Creating Chilling Effects On Speech Is A Feature, Not A Bug, Of The Surveillance State

[KoKo]

from the shut-up-you-people,-we're-protecting-you dept

We've discussed a few times how the pervasive surveillance efforts of the NSA and others have tremendous chilling effects on how people communicate and how they act. We've discussed how this is a "cost" to the program that not many, especially those who are backing these programs, seem interested in measuring or even thinking about. Of course, implicit in our assumption is that these "costs" are things that are negatives of the program. Others would point out that for those in power, that's not so much a cost as a benefit. It's not a bug or an unintended consequence, but a feature. Chilling speech and clamping down on communications? Why that's a good thing for those in power.

Josh Levy, from Free Press, has a great guest post over at Boing Boing where he discusses how the NSA's surveillance regime is a huge attack on free speech, and how this is both inevitable, and for some, the intent of the program:

The chilling of free speech isn’t just a consequence of surveillance. It’s also a motive. We adopt the art of self-censorship, closing down blogs, watching what we say on Facebook, forgoing “private” email for fear that any errant word may come back to haunt us in one, five or fifteen 15 years. “The mind's tendency to still feel observed when alone... can be inhibiting,” writes Janna Malamud Smith. Indeed.

Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that “the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.”

Hentoff stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are “attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.” In fact, they are attempts to define who we are as human beings.

Meanwhile, over at the Atlantic, Bruce Schneier has a post discussing the detainment of David Miranda, where he comes to similar conclusions, that these authoritarian police states clearly have no practical benefit, except to enable a powerful government to show off its power to invade your lives:

This leaves one last possible explanation -- those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They're lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they're not to be messed with -- that the normal rules of polite conduct don't apply to people who screw with them. That's probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone.

More with links to links of full articles of excerpts at:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130822/19270124286/creating-chilling-effects-speech-is-feature-not-bug-surveillance-state.shtml

[Supersedeas]

1. thank you for the link

[Fire Walk With Me]

2. The Occupy Movement agrees. K&R!

[Lint Head]

3. Who needs freedom of speech in a corporately controlled theocratic fascist state.

[mick063]

11. Good question sir

[99th_Monkey]

4. Great find. USA = SnoopsR-Us K&R. ~nt

[KoKo]

5. ...)

[nashville_brook]

6. k and r

[G_j]

7. “attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.”

this needs to be said.

[woo me with science]

9. +100000

[G_j]

10. and it's been working

just observe the conversations taking place here.

[woo me with science]

8. Amen. K&R a million times.

The psychological ramifications, the relationship of the people to the government has been fundamentally changed, and in a ugly, poisonous, malignant way. This is personal. This is something people feel and have to deal with psychologically every time they sit down to write an email.

It is the dark, omnipresent threat that anything you say could come back to be used against you in the future.

Perhaps we have not lived in a free country for some time now, but they have now destroyed any remaining illusion and have driven home the horrible reality of our true relationship to this government.

[Savannahmann]

12. The days of the Public Servant are long gone.

It could be argued that they never existed, and that the image of the dedicated public servant were merely fiction. There are certainly examples in history for both sides of the issue.

Today however, lets look at who takes these jobs. Cops are quite often people who were bullied in High School. It affected them deeply, and now they have a badge, and a gun, and the authority, and they aren't going to be ignored ever again. The are not the thin blue line protecting society, and I'm not sure they ever have been during my life.

Bureaucrats in every department and organization. They don't have the authority to say yes, but they do have the power to say no, and they enjoy exercising their power. Corruption runs rampant, and mistakes are either ignored, or most often, result in additional training. How often do we read stories of just blinding incompetence, and malfeasance? Oh not to worry they tell us, there is an internal investigation. Those investigations never result in charges. Want to have fun? Call the IRS helpline, and ask a question once a month. As the same question. If you donate a car to charity, do you get to deduct the bluebook value of the car at the time of the donation, or the actual sale value at auction? You will get a different answer every month, and they are the experts.

Then there are the Politicians. They vote on bills they have not read, and have no understanding of. Bills with thousands of pages, which nobody knows what is in them. The reason the IRS doesn't know what they're doing in regards to the question above, is that nobody has been clear in the thousands of pages of laws that we pass.

Douglas Adams said in the book Restaurant at the end of the Universe, that anyone who wanted the position of President of the Universe, and the power that went with it, was the person who should be the last one to have the power. In other words, you should be ineligible to hold the office if you want it. We spend billions of dollars fighting to see who can get the top office. We spend tens or even hundreds of millions to get the Senate seats. We spend all that money to get a job where you don't make much? Then how do all those Politicians leave Washington so rich?

The last Politician that I can think of to leave Washington poor was Harry Truman. How many of our representatives are similarly destitute?

I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know what the future holds. But each generation seems to have less to hold it's head up about. The sixties brought us such great advancements in science, the Apollo missions were an example of ingenuity and determination over adversity.

We used to take on the hard things, we used to dedicate ourselves as a people to that which was impossible. Curing diseases that were decimating our population. Polio, Mumps, Small Pox were all eradicated. We used to do such wonderful things.

Now, our intelligence is in making more drones, and better drones, to find and slaughter those who disagree with us. Our science has nearly turned it's back on space, and is now working on more machines to kill each other. It's a shame that our kids are dumb, but we have smart bombs, isn't that a clever thing?

So long as the Average Joe can check out Busty Bimbo's from Budapest on his computer, he doesn't care what is going on in town, what asinine things are being done by his Government. He doesn't care that his kids are dumber than a box of rocks. He doesn't care that we aren't advancing any science. He is ignorant of and apathetic about the fate of anything. All he wants to do is watch TV, and he's got a couple hundred channels, and then late at night, when the family is asleep, he'll sneak down and check out some readily available porn.

This is the world we live in, and the future isn't bright, it's so dark that pitch black would be an improvement.

[KoKo]

13. This is an incredible post...Recommend...

(I would only add that when "Wall Street" took over and Workers were forced into 401-K's instead of pensions and Deregulation took over most of our "safe guards" it helped create a Culture of Greed that ended up in the 2008 Crash. )

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As you say:

The last Politician that I can think of to leave Washington poor was Harry Truman. How many of our representatives are similarly destitute?

I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know what the future holds. But each generation seems to have less to hold it's head up about. The sixties brought us such great advancements in science, the Apollo missions were an example of ingenuity and determination over adversity.

We used to take on the hard things, we used to dedicate ourselves as a people to that which was impossible. Curing diseases that were decimating our population. Polio, Mumps, Small Pox were all eradicated. We used to do such wonderful things. and back again)

========
The last Politician that I can think of to leave Washington poor was Harry Truman. How many of our representatives are similarly destitute?

I don't know what the answer is, and I don't know what the future holds. But each generation seems to have less to hold it's head up about. The sixties brought us such great advancements in science, the Apollo missions were an example of ingenuity and determination over adversity.

We used to take on the hard things, we used to dedicate ourselves as a people to that which was impossible. Curing diseases that were decimating our population. Polio, Mumps, Small Pox were all eradicated. We used to do such wonderful things.

[Quantess]

14. Seems pretty obvious.

K & R

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. kick

[woo me with science]

16. kick