NSA spying has ‘chilling effect’ on US writers: Report

Recent disclosures of the National Security Agency’s global spying programs and the consequent crackdown on whistleblowers by the US government are having a “chilling effect” on freedom of expression in America, a report says.

A survey of 520 American writers published Tuesday by PEN America, a group of writers dedicated to promoting freedom of speech, has found that they are “not only overwhelmingly worried about government surveillance, but are engaging in self-censorship as a result.”

The report, Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives US Writers to Self Censor showed that American writers are overwhelmingly concerned about how to protect their sources in the current climate of repressed press freedoms.

Eighty-one percent of writers said they are “very concerned about government efforts to compel journalists to reveal sources of classified information, and another 15% are somewhat concerned.”

“The NSA’s surveillance will damage the ability of the press to report on the important issues of our time,” said the authors of the report, according to the Common Dreams. “If journalists refrain from contacting sources for fear that their sources will be found out and harmed, or if sources conclude that they cannot safely speak to journalists and thus stay silent.”

“Part of what makes self-censorship so troubling is the impossibility of knowing precisely what is lost to society because of it,” the authors noted.

24 percent of writers surveyed said that they have deliberately avoided topics in phone or email conversations out of fear of NSA eavesdropping.

16 percent said they have refrained from conducting Internet searches or visiting websites on topics that may be considered controversial or suspicious and another 12 percent have seriously considered it.

“As a writer and journalist who deals with the Middle East and the Iraq War in particular, I suspect I am being monitored. As a writer who has exposed sexual violence in the military, and who speaks widely on the subject, likewise,” said a PEN writer.