U.S.-China Surveillance

A journalism professor in Oregon, exchanging emails with a friend in Sudan, begins to wonder if he needs to “watch” what he is writing:

As I wrote him back, expressing my relief and my on-going concern for his safety, I also wanted to tell him about my concern for my own country and about my opposition to the Iraq war and the Bush/Cheney administration.

And that’s when a chill swept through me.

Here I was an American e-mailing a Sudanese. Wasn’t this is exactly the kind of communication that the American government was “monitoring”? No warrant necessary.

Who else would be reading what I had to say? How might they interpret my anti-government remarks? How might my e-mail affect Stanislaus, who has relatives living here in the United States? How might they be affected?