The Chilling Effect

I thought I'd comment briefly on the chilling effect of the President's domestic surveillance fettish from a personal perspective. I have a number of friends and acquaintances from the Republican persuasion who are prone to ask me questions like, "If you haven't done anything wrong, what have you got to worry about? They're only after the terrorists." Here are a few answers.

I have a number of fairly close Muslim friends, some who were former students of mine, who live in Arab states in North Africa, Kuwait and other places in the Middle East. Until recently, I communicated with them fairly regularly, by e-mail, snail mail, and sometimes phone and fax. In the past several years, however, I have felt compelled to cut off or at least limit those communications (and on the few more recent occasions when I have communicated with some of these friends, I sense they have felt silence was necessary as well). Why?

First, though I know that none of these people have anything to do with al Qaeda or any terrorists, they do live in areas where others around them may. Indeed, they may give to Muslim charities that, unknown to them, pass some of the funds on to terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. They may even knowingly give to charities that render assistance to destitute Palestinians from families of suicide bombers.

In the past several years, our government has begun prosecuting people who "sponsor" terrorists. It has interpreted that provision of the "Patriot" Act as including those who have given to charities that, unknown to them, have aided the innocent families of suicide bombers in the occupied territories and has tried some of them as "terrorists" or "terrorist sympathizers."

That means that my Arab friends might well be deemed "terrorists" by the sick, corrupted logic of our government, and any communication I might have with them would make me suspect as well, even though neither I nor they have knowledge of anything they might have done to provoke suspicion. The fact that I am openly critical of this government would only be likely to make the Bush henchmen more suspicious.

My fear here is not so much for myself, since I'm too small a fry for the government to care much about (I'm keeping my fingers crossed) or to risk raising a ruckus about. But, repeated communications between me and my friends (particularly if I were to share my criticism of the Administration with them) might well trigger our government to alert the governments of the Arab states where they live (particularly those in North Africa) to watch my friends. And, in those countries, that could easily lead to their arrest and imprisonment without charges being filed.

Now, I consider that a chilling effect. Does it do any great social harm that I have been induced to stop conversing with my friends? Probably not. The world will go on even if I and my friends don't communicate. But, multiply that by all the others that may be affected, and I suspect it begins to erode the quality of life for a good many Americans.

Many years ago, in the early 1970s, I and my family travelled on a business trip to Brazil. This was a time (one of the many times) that the Brazilian government was quite repressive, and you could feel and sense this everywhere you went. You could sense that taxi cab drivers wanted to speak about their frustrations with the government but feared their cabs might be tapped. Some would speak more openly outside the cab. Our guides and translators behaved similarly. Recall the fear that some films depicting Nazi Germany inspire (I think of Counterfeit Traitor as an example), the fear that friends and neighbors might report you to the authorities for suspicious behavior. This was a bit the way Brazil felt to me in those days.

I never thought it would happen, but I am beginning to feel the same way here in my own country!