Academic literature on the topic 'Gambia. Ministry of Works, Communications and Information'

In this article, we highlight comprehensive and up-to-date information on the analysis of the central public administration that addresses how the authorities, institutions and central public entities with responsibilities in preventing and combating the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Romania have used public funds allocated in this purpose. Romania has accepted the decrease of budget revenues, through a series of fiscal measures and by diminishing the income-generating economic activities. The budgets of some main authorizing officers with special attributions during the state of emergency were supplemented, namely: the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection; Ministry of Health; Ministry of Public Finance; Ministry of Public Works, Development and Administration; Ministry of Interior; Ministry of Transport, Infrastructure and Communications; Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development; Public ministry; National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority; Special Telecommunications Service; Romanian Information Service; Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Romanian Academy. In order to implement measures to prevent and combat the pandemic, as well as to manage the state of emergency, a series of resources were mobilized, in addition to donations and sponsorships, received by public institutions from the central public administration during the state of emergency. At the same time, for the local government component, the data are structured in such a way as to reflect the tasks and tasks of local authorities in preventing and combating the pandemic, but also the findings on resource management used for this purpose, segmented into the following areas: medical assistance (medical equipment, medicines, sanitary materials, salary rights, etc.); expenses incurred in establishing the quarantine; disinfection costs imposed by measures to prevent and combat the epidemic; Other expenditure due to the need to take measures to prevent and combat the epidemic. The Government of Romania has adopted an emergency ordinance for the organization and conduct of public information campaigns in the context of the epidemiological situation caused by the spread of COVID-19, in order to raise awareness of the risks of disease and increase voluntary compliance with health and social regulations imposed by competent authorities, in order to limit the spread of the virus after the end of the state of emergency. Audiovisual and printed materials that will be broadcast in public information campaigns, such as audio and video spots, online banners, print mock-ups, mock-ups for billboards, will be created and produced centrally by a creative structure in which specific professional associations can delegate members. from several volunteer and / or paid agencies.

This research is concerned with documenting and chronicling the art of NFTs art in the Saudi artistic cultural scene, the importance of which stems from the lack of scientific sources that document this field until the preparation of this research and aims to trace historically the emergence of the field of NFTs art in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the arts sector through the experiences of Saudi artists. The most prominent events for the culture, arts and technology sector, and other Saudi sectors. The research dealt with the history of the emergence of the field of NFTs art, which extends from the history of digital arts, and reviewed the most famous works of NFTs art.As a result of the technical revolution and the artistic movement that the world is witnessing in the direction of investing in digital arts, this movement has moved to the Saudi artistic cultural scene through the experiences of Saudi artists and emerged from the artist Rashid Al-Shasha’i, and after him the era of Al-Amoudi. As for the major Saudi sectors, the role of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and the Ministry of Culture, represented by the Visual Arts Authority, emerged for organizing conferences that paved the way for the emergence of this field in the Kingdom, followed by initiatives for the activities of some sectors to benefit from the technical capabilities of the field of NFTs art.

Backbone power lines in Russia have a complex spatial structure. There are no systematized and topologically consistent spatio-temporal data about them. however, the study of their evolution requires not only data mining, but also a comprehensive design of the structure of the spatio-temporal database. The structure should provide effective data storage, be convenient for filling the database and editing data, provide the ability to reconstruct the network for a given period and apply spatial analysis methods. Open sources like power grid operator reports, schemes and programs of power grid development, public cadastral map, information from Situational and Analytical Center of the Ministry of Energy and very high spatial resolution remote sensing data are the main data sources. Users do not have direct access to the database but refer to it using queries. Interaction with the database is carried out through Application programming Interface (API). This allows downloading data from the database as well as embedding them into external systems, for example, connecting analysis tools to them, creating cartographic web applications with this data. Data preprocessing is performed in python using the Arcpy module, the database is created with PostgreSQl, the API works on PostgREST. Consistent multi-temporal spatial database serves as the basis for analyzing the structural features of electrical networks, makes it possible to visualize the history of the development of the power grid of the territory in an interactive web-based mapping application, allows to apply geoprocessing tools and special network analysis tools. The detailed study of the evolution of backbone power grids is crucial in long-term strategies for the development of the power grid. Abroad, studies of the evolution of electrical networks usually operate with a schematic graph of a network without reference to real spatial geometry, therefore, there is no problem of designing the structure of spatio-temporal database. yet, ignoring topomorphological relationships in the network leads to the loss of information about electrical networks, which leads to a loss in the quality of spatial analysis.

The paper examines the history of the construction of administrative buildings in the new Maly Galagov quarter of Uzhhorod by the government of the Czechoslovakia Republic during the years 1919–1938. After the incorporation of Subcarpathian Rus into the republic in 1919, the question arose regarding developing the region's capital to become autonomous. Numerous officials and experts from various levels, mainly from the Czech lands, arrived in Uzhhorod to organize the administrative apparatus. The city's infrastructure, including administrative buildings, could not accommodate the newly arrived officials. The existing buildings did not meet modern standards or the capacity required for the city's prospective growth. This prompted the central government to consider the construction of ministry branches and other government buildings within tight deadlines. For this purpose, a non-urbanized territory was selected, which required preliminary preparation for the beginning of construction works. Accordingly, building design was carried out in parallel with constructing other objects and laying roads and municipal communications. As a result, by 1938, eleven administrative and other ministry buildings were erected, which are the subject of this research. The basis for the paper is the materials from the State Archives of the Zakarpattia Region in Berehove, particularly Fund No. 21, «Regional Administration of Subcarpathian Ruthenia, Uzhhorod.» The paper is also supplemented by comparing the situation in the architecture of administrative buildings in the republic's cities, such as Prague, Bratislava, and others, based on information from contemporary and modern sources and literature. The paper includes an analysis of the features of anti-crisis, urban planning, and technical solutions. In this context, the issue of stylistics is not overlooked as one of the factors of state policy identity. Through architecture and urban planning, the vectors and priorities set by the Czechoslovak Republic in the multi-ethnic region, which was then Subcarpathian Ruthenia with its capital in Uzhhorod, can be traced. The article presents material introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. Research into the history of the construction of administrative buildings in Uzhhorod during the interwar period will help outline this issue and provide a basis for research on each highlighted object.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Information and Communications, as of December 2022, the whole country has 127 news agencies; 670 journal agencies (there are 327 journals of political theory and science, 72 journals of literature and art); 72 radio and television agencies. Personnel operating in the field of journalism are about 41,000 people, of which the radio and television sector is approximately 16,500 people. Compared with 2021, personnel is relatively stable and the number of personnel granted journalist cards increases significantly. There have been 19,356 cases of being granted journalist cards. It is easy for the public to check the names of long-term online newspapers and major readers such as “VnExpress,” “Dan Tri,” “Vietnamplus,” “VietNamNet,” etc. The emergence of multimedia journalism is an important step towards shaping the new type of digital storytelling and the future of journalism. In the process of renovation, the Vietnamese press is also gradually transforming and approaching new media products (Long-form/E-Magazine/Megastory) that show long, in-depth stories and multi-purpose writing, photos, audio, video, photographers, etc. According to “Vietnamplus” – a press agency leading this trend, when you first bring this type of work to the public, it is unexpected that these works are received more strongly than other types of media. We use questionnaires to build public perceptions and observations as journalists working for five major online newspapers in Vietnam. The data is taken from in-depth interviews with journalists, editors, editorial staff, and editors-in-chief of five major online newspapers in Vietnam. We choose the sample according to the sampling method of the case. In the context of social media, Vietnam’s online newspapers have developed and changed significantly. These findings will enrich and have a typical impact by clarifying two main contradictions that exist in Vietnam’s online newspapers. Those are conflicts between news products, regular articles and media products, e-magazines, megastory and conflicts in organizations producing online newspapers. From there, the article looks at how Vietnam’s online newspaper is going to grow, how it uses visual reporting, and how excited journalists and press managers are about it.

Abstract Background Every year millions of Muslims travel to Saudi Arabia to perform the fifth pillar of Islam, the Hajj pilgrimage Aligned with the Kingdom's 2030 vision, the Ministry of Health works to provide advanced free medical services to pilgrims by implementing digital transformation. Hajj service providing companies are concerned with offering high-quality logistical services and removing obstacles that may face the pilgrims including those related to health and safety. In order to integrate healthcare applications with effectiveness, there is a need to have a unified electronic platform. Results This paper uses both primary and secondary data. The primary data collection has been done through an electronic survey and interviews with a number of employees working for Hajj and Umrah companies and an interview an employee in the health sector to support logistics health services. The secondary data have been collected through analyzing the official website of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. Conclusion Findings suggest that there is a lack of an integrating electronic interface of different applications that are provided by the companies involved and it is recommend that a unified medical database established as this could provide several benefits including informed decision-making, tracking of pilgrim’s health status, and increased user satisfaction.

AbstractNumerous cyber situational awareness models have been proposed in recent years. Yet, one of the main challenges still remains mostly unsolved, which is what information sources contribute to the process for establishing cyber situational awareness and how is relevant information collected. While previous scientific works focused on situational awareness models and decision support based on common operating pictures, ingesting and maintaining a consistent data basis for the cyber domain has rarely been studied in detail. However, this is crucial when data distributed across different systems need to be collected, vetted, correlated, de-duplicated, enriched and finally stored as a basis for flexible cyber security reporting. In this paper, we design an approach and a data model that enable to ingest and store the essential information from disparate organizational units and act as a basis for the flexible creation of cyber security reports. We describe the application of this approach and model in a case study together with the Austrian Ministry of Defense (MoD), in which we surveyed existing data sources and transfer paths and rated the applicability of the CCOP data model and accompanying processes in course of a proof-of-concept implementation.

PurposeAt the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.Design/methodology/approachThe study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.FindingsThe division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.Practical implicationsThe study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.Originality/valueStudying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

A customer’s choice refers to the types of service. If you are selling or providing a service knowing your customer’s preference however you can only fulfill your customers desires if u learn as much as you can about them. Anticipate their requirements and exceed their standard. Customer satisfaction is a metric that measures a customer’s level of satisfaction with company’s services. India's telecommunication network is 2nd biggest in number of Mobilepatrons as of January 31st, 2021, with 1179.49 million customers. It’s about every global smart phone rate, made it possible beyond large tele companies, flighty-conflict amongst its Bharat possesses every sphere has every second-biggest Internet user base. Dominant part of the Indian telecommunication business is Mobile phone, industry of internet and television broadcasting in India which is currently undergoing transformation into a to come-cohort lattice, hireling a comprehensive complex of current lattice constitute comparatively Modern phone transfer, polarize, At the core, media portal winking are interrelated beyond an extensive range of conveyance apparatus based on tendril perceiving either fryer Marconi impart lattice. Every way in lattice that links to every patron to every basic is hugely diverse, utilizing various russet-twain, ocular-fibril, also cellular mechanics. DTH is a newer podcasting mechanics gained considerable fame via every small screen fragment every incorporation about non- government FM own stated Marconi podcasting in India a boost. Telecommunications in India evolved powerfully the country's INSAT system, where world's biggest domiciliary sputnik complex has provided support. India has diverse network that connects every duchy via phone, net, Marconi, small screen, also spacecraft. Ago every 1990s, every Indian telecom enterprise familiar hasty trade broadens along widening, also it is at International Journal of Scientific Research in Engineering and Management (IJSREM) Volume: 06 Issue: 12 | December - 2022 Impact Factor: 7.185 ISSN: 2582-3930 © 2022, IJSREM | www.ijsrem.com DOI: 10.55041/IJSREM17020 | Page 2 present every sphere identical merciless also one of the rapid spreading telecom markets. Telecom network services own succor India's retrench improvement it backed to bridge every rural- urban cybernetic cleave to a certain extent Using the introduction about e-governance to a certain extent Using the also contributed to increased transparency in governance. The government has used modern technology. Telecommunications infrastructure to deliver mass education programmers to agricultural Indians. Technological modernization is widely recognized as a predicted requirement for all countries in today's age of progress and affluence. Thanks to enhanced technology and increased competition via initiated enterprises, Tele communications have invaded a phase of improvement. The telecoms sector's technological developments are tied to the mobile industry's continued expansion. Providers of services major intention are to establish a devoted client base by monitoring their efficiency and retaining existing customers so that they can Profit from their devotion. The purpose of this paper is to address these concerns. Every introduction of the telegraph in India marked the beginning of telecommunications. The postal service and telecommunications India's industries are among the oldest on the planet. The first trial electric telegraph cable was constructed from Calcutta to Diamond Harbor mod 1850. It had been opened in 1851 for the British East India Company's use. At every time, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs washoused in a nook in the Public Works Department Development of Broadcaster: Radio transmission began in 1927 however did not become a state obligation until 1930. All India Radio was granted to it. In 1937, also, it's been known as Akash Vani since 1957. Television programming with limited duration began in 1959, with full broadcasting following in 1965. Prior to the 1991 economic reforms, the owned and operated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting country's equipment for audio-visual communication, such as a televisionDoor Darshan. Under the Prasad Bharti Act, an autonomous body called Prasar Bhartiwas established in 1997 to oversee public service broadcasting. All India Radio and Door Darshan are two services that previously working with the Ministry of I&B as media organizations, they turn into members the bodies. Stats from before liberalization: During every British occupation, all of the country's significant towns and cities were wired utilizing telephones, but there were only about 80,000 telephones in 1948. Because the telephone was viewed as a prestige symbol rather than a useful tool after independence, expansion was modest. The number of telephones steadily increased from 980,000 in 1971 - 1981, 2.15 million to 5.07 million was the number in 1991. That’s when country's economic reforms began.

Introduction This article is a study in anxiety with regard to social online spaces (SOS) conceived of as dark. There are two possible ways to define ‘dark’ in this context. The first is that communication is dark because it either has limited distribution, is not open to all users (closed groups are a case example) or hidden. The second definition, linked as a result of the first, is the way that communication via these means is interpreted and understood. Dark social spaces disrupt the accepted top-down flow by the ‘gazing elite’ (data aggregators including social media), but anxious users might need to strain to notice what is out there, and this in turn destabilises one’s reception of the scene. In an environment where surveillance technologies are proliferating, this article examines contemporary, dark, interconnected, and interactive communications for the entangled affordances that might be brought to bear. A provocation is that resistance through counterveillance or “sousveillance” is one possibility. An alternative (or addition) is retreating to or building ‘dark’ spaces that are less surveilled and (perhaps counterintuitively) less fearful. This article considers critically the notion of dark social online spaces via four broad socio-technical concerns connected to the big social media services that have helped increase a tendency for fearful anxiety produced by surveillance and the perceived implications for personal privacy. It also shines light on the aspect of darkness where some users are spurred to actively seek alternative, dark social online spaces. Since the 1970s, public-key cryptosystems typically preserved security for websites, emails, and sensitive health, government, and military data, but this is now reduced (Williams). We have seen such systems exploited via cyberattacks and misappropriated data acquired by affiliations such as Facebook-Cambridge Analytica for targeted political advertising during the 2016 US elections. Via the notion of “parasitic strategies”, such events can be described as news/information hacks “whose attack vectors target a system’s weak points with the help of specific strategies” (von Nordheim and Kleinen-von Königslöw, 88). In accord with Wilson and Serisier’s arguments (178), emerging technologies facilitate rapid data sharing, collection, storage, and processing wherein subsequent “outcomes are unpredictable”. This would also include the effect of acquiescence. In regard to our digital devices, for some, being watched overtly—through cameras encased in toys, computers, and closed-circuit television (CCTV) to digital street ads that determine the resonance of human emotions in public places including bus stops, malls, and train stations—is becoming normalised (McStay, Emotional AI). It might appear that consumers immersed within this Internet of Things (IoT) are themselves comfortable interacting with devices that record sound and capture images for easy analysis and distribution across the communications networks. A counter-claim is that mainstream social media corporations have cultivated a sense of digital resignation “produced when people desire to control the information digital entities have about them but feel unable to do so” (Draper and Turow, 1824). Careful consumers’ trust in mainstream media is waning, with readers observing a strong presence of big media players in the industry and are carefully picking their publications and public intellectuals to follow (Mahmood, 6). A number now also avoid the mainstream internet in favour of alternate dark sites. This is done by users with “varying backgrounds, motivations and participation behaviours that may be idiosyncratic (as they are rooted in the respective person’s biography and circumstance)” (Quandt, 42). By way of connection with dark internet studies via Biddle et al. (1; see also Lasica), the “darknet” is a collection of networks and technologies used to share digital content … not a separate physical network but an application and protocol layer riding on existing networks. Examples of darknets are peer-to-peer file sharing, CD and DVD copying, and key or password sharing on email and newsgroups. As we note from the quote above, the “dark web” uses existing public and private networks that facilitate communication via the Internet. Gehl (1220; see also Gehl and McKelvey) has detailed that this includes “hidden sites that end in ‘.onion’ or ‘.i2p’ or other Top-Level Domain names only available through modified browsers or special software. Accessing I2P sites requires a special routing program ... . Accessing .onion sites requires Tor [The Onion Router]”. For some, this gives rise to social anxiety, read here as stemming from that which is not known, and an exaggerated sense of danger, which makes fight or flight seem the only options. This is often justified or exacerbated by the changing media and communication landscape and depicted in popular documentaries such as The Social Dilemma or The Great Hack, which affect public opinion on the unknown aspects of internet spaces and the uses of personal data. The question for this article remains whether the fear of the dark is justified. Consider that most often one will choose to make one’s intimate bedroom space dark in order to have a good night’s rest. We might pleasurably escape into a cinema’s darkness for the stories told therein, or walk along a beach at night enjoying unseen breezes. Most do not avoid these experiences, choosing to actively seek them out. Drawing this thread, then, is the case made here that agency can also be found in the dark by resisting socio-political structural harms. 1. Digital Futures and Anxiety of the Dark Fear of the darkI have a constant fear that something's always nearFear of the darkFear of the darkI have a phobia that someone's always there In the lyrics to the song “Fear of the Dark” (1992) by British heavy metal group Iron Maiden is a sense that that which is unknown and unseen causes fear and anxiety. Holding a fear of the dark is not unusual and varies in degree for adults as it does for children (Fellous and Arbib). Such anxiety connected to the dark does not always concern darkness itself. It can also be a concern for the possible or imagined dangers that are concealed by the darkness itself as a result of cognitive-emotional interactions (McDonald, 16). Extending this claim is this article’s non-binary assertion that while for some technology and what it can do is frequently misunderstood and shunned as a result, for others who embrace the possibilities and actively take it on it is learning by attentively partaking. Mistakes, solecism, and frustrations are part of the process. Such conceptual theorising falls along a continuum of thinking. Global interconnectivity of communications networks has certainly led to consequent concerns (Turkle Alone Together). Much focus for anxiety has been on the impact upon social and individual inner lives, levels of media concentration, and power over and commercialisation of the internet. Of specific note is that increasing commercial media influence—such as Facebook and its acquisition of WhatsApp, Oculus VR, Instagram, CRTL-labs (translating movements and neural impulses into digital signals), LiveRail (video advertising technology), Chainspace (Blockchain)—regularly changes the overall dynamics of the online environment (Turow and Kavanaugh). This provocation was born out recently when Facebook disrupted the delivery of news to Australian audiences via its service. Mainstream social online spaces (SOS) are platforms which provide more than the delivery of media alone and have been conceptualised predominantly in a binary light. On the one hand, they can be depicted as tools for the common good of society through notional widespread access and as places for civic participation and discussion, identity expression, education, and community formation (Turkle; Bruns; Cinque and Brown; Jenkins). This end of the continuum of thinking about SOS seems set hard against the view that SOS are operating as businesses with strategies that manipulate consumers to generate revenue through advertising, data, venture capital for advanced research and development, and company profit, on the other hand. In between the two polar ends of this continuum are the range of other possibilities, the shades of grey, that add contemporary nuance to understanding SOS in regard to what they facilitate, what the various implications might be, and for whom. By way of a brief summary, anxiety of the dark is steeped in the practices of privacy-invasive social media giants such as Facebook and its ancillary companies. Second are the advertising technology companies, surveillance contractors, and intelligence agencies that collect and monitor our actions and related data; as well as the increased ease of use and interoperability brought about by Web 2.0 that has seen a disconnection between technological infrastructure and social connection that acts to limit user permissions and online affordances. Third are concerns for the negative effects associated with depressed mental health and wellbeing caused by “psychologically damaging social networks”, through sleep loss, anxiety, poor body image, real world relationships, and the fear of missing out (FOMO; Royal Society for Public Health (UK) and the Young Health Movement). Here the harms are both individual and societal. Fourth is the intended acceleration toward post-quantum IoT (Fernández-Caramés), as quantum computing’s digital components are continually being miniaturised. This is coupled with advances in electrical battery capacity and interconnected telecommunications infrastructures. The result of such is that the ontogenetic capacity of the powerfully advanced network/s affords supralevel surveillance. What this means is that through devices and the services that they provide, individuals’ data is commodified (Neff and Nafus; Nissenbaum and Patterson). Personal data is enmeshed in ‘things’ requiring that the decisions that are both overt, subtle, and/or hidden (dark) are scrutinised for the various ways they shape social norms and create consequences for public discourse, cultural production, and the fabric of society (Gillespie). Data and personal information are retrievable from devices, sharable in SOS, and potentially exposed across networks. For these reasons, some have chosen to go dark by being “off the grid”, judiciously selecting their means of communications and their ‘friends’ carefully. 2. Is There Room for Privacy Any More When Everyone in SOS Is Watching? An interesting turn comes through counterarguments against overarching institutional surveillance that underscore the uses of technologies to watch the watchers. This involves a practice of counter-surveillance whereby technologies are tools of resistance to go ‘dark’ and are used by political activists in protest situations for both communication and avoiding surveillance. This is not new and has long existed in an increasingly dispersed media landscape (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes). For example, counter-surveillance video footage has been accessed and made available via live-streaming channels, with commentary in SOS augmenting networking possibilities for niche interest groups or micropublics (Wilson and Serisier, 178). A further example is the Wordpress site Fitwatch, appealing for an end to what the site claims are issues associated with police surveillance (fitwatch.org.uk and endpolicesurveillance.wordpress.com). Users of these sites are called to post police officers’ identity numbers and photographs in an attempt to identify “cops” that might act to “misuse” UK Anti-terrorism legislation against activists during legitimate protests. Others that might be interested in doing their own “monitoring” are invited to reach out to identified personal email addresses or other private (dark) messaging software and application services such as Telegram (freeware and cross-platform). In their work on surveillance, Mann and Ferenbok (18) propose that there is an increase in “complex constructs between power and the practices of seeing, looking, and watching/sensing in a networked culture mediated by mobile/portable/wearable computing devices and technologies”. By way of critical definition, Mann and Ferenbok (25) clarify that “where the viewer is in a position of power over the subject, this is considered surveillance, but where the viewer is in a lower position of power, this is considered sousveillance”. It is the aspect of sousveillance that is empowering to those using dark SOS. One might consider that not all surveillance is “bad” nor institutionalised. It is neither overtly nor formally regulated—as yet. Like most technologies, many of the surveillant technologies are value-neutral until applied towards specific uses, according to Mann and Ferenbok (18). But this is part of the ‘grey area’ for understanding the impact of dark SOS in regard to which actors or what nations are developing tools for surveillance, where access and control lies, and with what effects into the future. 3. Big Brother Watches, So What Are the Alternatives: Whither the Gazing Elite in Dark SOS? By way of conceptual genealogy, consideration of contemporary perceptions of surveillance in a visually networked society (Cinque, Changing Media Landscapes) might be usefully explored through a revisitation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, applied here as a metaphor for contemporary surveillance. Arguably, this is a foundational theoretical model for integrated methods of social control (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 192-211), realised in the “panopticon” (prison) in 1787 by Jeremy Bentham (Bentham and Božovič, 29-95) during a period of social reformation aimed at the improvement of the individual. Like the power for social control over the incarcerated in a panopticon, police power, in order that it be effectively exercised, “had to be given the instrument of permanent, exhaustive, omnipresent surveillance, capable of making all visible … like a faceless gaze that transformed the whole social body into a field of perception” (Foucault, Surveiller et Punir, 213–4). In grappling with the impact of SOS for the individual and the collective in post-digital times, we can trace out these early ruminations on the complex documentary organisation through state-controlled apparatuses (such as inspectors and paid observers including “secret agents”) via Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 214; Subject and Power, 326-7) for comparison to commercial operators like Facebook. Today, artificial intelligence (AI), facial recognition technology (FRT), and closed-circuit television (CCTV) for video surveillance are used for social control of appropriate behaviours. Exemplified by governments and the private sector is the use of combined technologies to maintain social order, from ensuring citizens cross the street only on green lights, to putting rubbish in the correct recycling bin or be publicly shamed, to making cashless payments in stores. The actions see advantages for individual and collective safety, sustainability, and convenience, but also register forms of behaviour and attitudes with predictive capacities. This gives rise to suspicions about a permanent account of individuals’ behaviour over time. Returning to Foucault (Surveiller et Punir, 135), the impact of this finds a dissociation of power from the individual, whereby they become unwittingly impelled into pre-existing social structures, leading to a ‘normalisation’ and acceptance of such systems. If we are talking about the dark, anxiety is key for a Ministry of SOS. Following Foucault again (Subject and Power, 326-7), there is the potential for a crawling, creeping governance that was once distinct but is itself increasingly hidden and growing. A blanket call for some form of ongoing scrutiny of such proliferating powers might be warranted, but with it comes regulation that, while offering certain rights and protections, is not without consequences. For their part, a number of SOS platforms had little to no moderation for explicit content prior to December 2018, and in terms of power, notwithstanding important anxiety connected to arguments that children and the vulnerable need protections from those that would seek to take advantage, this was a crucial aspect of community building and self-expression that resulted in this freedom of expression. In unearthing the extent that individuals are empowered arising from the capacity to post sexual self-images, Tiidenberg ("Bringing Sexy Back") considered that through dark SOS (read here as unregulated) some users could work in opposition to the mainstream consumer culture that provides select and limited representations of bodies and their sexualities. This links directly to Mondin’s exploration of the abundance of queer and feminist pornography on dark SOS as a “counterpolitics of visibility” (288). This work resulted in a reasoned claim that the technological structure of dark SOS created a highly political and affective social space that users valued. What also needs to be underscored is that many users also believed that such a space could not be replicated on other mainstream SOS because of the differences in architecture and social norms. Cho (47) worked with this theory to claim that dark SOS are modern-day examples in a history of queer individuals having to rely on “underground economies of expression and relation”. Discussions such as these complicate what dark SOS might now become in the face of ‘adult’ content moderation and emerging tracking technologies to close sites or locate individuals that transgress social norms. Further, broader questions are raised about how content moderation fits in with the public space conceptualisations of SOS more generally. Increasingly, “there is an app for that” where being able to identify the poster of an image or an author of an unknown text is seen as crucial. While there is presently no standard approach, models for combining instance-based and profile-based features such as SVM for determining authorship attribution are in development, with the result that potentially far less content will remain hidden in the future (Bacciu et al.). 4. There’s Nothing New under the Sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) For some, “[the] high hopes regarding the positive impact of the Internet and digital participation in civic society have faded” (Schwarzenegger, 99). My participant observation over some years in various SOS, however, finds that critical concern has always existed. Views move along the spectrum of thinking from deep scepticisms (Stoll, Silicon Snake Oil) to wondrous techo-utopian promises (Negroponte, Being Digital). Indeed, concerns about the (then) new technologies of wireless broadcasting can be compared with today’s anxiety over the possible effects of the internet and SOS. Inglis (7) recalls, here, too, were fears that humanity was tampering with some dangerous force; might wireless wave be causing thunderstorms, droughts, floods? Sterility or strokes? Such anxieties soon evaporated; but a sense of mystery might stay longer with evangelists for broadcasting than with a laity who soon took wireless for granted and settled down to enjoy the products of a process they need not understand. As the analogy above makes clear, just as audiences came to use ‘the wireless’ and later the internet regularly, it is reasonable to argue that dark SOS will also gain widespread understanding and find greater acceptance. Dark social spaces are simply the recent development of internet connectivity and communication more broadly. The dark SOS afford choice to be connected beyond mainstream offerings, which some users avoid for their perceived manipulation of content and user both. As part of the wider array of dark web services, the resilience of dark social spaces is reinforced by the proliferation of users as opposed to decentralised replication. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) can be used for anonymity in parallel to TOR access, but they guarantee only anonymity to the client. A VPN cannot guarantee anonymity to the server or the internet service provider (ISP). While users may use pseudonyms rather than actual names as seen on Facebook and other SOS, users continue to take to the virtual spaces they inhabit their off-line, ‘real’ foibles, problems, and idiosyncrasies (Chenault). To varying degrees, however, people also take their best intentions to their interactions in the dark. The hyper-efficient tools now deployed can intensify this, which is the great advantage attracting some users. In balance, however, in regard to online information access and dissemination, critical examination of what is in the public’s interest, and whether content should be regulated or controlled versus allowing a free flow of information where users self-regulate their online behaviour, is fraught. O’Loughlin (604) was one of the first to claim that there will be voluntary loss through negative liberty or freedom from (freedom from unwanted information or influence) and an increase in positive liberty or freedom to (freedom to read or say anything); hence, freedom from surveillance and interference is a kind of negative liberty, consistent with both libertarianism and liberalism. Conclusion The early adopters of initial iterations of SOS were hopeful and liberal (utopian) in their beliefs about universality and ‘free’ spaces of open communication between like-minded others. 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