---
tags: [ecopolsoc, privacy, surveillance-capitalism]
created: Thursday, January 09, 2025
---

# 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._

- https://riseup.net/en/about-us/newsletter/2013/08#riseup-and-the-recent-email-provider-closures

_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
