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Chapter 2: Surveillance
ISSUES: Privacy
Chapter
Surveillance
2
What is mass surveillance?
Mass surveillance is the subjection
of a population or significant
component
of
a
group
to
indiscriminate monitoring. It involves
a
systematic
interference
with
people’s right to privacy. Any system
that generates and collects data
on individuals without attempting
to limit the dataset to well-defined
targeted individuals is a form of mass
surveillance.
Under the methods that mass
surveillance is now capable of being
conducted, governments can capture
virtually all aspects of our lives.
Today it increasingly involves the
generation, collection and processing
of information about large numbers
of people, often without any regard
to whether they are legally suspected
of wrongdoing. At this scale, modern
surveillance shifts the burden of
proof, leads to an unaccountable
increase in power, and has a chilling
effect on individual action.
Is mass surveillance only a
recent phenomenon?
While the mass surveillance of
populations is currently on the rise,
mainly due to rapid technological
changes around the world, it has
been used all throughout history.
One of the oldest forms of mass
surveillance are national databases.
These old administrative surveillance
techniques
include
censuses
registering the subjects of a kingdom,
ID documenting individuals and
tattoosmarking them, and numbering
and categorising humans.
The searchable nature of databases
makes any datastore a potential
investigative tool and increases
the potential of trawling. This
is why national databases are
supposed to be regulated carefully
under law in democratic societies.
Census databases collect detailed
informationon individuals in a country
but should not be used to identify
specific individuals or populations.
Identity schemes should be limited
to very specific uses and not allow
for discrimination or for abusive use
of stop-and-identify powers. The
increasing use of biometrics and the
ability to query identity databases for
matches and near-matches allows for
fishing expeditions that increase the
risk of abuse and re-use of the system
for other purposes than for which it
was designed.
Mass surveillance in public spaces
became more commonplace with
the deployment of closed-circuit
television cameras (CCTV). Older
systems collected vague images with
limited capabilities of linking captured
images to personal information.
But now it is possible for people’s
movements to be tracked and stored
for later analysis. Automated and real-
time identification of large numbers
of people is now undertaken, and the
risk of further abuses is growing.
What are the latest forms of
mass surveillance?
While databases and CCTV still exist
and are in use, the most recent
discussions around mass surveillance
focus around the monitoring of
communications, including what we
do on our phones and our computers.
When it comes to spying on our
phones, government authorities can
now get access to data on everyone
within a specific geographic area
around a cell tower through bulk
access to data held by mobile
phone companies (often referred
to as a ‘cell tower dump’). We are
also seeing an increase in the use
of mobile surveillance tools that
allow authorities to monitor all
communications and identify all
devices within a localised area, for
instance at a public protest by setting
up fake mobile base stations.
Having started as mechanisms
to administer and control large
populations, then moving to capture
‘public’ actions, mass surveillance
techniques are no longer restricted to
public-facing activities. For instance,
governments have passed laws
mandating that all communications
transactions are logged and retained
by service providers to ensure that
they are accessible to government
authorities upon request. However,
numerous courts have called this type
of surveillance policy an interference
with the right to privacy.
The technologies of mass surveillance
are becoming more prevalent, and
as resource limitations disappear,
the capabilities for governments
become endless. Now it is possible
to monitor and retain an entire
country’s communications content,
and directly access communications
and metadata from undersea cable
companies, telephone companies
and Internet service providers.
There are practically no limits on what
governments can do with this broad
access and the power that comes
with unaccountable surveillance. For
instance, in conducting fibre optic
cable interception states can collect
and read any of the content of any
unencrypted communication flowing
through that cable – including phone
calls, voice-over-IP calls, messages,
emails, photos and social networking
activity. They can then apply a range
of analysis techniques and filters to
that information – from voice, text
and facial recognition, to the mapping
of networks and relationships, to
behavioural analysis, to emotion
detection.
