About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

31 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 117 (2016)
Chilling Effects: Online Surveillance and Wikipedia Use

handle is hein.journals/berktech31 and id is 127 raw text is: CHILLING EFFECTS: ONLINE SURVEILLANCE AND WIKIPEDIA USE Jonathon W. Penneyt ABSTRACT This Article discusses the results of the first empirical study providing evidence of regulatory chilling effects of Wikipedia users associated with online government surveillance. The study explores how traffic to Wikipedia articles on topics that raise privacy concerns for Wikipedia users decreased after the widespread publicity about NSA/PRISM surveillance revelations in June 2013. Using an interdisciplinary research design, the study tests the hypothesis, based on chilling effects theory, that traffic to privacy-sensitive Wikipedia articles reduced after the mass surveillance revelations. The Article finds not only a statistically significant immediate decline in traffic for these Wikipedia articles after June 2013, but also a change in the overall secular trend in the view count traffic, suggesting not only immediate but also long-term chilling effects resulting from the NSA/PRISM online surveillance revelations. These, and other results from the case study, not only offer evidence for chilling effects associated with online surveillance, but also offer important insights about how we should understand such chilling effects and their scope, including how they interact with other dramatic or significant events (like war and conflict) and their broader implications for privacy, U.S. constitutional litigation, and the health of democratic society. This study is among the first to evidence-using either Wikipedia data or web traffic data more generally-how government surveillance and similar actions may impact online activities, including access to information and knowledge online. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15779/Z38SS13 C 2016 Jonathon W. Penney. t The author would like to thank Victoria Nash, Urs Gasser, Joss Wright, Ron Deibert, J. Nate Mathias, Paul Kelly, Ryan Budish, Jamie Baxter, Kendra Albert, Andy Sellars, Molly Sauter, Masashi Crete-Nishihata, Yana Welinder, Michelle Paulson, Geoff Brigham, David Abrams, Bernie Black, Mordechai Kremnizer, Adam Chilton, Adi Leibovitch, Kate Litvak, James W. Coleman, Aurelie Ouss, Ben Perryman, Dahlia Othman, Elissa Berwick, Ari Waldman, Meredith Whittaker, Vern Paxon, Daniel Villar-Onrubia, Wenming Xu, Yehonatan Givati, Jeff Knockel, Jed Crandall, Phillipa Gill, and Derek Bambauer for comments, advice, and/or suggestions. The author would also like to thank participants for his talks at the 2015 Internet Law Work in Progress Conference, Santa Clara Law School, Santa Clara University, March 2015; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, May 2015; the 2015 Free and Open Communications on the Internet (FOCI) workshop, USENIX Security Symposium, Washington, D.C., August 2015; and the Inaugural Society for Empirical-Legal Studies (SELS) Global Workshop for Junior Empirical Legal Scholars, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, December 2015. The author, in particular, would like to thank Josh Furman and the BTLJ editorial team for their invaluable assistance and suggestions.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most