'Chilling Effect' of Mass Surveillance Is Silencing Dissent Online, Study Says (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a Motherboard article: Research suggests that widespread awareness of mass surveillance could undermine democracy by making citizens fearful of voicing dissenting opinions in public. A paper published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), found that "the government's online surveillance programs may threaten the disclosure of minority views and contribute to the reinforcement of majority opinion." The NSA's "ability to surreptitiously monitor the online activities of U.S. citizens may make online opinion climates especially chilly" and "can contribute to the silencing of minority views that provide the bedrock of democratic discourse," the researcher found.

Comments

They already do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mass government and commercial surveillance already have a massive chilling effect on speech online. Employers check your online presence and commentary for controversial issues; I can't believe the security clearance process doesn't do the same thing. Many people I know avoid making many political comments online precisely because of this.

This becomes more true as you enter fields intelligent people who understand policy may enter, such as law, finance, etc...

Re:They already do.

[neilo_1701D]

I would moderate you as insightful, but that means I'm agreeing with your position and thus inviting the government to monitor me more closely to see what other heretical beliefs I may have...

Re: They already do.

[Corwyn_123]

Moderating insightful it's not necessarily agreement, merely acknowledging the view as well thought out and with intellectual merit. You can see it as insightful and still disagree.

Re: They already do.

[Qzukk]

As the cost to monitor people decreases, more and more people will be put under watch for increasingly trivial reasons.

Re:They already do.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting anonymously because I don't want people to track this opinion to me. But here goes...

We have already seen where Brendan Eich was pressured to step down as the CEO of Mozilla. Despite showing respect to everyone who worked for and with him, the loudest ones on the Internet showed their full intolerance of him voting for Prop 8 and made an example out of him. You could also see that in the primaries where people would whisper "Republican" when asked which primary they wanted to vote in.

Re:They already do.

[PopeRatzo]

Money is definitely speech in a situation today where you don't get a voice unless you can pay for ad time.

Horseshit. You don't buy ad time, but you have a voice.

Speech as defined in the Constitution does not guarantee you a mass audience. It guarantees you that nobody is going to prevent you from saying something. The speech can't be regulated. The money can and should.

Re:Obama is a muslim

[Anonymous Coward]

They are the religion of the devil.

I've got an easier way to silence speech!

[CajunArson]

Go onto any college campus and commit a microagression. That'll shut things down real quick, no mass surveillance required.

I'm chilled

[wcrowe]

I was just having a conversation about this the other night with some friends. I said, "That's why I don't comment about a lot of stuff. It may be that one day all of those tweets and facebook comments will get sifted through, and someone may decide all you guys need to be in concentration camps." I was half-way joking... but only half-way. It certainly is chilling.

It's not just mass surveillance, however. Social media being what it is, everyone is one bad joke away from becoming the pariah du jour, losing their job, and having their entire life ruined.

Re:I'm chilled

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's how it's chilling, and has been chilling for a long time: I only post where I can comment either without logging in or where there are accounts on BugMeNot. Both are getting quite rare. Hello Slashdot, though. If Slashdot ever starts requiring logins, I'm out of here. I used to post to Usenet, with my real name even. But then came DejaNews and altered the deal: What was previously a transient form of communication, with at most personal archives, became a public archive of statements, indexed to be found and scrutinized forever. You can probably guess how many social network accounts I have. The lack of private and transient online communication is a real problem.

I think it's the fear of future career-kills

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> widespread awareness of mass surveillance could undermine democracy by making citizens fearful of voicing dissenting opinions in public

That's part of it, but the bigger part is that many people see how something stupid or controversial someone says now could bite them in the ass twenty years from now. That exact thing is playing out now with a state supreme court justice in Wisconsin (http://www.jsonline.com/news/rebecca-bradley-called-gays-queers-who-opted-to-kill-themselves-b99682686z1-371276861.html), but I think it will probably be 10x bigger in ten years when even more people's careers or positions in their communities get torpedoed by drunk/ignorant comments they put on Facebook before they grew up.

That plays out into political speech too - I'd say MOST people are afraid to sign their name to their beliefs today, not because they don't want to be challenged, but because someone could try to nuke them for speaking their mind down the road. (e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/04/04/mozilla-ceo-resignation-free-speech/7328759/ or http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisonsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french)

FWIW, it's also part of the reason for Trump's popularity - I think a lot of his supporters remember a time when you could speak your mind without getting fired/sued/ruined because someone thought you were "microaggressing" or not supporting the right cause at the right time, and they identify with him as a politically incorrect old schooler.

Its true even on slashdot

[JustNiz]

I find it very depressing that even here on Slashdot where the readership is apparently meant to be more "deep thinking" than the average, if you post anything that questions current mainstream thinking, no matter how polite, rational, justifiable and sincere your post is, you will inevitably incur the obligatory crop of -1 troll moderations.

If you are one of those people that moderates rational, polite posts as "-1 Troll" just because it is making a point that is contrary to your own beliefs, you need to realize what you are actually saying about yourself.

it wont stop me from criticizing the govt

[FudRucker]

it might make them listen because even though i am hard with my opinion i am truthful,.

as we all know the government is just middle managers for the real power behind the throne which is the global banking cartel with the military-industrial-complex as the muscle enforcing the desires of the BIG monied elite, thats why i say it does not matter who gets elected president because the monied elite is not going to let a president and an election by a bunch of filthy unwashed peasants change the status-quo