Anonymous protests Scientology in 2008. Image: Wikimedia
Last week, the literary and human rights organization known as the PEN America Center released their “Chilling Effects” report, a survey of how 528 writers are conducting themselves in light of Edward Snowden's leaks about widespread NSA surveillance. In a nutshell, the results in the study show writers are more fearful of government surveillance than the general populace—enough so that they are turning down book deals and speaking opportunities and shying away from writing about certain topics. Take it as an indication that some of them are scared to exert their First Amendment rights. It’s a troubling report, and one I actually found comforting.
See, for five years now I’ve been berating myself for being a self-censoring coward, but this new PEN report proves I am not the only one. Misery loves company, but so does cowardice, at least in my case.
My story of self-censorship and fear of surveillance and arrest begins in early 2008. At the time, I was living with a group of males who were into protesting Scientology once a month outside the Dianetics Center, and then Grant Park, here in Chicago. These young men were part of the collective now known as Anonymous, and they organized their protests in conjunction with hundreds of other like-minded individuals in cities around the globe. The Chicago protests never drew more than 50 people and were calm and tame fare, but the cops were always called, presumably by Scientologists.
There were problems related to surveillance almost immediately, and they quickly affected not only the protesters, but also me directly, as I was trying to cover the whole thing as a journalist. At the March 2008 protest, Scientologists came outside and filmed us, sneering. A few protest participants, including one woman I am still friends with today, were followed home on the train.
Scientology’s past history with critics, including their harassment and defamation plot “ Operation Freak Out” aimed at journalist and Scientology critic Paulette Cooper, had protesters guarding their identities as best as they could. Despite their best attempts, protesters soon received phone calls from Scientologists who tauntingly spelled out their names by each letter into the phone, sometimes with a “you’re not so anonymous anymore.” Parents of every student that “liked” an anti-Scientology Facebook page created by a Chicago protester received a letter from a legal office informing them their son or daughter was part of a “terrorist organization.”
Even more troubling, two older men—one quite physically fit, the other round, bearded and good at computers—abruptly disappeared before the end of the summer. Both vanished without a trace around the same time, with no explanation. These two men helped organize the protests, acquire protesting permits and were generally trusted by everyone in the community—especially the athletic “Fancy Sign Guy” known as such for the large and expensive laminated protest signs he brought every month.
By then, the intimidation from Scientologists and disappearance of the older “mentors” got to everyone, including two of the protesters I lived with. They began physically acting out by yelling, fighting with others and breaking things—they smashed a megaphone at one protest. That day, I had exchanged contact information with a Scientologist sent to monitor the protests, in the hopes of providing some balance to the story I was finally ready to finish.
I quickly became convinced I was being watched, and drastically cut back on writing, even reading about, hackers and activists.
Days later a woman called me up and spelled out my name letter by letter to me, and when I didn’t falter and tried to interview her, she changed the subject and asked if I lived with the protesters. I never told the Scientologist at the protest where I lived, so it became clear they had investigated me as well. My mom, influenced by her Communist Hungarian upbringing, pleaded with me to stop, fearing for my safety. I never did finish that story.
Flash forward to March 2012, and one of my hacker sources is freaking the fuck out. He'd been working on a project with other hackers, and one of them turned out to be an informant for the FBI and everyone was being arrested, including a young man in Chicago named Jeremy Hammond. My source had grown suspicious of this hacker-informant months before, and had kept his personal information away from him, but now he wasn't taking any chances and was packing his bags. I'd been absorbing his paranoia like a super-empathic sponge for more than six months, but the arrests, along with my source going "on the lam" was my breaking point. I could hold no more. I deleted my Internet Relay Chat client along with a web privacy tool, and stopped talking with friends in those circles. It didn't help when a federally-indicted-but-not-yet-imprisoned hacker I occasionally chatted with mentioned how he was being monitored as if it was a cool thing. Once, he tried to put one of his "bodyguards" on the phone with me.
I quickly became convinced I was being watched, and drastically cut back on writing, even reading about, hackers and activists. Being afraid of the government surveilling me was more terrifying than the threat of being watched by Scientologists— I worried the US government could lock me up with no trial and no one would ever never find me again. (I had absorbed my mother’s fear of a merciless, all-powerful government too, it seemed.) I tried to content myself with leaving said coverage to other less sensitive and brave writers, like Quinn Norton and Amber Lyon, to name a few.
When the fear didn’t go away, I quit my job. At my new place of employment I continued to shy away from any story that I thought would give the FBI or NSA cause to monitor me, and after six months, it seemed to work and the fear dissipated. Then suddenly, journalist Barrett Brown was arrested, and then charged in federal court that December for hyperlinking to stolen information. I had exchanged emails with Brown, as well as phone and tinychat conversations, and the fear came back like a swarm of angry bees defending their honeycomb. I sometimes joke-blame the NSA and the FBI for my panic attacks, but I am only half-kidding when I do so.
Snowden’s NSA leaks this May oddly elicited a sigh of relief from me: I’m not crazy, and the government is monitoring everyone and everything! Hooray, not just me, hackers and activists! Oh wait. They’re monitoring everyone without cause, meaning many writers out there must now feel, and deal, with this fear.
The PEN America study proves writers are, with some doing exactly what I did. Of the 528 writers polled, 1 in 6 admitted to censoring themselves in what they write to avoid being monitored. And it’s just not on hackers, activists, and the NSA leaks either. Writers are “self-censoring on subjects including military affairs, the Middle East North Africa region, mass incarceration, drug policies, pornography … the study of certain languages, and criticism of the U.S. government.” In fact, 16 percent of writers polled by PEN won’t even do certain Google searches or Internet research in case it piques the NSA’s interest and one in four self-censor in email and on the phone.
In this way, the NSA’s spying apparatus isn’t just violating the Fourth Amendment (right to privacy), it is violating the First Amendment right to free speech. There can be no freedom of the press if a fraction of the press is too frightened to write what they want, or even talk to their friends on the phone.
“We’ve always known about surveillance having a negative effect on creativity and freedom of expression...but because of the First Amendment, Americans have considered themselves the exception,” said PEN America Center executive director Suzanne Nossel in an interview. “But freedoms are being curtailed, writers are avoiding subjects and there are ideas we are not hearing about, so there needs to be an open debate about surveillance and its harms.”
The PEN America Center report closes with some preliminary recommendations on how to rectify self-censorship among writers by restoring the Fourth and First Amendment rights. This would be done by curtailing the NSA’s unwarranted mass collection of metadata and monitoring persons only with probable cause and due process.
Now if only someone could do a study on the chilling effects prosecutorial overcharging of hackers, activists like thelate Aaron Swartz, and journalists like Barrett Brown have on free speech. Something tells me the results will be chillingly similar.