If, back in 2003, government surveillance had reached a point that many of us felt the need to self-censor, today it’s private citizens who are imposing the censorship regime. Online mobs savage people for making an insensitive remark, communities shun people for asking questions. The desire to speak freely and without fear is driving not only the creation of platforms like Substack, but actual migration patterns. This is what happens when surveillance and social control are pervasive enough: True enemies, like al-Qaida, are replaced by boogeymen like @TrumpDyke, and dubious figments like “disinformation” supplant real threats like terror. The zealous among us begin policing speech so the actual police don’t have to, and the press, the inevitable organ of every authoritarian regime, either turns a blind eye or actively colludes with the government and its partners to smother unsanctioned views.
We lost a lot for choosing not to have a dialogue about government overreach back in 2013, when Snowden revealed the government’s mass surveillance programs. “Study after study has shown that human behavior changes when we know we’re being watched,” he once said. “Under observation, we act less free, which means we are less free.” Maybe you hesitated to do a search on Google, or say something in an email because you thought someone might intercept it. After Snowden, writers admitted to turning down work out of the mere possibility of surveillance. The “war on terror” had a chilling effect on speech, which was bad enough. Fast forward to 2020, and scientists were voluntarily taking themselves out of the lockdown debate. If in 2013, we lost a core American value when we chose not to take up the cause of privacy, in 2020, we lost jobs and lives.