747589ad_effects_of_privacy_violation
What surveillance really is, at its root, is a highly effective form of social control. The knowledge of always being watched changes our behavior and stifles dissent. The inability to associate secretly means there is no longer any possibility for free association. The inability to whisper means there is no longer any speech that is truly free of coercion, real or implied. Most profoundly, pervasive surveillance threatens to eliminate the most vital element of both democracy and social movements: the mental space for people to form dissenting and unpopular views.
If you live in a surveillance state for long enough, you create a censor in your head. When video cameras are routine fixtures in urban landscapes; when corporate Internet giants store records of online navigation and communication; and when managers and bosses maintain capabilities to measure and monitor employees as never before, society at large pays the price. These different vectors of surveillance aggregate, exerting a pressure for us to blend in, to think twice before speaking out, to, in essence, follow a narrow set of prescribed norms. Social conformity encourages quiet resignation and discourages the experimental - and necessarily risky - acts of speaking, thinking, and doing required for healthy democratic dissent.
Gabriella Coleman. Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy (2014): 380
