This is What Government Sponsored Mass Surveillance is Doing to Your MindBy Alex Pietrowski This is a lie, of course, and as we move deeper into the era of State-sponsored technological surveillance, wesee more evidence that the loss of privacy and confidence in interpersonal communicationsis transforming the individual into a compliant, self-policing ward of the State. In one of the first empiricalscientific studies to provide concrete evidence of the chilling effectsthat government surveillance has on Internet users,Oxford University professor Jon Penney looked at Wikipedia search data and traffic patterns before and after the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden regarding widespread NSA surveillance of the Internet. The results demonstrated an immediate trend towards self-censorship, as traffic and searches for terms like Al Qaeda, car bomb, and Taliban showed nearly instant and mentionabledecline. The changes were statistically significant enough to indicatethat many people automaticallyalter their own behavior upon realizing that a punitive authoritarian organization is monitoring them for legitimate or perceived wrongdoings. If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate. Jon Penney In 2013, the organization Pen America conducted a survey of writers in the United States showing that many were already self-censoring themselves in an increasingly oppressive atmosphere of government surveillance. The fear of being caught up in a dragnet of legal and financial problems was sufficient enough for many to change their tone and content, even though no direct physical threat existed. The results of this surveythe beginning of a broader investigation into the harms of surveillancesubstantiate PENs concerns: writers are not only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result.[Source] Commenting on the effects of authoritarian governments which heavily surveil their citizens, Pen America also notes that, historically, from writers and intellectuals in the Soviet Bloc, and contemporaneously from writers, thinkers, and artists in China, Iran, and elsewhereaggressive surveillance regimes limit discourse and distort the flow of information and ideas. This is without question the intended aim of such programs. That study also included data which indicated how people curtail their online behavior and interactions with other people out of fear of being persecuted by the nanny state: Smaller percentages of those surveyed described already changing their day-to-day behavior: 28 percent said they had curtailed or avoided activities on social media, with another 12 percent saying they had seriously considered doing it; similar percentages said they had steered clear of certain topics in phone calls or email (24 percent had done so; 9 percent had seriously considered it). [Source] Furthermore, in a 2015 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)examining how awareness of government surveillance affected peoples use of Google, the worlds most widely used Internet search engine,researchers concluded that, users were less likely to search using search terms that they believed might get them in trouble with the US government. In general, peoples behavior also changes in ways more favorable to an authoritarian government when surveillance both online and in the real world is as ubiquitous as it already is in American society. The State draws power from a compliant, acquiescent, and self-policing public, and when mass surveillance is applied to the citizenry, with the predictable result of creating a more submissive and conformist citizenry. This idea was effectively brought to life in George Orwells classic dystopian novel, 1984, where the primary surveillance device of the individual was the telescreen, a digital device located in every home that could receive and transmit audio and video, giving individuals zero privacy in their own homes. The beauty of omnipotent surveillance such as this was that the government did not even have to actually be monitoring an individual, because the simple fact that they could be listening and watching was enough to frighten a person into voluntary compliance and self-censorship. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You have to live did live, from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. George Orwell, 1984 This principle is coming to fruition in our modern world in the form of the internet and social media. Couple this with the creation and publication of government watch lists of all flavors, where people can be arbitrarily restricted from travel, or worse, and we are marching headlong into a brave new world where freedom is tightly constricted not by law, but by a creeping ambiguous fear of what may happen to us if we step out of line. We are creating a society where people may have legally protected free speech, but they dare not use it. There is a reason governments, corporations, and multiple other entities of authority crave surveillance. Its precisely because the possibility of being monitoredradically changes individual and collective behavior. Specifically, that possibilitybreeds fear and fosters collective conformity. Thats always been intuitively clear. Now, there is mounting empirical evidence proving it. Glen Greenwald Alex Pietrowski is an artist and writer concerned with preserving good health and the basic freedom to enjoy a healthy lifestyle. He is a staff writer for WakingTimes.com and Offgrid Outpost, a provider of storable food and emergency kits. Alex is an avid student of Yoga and life. Like Waking Times on Facebook. Follow Waking Times on Twitter. This article (This is What Government Sponsored Mass Surveillance is Doing to Your Mind)was originally created and published byWaking Timesand is published here under aCreative Commonslicense with attribution toAlex PietrowskiandWakingTimes.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this copyright statement. ~~ Help Waking Times to raise the vibration by sharing this article with friends and family The older you getthe less spooked you get. These criminal surveillors had better watch their step.a sea change is happening as evidenced by this election When the (S)election is over and people wake up to the reality that their vote means nothing and start to revolt against this criminal government that is spraying the citizens with toxic chemtrails, that has willfully killed 3,000 of its own citizens to start an illegal war just to mention a few of their crimes the people who have supported (police, NSA etc) the regime had better find a nice underground hiding place, lest they be hung by the neck for treason by the masses who will decide the law as they go. Top quality Grade A medical marijuana strains available for sale . Place your order directly from our website and have it ship the same day . Visit http://www.saintmaryhouse . com or contact us at 512 640 9206 I hope the Taliban puts car bombs in every traitor in Washingtons cars. I figure I am already on the list, screw the NSA and all the alphabet soups. Top quality Grade A medical marijuana strains available for sale . Place your order directly from our website and have it ship the same day . Visit http://www.saintmaryhouse . com or contact us at 512 640 9206 /;. First they hoist a false flag CIA operative named Snowed-In to tell everyone they are being watched. Then they wait a little while and report, Yep, its working. People are self-policing, so that people will not only continue but now feel justified because they think everyone else is scared too. Why, after being lied to about everything else under the sun (including the sun) would anyone believe the government is monitoring every little word search and phone conversation we all have 24/7? They only want us to think they have the audacious ability to do this without having to actually go to all the trouble and expense, nevermind the impossibility of it. Think people! Or have you also bought the BS that they are reading your mind too? 