{"id":2350,"date":"2016-05-02T10:20:43","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T17:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/?p=2350"},"modified":"2020-08-26T15:15:38","modified_gmt":"2020-08-26T22:15:38","slug":"nsa-causes-people-develop-entirely-new-form-self-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/nsa-causes-people-develop-entirely-new-form-self-censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"NSA has caused people to develop entirely new form of self-censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>A Wikipedia study of readership show that people largely abstain from reading certain articles about terror groups after the NSA mass surveillance revelations of 2013, in fear of being redflagged as potential troublemakers. This is an entirely new form of self-censorship, and the media reporting on it has failed to see and explore this new form of self-censorship that has developed in fear of being redflagged in a new technical landscape.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The study, as first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonk\/wp\/2016\/04\/27\/new-study-snowdens-disclosures-about-nsa-spying-had-a-scary-effect-on-free-speech\/\">reported<\/a> by the Washington Post and reported\/discussed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/technology\/comments\/4gpfg9\/internet_traffic_to_wikipedia_pages_summarizing\/\">on Reddit<\/a>, highlight this as an issue of self-censorship harming freedom of speech, even right in the headline. That\u2019s wrong. It\u2019s something else.<\/p>\n<p>The Intercept further <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2016\/04\/28\/new-study-shows-mass-surveillance-breeds-meekness-fear-and-self-censorship\/\">highlights<\/a> the story and explores how it suppresses freedoms of expression and thought. But that\u2019s still not what\u2019s being self-censored here. Instead, what we\u2019re seeing is something entirely new.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The classic self-censorship is refraining from speaking out.<\/strong> When speaking out gets you in trouble, formally or informally, this interferes with freedoms of <em>speech and expression<\/em>. This form of self-censorship has existed since ancient times \u2013 there have always been taboo subjects where we need to tread carefully. Sometimes they are social, sometimes they are political. It\u2019s like the old Soviet joke:<\/p>\n<p><em>Three people are sitting in a cell at the KGB headquarters. The first man says, \u201cI\u2019m here because I criticized Karl Radek. And you?\u201d. The second man says \u201cI\u2019m here because I spoke out in favor of Karl Radek\u201d. The third man adds, \u201cI\u2019m Karl Radek.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Speaking of the KGB, they created a second form of self-censorship.<\/strong> By placing <em>agents provocateurs<\/em> in the general population in the Soviet Union and its puppet states, where KGB agents would claim over vodka that this communism thing really sucked and promptly have anyone who agreed with the statement raided and arrested, they created a fear of allying with dissenters \u2013 the KGB created a fear of having the wrong friends. They created a self-censorship that attacked the freedom of <em>association<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The FBI had yet a third form going when they started attacking libraries and demanded to know which books had been borrowed by whom, something the librarians fought back as a profession and created the \u201cwarrant canary\u201d, now commonly used in IT. Had the FBI started redflagging people based on this, and the librarians not fought back, it may have created this third form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But it\u2019s not until now that this third form really surfaces.<\/strong> Imagine you\u2019re holding a (physical) encyclopedia in your hand, and you\u2019re afraid of <em>reading certain articles<\/em>, self-censoring your behavior to look away from them. If you were reading a book, that you were avoiding <em>certain pages<\/em>. If you were reading a newspaper, that you\u2019re avoiding <em>reading certain topics<\/em>. This is what the Wikipedia study shows is happening. This is self-censorship of the freedom of <em>information<\/em>, and it\u2019s something entirely new and destructive that the NSA has caused.<\/p>\n<p>Privacy remains your own responsibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Wikipedia study of readership show that people largely abstain from reading certain articles about terror groups after the NSA mass surveillance revelations of 2013, in fear of being redflagged as potential troublemakers. This is an entirely new form of self-censorship, and the media reporting on it has failed to see and explore this new &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.privateinternetaccess.com\/blog\/nsa-causes-people-develop-entirely-new-form-self-censorship\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;NSA has caused people to develop entirely new form of self-censorship&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1945,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-censorship","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v26.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>NSA has caused people to 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