Mass surveillance
Encyclopedia
Surveillance
Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner...
of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof.
Modern governments today commonly perform mass surveillance of their citizens, explaining that they believe that it is necessary to protect them from dangerous groups such as terrorists, criminals, or political subversives and to maintain social control
Social control
Social control refers generally to societal and political mechanisms or processes that regulate individual and group behavior, leading to conformity and compliance to the rules of a given society, state, or social group. Many mechanisms of social control are cross-cultural, if only in the control...
.
Mass surveillance has been widely criticized on several grounds such as violations of privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
rights, illegality, and for preventing political and social freedoms, which some fear will ultimately lead to a totalitarian state
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
where political dissent is crushed by COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
-like programs. Such a state may also be referred to as an Electronic Police State
Electronic police state
The term electronic police state describes a state in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.- Definition :...
.
State enforced
Privacy International'sPrivacy International
Privacy International is a UK-based non-profit organisation formed in 1990, "as a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations." PI has organised campaigns and initiatives in more than fifty countries and is based in London, UK.-Formation, background and...
2007 survey, covering 47 countries, indicated that there had been an increase in surveillance and a decline in the performance of privacy safeguards, compared to the previous year. Balancing these factors, eight countries were rated as being 'endemic surveillance societies'. Of these eight, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, Malaysia and Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
scored lowest, followed jointly by Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, then jointly by Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
, Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
and the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The best ranking was given to Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, which was judged to have 'adequate safeguards against abuse'.
Many countries throughout the world have already been adding thousands of surveillance cameras to their urban, suburban and even rural areas. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union
American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) has directly stated that "we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States - a dark future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is recorded, compiled, and stored away, ready to be examined and used against us by the authorities whenever they want."
United Kingdom
On 6 February 2009 a report by the House of Lords Constitution Committee
Constitution Committee (House of Lords)
The Constitution Committee is a cross-party select committee of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Committee’s remit is “to examine the constitutional implications of all public bills coming before the House; and to keep under review the operation of...
, Surveillance: Citizens and the State, warned that increasing use of surveillance by the government and private companies is a serious threat to freedoms and constitutional rights, stating that "The expansion in the use of surveillance represents one of the most significant changes in the life of the nation since the end of the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Mass surveillance has the potential to erode privacy. As privacy is an essential pre-requisite to the exercise of individual freedom, its erosion weakens the constitutional foundations
Constitution of the United Kingdom
The constitution of the United Kingdom is the set of laws and principles under which the United Kingdom is governed.Unlike many other nations, the UK has no single core constitutional document. In this sense, it is said not to have a written constitution but an uncodified one...
on which democracy and good governance have traditionally been based in this country."
Public perception
A YouGovYouGov
YouGov, formerly known as PollingPoint in the United States, is an international internet-based market research firm launched in the UK in May 2000 by Stephan Shakespeare, now Chief Executive Officer, and Nadhim Zahawi...
poll
Opinion poll
An opinion poll, sometimes simply referred to as a poll is a survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence...
published on December 4, 2006, indicated that 79% of those interviewed agreed that Britain has become a 'surveillance society’ (51% were unhappy with this). In 2004 the Information Commissioner, talking about the proposed British national identity database
British national identity card
The Identity Cards Act 2006 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It provided for National Identity Cards, a personal identification document and European Union travel document, linked to a database known as the National Identity Register .The introduction of the scheme was much...
gave a warning of this, stating, "My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society." Other database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
s causing him concern were the National Child Database (ContactPoint), the Office for National Statistics'
Office for National Statistics
The Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the Parliament of the United Kingdom.- Overview :...
Citizen Information Project
Citizen Information Project
In the United Kingdom, the Citizen Information Project was a plan by the Office for National Statistics to build a national population register....
, and the National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
National Programme for IT.
CCTV networks
it was estimated that the United Kingdom was monitored by over 4.2 million CCTV camerasClosed-circuit television
Closed-circuit television is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors....
, some with a facial recognition
Facial recognition system
A facial recognition system is a computer application for automatically identifying or verifying a person from a digital image or a video frame from a video source...
capacity, with practically all cities and towns under 24-hour surveillance. Currently, in the City of Westminster
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...
, microphone
Microphone
A microphone is an acoustic-to-electric transducer or sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal. In 1877, Emile Berliner invented the first microphone used as a telephone voice transmitter...
s are being fitted next to CCTV cameras. Westminster council claims that they are simply part of an initiative against urban noise, and will not "be used to snoop", but comments from a council spokesman appear to imply that they have been deliberately designed to capture an audio stream alongside the video stream, rather than simply reporting noise levels.
As of Feb 2010, many larger cities in the UK now have CCTV in which if an operator spots anything illegal or troubling, they are able to speak through the cameras via loudspeaker into the street, and some also have microphones to allow them to hear what the public are saying.
Unmanned-aircraft vehicle systems
A consortium of government agencies and the arms manufacturer BAE Systems intends to begin using drones for the surveillance of the 2012 Summer Olympics2012 Summer Olympics
The 2012 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the "London 2012 Olympic Games", are scheduled to take place in London, England, United Kingdom from 27 July to 12 August 2012...
. Police forces have signed up to a scheme for "surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering" to introduce unmanned aerial vehicle
Unmanned aerial vehicle
An unmanned aerial vehicle , also known as a unmanned aircraft system , remotely piloted aircraft or unmanned aircraft, is a machine which functions either by the remote control of a navigator or pilot or autonomously, that is, as a self-directing entity...
s "into the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies" for the "routine" monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers. The drones stay airborne for up to 15 hours with monitoring equipment such as high-definition cameras, radar devices and infrared sensors and reach heights of 20,000f. They could be used for road and railway monitoring, search and rescue, event security and covert urban surveillance. Other routine tasks could be to use the drones to combat "fly-posting, fly-tipping
Fly-tipping
Fly-tipping is a British term for dumping waste illegally instead of in an authorised rubbish dump. It is the illegal deposit of any waste onto land, i.e...
, abandoned vehicles, abnormal loads, waste management". To offset some of the running costs it was proposed the aircraft could undertake commercial work during spare time and selling the surveillance data to private companies.
Public transport
In LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, the Oyster card
Oyster card
The Oyster card is a form of electronic ticketing used on public transport services within the Greater London area of the United Kingdom. It is promoted by Transport for London and is valid on a number of different travel systems across London including London Underground, buses, the Docklands...
payment system can track the movement of individual people through the public transport
Public transport
Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...
system, although an anonymous option is available, while the London congestion charge
London congestion charge
The London congestion charge is a fee charged for some categories of motor vehicle to travel at certain times within the Congestion Charge Zone , a traffic area in London. The charge aims to reduce congestion, and raise investment funds for London's transport system...
uses computer imaging
Computer vision
Computer vision is a field that includes methods for acquiring, processing, analysing, and understanding images and, in general, high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical or symbolic information, e.g., in the forms of decisions...
to track car number plates
British car number plates
Vehicle registration plates are the mandatory number plates used to display the registration mark of a vehicle, and have existed in the United Kingdom since 1904...
.
Communication
In 2002 the UK government announced plans to extend the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), so that at least 28 government departments would be given powers to browse citizens' web, email, telephone and fax records, without a warrant and without a subject's knowledge. Public and security authorities made a total of 440,000 requests to monitor people's phone and internet use in 2005-2006. In the period 11 April to 31 December 2006 the UK government issued 253,557 requests for communication data, which as defined by the RIPA includes who you phoned, when they phoned you, how long they phoned you for, subscriber information and associated addresses.Since October 2007 telecommunication companies have been required to keep records of phone calls and text messages for twelve months under the Data Retention Directive Though all telecoms firms already keep data for a period, the regulations are designed to ensure a uniform approach across the industry. This enables the Government and other selected authorities within the UK such as Police and Councils amongst others to monitor all phone calls made from a UK landline or Mobile upon request.
In 2008 plans were being made to collect data on all phone calls, emails, chat room
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
discussions and web-browsing habits as part of the Government's Interception Modernisation Programme
Interception Modernisation Programme
The Interception Modernisation Programme is a UK government initiative to extend the government's capabilities for intercepting and storing communications data...
, thought likely to require the insertion of 'thousands' of black box
Black box
A black box is a device, object, or system whose inner workings are unknown; only the input, transfer, and output are known characteristics.The term black box can also refer to:-In science and technology:*Black box theory, a philosophical theory...
probes into the country’s computer and telephone networks. The proposals were expected to be included in the Communications Data Bill
Communications Data Bill
The Communications Data Bill includes plans in the United Kingdom to collect data on people's phone, e-mail and web-browsing habits for mass surveillance. The government database would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent but not the text of...
. The "giant database" would include telephone numbers dialed, the websites visited and addresses to which e-mails are sent "but not the content of e-mails or telephone conversations." Chris Huhne
Chris Huhne
Christopher Murray Paul-Huhne, generally known as Chris Huhne is a British politician and cabinet minister, who is the current Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for the Eastleigh constituency in Hampshire...
, Liberal Democrat Home affairs spokesman, said: "The government's Orwellian
Orwellian
"Orwellian" describes the situation, idea, or societal condition that George Orwell identified as being destructive to the welfare of a free society...
plans for a vast database of our private communications are deeply worrying." In November 2009, ministers confirmed that the estimated £2 billion project will proceed as planned. A consultation found that 40% of people were against the plans which will also include monitoring communications in online game
Online game
An online game is a game played over some form of computer network. This almost always means the Internet or equivalent technology, but games have always used whatever technology was current: modems before the Internet, and hard wired terminals before modems...
s.
Mobile phone tracking
Some shopping centres have tracked customers through mobile phoneMobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
signals. A system can tell when people enter the centre, how long they stay in a particular shop, and what route each customer takes. The system works by monitoring the signals produced by mobile handsets and then locating the phone by triangulation.
Vehicle tracking
Automatic number plate recognition
Automatic number plate recognition is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the license plates on vehicles. They can use existing closed-circuit television or road-rule enforcement cameras, or ones specifically designed for the task...
systems. These tracks, record and store the details of all journeys undertaken on major roads and through city centres and the information is stored for five years. In the longer term mandatory onboard vehicle telematics
Telematics
Telematics typically is any integrated use of telecommunications and informatics, also known as ICT...
systems are also suggested, to facilitate road charging (see vehicle excise duty
Vehicle excise duty
Vehicle Excise Duty is a vehicle road use tax levied as an excise duty which must be paid for most types of vehicle which are to be used on the public roads in the United Kingdom...
).
DNA Database
The British Police hold records of 5.5 million fingerprintFingerprint
A fingerprint in its narrow sense is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. In a wider use of the term, fingerprints are the traces of an impression from the friction ridges of any part of a human hand. A print from the foot can also leave an impression of friction ridges...
s and over 3.4 million DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
samples on the National DNA Database
UK National DNA Database
The United Kingdom National DNA Database is a national DNA Database that was set up in 1995. As of the end of 2005, it carried the profiles of around 3.1 million people...
. There is increasing use of roadside fingerprinting - using new police powers to check identity. Concerns have been raised over the unregulated use of biometrics in schools
Biometrics in schools
Biometrics in schools have been used worldwide since the early first decade of the 21st century to address truancy, to replace library cards, or to charge for meals...
, affecting children as young as three.
Overseas travel
In February 2009 it emerged that the government is planning a database to track and store records of all international travel into and out of the UK. The database will retain record of names, addresses, telephone numbers, seat reservations, travel itineraries and credit cardCredit card
A credit card is a small plastic card issued to users as a system of payment. It allows its holder to buy goods and services based on the holder's promise to pay for these goods and services...
details, which will be kept for 'no more than 10 years'.
Protests
Forward Intelligence TeamForward Intelligence Team
Forward Intelligence Teams are two or more police officers who are deployed by UK police forces to gather intelligence on the ground and in some circumstances, to disrupt activists and deter anti-social behaviour. They use cameras, camcorders and audio recorders to conduct overt surveillance of...
s conduct mass surveillance of political and environmental protestors and of journalists . The information they gather is then stored on the crimint
Crimint
Crimint is a database run by the Metropolitan Police Service of Greater London which stores information on criminals, suspected criminals and protesters. It was created in 1994 and supplied by Memex Technology Limited. It supports the recording and searching of items of intelligence by both police...
database.
Recent developments
On 21 December 2010 the Identity Documents Act 2010, which scraps the impending mandatory ID card scheme, received Royal Assent. A further Great Repeal Bill which aims to restore some civil liberties is also in the pipeline.United States
Western Union
The Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
was reviewed by the US military. After the wars were over, the mass surveillance continued, via programs such as Black Chamber
Black Chamber
The Cipher Bureau otherwise known as The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization, and a forerunner of the National Security Agency...
and Shamrock
Project SHAMROCK
Project SHAMROCK, considered to be the sister project for Project MINARET, was an espionage exercise that involved the accumulation of all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States...
.
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
projects from 1956—1971 targeted various "subversive" organizations, including various peaceful anti-war, racial equality and civil rights groups including Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
.
Internet communications
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement ActCommunications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton...
(CALEA) requires that all U.S. telecommunications companies modify their equipment to allow easy wiretapping
Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping is the monitoring of telephone and Internet conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitoring connection was an actual electrical tap on the telephone line...
of telephone, VoIP, and broadband internet traffic.
Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office
Information Awareness Office
The Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
, National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore
Carnivore (FBI)
Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic...
, ECHELON
ECHELON
ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK–USA Security Agreement...
, and NarusInsight to intercept and analyze the immense amount of data that traverses the Internet and telephone system every day.
The Total Information Awareness program, of the Information Awareness Office
Information Awareness Office
The Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
, designed numerous technologies to be used to perform mass surveillance. Examples include advanced speech-to-text programs (so that phone conversations can be monitored en-masse by a computer, instead of requiring human operators to listen to them), social network analysis software to monitor groups of people and their interactions with each other, and "Human identification at a distance" software which allows computers to identify people on surveillance cameras by their facial features and gait (the way they walk). The program was later renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness", after a negative public reaction.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
has an ongoing lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T
Hepting v. AT&T
Hepting v. AT&T is a United States class action lawsuit filed in January 2006 by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against the telecommunications company AT&T, in which the EFF alleges that AT&T permitted and assisted the National Security Agency in unlawfully monitoring the communications of...
) against the telecom giant AT&T
AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
for its assistance of the U.S. government in monitoring the communications of millions of American citizens. It has managed thus far to keep the proceedings open. Recently the documents, exposed by a whistleblower who previously worked for AT&T, showing schematics of the massive data mining system were made public.
The FBI developed the computer programs "Magic Lantern
Magic Lantern (software)
Magic Lantern is keystroke logging software developed by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation. Magic Lantern was first reported in a column by Bob Sullivan of MSNBC on 20 November 2001 and by Ted Bridis of the Associated Press.-How it works:...
" and CIPAV, which they can remotely install on a computer system, in order to monitor a person's computer activity.
In 1999 two models of mandatory data retention
Telecommunications data retention
In the field of telecommunications, data retention generally refers to the storage of call detail records of telephony and internet traffic and transaction data by governments and commercial organisations...
were suggested for the US: What IP address
IP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
was assigned to a customer at a specific time. In the second model, "which is closer to what Europe adopted", telephone numbers dialed, contents of Web pages visited, and recipients of e-mail messages must be retained by the ISP for an unspecified amount of time. In 2006 the International Association of Chiefs of Police
International Association of Chiefs of Police
The International Association of Chiefs of Police was founded in Chicago in 1893 as the National Chiefs of Police Union. The primary goal of this organization was to apprehend and return criminals who had fled the agency jurisdictions in which they were wanted...
adopted a resolution calling for a "uniform data retention mandate" for "customer subscriber information and source and destination information." The U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2011 that criminal investigations "are being frustrated" because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing.
The Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth (SAFETY
SAFETY
The United States also known as H.R. 1076 and S.436 would require providers of "electronic communication or remote computing services" to "retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the...
) Act of 2009 also known as H.R. 1076 and S.436 would require providers of "electronic communication or remote computing services" to "retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."
Intelligence apparatus to monitor Americans
Since September 2001, a vast domestic intelligence apparatus has been built to collect information using FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The intelligence apparatus collects, analyzes and stores information about thousands of American citizens, many of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Every state and local law enforcement agency is to feed information to federal authorities to support the work of the FBI.Telephones
In early 2006, USA TodayUSA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
reported that several major telephone companies were cooperating illegally with the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
to monitor the phone records of U.S. citizens, and storing them in a large database known as the NSA call database
NSA call database
The United States' National Security Agency maintains a database containing hundreds of billions of records of telephone calls made by U.S...
. This report came on the heels of allegations that the U.S. government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...
had been conducting electronic surveillance of domestic telephone calls without warrants.
Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone.
U.S. federal agents regularly use mobile phones to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the person carrying it) can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique known multilateration
Multilateration
Multilateration is a navigation technique based on the measurement of the difference in distance to two or more stations at known locations that broadcast signals at known times. Unlike measurements of absolute distance or angle, measuring the difference in distance results in an infinite number of...
to calculate the differences in time for a signal to travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the phone.
Surveillance cameras
Traffic camerasRoad-rule enforcement camera
A traffic enforcement camera is an automated ticketing machine...
, which were meant to help enforce traffic laws at intersections, have also sparked some controversy, due to their use by law enforcement agencies for purposes unrelated to traffic violations.
The Department of Homeland Security
United States Department of Homeland Security
The United States Department of Homeland Security is a cabinet department of the United States federal government, created in response to the September 11 attacks, and with the primary responsibilities of protecting the territory of the United States and protectorates from and responding to...
is funding networks of surveillance cameras in cities and towns as part of its efforts to combat terrorism. In February 2009, Cambridge, MA
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
rejected the cameras due to privacy concerns.
Data mining
The NSA has been gathering information on financial records, internet surfing habits, and monitoring e-mails. They have also performed extensive surveillance on social networks such as Myspace.The FBI
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
collected nearly all hotel, airline, rental car, gift shop, and casino records in Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
during the last two weeks of 2003. The FBI requested all electronic data of hundreds of thousands of people based on a very general lead for the Las Vegas New Year's celebration. The Senior VP of The Mirage
The Mirage
The Mirage is a 3,044 room hotel and casino resort located on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, United States.The Mirage is connected by a free tram to Treasure Island. The marquee in front of the Mirage is the largest free standing marquee in the world.-History:The Mirage was built by...
went on record with PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
' Frontline describing the first time they were requested to help in the mass collection of personal information.
Infiltration of activist groups
The New York City Police DepartmentNew York City Police Department
The New York City Police Department , established in 1845, is currently the largest municipal police force in the United States, with primary responsibilities in law enforcement and investigation within the five boroughs of New York City...
infiltrated and compiled dossiers on protest groups (most of whom were doing nothing illegal) before the 2004 Republican National Convention
2004 Republican National Convention
The 2004 Republican National Convention, the presidential nominating convention of the Republican Party of the United States, took place from August 30 to September 2, 2004 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, New York...
, leading to over 1,800 arrests and subsequent fingerprinting.
European Union
The legislative bodyEuropean Union legislative procedure
The legislatureof the European Union is principally composed of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. Competencies in scrutinising and amending legislation are usually divided equally between the two, while the power to initiate laws is held by the European Commission...
of the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
passed the Data Retention Directive on 2005-12-15. It requires telecommunication operators to implement mass surveillance of the general public through retention of metadata on telecommunications and to keep the collected data at the disposal of various governmental bodies for substantially long times. Access to this information is not required to be limited to investigation of serious crimes, nor is a warrant required for access.
Undertaken under the Seventh Framework Programme for research and technological development (FP7 - Science in Society) some multidisciplinary and mission oriented mass surveillance activities (for example INDECT
INDECT
INDECT is a research project in the area of intelligent security systems performed by several European universities since 2009 and funded by the European Union...
and HIDE) are funded by the European Commission
European Commission
The European Commission is the executive body of the European Union. The body is responsible for proposing legislation, implementing decisions, upholding the Union's treaties and the general day-to-day running of the Union....
in association with industrial partners.
The INDECT Project ("Intelligent information system supporting observation, searching and detection for security of citizens in urban environment") develops an intelligent urban environment observation system to register and exchange operational data for the automatic detection, recognition and intelligent processing of all information of abnormal behaviour or violence.
The main expected results of the INDECT project are:
- implementation of a distributed computer systemDistributed computingDistributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal...
that is capable of acquisition, storage and effective sharing on demand of the data - devices used for mobile object tracking
- a search engine for fast detection of persons and documents based on watermarking technology used for semantic searchSemantic searchSemantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results. Author Seth Grimes lists "11 approaches that join...
- agents assigned to continuous and automatic monitoring of public resources such as CCTV, websites, Internet forums, usenet newsgroups, file servers, P2P networksPeer-to-peerPeer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application...
and individual computer systems
The consortium HIDE ("Homeland Security, Biometric Identification & Personal Detection Ethics"), devoted to monitoring the ethical
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
and privacy
Privacy
Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...
implications of biometrics
Biometrics
Biometrics As Jain & Ross point out, "the term biometric authentication is perhaps more appropriate than biometrics since the latter has been historically used in the field of statistics to refer to the analysis of biological data [36]" . consists of methods...
and personal detection technologies and promoted by the European Commission develops ADABTS ("Automatic Detection of Abnormal Behaviour and Threats in crowded Spaces"), a low-cost
No frills
No-frills or no frills is a term used to describe any service or product for which the non-essential features have been removed to keep the price low. The use of the term "frills" refers to a style of fabric decoration...
pro-active surveillance system to detect potential abnormal behaviour in crowded spaces.
Russia
The SORMSORM
SORM is a technical system for search and surveillance in the internet...
(and SORM-2) laws enable complete monitoring of any communication
Communication
Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
, electronic
Telecommunication
Telecommunication is the transmission of information over significant distances to communicate. In earlier times, telecommunications involved the use of visual signals, such as beacons, smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs, or audio messages via coded...
or traditional, by eight state agencies, without warrant. These SORM laws are believed by some to be against Constitution of Russia
Constitution of Russia
The current Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted by national referendum on 12 December 1993. Russia's constitution came into force on 25 December 1993, at the moment of its official publication...
, however:
Constitution of Russia.
Article 23:
1. Everyone shall have the right to the inviolability of private life, personal and family secrets, the protection of honour and good name.
2. Everyone shall have the right to privacy of correspondence, of telephone conversations, postal, telegraph and other messages. Limitations of this right shall be allowed only by court decision.
Germany & Netherlands
In 2002 German citizens were tipped off about wiretapping, when a software error led to a phone number allocated to the German Secret Service being listed on mobile telephone bills.East Germany
Before the Digital Revolution, one of the world's biggest mass surveillance operations was carried out by the StasiStasi
The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...
, the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
of the former East Germany. By the time the state collapsed in 1989, the Stasi had built up an estimated civilian network of 300,000 informants (approximately one in fifty of the population), who monitored even minute hints of political dissent among other citizens. Many West Germans
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
visiting friends and family in East Germany were also subject to Stasi spying, as well as many high-ranking West German politicians and persons in the public eye.
Most East German citizens were well aware that their government was spying on them, which led to a culture of mistrust: touchy political issues were only discussed in the comfort of their own four walls and only with the closest of friends and family members, while widely maintaining a façade of unquestioning followership in public.
India
The Indian parliament passed the Information Technology ActInformation Technology Act
The Information Technology Act 2000 is an Act of the Indian Parliament notified on October 17, 2000.-History of the Act:...
of 2008 with no debate, giving the government fiat power to tap all communications without a court order or a warrant. Section 69 of the act states "Section 69 empowers the Central Government/State Government/ its authorized agency to intercept, monitor or decrypt any information generated, transmitted, received or stored in any computer resource if it is necessary or expedient so to do in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order or for preventing incitement to the commission of any cognizable offence or for investigation of any offence."
India is setting up a national intelligence grid called NATGRID, which would be fully set up by May 2011 where each individual's data ranging from land records, internet logs,air and rail PNR, phone records, gun records, driving license, property records, insurance, and income tax records would be available in real time and with no oversight. With a UID from the Unique Identification Authority of India
Unique Identification Authority of India
The Unique Identification Authority of India , is an agency of the Government of India responsible for implementing the AADHAAR scheme, a unique identification project. It was established in February 2009, and will own and operate the Unique Identification Number database...
being given to every Indian from February 2011, the government would be able track people in real time. A national population registry of all citizens will be established by the 2011 census, during which fingerprints and iris scans would be taken along with GPS records of each household.
Sweden
In 2008 a law was passed allowing warrantless wiretapping of all communications (including internet and telephone calls) crossing the border. This law went to effect on the 1st December 2009 when all affected ISPs had to provide a copy of border crossing traffic to the authorities. While it is believed that other states have similar wiretapping programs, Sweden is the first nation to publicize it.Due to the architecture of internet backbones in the Nordic area, a large portion of Norwegian and Finnish traffic will also be affected by the Swedish wiretapping.
Commercial mass surveillance
As a result of the digital revolutionDigital Revolution
The Digital Revolution is the change from analog mechanical and electronic technology to digital technology that has taken place since c. 1980 and continues to the present day. Implicitly, the term also refers to the sweeping changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology...
, many aspects of life are now captured and stored in digital form. Concern has been expressed that governments may use this information to conduct mass surveillance on their populations. Commercial mass surveillance often makes use of copyright
Copyright
Copyright is a legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights to it, usually for a limited time...
laws and "user agreements
Clickwrap
A clickwrap agreement is a common type of agreement often used in connection with software licenses. Such forms of agreement are mostly found on the Internet, as part of the installation process of many software packages, or in other circumstances where agreement is sought using electronic media...
" to obtain (typically uninformed) 'consent'
to surveillance from consumers who use their software or other related materials. This allows gathering of information which would be technically illegal if performed
by government agencies. This data is then often shared with government agencies - thereby - in practice - defeating the purpose of such privacy protections.
One of the most common forms of mass surveillance is carried out by commercial organizations. Many people are willing to join supermarket and grocery loyalty card programs, trading their personal information and surveillance of their shopping habits in exchange for a discount on their groceries, although base prices might be increased to encourage participation in the program. Since a significant proportion of purchases are carried out by credit or debit cards, which can also be easily tracked, it is questionable whether loyalty cards provide any significant additional privacy threat.
Through programs like Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
's AdSense
AdSense
Google AdSense which is a program run by Google Inc. allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to automatically serve text, image, video, and rich media adverts that are targeted to site content and audience. These adverts are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google, and they...
, OpenSocial
OpenSocial
OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces for web-based social network applications, developed by Google along with MySpace and a number of other social networks.It was released November 1, 2007....
and their increasing pool of so called "web gadgets", "social gadgets" and other Google-hosted services many web sites on the Internet are effectively feeding user information about sites visited by the users, and now also their social connections, to Google. Facebook
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
also keep this information, although its acquisition is limited to page views within Facebook. This data is valuable for authorities, advertisers and others interested in profiling users, trends and web site marketing performance. Google, Facebook and others are increasingly becoming more guarded about this data as their reach increases and the data becomes more all inclusive, making it more valuable.
New features like geolocation
Geolocation
Geolocation is the identification of the real-world geographic location of an object, such as a radar, mobile phone or an Internet-connected computer terminal...
give an even increased admission of monitoring capabilities to large service providers like Google, where they also are enable to track one's physical movements while users are using mobile devices, especially those which are syncing without any user interaction. Google's Gmail
Gmail
Gmail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Google. Users may access Gmail as secure webmail, as well via POP3 or IMAP protocols. Gmail was launched as an invitation-only beta release on April 1, 2004 and it became available to the general public on February 7, 2007, though...
service is increasingly employing features to work as a stand-alone application which also might activate while a web browser is not even active for synchronizing; a feature mentioned on the Google I/O
Google I/O
Google I/O is an annual two-day developer-focused conference held by Google in San Francisco, California. Google I/O features highly technical, in-depth sessions focused on building web, mobile, and enterprise applications with Google and open web technologies such as Android, Chrome, Chrome OS,...
2009 developer conference while showing the upcoming HTML5 features which Google and others are actively defining and promoting.
In 2008 at the World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....
in Davos
Davos
Davos is a municipality in the district of Prättigau/Davos in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of 11,248 . Davos is located on the Landwasser River, in the Swiss Alps, between the Plessur and Albula Range...
, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, said: "The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a 'huge revolution'".
At the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 16, Google presented their vision of a new business model for mobile operators and trying to convince mobile operators to embrace location-based service
Location-based service
A Location-Based Service is an information or entertainment service, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device....
s and advertising. With Google as the advertising provider, it would mean that every mobile operator using their location-based advertising service would be revealing the location of their mobile customers to Google.
Google China
Google China
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu...
has a history of cooperating with the wishes of the authorities. Organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...
are constantly informing users on the importance of privacy, and considerations about technologies like geolocation.
Critical of mass surveillance
- Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
, a novel by George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
depicting life under an omnipresent totalitarian state, and is probably the most prominent of the media listed; the 'Big Brother'Big Brother (1984)Big Brother is a fictional character in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. He is the enigmatic dictator of Oceania, a totalitarian state taken to its utmost logical consequence – where the ruling Party wields total power for its own sake over the inhabitants.In the society that Orwell...
who watches over the novel's characters is now used to describe any form of spying on or interfering with the public, such as CCTV cameras. - WeWe (novel)We is a dystopian novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin completed in 1921. It was written in response to the author's personal experiences during the Russian revolution of 1905, the Russian revolution of 1917, his life in the Newcastle suburb of Jesmond, and his work in the Tyne shipyards during the First...
, a little-known 1920 novel by Russian author Yevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny ZamyatinYevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin was a Russian author of science fiction and political satire. Despite having been a prominent Old Bolshevik, Zamyatin was deeply disturbed by the policies pursued by the CPSU following the October Revolution...
, that predates Nineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-FourNineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...
and was read by its author George OrwellGeorge OrwellEric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
. - The Transparent SocietyThe Transparent SocietyThe Transparent Society is a non-fiction book by the science-fiction author David Brin in which he forecasts social transparency and some degree of erosion of privacy, as it is overtaken by low-cost surveillance, communication and database technology, and proposes new institutions and practices...
by David BrinDavid BrinGlen David Brin, Ph.D. is an American scientist and award-winning author of science fiction. He has received the Hugo, Locus, Campbell and Nebula Awards.-Biography:...
, discusses various scenarios for the future considering the spread of cheap web-cameras, increases in government security initiatives, and the possible death of encryption if quantum computing becomes reality. - Little BrotherLittle Brother (Cory Doctorow novel)Little Brother is a novel by Cory Doctorow, published by Tor Books. It was released on April 29, 2008. The novel is about several teenagers in San Francisco who, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, defend themselves against the...
by Cory DoctorowCory DoctorowCory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
, set in San Francisco after a major terrorist attack; the DHS uses technologies such as RFIDs and surveillance cameras to create a totalitarian system of control. - The Minority Report, a story by Philip K. DickPhilip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
about a society that arrests people for crimes they have yet to commit (made into a movieMinority Report (film)Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
in 2002). - A Scanner DarklyA Scanner DarklyA Scanner Darkly is a BSFA Award winning 1977 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. The semi-autobiographical story is set in a dystopian Orange County, California, in the then-future of June 1994...
, another novel by Philip K. DickPhilip K. DickPhilip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
, examines how close we are as a society to complete surveillance by law enforcement. - THX 1138THX 1138THX 1138 is a 1971 science fiction film directed by George Lucas in his directorial debut. The film is based on a screenplay by Lucas and Walter Murch...
, a 1971 film by George LucasGeorge LucasGeorge Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
depicting life in an underground dystopia where all human activities are monitored centrally at all times. A high level of control is exerted upon the populace through ever-present faceless, android police officers and mandatory, regulated use of special drugs to suppress emotion, including sexual desire. The film was first made as a student project in the University of Southern CaliforniaUniversity of Southern CaliforniaThe University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
and called Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB. - Oath of FealtyOath of Fealty (novel)Oath of Fealty is a 1982 novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Set in the near future, it involves an arcology, a large inhabited structure, called Todos Santos, which rises above a crime-ridden Los Angeles, California, but has little beyond casual contact with the city...
, a 1982 novel by Larry NivenLarry NivenLaurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
and Jerry PournelleJerry PournelleJerry Eugene Pournelle is an American science fiction writer, essayist and journalist who contributed for many years to the computer magazine Byte and has since 1998 been maintaining his own website/blog....
describing a large arcologyArcologyArcology, a portmanteau of the words "architecture" and "ecology", is a set of architectural design principles aimed toward the design of enormous habitats of extremely high human population density. These largely hypothetical structures would contain a variety of residential, commercial, and...
whose dwellers and visitors are constantly being of surveilled by a variety of technologies - Blue ThunderBlue ThunderBlue Thunder is a 1983 feature film that features a high-tech helicopter of the same name. The movie was directed by John Badham and stars Roy Scheider...
, 1983 movie starring Roy ScheiderRoy ScheiderRoy Richard Scheider was an American actor. He was best known for his leading role as police chief Martin C... - Brazil, a film by Terry GilliamTerry GilliamTerrence Vance "Terry" Gilliam is an American-born British screenwriter, film director, animator, actor and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. Gilliam is also known for directing several films, including Brazil , The Adventures of Baron Munchausen , The Fisher King , and 12 Monkeys...
depicting an oppressive total information awareness society - Pizza, a short FlashAdobe FlashAdobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
video by the American Civil Liberties UnionAmerican Civil Liberties UnionThe American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
depicting ordering pizza by phone in a Total Surveillance Society. - Discipline and PunishDiscipline and PunishDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
by the critical theorist Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
is generally taken as being one of the paradigmatic works on theories of surveillance and discipline - EquilibriumEquilibrium (film)Equilibrium is a 2002 American science fiction action film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer. It stars Christian Bale as John Preston, a warrior-priest and enforcement officer in a future dystopia where both feelings and artistic expression are outlawed and citizens take daily injections of drugs...
, 2002 film wherein a dystopian future society surviving the third world war takes an emotion-suppressing drug and where the general public is constantly watched by the government to make sure that no one breaks the equilibrium. - V for VendettaV for VendettaV for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...
- Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance and the Culture of Control by Social and Environmental philosopher, Derrick JensenDerrick JensenDerrick Jensen is an American author and environmental activist living in Crescent City, California. Jensen has published several books questioning and critiquing modern civilization and its values, including A Language Older Than Words, The Culture of Make Believe, and Endgame. He holds a B.S...
thoroughly examines the use of RFID chips, nanotechnology, military technology, science, and surveillance. - The Listening, a 2006 movie in which a rogue NSA employee fights against the agency's EchelonEchelonEchelon may refer to:* A level or rank in an organization, profession, or society.* Echelon formation, a military hierarchical formation, also used to describe the migratory patterns of birds...
system and one of its corporate partners. - Eagle EyeEagle EyeEagle Eye is a 2008 thriller film directed by D. J. Caruso and starring Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan. The two portray a young man and a single mother who are brought together and coerced by an anonymous caller into carrying out a plan by a possible terrorist organization...
, a 2008 movie which portrays how surveillance can get out of hand. - The Lives of OthersThe Lives of OthersThe Lives of Others is a 2006 German drama film, marking the feature film debut of filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police...
, the 2006 German drama film, movingly conveys the terrible impact that constant surveillance has on the emotional wellbeing and life prospects of those subjected to it. - Tomorrow Never DiesTomorrow Never DiesTomorrow Never Dies is the eighteenth spy film in the James Bond series, and the second to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Bruce Feirstein wrote the screenplay, and it was directed by Roger Spottiswoode. It follows Bond as he tries to stop a media mogul from engineering...
, the eighteenth film in the James Bond series. The plot revolves around the ruthless Murdochesque media baron, Elliot Carver, whose newspapers print false stories that are related to Carver's secret agenda. A clear sign of his vanity and a reference to Big Brother, much of Carver's headquarters in Hamburg is decorated with vast, imposing banners, with Carver's face glaring out. - Enemy of the State, a 1998 film starring Will SmithWill SmithWillard Christopher "Will" Smith, Jr. , also known by his stage name The Fresh Prince, is an American actor, producer, and rapper. He has enjoyed success in television, film and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood...
and Gene HackmanGene HackmanEugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...
, portrays an attorney who is the target of an NSA cover-upCover-upA cover-up is an attempt, whether successful or not, to conceal evidence of wrong-doing, error, incompetence or other embarrassing information...
related to a bill in Congress that would expand the federal government's surveillance powers. - The Dark KnightThe Dark Knight (film)The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins...
, the 2008 summer blockbuster delved into whether the public security against the Joker's actions warranted Batman's mass scale spying on Gotham City's citizens using cell phone technology. Lucius Fox, Morgan Freeman's character, threatened to quit Wayne Enterprises over Batman's private surveillance of Gotham claiming that no one man should possess such power. However the hero of the movie, Batman, claimed that mass surveillance of citizens was vital to fight "terrorism". Batman came to Lucius opinion at the end of the film, when he destroyed the surveillance system. - The Last EnemyThe Last Enemy (TV series)The Last Enemy is a BBC TV series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and featuring Robert Carlyle and Max Beesley which first aired on 17 February 2008.-Plot:...
, a 2008 BBC 5 episode series which dealt with Total Information Awareness monitoring of near-future Britain, and the Government's use of race-specific remote drugs which could be triggered to affect one population but not the other.
Praising mass surveillance
- The Light of Other DaysThe Light of Other DaysThe Light of Other Days is a 2000 science fiction novel written by Stephen Baxter based on a synopsis by Arthur C. Clarke, which explores the development of wormhole technology to the point where information can be passed instantaneously between points in the space-time continuum.- Characters...
is a science-fiction book that praises mass surveillance, under the condition that it is available to everyone. It shows a world in which a total lack of privacy results in a decrease in corruption and crime. - Digital FortressDigital FortressDigital Fortress is a techno-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press. The book explores the theme of government surveillance of electronically stored information on the private lives of citizens, and the possible civil liberties and ethical...
, novel by Dan BrownDan BrownDan Brown is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003 bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography, keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories...
, involving an NSA codebreaking machine called 'TRANSLTR', reading and decrypting email messages, with which the NSA allegedly foiled terrorist attacks and mass murders. - Déjà Vu (2006 film) is a movie in which a supercomputer synthesizes multiple Closed Circuit TV and Satellite images from 24 hours in the past into a single framework.
See also
- Discipline and PunishDiscipline and PunishDiscipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a book by philosopher Michel Foucault. Originally published in 1975 in France under the title Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la Prison, it was translated into English in 1977. It is an interrogation of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind...
- CarnivoreCarnivore (FBI)Carnivore was a system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was designed to monitor email and electronic communications. It used a customizable packet sniffer that can monitor all of a target user's Internet traffic...
, FBI US digital interception program - COINTELPROCOINTELPROCOINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations.COINTELPRO tactics included discrediting targets through psychological...
- Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement ActCommunications Assistance for Law Enforcement ActThe Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act is a United States wiretapping law passed in 1994, during the presidency of Bill Clinton...
- Computer surveillanceComputer surveillanceComputer surveillance is the act of performing surveillance of computer activity, and of data stored on a hard drive or being transferred over the Internet....
- Criticisms of the War on Terrorism
- Data privacyData privacyInformation privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between collection and dissemination of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them....
- Data retentionData retentionData retention defines the policies of persistent data and records management for meeting legal and business data archival requirements. A data retention policy weighs legal and privacy concerns against economics and need to know concerns to determine both the retention time, archival rules, data...
- Government databases
- ECHELONECHELONECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK–USA Security Agreement...
- Information Awareness OfficeInformation Awareness OfficeThe Information Awareness Office was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in January 2002 to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying surveillance and information technology to track and monitor terrorists and other asymmetric threats to national security,...
- Lawful interceptionLawful interceptionLawful interception is obtaining communications network data pursuant to lawful authority for the purpose of analysis or evidence. Such data generally consist of signalling or network management information or, in fewer instances, the content of the communications...
- Mastering the InternetMastering the Internet"Mastering the Internet" is reportedly a massive UK government mass surveillance project led by the British communications intelligence agency GCHQ, with a budget of over £1 billion...
- Network analysisNetwork analysisNetwork analysis can refer to:* Analysis of general networks: see Network theory.* Electrical network analysis see Network analysis .* Social network analysis.You may also be interested in Network planning and design...
- Narus: supplier of SIGINT system, NarusInsight, referred to in Hepting vs. AT&T
- National securityNational securityNational security is the requirement to maintain the survival of the state through the use of economic, diplomacy, power projection and political power. The concept developed mostly in the United States of America after World War II...
- NSA call databaseNSA call databaseThe United States' National Security Agency maintains a database containing hundreds of billions of records of telephone calls made by U.S...
- Omniscient technology
- Pen registerPen registerA pen register is an electronic device that records all numbers called from a particular telephone line. The term has come to include any device or program that performs similar functions to an original pen register, including programs monitoring Internet communications.The United States statutes...
- Phone surveillancePhone surveillancePhone surveillance is the act of performing surveillance of phone conversations, location tracking and data monitoring of a phone. Before the era of mobile phones, these used to refer to the tapping of phone lines via a method called wiretapping...
- Police statePolice stateA police state is one in which the government exercises rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the population...
- RFID tagging
- Right to privacy
- Security cultureSecurity cultureA security culture is a set of customs shared by a community whose members may engage in illegal or sensitive activities, the practice of which minimizes the risks of such activities being subverted, or targeted for sabotage...
- SIGINTSIGINTSignals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people , whether involving electronic signals not directly used in communication , or combinations of the two...
- SousveillanceSousveillanceSousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies.Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", i.e...
- Surveillance stateSurveillance stateThe surveillance state is a government's surveillance of large numbers of citizens and visitors. Such widespread surveillance is most usually justified as being necessary to prevent crime or terrorism....
- Traffic analysisTraffic analysisTraffic analysis is the process of intercepting and examining messages in order to deduce information from patterns in communication. It can be performed even when the messages are encrypted and cannot be decrypted. In general, the greater the number of messages observed, or even intercepted and...
- Tracking systemTracking systemGenerally tracking is the observing of persons or objects on the move and supplying a timely ordered sequence of respective location data to a model e.g...
- Telephone tapping in the Eastern BlocTelephone tapping in the Eastern BlocTelephone tapping in the countries of the Eastern Bloc was a widespread method of the mass surveillance of the population by the secret police.-History:...
- Technologies of political control
- USA PATRIOT ActUSA PATRIOT ActThe USA PATRIOT Act is an Act of the U.S. Congress that was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001...
External links
- BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
: Is business the real Big Brother? - The UKUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee'sHome Affairs Select CommitteeThe Home Affairs Select Committee is a Committee of the House of Commons in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.-Remit:The Home Affairs Committee is one of the House of Commons Select Committees related to government departments: its terms of reference are to examine "the expenditure,...
report into ID cards - Bigger databases...could also mean more unwelcome intervention
- Telegraph Online report: Council plans to listen in on street life
- Minnesota CriMNet Department of Public Safety Bureau of Criminal Apprehension databases
- Edward Higgs The Development of Central State Surveillance of the Citizen in England, 1500 - 2000
- GCHQ: Britain's Most Secret Intelligence Agency