https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2013/07/12/14/08/surveillance-147831_960_720.png

The phase about minorities may reveal how minorities are perceived by government. If you are not a minority then it may not be obvious or immediate for you to understand the psychology of a minority. A minority in any governance system has for historical reasons the constant threat and or fear of being put under surveillance, monitored, spied on, etc. In most societies the people who are the least connected socially are the least trusted by the government.

What about minorities in cyberspace?
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A minority in cyberspace is an individual who holds an unpopular opinion about any subject matter. Political minorities as many know are clearly targeted. But also if you think in a way which is considered obscene and others find out, or if you have an unpopular opinion which you make the mistake of sharing, then your school of thought becomes at risk of being the minority school of thought, and this could put you the individual in the position of minority opinion. 

We see this all the time. Twitter trends reveal public sentiment. Sentiment analysis is one of the most important ways of determining the majority opinion on any topic. The majority or people who have the majority opinion may seek to put under surveillance all who have opinions which diverge too far from what they consider as normal. In addition, the majority will often censor, ban, or remove access to and of individuals or entities which fail to conform.

What should cyber minorities do?
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Cyber minorities likely are monitored on the basis of what they post, tweet, etc. There are bots which monitor social media and which look for specific key words, phrases, etc, that indicate a certain sentiment. When those key words or phrases are triggered the spying agencies can put under surveillance the persons and groups behind those accounts. In fact that is likely what does happen.

What can cyber minorities do? Even on Steemit, if a person posts something too unpopular the post will be voted down, the poster may even be put under surveillance offline if they posted under their true identity. Do we really value free speech and do minorities have a right to share their unpopular opinions? Unfortunately it seems like the answer is no, even on Steemit.

The purpose of surveillance/total transparency is to enforce censorship
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Surveillance may have security purposes if it is merely collected and never used for anything political but how can we know this? At the same time the trend away from anonymity, privacy, toward transparency and openness, leads to increased censorship. You can say what you truly think and feel only if you don't mind being demonetized, either by being fired, or lawsuits, or losing sponsors. Is this the true purpose behind openness? Is it the true purpose behind surveillance or is it the mission creep corruption of that purpose?