From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Surveillance is used by governments for intelligence gathering,
prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or
object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal
organisations to plan and commit crimes, such as robbery and kidnapping,
by businesses to gather intelligence, and by
private investigators.
Surveillance can be viewed as a violation of
privacy, and as such is often opposed by various
civil liberties groups and activists.
Liberal democracies
have laws which restrict domestic government and private use of
surveillance, usually limiting it to circumstances where public safety
is at risk.
Authoritarian government seldom have any domestic restrictions, and international
espionage is common among all types of countries.
The area of surveillance is increasingly a topic of academic study, including through research centers, books, and peer-reviewed academic journals. "In the future, intelligence services might use the
internet of things
for identification, surveillance, monitoring, location tracking, and
targeting for recruitment, or to gain access to networks or user
credentials," Clapper said.
Types
Computer
The vast majority of computer surveillance involves the monitoring of
data and
traffic on the
Internet. In the United States for example, under the
Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act,
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. Therefore, automated
Internet surveillance computers sift through the vast amount of
intercepted Internet traffic to identify and report to human
investigators the traffic that is considered interesting or suspicious.
This process is regulated by targeting certain "trigger" words or
phrases, visiting certain types of web sites, or communicating via email
or online chat with suspicious individuals or groups. Billions of dollars per year are spent by agencies, such as the
NSA, the
FBI and the now-defunct
Information Awareness Office, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as
Carnivore,
NarusInsight, and
ECHELON
to intercept and analyze all of this data to only extract the
information which is useful to law enforcement and intelligence
agencies.
Computers can be a surveillance target because of the personal
data stored on them. If someone is able to install software, such as the
FBI's
Magic Lantern and
CIPAV,
on a computer system, they can easily gain unauthorized access to this
data. Such software could be installed physically or remotely. Another form of computer surveillance, known as
van Eck phreaking,
involves reading electromagnetic emanations from computing devices in
order to extract data from them at distances of hundreds of meters. The NSA runs a database known as "
Pinwale", which stores and indexes large numbers of emails of both American citizens and foreigners. Additionally, the NSA runs a program known as
PRISM,
which is a data mining system that gives the United States government
direct access to information from technology companies. Through
accessing this information, the government is able to obtain search
history, emails, stored information, live chats, file transfers, and
more. This program generated huge controversies in regards to
surveillance and privacy, especially from U.S. citizens.
Telephones
The official and unofficial tapping of telephone lines is widespread. In the
United States for instance, the
Communications Assistance For Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)
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.—
AT&T Inc. 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 per year. Between 2003 and 2005, the FBI sent out more than 140,000 "
National Security Letters"
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, or companies such as
Verint, 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 activate the microphones in
cell phones remotely, by accessing phones' diagnostic or maintenance
features in order to listen to conversations that take place near the
person who holds the phone.
The
StingRay
tracker is an example of one of these tools used to monitor cell phone
usage in the United States and the United Kingdom. Originally developed
for counterterrorism purposes by the military, they work by broadcasting
powerful signals that cause nearby cell phones to transmit their
IMSI number,
just as they would to normal cell phone towers. Once the phone is
connected to the device, there is no way for the user to know that they
are being tracked. The operator of the stingray is able to extract
information such as location, phone calls, and text messages, but it is
widely believed that the capabilities of the StingRay extend much
further. A lot of controversy surrounds the StingRay because of its
powerful capabilities and the secrecy that surrounds it.
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 even when the phone is not being
used, using a technique known as
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. The legality of such techniques has been questioned in the United States, in particular 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.
In response to customers' privacy concerns in the post
Edward Snowden era, Apple's iPhone 6 has been designed to disrupt investigative
wiretapping
efforts. The phone encrypts e-mails, contacts, and photos with a code
generated by a complex mathematical algorithm that is unique to an
individual phone, and is inaccessible to Apple. The
encryption
feature on the iPhone 6 has drawn criticism from FBI director James B.
Comey and other law enforcement officials since even lawful requests to
access user content on the iPhone 6 will result in Apple supplying
"gibberish" data that requires law enforcement personnel to either break
the code themselves or to get the code from the phone's owner.
Because the Snowden leaks demonstrated that American agencies can
access phones anywhere in the world, privacy concerns in countries with
growing markets for smart phones have intensified, providing a strong
incentive for companies like
Apple to address those concerns in order to secure their position in the global market.
Although the
CALEA requires
telecommunication
companies to build into their systems the ability to carry out a lawful
wiretap, the law has not been updated to address the issue of smart
phones and requests for access to
e-mails and
metadata. The Snowden leaks show that the
NSA
has been taking advantage of this ambiguity in the law by collecting
metadata on "at least hundreds of millions" of "incidental" targets from
around the world.
The NSA uses an analytic tool known as CO-TRAVELER in order to track
people whose movements intersect and to find any hidden connections with
persons of interest.
The Snowden leaks have also revealed that the British
Government Communications Headquarters
(GCHQ) can access information collected by the NSA on American
citizens. Once the data has been collected, the GCHQ can hold on to it
for up to two years. The deadline can be extended with the permission of
a "senior UK official".
Cameras
Surveillance
cameras such as these are installed by the millions in many countries,
and are nowadays monitored by automated computer programs instead of
humans.
Surveillance cameras are video cameras used for the purpose of
observing an area. They are often connected to a recording device or
IP network, and may be watched by a
security guard or
law enforcement officer.
Cameras and recording equipment used to be relatively expensive and
required human personnel to monitor camera footage, but analysis of
footage has been made easier by automated software that organizes
digital video footage into a searchable
database, and by video analysis software (such as
VIRAT and
HumanID).
The amount of footage is also drastically reduced by motion sensors
which only record when motion is detected. With cheaper production
techniques, surveillance cameras are simple and inexpensive enough to be
used in home security systems, and for everyday surveillance.
As of 2016, there are about 350 million surveillance cameras
worldwide. About 65% of these cameras are installed in Asia. The growth
of CCTV has been slowing in recent years.
In 2018, China was reported to have a huge surveillance network of over
170 million CCTV cameras with 400 million new cameras expected to be
installed in the next three years, many of which use
facial recognition technology.
In the
United States, the
Department of Homeland Security awards 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,
Illinois, 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. Speaking in 2009, Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley announced that Chicago would have a surveillance camera on every street corner by the year 2016.
In the
United Kingdom,
the vast majority of video surveillance cameras are not operated by
government bodies, but by private individuals or companies, especially
to monitor the interiors of shops and businesses. According to 2011
Freedom of Information Act requests, the total number of local government operated CCTV cameras was around 52,000 over the entirety of the UK. The prevalence of video surveillance in the UK is often overstated due to unreliable estimates being requoted;
for example one report in 2002 extrapolated from a very small sample to
estimate the number of cameras in the UK at 4.2 million (of which
500,000 in
Greater London).
More reliable estimates put the number of private and local government
operated cameras in the United Kingdom at around 1.85 million in 2011.
In the Netherlands, one example city where there are cameras is
The Hague. There, cameras are placed in city districts in which the most
illegal activity is concentrated. Examples are the
red-light districts and the train stations.
As part of China's
Golden Shield Project, several U.S. corporations, including
IBM,
General Electric, and
Honeywell, have been working closely with the
Chinese government to install millions of surveillance cameras throughout
China, 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.
A payload surveillance camera manufactured by Controp and distributed to the U.S. government by ADI Technologies
The
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a research project called
Combat Zones That See
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 in January 2001, police in Tampa, 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,
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 people's movements throughout the city, and
identify whom they have been with – has been argued by some to present a
risk to
civil liberties.
Trapwire is an example of such a network.
Social network analysis
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:
The purpose of the SSNA algorithms
program is to extend techniques of social network analysis to assist
with distinguishing potential terrorist cells from legitimate groups of
people.... In order to be successful SSNA will require information on
the social interactions of the majority of people around the globe.
Since the Defense Department cannot easily distinguish between peaceful
citizens and terrorists, it will be necessary for them to gather data on
innocent civilians as well as on potential terrorists.
— Jason Ethier
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,
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.
In 2008, about 20% of employers reported using social networking sites
to collect personal data on prospective or current employees.
Biometric
Fingerprints being scanned as part of the US-VISIT program
Biometric surveillance is a technology that measures and analyzes
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 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 (150 m) by their facial features.
Another form of behavioral biometrics, based on
affective computing,
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's behavior is
suspect (looking around furtively, "tense" or "angry" facial
expressions, waving arms, etc.).
A more recent development is
DNA profiling,
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 the 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.
In
his paper in
Ethics and Information Technology,
Avi Marciano maps the harms caused by biometric surveillance, traces
their theoretical origins, and brings these harms together in one
integrative framework to elucidate their cumulative power. Marciano
proposes four types of harms: Unauthorized use of bodily information,
denial or limitation of access to physical spaces, bodily social
sorting, and symbolic ineligibility through construction of marginality
and otherness. Biometrics' social power, according to Marciano, derives
from three main features: their complexity as "enigmatic technologies",
their objective-scientific image, and their increasing agency,
particularly in the context of automatic decision-making.
Aerial
Micro Air Vehicle with attached surveillance camera
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, 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. In an earlier instance of commercial aerial surveillance, the
Killington Mountain
ski resort hired 'eye in the sky' aerial photography of its
competitors' parking lots to judge the success of its marketing
initiatives as it developed starting in the 1950s.
HART program concept drawing from official IPTO (DARPA) official website
In addition to their surveillance capabilities, MAVs are capable of carrying
tasers for "
crowd control", or weapons for killing enemy combatants.
Programs such as the
Heterogeneous 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.
In addition, researchers also investigate possibilities of autonomous
surveillance by large groups of micro aerial vehicles stabilized by
decentralized bio-inspired swarming rules.
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
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 and records. In the past, this data was documented in paper records, leaving a "
paper trail",
or was simply not 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,
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 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 and
TALON, 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.
Corporate
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,
which enables the corporation to better tailor their products and/or
services to be desirable by their customers. Although there is a common
belief that monitoring can increase productivity, it can also create
consequences such as increasing chances of deviant behavior and creating
punishments that are not equitable to their actions. Additionally,
monitoring can cause resistance and backlash because it insinuates an
employer’s suspicion and lack of trust.
Business Intelligence
Data
collected on individuals and groups can be sold to other corporations,
so that they can use it for the aforementioned purpose. It can be used
for
direct marketing
purposes, such as targeted advertisements on Google and Yahoo. These
ads are tailored to the individual 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, the world's most popular search engine, stores identifying information for each web search. An
IP address 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. Their
revenue model is based on receiving payments from advertisers for each
page-visit resulting from a visitor clicking on a Google
AdWords
ad, hosted either on a Google service or a third-party website.
Millions of sites place Google's advertising banners and links on their
websites, in order to share this profit from visitors who click on the
ads. Each page containing Google advertisements adds, reads, and
modifies
"cookies" 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.
Intra-Corporate Surveillance
According to the
American Management Association
and the ePolicy Institute that undertake an annual quantitative survey
about electronic monitoring and surveillance with approximately 300 U.S.
companies, "more than one fourth of employers have fired workers for
misusing e-mail and nearly one third have fired employees for misusing
the Internet".
More than 40% of the companies monitor e-mail traffic of their workers,
and 66% of corporations monitor Internet connections. In addition, most
companies use software to block non-work related websites such as
sexual or pornographic sites, game sites, social networking sites,
entertainment sites, shopping sites, and sport sites. The American
Management Association and the ePolicy Institute also stress that
companies "tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard
... store and review computer files ... monitor the blogosphere to see
what is being written about the company, and ... monitor social
networking sites".
Furthermore, about 30% of the companies had also fired employees for
non-work related email and Internet usage such as "inappropriate or
offensive language" and "viewing, downloading, or uploading
inappropriate/offensive content".
Government Use of Corporate Surveillance Data
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 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 capabilities.
Satellite imagery
Identification and credentials
A card containing an identification number
One of the simplest forms of identification is the carrying of credentials. Some nations have an
identity card system to aid identification, whilst others are considering it but face public opposition. Other documents, such as
passports,
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),
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
Hand with planned insertion point for Verichip device
RFID tagging
Radio Frequency Identification
(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.
Some companies appear to be "tagging" their workers by
incorporating RFID tags in employee ID badges. Workers in U.K.
considered
strike action 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. On the other hand, RFID tags in newborn baby ID bracelets put on by hospitals have foiled kidnappings.
RFID chip pulled from new credit card
Verichip
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.
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 purposes.
In a 2003 editorial, CNET News.com's chief political
correspondent, Declan McCullagh, speculated that, soon, every object
that is purchased, and perhaps ID cards, will have RFID devices in them,
which would respond with 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. As of 2012, this has largely not come to pass.
Global Positioning System
Diagram of GPS satellites orbiting Earth
In the U.S., police have planted hidden
GPS 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 powered mobile phone (and thus the person
carrying it) can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not),
using a technique known as
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. Dr. Victor Kappeler
of Eastern Kentucky University indicates that police surveillance is a
strong concern, stating the following statistics from 2013:
Of the 321,545 law enforcement
requests made to Verizon, 54,200 of these requests were for "content" or
"location" information—not just cell phone numbers or IP addresses.
Content information included the actual text of messages, emails and the
wiretapping of voice or messaging content in real-time.
A comparatively new off-the-shelf surveillance device is an
IMSI-catcher, a
telephone eavesdropping device used to intercept mobile phone traffic and track the movement of mobile phone users. Essentially a "fake"
mobile tower acting between the target mobile phone and the service provider's real towers, it is considered a
man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack. IMSI-catchers are used in some countries by
law enforcement and
intelligence agencies, but their use has raised significant civil liberty and privacy concerns and is strictly regulated in some countries.
Human microchips
A human microchip implant is an identifying integrated circuit device or
RFID transponder encased in
silicate glass and implanted in the body of a human being. A
subdermal implant
typically contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information
contained in an external database, such as personal identification,
medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information.
Several types of microchips have been developed in order to
control and monitor certain types of people, such as criminals,
political figures and spies, a "killer" tracking chip patent was filed at the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) around May 2009.
Devices
Covert listening devices
and video 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.
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. This is not a common practice, however, and entities like the US Army require high levels of approval to conduct.
Stakeout
A
stakeout is the coordinated surveillance of a location or person. Stakeouts are generally performed
covertly and for the purpose of gathering
evidence related to
criminal activity. The term derives from the practice by
land surveyors of using
survey stakes to measure out an area before the main building project is commenced.
Wildlife
The management of wildlife populations often requires surveillance. This includes, for example surveillance of (1)
Invasive species location and abundance for more effective management, (2) illegal fishers and poachers to reduce harvest and
overexploitation
of natural resources, (3) the population abundances of endangered
species to decrease the risk of extinction, and (4) wildlife diseases
that can damage crops, agriculture and natural populations.
Controversy
Graffiti expressing concern about proliferation of video surveillance
Support
Supporters of surveillance systems believe that these tools can help protect society from
terrorists and
criminals.
They argue that surveillance can reduce crime by three means: by
deterrence, by observation, and by reconstruction. Surveillance can
deter by increasing the chance of being caught, and by revealing the
modus operandi. This requires a minimal level of
invasiveness.
Another method on how surveillance can be used to fight criminal
activity is by linking the information stream obtained from them to a
recognition system (for instance, a camera system that has its feed run
through a facial recognition system). This can for instance
auto-recognize fugitives and direct police to their location.
A distinction here has to be made however on the type of
surveillance employed. Some people that say support video surveillance
in city streets may not support indiscriminate telephone taps and vice
versa. Besides the types, the way in how this surveillance is done also
matters a lot; i.e. indiscriminate telephone taps are supported by much
fewer people than say telephone taps only done to people suspected of
engaging in illegal activities.
Surveillance can also be used to give human operatives a tactical
advantage through improved situational awareness, or through the use of
automated processes, i.e.
video analytics.
Surveillance can help reconstruct an incident and prove guilt through
the availability of footage for forensics experts. Surveillance can also
influence subjective security if surveillance resources are visible or
if the consequences of surveillance can be felt.
Some of the surveillance systems (such as the camera system that
has its feed run through a facial recognition system mentioned above)
can also have other uses besides countering criminal activity. For
instance, it can help on retrieving runaway children, abducted or
missing adults and mentally disabled people.
Other supporters simply believe that there is nothing that can be done
about the loss of privacy, and that people must become accustomed to
having no privacy. As
Sun Microsystems CEO
Scott McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
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. Also if an employer wishes total privacy to watch over their
own employee and secure their financial information it may become
impossible, and they may not wish to hire those under surveillance. The
most concern of detriment is securing the lives of those who live under
total surveillance willingly, educating the public to those under
peaceful watch while identifying terrorist and those who use the same
surveillance systems and mechanisms in opposition to peace, against
civilians, and to disclose lives removed from the laws of the land.
In addition, a significant risk of private data collection stems
from the fact that this risk is too much unknown to be readily assessed
today. Storage is cheap enough to have data stored forever, and the
models using which it will be analyzed in a decade from now cannot
reasonably be foreseen.
In December 2017, the Government of China took steps to oppose
widespread surveillance by security-company cameras, webcams, and
IP Cameras after tens-of-thousands were made accessible for internet viewing by IT company
Qihoo
Totalitarianism
A traffic camera atop a high pole oversees a road in the Canadian city of Toronto
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,
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.
The concept of panopticism is a means of indirect control over a
large populace through the uncertainty of surveillance. Michel Foucault
analyzed the architecture of the prison panopticon, and realized that
its success was not just in its ability to monitor but also its ability
to not monitor without anyone knowing.
Critics such as Derrick Jensen and George Draffan, argue that
panopticism in the United States began in World War I when the issuing
of passports became important for the tracking of citizens and possibly
enemies of the state. Such surveillance continues today through
government agencies in the form of tracking internet usage and library
usage.
With the development of digital technology, individuals have
become increasingly perceptible to one another, as surveillance becomes
virtual. Online surveillance is the utilization of the internet to
observe one's activity.
Corporations, citizens, and governments participate in tracking others'
behaviours for motivations that arise out of business relations, to
curiosity, to legality. In her book Superconnected, Chayko differentiates between two types of surveillance: vertical and horizontal.
Vertical surveillance occurs when there is a dominant force, such as
the government that is attempting to control or regulate the actions of a
given society. Such powerful authorities often justify their incursions
as a means to protect society from threats of violence or terrorism.
Some individuals question when this becomes an infringement on civil
rights.
Horizontal diverges from vertical surveillance as the tracking
shifts from an authoritative source to an everyday figure, such as a
friend, coworker, or stranger that is interested in one's mundane
activities.
Individuals leave traces of information when they are online that
reveal their interests and desires of which others observe. While this
can allow people to become interconnected and develop social connections
online, it can also increase potential risk to harm, such as
cyberbullying or censoring/stalking by strangers, reducing privacy.
Michel Foucault has expanded literature on discipline and power
structures within society, specifically by developing Jeremy Bentham's
notion of the
panopticon.
This metaphor has been used to illustrate the influence of surveillance
on the individual, in addition to society as a collective. The
panopticon is a circular prison design in which prison guards are
located within the center of the facility, monitoring the prisoners who
are invisible to one another.
Although the inmates are not consistently observed, they are
nevertheless obliged to abide by the rules due to the perception that
they are under surveillance. This is similar to the contemporary
prevalence of undercover police and highway trackers. An example of
video surveillance is called closed-circuit television (
CCTV), which are used to reduce crime and increase public safety. Regulation is maintained both through vertical and self-surveillance.
In addition,
Simone Browne
argues that surveillance wields an immense racializing quality such
that it operates as "racializing surveillance." Browne uses racializing
surveillance to refer to moments when enactments of surveillance are
used to reify boundaries, borders, and bodies along racial lines and
where the outcome is discriminatory treatment of those who are
negatively racialized by such surveillance. Browne argues racializing
surveillance pertains to policing what is “in or out of place.”
Privacy
Legislative proceedings such as those that took place during the
Church Committee, which investigated domestic intelligence programs such as
COINTELPRO, have also weighed the pros and cons of surveillance.
- Court Cases
People vs. Diaz (2011)
was a court case in the realm of cell phone privacy, even though the
decision was later overturned. In this case, Gregory Diaz was arrested
during a sting operation for attempting to sell ecstasy. During his
arrest, police searched Diaz's phone and found more incriminating
evidence including SMS text messages and photographs depicting illicit
activities. During his trial, Diaz attempted to have the information
from his cell phone removed from evidence, but the courts deemed it as
lawful and Diaz's appeal was denied on the California State Court level
and, later, the Supreme Court level. Just three short years after, this
decision was overturned in the case Riley vs. California (2014).
Riley vs. California (2014) was an extremely vital
Supreme Court
case in which a man was arrested for his involvement in a drive-by
shooting. A few days after the shooting the police made an arrest of
the suspect (Riley), and, during the arrest, the police searched him.
However, this search was not only of Riley's person, but also the police
opened and searched his cell phone, finding pictures of other weapons,
drugs, and of Riley showing gang signs. In court, the question arose
whether searching the phone was lawful or if the search was protected by
the 4th amendment of the constitution. The decision held that the
search of Riley's cell phone during the arrest was illegal, and that it
was protected by the 4th Amendment.
Countersurveillance, inverse surveillance, sousveillance
Countersurveillance
is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making surveillance
difficult. Developments in the late twentieth century have caused
counter surveillance to dramatically grow in both scope and complexity,
such as the Internet, increasing prevalence of electronic
security systems, high-altitude (and possibly armed)
UAVs, and large corporate and government computer databases.
Inverse surveillance
is the practice of the reversal of surveillance on other individuals or
groups (e.g., citizens photographing police). Well-known examples are
George Holliday's recording of the
Rodney King beating and the organization
Copwatch, which attempts to monitor police officers to prevent
police brutality.
Counter-surveillance can be also used in applications to prevent
corporate spying, or to track other criminals by certain criminal
entities. It can also be used to deter stalking methods used by various
entities and organizations.
Sousveillance is inverse surveillance, involving the recording by private individuals, rather than government or corporate entities.
Popular culture
In literature
- George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four portrays a fictional totalitarian surveillance society with a very simple (by today's standards) mass surveillance
system consisting of human operatives, informants, and two-way
"telescreens" in people's homes. Because of the impact of this book,
mass-surveillance technologies are commonly called "Orwellian" when they
are considered problematic.
- The novel mistrust
highlights the negative effects from the overuse of surveillance at
Reflection House. The central character Kerryn installs secret cameras
to monitor her housemates – see also Paranoia.
- The book The Handmaid's Tale, as well as a film and TV series based on it, portray a totalitarian Christian theocracy where all citizens are kept under constant surveillance.
- In the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander uses computers to get information on people, as well as other common surveillance methods, as a freelancer.
- David Egger's novel The Circle
exhibits a world where a single company called "The Circle" produces
all of the latest and highest quality technologies from computers and
smartphones, to surveillance cameras known as "See-Change cameras". This
company becomes associated with politics when starting a movement where
politicians go "transparent" by wearing See-Change cameras on their
body to prevent keeping secrets from the public about their daily work
activity. In this society, it becomes mandatory to share personal
information and experiences because it is The Circle's belief that
everyone should have access to all information freely. However, as
Eggers illustrates, this takes a toll on the individuals and creates a
disruption of power between the governments and the private company. The
Circle presents extreme ideologies surrounding mandatory surveillance.
Eamon Bailey, one of the Wise Men, or founders of The Circle, believes
that possessing the tools to access information about anything or
anyone, should be a human right given to all of the world's citizens.
By eliminating all secrets, any behaviour that has been deemed shameful
will either become normalized or no longer considered shocking.
Negative actions will eventually be eradicated from society altogether,
through the fear of being exposed to other citizens
This would be achieved in part by everyone going transparent, something
that Bailey highly supports, although it's notable that none of the
Wise Men ever became transparent themselves. One major goal of The
Circle is to have all of the world's information filtered through The
Circle, a process they call "Completion".
A single, private company would then have full access and control over
all information and privacy of individuals and governments. Ty
Gospodinov, the first founder of The Circle, has major concerns about
the completion of the circle. He warns that this step would give The
Circle too much power and control, and would quickly lead to totalitarianism.
In music
On screen
- The film Gattaca 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, the police and government intelligence agencies use micro aerial vehicles in SWAT operations and for surveillance purposes.
- HBO's crime-drama series The Sopranos regularly portrays the FBI's surveillance of the DiMeo Crime Family. Audio devices they use include "bugs" 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.
- The movie The Lives of Others portrays the monitoring of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, the GDR's secret police.
- The movie The Conversation portrays many methods of audio surveillance.