“Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self-Censor" is the title of a survey of American authors conduced by the FDR Group for the PEN American Center toward the end of last year.
They surveyed more than 500 writers to find out whether and how awareness of the see-all, know-all practices of the NSA might be affecting their writing.
Here are some of the results:
* Have avoided writing or speaking about a particular topic : 16%
* Have seriously considered avoiding it: another 11%
* Have curtailed or avoided social media activities: 28%
* Have seriously considered doing so: another 12%
A larger proporation of the writers disapproved of the government's wholesale collection of data than was true of the general population: 66% vs. 44%.
Do these writers censor their private communications because they know the NSA can access those at will, or do they censor what they write publicly because they assume the NSA has people monitoring what is said and written in magazines, online, in speeches, etc.? Or both?
At least 16%, and up to 27% if we include the "seriously considered it" group, must believe there is a real danger of some kind of reprisal or penalty for expressing their views in their private and/or public writing or speaking. That's different from just generally feeling that the NSA is going overboard with data collection.
Are they paranoid? What about the old, "If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about" assurance?
I'm old enough to have participated in anti-VietNam War demonstrations and I wonder how those would have played out if today's technology had been available to the authorities then.
Or what if Richard Nixon had had today's level of information about the people on his Enemies List?
Or if J. Edgar Hoover had been able to misuse it to destroy the civil rights movement?
I can't say that fear has stopped me from expressing myself; the main problem has been that I am planning to write a satire about what happens when one character mistakenly gets on a list of people suspected of terrorism, but the reality of what's happening keeps getting more and more bizarre.
For example, see my recent post about the Disney/NSA cartoon designed to get kids used to the idea that drones will be watching their every action--not only to protect them from terrorists but also from not fastening their seat belts.
It's hard to satirize that kind of reality.
I hope writers and others don't stop themselves from speaking out. The right to do that without fear is at the very core of freedom.
After all, Patrick Henry didn't say, "I may disagree with what you say, so shut up or else!"
