Writing Under Watch: Documenting the Truth in a Surveillance State

Writers who document truth inside surveillance states walk a narrow line between public service and personal danger. Every sentence carries the weight of scrutiny, with authorities eager to suppress accounts that contradict official narratives. The act of recording reality becomes both an act of resistance and a test of resilience, as authors and journalists balance the risks of censorship, intimidation, and punishment. This article looks at the lived experience of those under watch, where the simple decision to publish can determine not just the fate of a story, but the future of free expression in society.

I didn’t expect the most challenging part of writing about surveillance would be the act of writing itself. Not the research, the sources, or the verification of facts in an era thick with fiction. No, the hardest part is knowing that the words I type might, someday soon, be enough to put me on a list.

When I first began researching Executive Directive 14209, I followed the standard approach of most writers: I took notes, followed trails, and cataloged terms such as EDIO, Sentinel Shadow, risk scoring, and metadata profiling. But a strange thing started happening. My search suggestions changed. My social media ads glitched oddly between baby products and biometric security. A family member got a call from someone “verifying voter data.” None of this is proof. But all of it made me pause and take a moment to catch my breath.

And that’s precisely the point.

The new landscape of surveillance isn’t just about what’s collected. It’s about what’s prevented. The fear is the feature, a self-censorship switch unknowingly flipped by the possibility that curiosity could be misconstrued as subversion. You don’t need to be an activist, a dissenter, or a whistleblower. You just need to ask the wrong questions, read the wrong books, or write about the wrong directive.

Surveys show that nearly half of Americans say government surveillance makes them less likely to express opinions online, a sentiment that cuts across party lines (YouGov, 2025).

We, as writers, live at the intersection of truth and danger. We report. We imagine. We document. But increasingly, we’re also cataloged. When tools like Sentinel Shadow assign “ideological risk scores” based on voting patterns or proximity to protests, how far behind can writing be? A single op-ed, a shared link, or a donation to a press freedom group—each becomes a datapoint in an invisible dossier.

The implications stretch beyond the page. They hit the keystroke.

Because when government classification replaces public debate, and when behavior becomes evidence, writing ceases to be protected speech. It becomes data—sorted, scored, and, in some cases, flagged.

I’m not naïve. Surveillance is woven into the fabric of American history, often justified by fear of communism, terrorism, or now, “domestic instability.” From J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO targeting civil rights leaders, to the post-9/11 expansion under the Patriot Act, we’ve long tolerated incursions on privacy in the name of national security. But what’s changed—what feels chillingly different now—is the normalization of it—the steady absorption of once-extraordinary powers into the day-to-day operations of government.

Today, surveillance isn’t just the stuff of wiretaps or secret agents—it’s woven into the algorithms that run our phones, our social media feeds, our financial transactions. And under executive actions, such as Directive 14209, these powers no longer require court warrants, congressional briefings, or even public justification. The shift isn’t just legal—it’s a cultural phenomenon. We’re being conditioned to accept that being watched is the cost of participation, data trails are the new fingerprints, and dissent, however peaceful or principled, may be interpreted as destabilization rather than democratic engagement.

This is not just speculation—71% of Americans express concern about the government's use of their personal data, and trust in federal institutions is at near-historic lows (Pew Research Center, 2023; Secureframe, 2024).

Writers, especially, feel this squeeze. Under historical programs like Operation CHAOS, journalists were surveilled and infiltrated for merely reporting on anti-war activity. Today, the tools are faster, broader, and invisible. Platforms scrape metadata. AI flags “patterns of concern.” And leaked memos from programs like Sentinel Shadow confirm that the act of researching surveillance itself can place someone on a digital watchlist.

Recent polling shows that 55% of Democrats and 23% of Republicans worry deeply about surveillance being used against political opponents (YouGov, 2025)—a reminder that fear of overreach transcends ideology.

So yes, I write. But I write knowing that the line between journalist and subject is no longer reliably drawn. That publishing a piece like this might not be seen as protected speech, but as evidence of ideological deviance. And that realization doesn’t come with a knock at the door. It comes in the silence that follows it.

So what do we do?

We write anyway.

We write with the knowledge that risk exists. That some stories may never see the light of day, that fear may whisper at the edge of every sentence. But we also write because silence concedes the terrain we may find ourselves in, and often do. And the moment we stop putting these truths into language is the moment power no longer needs to hide what it’s doing.

This isn’t just about one directive. It’s about defending the act of writing itself.

And for now, at least, I choose to write.

References from the Author

Pew Research Center. (2023, October 18). Key findings about Americans and data privacy. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/18/key-findings-about-americans-and-data-privacy/

Pew Research Center. (2025, Winter). How U.S. public opinion has changed in 20 years of Pew Research Center surveys. https://www.pew.org/en/trust/archive/winter-2025/how-us-public-opinion-has-changed-in-20-years-of-pew-research-center-surveys/

Secureframe. (2024). 70+ data privacy statistics you need to know in 2024. Secureframe. https://secureframe.com/blog/data-privacy-statistics

YouGov. (2025, June 17). What Americans think about privacy and government surveillance. YouGov America. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52425-what-americans-think-about-privacy-united-states-government-surveillance-in-2025-poll

Financial Times. (2025, March 4). Young Americans’ trust in freedom and institutions hits record low. https://www.ft.com/content/44a7927b-66d7-4321-8425-08ed162a3994