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I don't see the clear link. A writer expects that his writing will be viewed by countless others. For instance I have no fear of the NSA reading this message.

I don't see the clear link. A writer expects that his writing will be viewed by countless others. For instance I have no fear of the NSA reading this message. Surveillance or not, this is a public forum. They don't need taps. Are they afraid that by writing that they will become the subject of increased surveillance? That could/would happen as easily 30 years ago as today. At least today we have tools to fight back. The mathematics of encryption are on the side of the individual. Open source software, Tor, PGP ... today anyone with a netbook can play in the big leagues of secrecy. Journalists should probably feel safer than they did back when the only thing protecting their documents was a metal key to a leather briefcase, when the only thing stopping them from reading their mail was the glue.

grrowl 12y ago
> Surveillance or not, this is a public forum. Unfortunately, many here write under a pseudonym. Surveillance at the scale the NSA/FBI/CIA is practicing deanonymises everyone, pseudonym or not. You control the information you put into this public forum, but they operate at a level beyond that information.
chaostheory 12y ago
> Are they afraid that by writing that they will become the subject of increased surveillance? That could/would happen as easily 30 years ago as today. It was less efficient and a lot slower decades ago. Back then you just have people manually combing and reading books. Now you have computers with improved machine learning processing huge numbers of documents. Even without machine learning, just being able to flag keywords is really powerful compared to yesteryear.
talmand 12y ago
The fear isn't of being read, the fear is of the backlash of what was written. The fear is that free expression is no longer free but subject to strange, vague rules that change all the time. Such as supporting something today and then years from now it's out of vogue so that previous statements, collected and tagged all those years ago, will be held against you. Either socially, or in some cases criminally. And it isn't just the government that's been doing this. Many of us now live in a world where your opinion can have heavy consequences outside the scope of the context of the opinion. I would say that if you have an opinion on anything that you share publicly, prepare to have your apology ready to go to appease the offended masses that will not hesitate to make an example of you. Keep in mind that some people see this as a good thing, until it happens to them.
- sandworm 12y ago
  But these are writers speaking as writers, not members of the general public. Their criticisms of state-backed surveillance should therefore be different than the generalized chilling of expression felt by the public at large. Writers have always known their words are inspected. The public, those who previously did not expect their communications to be monitored, they have far more to fear from electronic surveillance. The OP, and several commentators here, also conflate fear of surveillance with fear of the burgeoning police state. They are different concepts. A police state can/will attack a journalist without any surveillance beyond a police officer reading a newspaper.
  - talmand 12y ago
    Not that I'm disputing anything you're saying, but I am going by what the article stated that some of these writers claimed is their reasoning behind worrying over the surveillance. I just happen to agree with much of it. What you say about the two different concepts is true, but they also go hand-in-hand in most cases. I see nothing wrong with any of the statements from the article or this thread.

grrowl 12y ago

> Surveillance or not, this is a public forum. Unfortunately, many here write under a pseudonym. Surveillance at the scale the NSA/FBI/CIA is practicing deanonymises everyone, pseudonym or not. You control the information you put into this public forum, but they operate at a level beyond that information.

chaostheory 12y ago

> Are they afraid that by writing that they will become the subject of increased surveillance? That could/would happen as easily 30 years ago as today. It was less efficient and a lot slower decades ago. Back then you just have people manually combing and reading books. Now you have computers with improved machine learning processing huge numbers of documents. Even without machine learning, just being able to flag keywords is really powerful compared to yesteryear.

talmand 12y ago

The fear isn't of being read, the fear is of the backlash of what was written. The fear is that free expression is no longer free but subject to strange, vague rules that change all the time. Such as supporting something today and then years from now it's out of vogue so that previous statements, collected and tagged all those years ago, will be held against you. Either socially, or in some cases criminally. And it isn't just the government that's been doing this. Many of us now live in a world where your opinion can have heavy consequences outside the scope of the context of the opinion. I would say that if you have an opinion on anything that you share publicly, prepare to have your apology ready to go to appease the offended masses that will not hesitate to make an example of you. Keep in mind that some people see this as a good thing, until it happens to them.

sandworm 12y ago
But these are writers speaking as writers, not members of the general public. Their criticisms of state-backed surveillance should therefore be different than the generalized chilling of expression felt by the public at large. Writers have always known their words are inspected. The public, those who previously did not expect their communications to be monitored, they have far more to fear from electronic surveillance. The OP, and several commentators here, also conflate fear of surveillance with fear of the burgeoning police state. They are different concepts. A police state can/will attack a journalist without any surveillance beyond a police officer reading a newspaper.
- talmand 12y ago
  Not that I'm disputing anything you're saying, but I am going by what the article stated that some of these writers claimed is their reasoning behind worrying over the surveillance. I just happen to agree with much of it. What you say about the two different concepts is true, but they also go hand-in-hand in most cases. I see nothing wrong with any of the statements from the article or this thread.