. The fruitful contracting organization will have "day in and day out access to a secret word ensured, media influencer database, including columnists, editors, journalists, online networking influencers, bloggers and so forth." so as to "recognize any media scope identified with the Department of Homeland Security or a specific occasion."

"Any and all media coverage," as you might imagine, is quite broad and includes "online, print, broadcast, cable, radio, trade and industry publications, local sources, national/international outlets, traditional news sources, and social media."

The database will be browsable by "location, beat and type of influencer," and for each influencer, the chosen contractor should "present contact details and any other information that could be relevant, including publications this influencer writes for, and an overview of the previous coverage published by the media influencer."

One aspect of the media coverage to be gathered is its "sentiment."

Anyone else just pull their blanket up over them a little more tightly? Just me?

Why "Media Monitoring" and Why Now?

DHS says the "NPPD/OUS [National Protection and Programs Directorate/Office of the Under Secretary] has a basic need to fuse these capacities into their projects with a specific end goal to better achieve Federal, state, neighborhood, ancestral and private accomplices." Who comprehends what that implies, yet the record likewise expresses the NPPD's central goal is "to secure and upgrade the flexibility of the country's physical and cyberinfrastructure."

That line makes it seem as though the making of this database could be an immediate reaction to the widespread charges of Russian obstruction in the 2016 U.S. presidential race — in spite of the fact that President Donald Trump, who has standardized the expression "counterfeit news," can't choose whether that is even an issue or not.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg supposes it is. Not long ago, he reported the interpersonal interaction webpage would evacuate "in excess of 270 pages and records worked by a Russian association called the Internet Research Agency" in an exertion "to secure the honesty of decisions around the globe."

Inside the setting of expanding worries over "phony news" and outside obstruction in decisions, an activity, for example, the DHS's database may appear, at first look, to be a sensible approach.

Not precisely.

Tragically, expanding government infringement on the flexibility of the press is the vile background to the majority of this. Opportunity House, which has checked the status of the press for about 40 years, as of late presumed that worldwide media flexibility has achieved its least level in the previous 13 years. The autonomous guard dog association faults "new dangers to columnists and media outlets in real majority rule governments" and in addition "facilitate crackdowns on free media in tyrant nations like Russia and China." And then it goes above and beyond.

"However, it is the expansive assaults on the news media and their place in a just society by Donald Trump, first as an applicant and now as leader of the United States, that fuel forecasts of further difficulties in the years to come," the report said.

Could the DHS media database be such a mishap?

Conceivably, and it's not even the first run through potential direction of columnists has floated over the American political scene.

Last October, an Indiana official recommended that columnists be authorized. Delegate Jim Lucas' bill was generally an attention stunt, however could this DHS activity be a path for the administration to monitor American and remote columnists and additionally "subject writers," debilitating the opportunity of the press as well as individual the right to speak freely?

The genuine inquiry, obviously, is the thing that the administration intends to do with the data it accumulates, and there's been no remark on that past what is in the posting, which, coincidentally, has enthusiasm from no less than seven organizations. Will those on the DHS media database be addressed all the more brutally coming all through the nation? Will they experience difficulty inspiring visas to go to specific nations for their own particular revealing or individual excursions? More regrettable?

Discussing visas — and demonstrating that online networking action is unequivocally on the radar of this organization — prior this week, the State Department set two notification in the Federal Register looking for remarks on its proposition to require that all visa candidates to the U.S. turn over their online networking data for the past five years.

Concerning DHS media database, we are entering a possibly unsafe area with the administration monitoring the "assumption" of natives and remote nationals. If not lawful difficulties from associations that safeguard squeeze opportunity and the right to speak freely interests, the administration ought to expect, at any rate, reaction from people in general.

Furthermore, that implies you. In the event that you think the possibility of the U.S. government's ordering and observing a rundown of media experts and "best media influencers" is a potential danger to popular government, now would be the ideal time to call your nearby and congressional agents to tell them the amount you esteem a free press and the right to speak freely, just in the event that they've overlooked.

Rest tight, kids!