“In a rural Virginia server farm, a disk drive whirs momentarily, and your comment is recorded.”
If you cower away from this likelihood, you have lost already and you have let down the Founders of this country and your fellow citizens.
And the Czarist police kept close watch on Lenin, and look how that turned out.
In fact, it becomes a two way line of communication. If those observing understand that the current regime cannot, will not, or shall not protect the people and the interests of the country, then exactly what are the observors truly loyal to? To a dysfunctional regime or the nation? Then they must choose!