{"id":20338,"date":"2016-04-28T19:05:55","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T00:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20338"},"modified":"2016-04-28T19:05:55","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T00:05:55","slug":"new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20338","title":{"rendered":"New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A\u00a0newly published study<\/a>\u00a0from Oxford\u2019s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear\u00a0and\u00a0conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study,\u00a0the Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0this morning\u00a0described this phenomenon<\/a>: \u201cIf we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was \u201ca 20 percent decline\u00a0in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned \u2018al-Qaeda,\u2019\u00a0\u201ccar bomb\u2019 or \u2018Taliban.’\u201d People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of\u00a0suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: \u201cIf people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the\u00a0Post<\/em>\u00a0explains, several other studies have also demonstrated how mass surveillance crushes free expression and free thought. A 2015 study examined Google search data and\u00a0demonstrated<\/a>\u00a0that, post-Snowden, \u201cusers were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the US government\u201d and that these \u201cresults suggest that there is a chilling effect on search behavior from government surveillance on the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fear that causes\u00a0self-censorship\u00a0is well beyond the realm of theory. Ample evidence demonstrates that it\u2019s real \u2013 and rational. A study from PEN America writers\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that 1 in 6 writers had curbed their content out of fear of surveillance and showed that writers are\u00a0\u201cnot only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

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New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship A\u00a0newly published study\u00a0from Oxford\u2019s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear\u00a0and\u00a0conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study,\u00a0the Washington Post\u00a0this morning\u00a0described this phenomenon: \u201cIf we think that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[302,5437,13676,5570,13677,652,13675,3323,5567,5228],"class_list":["post-20338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-fear","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-jon-penney","tag-mass-surveillance","tag-oxford","tag-privacy","tag-richard-mia","tag-self-censorship","tag-the-intercept","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20339,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20338\/revisions\/20339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}