The Cost of Speaking Out: How Digital Surveillance Silences Journalists

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Governments worldwide increasingly use digital surveillance technologies in the name of security and public safety. While these tools may help control crime, they can also discourage journalists, activists, and citizens from speaking freely, creating serious threats to freedom of expression.

Imagine if someone could watch every call, text, or post you share online. For billions of people, this is already a reality. Governments and companies collect data through facial recognition, location tracking, biometrics, and online monitoring. Freedom House’s 2025 report found that global internet freedom has declined for fifteen consecutive years, as governments deepen surveillance and censorship to silence dissent. This decline shows no sign of reversing, even as public awareness of digital rights grows.

Some argue these tools keep the public safe. But growing evidence shows that digital surveillance can harm freedom of expression, especially for journalists and activists. While such tools help address genuine security threats, overuse can erode basic human rights.

The Growth of Digital Surveillance

Digital surveillance refers to monitoring, collecting, and analyzing information about people’s online and offline activities. Governments and corporations gather data through smartphones, social media, facial recognition cameras, browsing histories, and mobile apps. These capabilities have expanded rapidly over the past two decades.

This growth accelerated after the 9/11 attacks, when the controversial Patriot Act granted United States (U.S.) agencies broader powers to collect information in the name of national security. Similar policies followed worldwide. China, for example, has built an extensive surveillance system in Xinjiang, using facial recognition to track residents’ daily lives.

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated this trend. Many countries introduced contact-tracing apps and health QR codes, and some stayed in place after the emergency ended. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that emergency measures can quickly become permanent tools of control. Few of these programs included independent oversight, leaving citizens with little way to know how their data was ultimately used. 

Today, almost everyone carries a smartphone, so billions of people share data about where they go and what they say, often without realizing it. The question is no longer if we are being watched, but how that information is used.

How Surveillance Silences Journalists in Pakistan

Nowhere are the stakes of this surveillance apparatus clearer than in the daily lives of journalists, who are often the first targets when governments turn these tools against critics. In Pakistan, journalists face a daily battle for safety. According to Amnesty International, surveillance is a “part of the cost of being a journalist.” Government agencies reportedly use spyware, often sold by private companies, to hack into reporters’ phones, accessing private messages, calls, and locations. Not just to gather information, but to intimidate.

One Pakistani journalist told Amnesty International that after she reported on corruption allegations, she was threatened and had her movements restricted for weeks. When she resumed her routine, she was attacked with iron rods near her local bank, despite telling no one about the trip and taking an unfamiliar route.

Pakistan is far from an isolated case. Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 report counted hundreds of journalists imprisoned worldwide and dozens killed or missing over the previous year. Digital surveillance is part of that climate. The 2021 Pegasus Project, led by Forbidden Stories with Amnesty’s Security Lab, identified close to 200 journalists across two dozen countries on a leaked list of spyware targets. Journalists everywhere rely on confidential sources to expose wrongdoing. 

When surveillance puts those conversations at risk, fear of retaliation can silence people before they even speak. Digital surveillance does not just invade privacy; it weakens the range of opinions and fair reporting that democracy needs to function.

Different Perspectives on Security and Freedom of Expression

Governments often defend surveillance by arguing it is necessary for national security. Following 9/11, many countries expanded digital surveillance to help identify threats before they caused harm. According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report, digital technologies have become increasingly significant tools for addressing security concerns. 

From this view, some surveillance seems reasonable. Most citizens expect governments to act against genuine threats, and many are willing to trade some privacy for security. Even so, accountability advocates note that oversight mechanisms have often failed to keep pace with the rapid growth of these tools. But the real challenge is knowing where to draw the line.

Human rights advocates counter that excessive surveillance does more than collect information. It can discourage people from speaking freely. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned that privacy is closely linked to freedom of expression, since people are less likely to share opinions when they believe they are being watched. This can weaken democratic participation by encouraging self-censorship over open debate, as Pakistan’s journalists demonstrate.

Weighing these positions, the stronger case is that legitimate security aims do not require indiscriminate, unaccountable surveillance of the press. Targeted, warrant-based monitoring of criminal suspects differs fundamentally from bulk data collection and spyware used against journalists doing their jobs, and Pakistan shows what happens once that line is crossed: intimidation replaces investigation, and self-censorship replaces reporting. The task ahead is not choosing sides but building safeguards that preserve legitimate security functions while closing the gaps that enable abuse.

Moving Forward: Recommendations for Change

Digital surveillance has become a defining feature of modern life. While security is a legitimate concern, monitoring citizens without strong limits creates a world where speaking out carries personal risk. As seen in Pakistan, journalists and activists are often the first victims, despite being the people democracies rely on to hold power accountable.

Three changes could help restore balance. First, countries should pass stronger privacy laws requiring warrants for surveillance, enforced by independent bodies modelled on judicial oversight and empowered to audit government purchases of spyware, since self-reporting by security agencies has proven insufficient. Governments with poor human rights records should be barred from acquiring spyware; export-licensing regimes, like the tighter controls the U.S. Commerce Department has placed on spyware sales to abusive states, offer one practical route. 

Second, technology companies must be transparent about how they collect and sell user data, publishing annual reports on government requests for surveillance services, backed by real penalties, such as fines or lost export licenses, so transparency does not become a public-relations exercise without consequences.

Finally, public education campaigns can help citizens understand how surveillance works and how they unknowingly share personal data, so they can make informed choices about their digital footprint. The future of democracy depends on treating surveillance as a limited tool for safety, not a permanent cage for our voices. We should not have to choose between security and freedom of expression. With the right rules, we can have both.

Edited by Isaac Code