Surveillance - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Surveillance is the monitoring of the behavior

Behavior

Behavior or behaviour refers to the actions and mannerisms made by organisms, systems, or artificial entities in conjunction with its environment, which includes the other systems or organisms around as well as the physical environment...

, activities, or other changing information, usually of people. It is sometimes done in a surreptitious manner. It most usually refers to observation of individuals or groups by government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

organizations, but disease surveillance, for example, is monitoring the progress of a disease

Disease

A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...

in a community.

The word surveillance is the French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

word for "watching over".

The word surveillance may be applied to observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment (such as CCTV

Closed-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....

cameras), or interception of electronically transmitted information (such as Internet traffic

Internet traffic

-Historical Internet Traffic Growth:Because of the distributed nature of the Internet, there is no single point of measurement for total Internet traffic...

or phone calls). It may also refer to simple, relatively no- or low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception

Postal interception

Postal interception is the act of retrieving another person's mail for the purpose of ensuring that the mail is not delivered to the recipient, or to spy on them....

.

Surveillance is very useful to governments and law enforcement 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...

, recognize and monitor threats, and prevent/investigate criminal activity. With the advent of programs such as the Total Information Awareness program and ADVISE

ADVISE

ADVISE is a research and development program within the United States Department of Homeland Security Threat and Vulnerability Testing and Assessment portfolio...

, technologies such as high speed surveillance computers and biometrics software, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act

Communications 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...

, governments now possess an unprecedented ability to monitor the activities of their subjects.

However, many civil rights

Civil rights

Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights 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...

groups, such as 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...

and 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...

, have expressed concern that by allowing continual increases in government surveillance of citizens we will end up in a mass surveillance

Mass surveillance

Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance 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,...

society, with extremely limited, or non-existent political and/or personal freedoms. Fears such as this have led to numerous lawsuits such as 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...

.

Computer surveillance

The vast majority of computer surveillance

Computer surveillance

Computer surveillance is the act of performing surveillance of computer activity, and of data stored on a hard drive or being transferred over the Internet....

involves the monitoring of data

Data mining

Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...

and traffic

Traffic analysis

Traffic 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...

on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

. In the United States for example, under the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act

Communications 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...

, all phone calls and broadband Internet traffic (emails, web traffic, instant messaging, etc.) are required to be available for unimpeded real-time monitoring by Federal law enforcement agencies.

There is far too much data on the Internet for human investigators to manually search through all of it. So automated Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of intercepted Internet traffic and identify and report to human investigators traffic considered interesting by using certain "trigger" words or phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email or chat with suspicious individuals or groups. 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,...

, NSA, and the FBI, 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...

, NarusInsight, and 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...

to intercept and analyze all of this data, and extract only the information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Computers are also a surveillance target because of the personal data stored on them. If someone is able to install software (either physically or remotely), such as the FBI's 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, on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this data.

Another form of computer surveillance, known as TEMPEST

TEMPEST

TEMPEST is a codename referring to investigations and studies of compromising emission . Compromising emanations are defined as unintentional intelligence-bearing signals which, if intercepted and analyzed, may disclose the information transmitted, received, handled, or otherwise processed by any...

, involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters.

The NSA also runs a database known as "Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners.

Telephones

The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines is widespread. In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

for instance, the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)

Communications 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...

requires that all telephone and VoIP communications be available for real-time wiretapping by Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Two major telecommunications companies in the U.S. -- AAT&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...

and Verizon—have contracts with the FBI, requiring them to keep their phone call records easily searchable and accessible for Federal agencies, in return for $1.8 million dollars per year. Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 "National Security Letter

National Security Letter

A National Security Letter is a form of administrative subpoena used by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and reportedly by other U.S. Government Agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Defense. They require no probable cause or judicial oversight...

s" ordering phone companies to hand over information about their customers' calling and Internet histories. About half of these letters requested information on U.S. citizens.

Human agents are not required to monitor most calls. Speech-to-text software creates machine-readable text from intercepted audio, which is then processed by automated call-analysis programs, such as those developed by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office

Information Awareness Office

, or companies such as Verint

Verint

Verint Systems is a company providing analytic software and hardware for the security, surveillance, and business intelligence markets. Their products are aimed to support government and enterprises in making sense of the vast information they collect to meet performance and security goals....

, and Narus, which search for certain words or phrases, to decide whether to dedicate a human agent to the call.

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United Kingdom and the United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones, by accessing phones' diagnostic/maintenance features, in order to listen to conversations that take place near the person who holds the phone.

Mobile phones are also commonly used 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. A controversy has emerged in the United States over the legality of such techniques, and particularly whether a court warrant is required. Records for one carrier alone (Sprint), showed that in a given year federal law enforcement agencies requested customer location data 8 million times.

Surveillance cameras

Surveillance cameras are video cameras used for the purpose of observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device, IP network, and/or watched by a security guard

Security guard

A security guard is a person who is paid to protect property, assets, or people. Security guards are usually privately and formally employed personnel...

/law enforcement officer. Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and required human personnel to monitor camera footage. Now with cheaper production techniques, it is simple and inexpensive enough to be used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance. Analysis of footage is made easier by automated software that organizes digital video footage into a searchable 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...

, and by automated video analysis software (such as VIRAT

VIRAT

The Video Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool program is a video surveillance project funded by the Information Processing Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ....

and HumanID) . The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors which only record when motion is detected.

The use of surveillance cameras by governments and businesses has dramatically increased over the last 10 years. In the U.K., for example, there are about 4.2 million surveillance cameras—1 camera for every 14 people.

In the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, the Department of Homeland Security gives billions of dollars per year in Homeland Security grants for local, state, and federal agencies to install modern video surveillance equipment. For example, the city of Chicago, IL recently used a $5.1 million Homeland Security grant to install an additional 250 surveillance cameras, and connect them to a centralized monitoring center, along with its preexisting network of over 2000 cameras in a program known as Operation Virtual Shield

Operation Virtual Shield

Operation Virtual Shield is a program implemented by Chicago, IL mayor Richard Daley, which created the most extensive video surveillance network in the United States by linking more than 3000 surveillance cameras to a centralized monitoring system, which captures and processes camera feeds in real...

. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley

Richard Daley

Richard Daley may refer to:*Richard J. Daley , Mayor of Chicago , father of Richard M. Daley*Richard M. Daley , Mayor of Chicago , son of Richard J. Daley...

has announced that Chicago will have a surveillance camera on every street corner by the year 2016.

As part of China's Golden Shield Project

Golden Shield Project

The Golden Shield Project , colloquially referred to as the Great Firewall of China is a censorship and surveillance project operated by the Ministry of Public Security division of the government of the People's Republic of China...

, several U.S. corporations such as IBM

IBM

International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...

, General Electric

General Electric

General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...

, and Honeywell

Honeywell

Honeywell International, Inc. is a major conglomerate company that produces a variety of consumer products, engineering services, and aerospace systems for a wide variety of customers, from private consumers to major corporations and governments....

have been working closely with the Chinese government

Politics of the People's Republic of China

The politics of the People's Republic of China take place in a framework of a single-party socialist republic. The leadership of the Communist Party is stated in the Constitution of the People's Republic of China...

to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout China

People's Republic of China

China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...

, along with advanced video analytics and facial recognition software, which will identify and track individuals everywhere they go. They will be connected to a centralized database and monitoring station, which will, upon completion of the project, contain a picture of the face of every person in China: over 1.3 billion people. Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China's "Information Security Technology" office (which is in charge of the project), credits the surveillance systems in the United States and the U.K. as the inspiration for what he is doing with the Golden Shield project.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...

is funding a research project called Combat Zones That See

Combat Zones That See

Combat Zones That See, or CTS, is a project of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency whose goal is to "track everything that moves" in a city by linking up a massive network of surveillance cameras to a centralized computer system...

that will link up cameras across a city to a centralized monitoring station, identify and track individuals and vehicles as they move through the city, and report "suspicious" activity (such as waving arms, looking side-to-side, standing in a group, etc.).

At Super Bowl XXXV

Super Bowl XXXV

Super Bowl XXXV was played on January 28, 2001 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida to decide the National Football League champion following the 2000 regular season. The American Football Conference champion Baltimore Ravens defeated the National Football Conference champion New York...

in January 2001, police in Tampa Bay, Florida, used Identix’s facial recognition software, FaceIt, to scan the crowd for potential criminals and terrorists in attendance at the event.
(it found 19 people with pending arrest warrants)

Governments often initially claim that cameras are meant to be used for traffic control

Traffic control

Road traffic control involves directing vehicular and pedestrian traffic around a construction zone, accident or other road disruption, thus ensuring the safety of emergency response teams, construction workers and the general public....

, but many of them end up using them for general surveillance. For example, Washington, D.C. had 5,000 "traffic" cameras installed under this premise, and then after they were all in place, networked them all together and then granted access to the Metropolitan Police Department, so they could perform "day-to-day monitoring".

The development of centralized networks of CCTV cameras watching public areas—linked to computer databases of people's pictures and identity (biometric data), able to track peoples' movements throughout the city, and identify who they have been with—has been argued by some to present a risk to civil liberties

Civil liberties

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

Social network analysis

One common form of surveillance is to create maps of social networks based on data from social networking sites such as 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...

, MySpace

MySpace

Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

as well as from traffic analysis

Traffic analysis

information from phone call records such as those in 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...

, and others. These social network

Social network

A social network is a social structure made up of individuals called "nodes", which are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, common interest, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige.Social...

"maps" are then data mined

Data mining

to extract useful information such as personal interests, friendships & affiliations, wants, beliefs, thoughts, and activities.

Many U.S. government agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military...

(DARPA), 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...

(NSA), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are investing heavily in research involving social network analysis. The intelligence community believes that the biggest threat to U.S. power comes from decentralized, leaderless, geographically dispersed groups of terrorists, subversives, extremists, and dissidents. These types of threats are most easily countered by finding important nodes in the network, and removing them. To do this requires a detailed map of the network.

Jason Ethier of Northeastern University, in his study of modern social network analysis, said the following of the Scalable Social Network Analysis Program developed by the Information Awareness Office

Information Awareness Office

:
AT&T developed a programming language called "Hancock", which is able to sift through enormous databases of phone call and Internet traffic records, such 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...

, and extract "communities of interest" -- groups of people who call each other regularly, or groups that regularly visit certain sites on the Internet. AT&T originally built the system to develop "marketing leads", but the FBI has regularly requested such information from phone companies such as AT&T without a warrant, and after using the data stores all information received in its own databases, regardless of whether or not the information was ever useful in an investigation.

Some people believe that the use of social networking sites is a form of "participatory surveillance", where users of these sites are essentially performing surveillance on themselves, putting detailed personal information on public websites where it can be viewed by corporations and governments. About 20% of employers have reported using social networking sites to collect personal data on prospective or current employees.

Biometric surveillance

Biometric surveillance refers to technologies that measure and analyze human physical and/or behavioral characteristics for authentication, identification, or screening purposes. Examples of physical characteristics include fingerprints, DNA, and facial patterns. Examples of mostly behavioral characteristics include gait (a person's manner of walking) or voice.

Facial recognition is the use of the unique configuration of a person's facial features to accurately identify them, usually from surveillance video. Both the Department of Homeland Security and DARPA are heavily funding research into facial recognition systems. The Information Processing Technology Office

Information Processing Technology Office

The Information Processing Techniques Office is part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the United States Department of Defense whose stated mission is:...

, ran a program known as Human Identification at a Distance which developed technologies that are capable of identifying a person at up to 500 ft by their facial features.

Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on affective computing

Affective computing

Affective computing is the study and development of systems and devices that can recognize, interpret, process, and simulate human affects. It is an interdisciplinary field spanning computer sciences, psychology, and cognitive science...

, involves computers recognizing a person's emotional state based on an analysis of their facial expressions, how fast they are talking, the tone and pitch of their voice, their posture, and other behavioral traits. This might be used for instance to see if a person is acting "suspicious" (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial expressions, waving arms, etc.).

A more recent development is 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...

fingerprinting, which looks at some of the major markers in the body's DNA to produce a match. The FBI is spending $1 billion to build a new biometric database, which will store DNA, facial recognition data, iris/retina (eye) data, fingerprints, palm prints, and other biometric data of people living in the United States. The computers running the database are contained in an underground facility about the size of two American football fields.

The Los Angeles Police Department is installing automated facial recognition and license plate recognition devices in its squad cars, and providing handheld face scanners, which officers will use to identify people while on patrol.

Facial thermographs are in development, which allow machines to identify certain emotions in people such as fear or stress, by measuring the temperature generated by blood flow to different parts of their face. Law enforcement officers believe that this has potential for them to identify when a suspect is nervous, which might indicate that they are hiding something, lying, or worried about something.

Aerial surveillance

Aerial surveillance is the gathering of surveillance, usually visual imagery or video, from an airborne vehicle—such as a 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...

, helicopter

Helicopter

A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...

, or spy plane. Military surveillance aircraft

Surveillance aircraft

A surveillance aircraft is an aircraft used for surveillance — collecting information over time. They are operated by military forces and other government agencies in roles such as intelligence gathering, battlefield surveillance, airspace surveillance, observation , border patrol and fishery...

use a range of sensors (e.g. radar) to monitor the battlefield.

Digital imaging technology, miniaturized computers, and numerous other technological advances over the past decade have contributed to rapid advances in aerial surveillance hardware such as micro-aerial vehicles, forward-looking infrared, and high-resolution imagery capable of identifying objects at extremely long distances. For instance, the MQ-9 Reaper

MQ-9 Reaper

The General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper is an unmanned aerial vehicle , capable of remote controlled or autonomous flight operations, developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems for use by the United States Air Force, the United States Navy, the CIA, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Royal...

, a U.S. drone plane used for domestic operations by the Department of Homeland Security, carries cameras that are capable of identifying an object the size of a milk carton from altitudes of 60,000 feet, and has forward-looking infrared devices that can detect the heat from a human body at distances of up to 60 kilometers.

The United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Department of Homeland Security is in the process of testing UAVs to patrol the skies over the United States for the purposes of critical infrastructure protection, border patrol, "transit monitoring", and general surveillance of the U.S. population. Miami-Dade police department ran tests with a vertical take-off and landing UAV from Honeywell

Honeywell

, which is planned to be used in SWAT

SWAT

A SWAT team is an elite tactical unit in various national law enforcement departments. They are trained to perform high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular officers...

operations. Houston's police department has been testing fixed-wing UAVs for use in "traffic control".

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...

, as well, is working on plans to build up a fleet of surveillance UAVs ranging from micro-aerial vehicles to full-size drones

Unmanned aerial vehicle

, to be used by police forces throughout the U.K.

In addition to their surveillance capabilities, MAVs are capable of carrying taser

Taser

A Taser is an electroshock weapon that uses electrical current to disrupt voluntary control of muscles. Its manufacturer, Taser International, calls the effects "neuromuscular incapacitation" and the devices' mechanism "Electro-Muscular Disruption technology"...

s for "crowd control", or weapons for killing enemy combatants.

Programs such as the Heterogenous Aerial Reconnaissance Team program developed by DARPA have automated much of the aerial surveillance process. They have developed systems consisting of large teams drone planes that pilot themselves, automatically decide who is "suspicious" and how to go about monitoring them, coordinate their activities with other drones nearby, and notify human operators if something suspicious is occurring. This greatly increases the amount of area that can be continuously monitored, while reducing the number of human operators required. Thus a swarm of automated, self-directing drones can automatically patrol a city and track suspicious individuals, reporting their activities back to a centralized monitoring station.

Data mining and profiling

Data mining

is the application of statistical techniques and programmatic algorithms to discover previously unnoticed relationships within the data.. Data profiling

Data profiling

Data profiling is the process of examining the data available in an existing data source and collecting statistics and information about that data...

in this context is the process of assembling information about a particular individual or group in order to generate a profile — that is, a picture of their patterns and behavior. Data profiling can be an extremely powerful tool for psychological and social network analysis. A skilled analyst can discover facts about a person that they might not even be consciously aware of themselves.

Economic (such as credit card purchases) and social (such as telephone calls and emails) transactions in modern society create large amounts of stored data

Data

The term data refers to qualitative or quantitative attributes of a variable or set of variables. Data are typically the results of measurements and can be the basis of graphs, images, or observations of a set of variables. Data are often viewed as the lowest level of abstraction from which...

and records. In the past, this data was documented in paper records, leaving a "paper trail

Paper Trail

Paper Trail is the sixth studio album by American hip hop artist T.I., released September 30, 2008 on Grand Hustle Records and Atlantic Records. He began to write songs for the album as he awaited trial for federal weapons and possession charges...

", or was simply not be documented at all. Correlation of paper-based records was a laborious process—it required human intelligence operators to manually dig through documents, which was time-consuming and incomplete, at best.

But today many of these records are electronic, resulting in an "electronic trail". Every use of a bank machine, payment by credit card, use of a phone card, call from home, checked out library book, rented video, or otherwise complete recorded transaction generates an electronic record. Public records—such as birth, court, tax and other records—are increasily being digitized and made available online. In addition, due to laws like CALEA

Communications 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...

, web traffic and online purchases are also available for profiling. Electronic record-keeping makes data easily collectable, storable, and accessible—so that high-volume, efficient aggregation and analysis is possible at significantly lower costs.

Information relating to many of these individual transactions is often easily available because it is not generally not guarded in isolation, since the information, such as the title of a movie a person has rented, might not seem sensitive. However, when many such transactions are aggregated they can be used to assemble a detailed profile revealing the actions, habits, beliefs, locations frequented, social connections, and preferences of the individual. This profile is then used, by programs such as ADVISE

ADVISE

ADVISE is a research and development program within the United States Department of Homeland Security Threat and Vulnerability Testing and Assessment portfolio...

and TALON

TALON (database)

TALON , is a database maintained by the United States Air Force after the September 11th terrorist attacks. It was authorised for creation in 2002 by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, in order to collect and evaluate information about possible threats to U.S. servicemembers and civilian...

, to determine whether the person is a military, criminal, or political threat.

In addition to its own aggregation and profiling tools, the government is able to access information from third parties — for example, banks, credit companies or employers, etc. — by requesting access informally, by compelling access through the use of subpoenas or other procedures, or by purchasing data from commercial data aggregators or data brokers. The United States has spent $370 million on its 43 planned fusion centers, which are national network of surveillance centers that are located in over 30 states. The centers will collect and analyze vast amounts of data on U.S. citizens. It will get this data by consolidating personal information from sources such as state driver's licensing agencies, hospital records, criminal records, school records, credit bureaus, banks, etc. -- and placing this information in a centralized database that can be accessed from all of the centers, as well as other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Under United States v. Miller (1976), data held by third parties is generally not subject to Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment may refer to the:*Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution—part of the Bill of Rights, prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures....

warrant requirements.

Corporate surveillance

Corporate surveillance is the monitoring of a person or group's behavior by a corporation. The data collected is most often used for marketing purposes or sold to other corporations, but is also regularly shared with government agencies. It can be used as a form of business intelligence

Business intelligence

Business intelligence mainly refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by associated costs and incomes....

, which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or services to be desirable by their customers. Or the data can be sold to other corporations, so that they can use it for the aforementioned purpose. Or it can be used for direct marketing purposes, such as the targeted advertisements on Google and Yahoo, where ads are targeted to the user of the search engine by analyzing their search history and emails (if they use free webmail services), which is kept in a database.

For instance, 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...

, the world's most popular search engine, stores identifying information for each web search. An 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...

and the search phrase used are stored in a database for up to 18 months. Google also scans the content of emails of users of its Gmail webmail service, in order to create targeted advertising based on what people are talking about in their personal email correspondences. Google is, by far, the largest Internet advertising agency—millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their websites, in order to earn money from visitors who click on the ads. Each page containing Google advertisements adds, reads, and modifies "cookies"

HTTP cookie

A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...

on each visitor's computer. These cookies track the user across all of these sites, and gather information about their web surfing habits, keeping track of which sites they visit, and what they do when they are on these sites. This information, along with the information from their email accounts, and search engine histories, is stored by Google to use for building a profile of the user to deliver better-targeted advertising.

The United States government often gains access to these databases, either by producing a warrant for it, or by simply asking. The Department of Homeland Security has openly stated that it uses data collected from consumer credit and direct marketing agencies—such as Google—for augmenting the profiles of individuals whom it is monitoring. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and other intelligence agencies have formed an "information-sharing" partnership with over 34,000 corporations as part of their Infragard

InfraGard

InfraGard is a private non-profit organization serving as a public-private partnership between U.S. businesses and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The organization describes itself as an information sharing and analysis effort serving the interests and combining the knowledge base of a wide...

program.

The U.S. Federal government has gathered information from grocery store "discount card" programs, which track customers' shopping patterns and store them in databases, in order to look for "terrorists" by analyzing shoppers' buying patterns.

Human operatives

Organizations that have enemies who wish to gather information about the groups' members or activities face the issue of infiltration.

In addition to operatives' infiltrating an organization, the surveilling party may exert pressure on certain members of the target organization to act as informants (i.e., to disclose the information they hold on the organization and its members).

Fielding operatives is very expensive, and for governments with wide-reaching electronic surveillance tools at their disposal the information recovered from operatives can often be obtained from less problematic forms of surveillance such as those mentioned above. Nevertheless, human infiltrators are still common today. For instance, in 2007 documents surfaced showing that the FBI was planning to field a total of 15,000 undercover agents and informants in response to an anti-terrorism directive sent out by George W. Bush in 2004 that ordered intelligence and law enforcement agencies to increase their HUMINT

HUMINT

HUMINT, a syllabic abbreviation of the words HUMan INTelligence, refers to intelligence gathering by means of interpersonal contact, as opposed to the more technical intelligence gathering disciplines such as SIGINT, IMINT and MASINT...

capabilities.

Satellite imagery

On May 25, 2007 the U.S. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell authorized the National Applications Office (NAO)

National Applications Office

The National Applications Office was a United States Department of Homeland Security program that provides local, state, and federal officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery. It has access to military satellites to observe the United States...

of the Department of Homeland Security to allow local, state, and domestic Federal agencies to access imagery from military intelligence

Military intelligence

Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....

satellites and aircraft sensors which can now be used to observe the activities of U.S. citizens. The satellites and aircraft sensors will be able to penetrate cloud cover, detect chemical traces, and identify objects in buildings and "underground bunkers", and will provide real-time video at much higher resolutions than the still-images produced by programs such as Google Earth

Google Earth

Google Earth is a virtual globe, map and geographical information program that was originally called EarthViewer 3D, and was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency funded company acquired by Google in 2004 . It maps the Earth by the superimposition of images obtained from satellite...

Identification and credentials

One of the simplest forms of identification is the carrying of credentials. Some nations have an identity card

Identity document

An identity document is any document which may be used to verify aspects of a person's personal identity. If issued in the form of a small, mostly standard-sized card, it is usually called an identity card...

system to aid identification, whilst many, such as Britain, are considering it but face public opposition. Other documents, such as passport

Passport

A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....

s, driver's licenses, library cards, banking or credit cards are also used to verify identity.

If the form of the identity card is "machine-readable", usually using an encoded magnetic stripe or identification number (such as a Social Security number

Social Security number

In the United States, a Social Security number is a nine-digit number issued to U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and temporary residents under section 205 of the Social Security Act, codified as . The number is issued to an individual by the Social Security Administration, an independent...

), it corroborates the subject's identifying data. In this case it may create an electronic trail when it is checked and scanned, which can be used in profiling, as mentioned above.

RFID and geolocation devices

RFID tagging

Radio Frequency Identification

Radio-frequency identification is a technology that uses radio waves to transfer data from an electronic tag, called RFID tag or label, attached to an object, through a reader for the purpose of identifying and tracking the object. Some RFID tags can be read from several meters away and beyond the...

(RFID) tagging is the use of very small electronic devices (called 'RFID tags') which are applied to or incorporated into a product, animal, or person for the purpose of identification and tracking using radio waves. The tags can be read from several meters away. They are extremely inexpensive, costing a few cents per piece, so they can be inserted into many types of everyday products without significantly increasing the price, and can be used to track and identify these objects for a variety of purposes.

Many companies are already "tagging" their workers, who are monitored while on the job. Workers in U.K. went on general strike

General strike

A general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region, or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...

in protest of having themselves tagged. They felt that it was dehumanizing to have all of their movements tracked with RFID chips. Some critics have expressed fears that people will soon be tracked and scanned everywhere they go.

Verichip

VeriChip

VeriChip was the only Food and Drug Administration -approved human-implantable radio-frequency identification microchip. It was marketed by PositiveID, a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions, and it received United States FDA approval in 2004. Its manufacture and marketing were discontinued in...

is an RFID device produced by a company called Applied Digital Solutions (ADS). Verichip is slightly larger than a grain of rice, and is injected under the skin. The injection reportedly feels similar to receiving a shot

Injection (medicine)

An injection is an infusion method of putting fluid into the body, usually with a hollow needle and a syringe which is pierced through the skin to a sufficient depth for the material to be forced into the body...

. The chip is encased in glass, and stores a "VeriChip Subscriber Number" which the scanner uses to access their personal information, via the Internet, from Verichip Inc.'s database, the "Global VeriChip Subscriber Registry". Thousands of people have already had them inserted. In Mexico, for example, 160 workers at the Attorney General's office were required to have the chip injected for identity verification and access control

Access control

Access control refers to exerting control over who can interact with a resource. Often but not always, this involves an authority, who does the controlling. The resource can be a given building, group of buildings, or computer-based information system...

purposes.

It may be that soon every object that is purchased, and perhaps ID cards, will have RFID devices in them, which would broadcast information about people as they walk past scanners (what type of phone they have, what type of shoes they have on, which books they are carrying, what credit cards or membership cards they have, etc.). This information could be used for identification, tracking, or targeted marketing.

Global Positioning System

In the U.S., police have planted hidden GPS

Global Positioning System

The Global Positioning System is a space-based global navigation satellite system that provides location and time information in all weather, anywhere on or near the Earth, where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites...

tracking devices in people's vehicles to monitor their movements, without a warrant. In early 2009, they were arguing in court that they have the right to do this.

Several cities are running pilot projects to require parolees to wear GPS devices to track their movements when they get out of prison.

Mobile phones

Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect geolocation 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

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 devices

Surveillance devices, or "bugs", are hidden electronic devices which are used to capture, record, and/or transmit data to a receiving party such as a law enforcement agency.

The U.S. has run numerous domestic intelligence, such as 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...

, which have bugged the homes, offices, and vehicles of thousands of U.S. citizens, usually political activists, subversives, and criminals.

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the U.K. and the United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones, by accessing the phone's diagnostic/maintenance features, in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone.

Postal services

As more people use faxes and e-mail the significance of surveilling the postal system is decreasing, in favor of Internet and telephone surveillance. But interception of post is still an available option for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, in certain circumstances.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

Central Intelligence Agency

The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...

and 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...

have performed twelve separate mail-opening campaigns targeted towards U.S. citizens. In one of these programs, more than 215,000 communications were intercepted, opened, and photographed.

Controversy surrounding surveillance

Support

Some supporters of surveillance systems believe that these tools protect society from terrorists and criminals. Other supporters simply believe that there is nothing that can be done about it, and that people must become accustomed to having no privacy. As Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. was a company that sold :computers, computer components, :computer software, and :information technology services. Sun was founded on February 24, 1982...

CEO Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy

Scott McNealy is an American business executive. He co-founded computer technology company Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Bill Joy, and Andy Bechtolsheim.-Biography:...

said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."

Another common argument is: "If you aren't doing something wrong then you don't have anything to fear." Which follows that if you are engaging in unlawful activities, in which case you do not have a legitimate justification for your privacy. However, if you are following the law the surveillance would not affect you.

Opposition

Some critics state that the claim made by supporters should be modified to read: "As long as we do what we're told, we have nothing to fear.". For instance, a person who is part of a political group which opposes the policies of the national government, might not want the government to know their names and what they have been reading, so that the government cannot easily subvert their organization, arrest, or kill them. Other critics state that while a person might not have anything to hide right now, the government might later implement policies that they do wish to oppose, and that opposition might then be impossible due to mass surveillance enabling the government to identify and remove political threats. Further, other critics point to the fact that most people do have things to hide. For example, if a person is looking for a new job, they might not want their current employer to know this.

Totalitarianism

Programs such as the Total Information Awareness program, and laws such as the Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act

Communications 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...

have led many groups to fear that society is moving towards a state of mass surveillance

Mass surveillance

with severely limited personal, social, political freedoms, where dissenting individuals or groups will be strategically removed in COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO

-like purges.

Kate Martin, of the Center For National Security Studies said of the use of military spy satellites being used to monitor the activities of U.S. citizens: "They are laying the bricks one at a time for a police state."

Some point to the blurring of lines between public and private places, and the privatization of places traditionally seen as public (such as shopping malls and industrial parks) as illustrating the increasing legality of collecting personal information. Traveling through many public places such as government offices is hardly optional for most people, yet consumers have little choice but to submit to companies' surveillance practices. Surveillance techniques are not created equal; among the many biometric identification technologies, for instance, face recognition requires the least cooperation. Unlike automatic fingerprint reading, which requires an individual to press a finger against a machine, this technique is subtle and requires little to no consent.

Psychological/social effects

Some critics, such as Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

, believe that in addition to its obvious function of identifying and capturing individuals who are committing undesirable acts, surveillance also functions to create in everyone a feeling of always being watched, so that they become self-policing. This allows the State to control the populace without having to resort to physical force, which is expensive and otherwise problematic.

Privacy

Numerous civil rights

Civil rights

groups and privacy

Privacy

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

groups oppose surveillance as a violation of people's right to privacy. Such groups include: Electronic Privacy Information Center

Electronic Privacy Information Center

Electronic Privacy Information Center is a public interest research group in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values in the information age...

, 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...

, American Civil Liberties Union

American Civil Liberties Union

There have been several lawsuits such as 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...

and EPIC v. Department of Justice

EPIC v. Department of Justice

EPIC v. Department of Justice was a 2007 case in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia between the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the U.S. Department of Justice involving the Department of Justice refusing to comply with rules laid out in the Freedom of...

by groups or individuals, opposing certain surveillance activities.

Legislative proceedings such as those that took place during the Church Committee

Church Committee

The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...

, which investigated domestic intelligence programs such as COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO

, have also weighed the pros and cons of surveillance.

Countersurveillance, inverse surveillance, sousveillance

Countersurveillance

Countersurveillance refers to measures undertaken to prevent surveillance, including covert surveillance. Countersurveillance may include electronic methods such as bug sweeping, the process of detecting surveillance devices, including covert listening devices and visual surveillance devices...

is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making surveillance difficult. With recent developments — the Internet, increasing prevalence of electronic security systems, armed UAVs

Unmanned aerial vehicle

flying at 60,000 feet, and large corporate/government computer databases — counter surveillance has dramatically grown in scope and complexity.

Inverse surveillance is the practice of reversalism on surveillance (e.g., citizens photographing police). Well-known examples are George Holliday

Rodney King

Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...

's recording of the Rodney King

Rodney King

Rodney Glen King is an American best known for his involvement in a police brutality case involving the Los Angeles Police Department on March 3, 1991...

beating and the organization Copwatch

Copwatch

Copwatch is a network of activist organizations in the United States and Canada that observe and document police activity while looking for signs of police misconduct and police brutality...

, which attempts to surveil police officers to prevent police brutality

Police brutality

Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer....

.

Sousveillance

Sousveillance

Sousveillance 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...

(a term coined by Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto) is inverse surveillance that includes the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity.

In literature

George Orwell's
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

novel, 1984
Nineteen Eighty-Four
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party...

, portrays a fictional totalitarian surveillance society which has a very simple (by today's standards) mass surveillance
Mass surveillance
Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance 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,...

system consisting of human operatives, informants, and two-way "telescreens" in people's homes. Because of the impact of this book, "Orwellian" is a common term used to describe mass surveillance technologies.
The book, The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale
The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985...

as well as a film based on it, portray a totalitarian Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

theocracy
Theocracy
Theocracy is a form of organization in which the official policy is to be governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided, or simply pursuant to the doctrine of a particular religious sect or religion....

where all citizens are kept under constant surveillance.

In music

The Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys are an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1978. The band became part of the American hardcore punk movement of the early 1980s. They gained a large underground fanbase in the international punk music scene....

' song, "I Am The Owl", is about government surveillance and social engineering
Social engineering (security)
Social engineering is commonly understood to mean the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information...

of political groups.

Onscreen

The movie, Gattaca
Gattaca
Gattaca is a 1997 science fiction film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. It stars Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman and Jude Law with supporting roles played by Loren Dean, Ernest Borgnine, Gore Vidal and Alan Arkin....

, portrays a society that uses biometric surveillance to distinguish between people who are genetically engineered "superior" humans and genetically natural "inferior" humans.
In the movie Minority Report
Minority 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...

, the police and government intelligence agencies use micro aerial vehicles in SWAT
SWAT
A SWAT team is an elite tactical unit in various national law enforcement departments. They are trained to perform high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular officers...

operations and for surveillance purposes.
HBO's crime-drama series, The Sopranos
The Sopranos
The Sopranos is an American television drama series created by David Chase that revolves around the New Jersey-based Italian-American mobster Tony Soprano and the difficulties he faces as he tries to balance the often conflicting requirements of his home life and the criminal organization he heads...

, regularly portrays the FBI's surveillance of the DiMeo Crime Family
DiMeo Crime Family
The DiMeo crime family, later referred to as the Soprano crime family, is a fictional Mafia family from the HBO series The Sopranos. It is thought to be loosely based on the DeCavalcante crime family, a real New Jersey Mafia family....

. Audio devices they use include "bugs
Covert listening device
A covert listening device, more commonly known as a bug or a wire, is usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone. The use of bugs, called bugging, is a common technique in surveillance, espionage and in police investigations.A bug does not have to be a device...

" placed in strategic locations (e.g., in "I Dream of Jeannie Cusamano" and "Mr. Ruggerio's Neighborhood") and hidden microphones worn by operatives (e.g., in "Rat Pack") and informants (e.g., in "Funhouse", "Proshai, Livushka", and "Members Only"). Visual devices include hidden still cameras (e.g., in "Pax Soprana") and video cameras (e.g., in "Long Term Parking").
The movie, THX-1138, portrays a society wherein people are drugged with sedatives and antidepressants, and have surveillance cameras watching them everywhere they go.

Computer surveillance

Telephones

Surveillance cameras

Social network analysis

Biometric surveillance

Aerial surveillance

Data mining and profiling

Corporate surveillance

Human operatives

Satellite imagery

Identification and credentials

RFID and geolocation devices

RFID tagging

Global Positioning System

Mobile phones

Surveillance devices

Postal services

Controversy surrounding surveillance

Support

Opposition

Totalitarianism

Psychological/social effects

Privacy

Countersurveillance, inverse surveillance, sousveillance

In literature

In music

Onscreen

See also

Further reading

General information

Historical information

Legal resources