A Brief History of Surviellance

Over the last two decades the average person living in countries like Canada, The United States, and the United Kingdom has seen an exponential increase in the amount that they are surveilled. Surveillance is conducted on the general population through overt and covert tactics, from a proliferation of CCTV cameras and watchlists to the ubiquity of data traces that are created by our smartphones. This surveillance apparatus comes from the state, corporations, and our own peers. We are told that this surveillance will give us greater security from domestic and international threats, better entertainment, convenience in managing our homes, and protection from dangerous illnesses. Efforts to try and minimize the amount that one is surveilled are laborious and risk that person being seen as paranoid. If one take steps to mitigate the amount they are surveilled they are seen as having something to hide. Protest against this surveillance tends to be politicized with those who don’t agree being painted as on the side of the terrorists or anti-science.

Surveillance is nothing new, it is a tool governments and corporations have used for a long time whether it be for the purpose of spying on foreign governments, investigating criminals, or attempting to infiltrate labour unions (White, 2018). The pre-internet days of surveillance included border checks, wiretaps of telegraphs and telephones, private detectives, and stakeouts. Until the 1920s wiretapping was conducted mostly by private detective and corporations, it wasn’t until the prohibition that law enforcement in the United States began commonly employing this tactic (White, 2018). Fast forward to the aftermath of the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City, a security and surveillance apparatus was unleashed on the public that could not have even been imagined a decade before.

In the aftermath of 9/11 much discussion occurred throughout the intelligence communities of the United State about how these agencies failed in preventing this attack. The FBI, CIA, NSA, and FAA all had their own tools and methods for surveillance and security pertaining to their respective organizations. A senior member of the NSA Thomas Drake believed that the data collected and analyzed by the NSA should have prevented 9/11 (McGovern, 2021). A strong belief throughout this community of officials was that all the data to prevent the attacks was there in existing databases, they just did not have a way of connecting all the dots to see the bigger picture (Amoore, 2009. Pg 52).

Thus began the mission of connecting the dots. This included complex algorithms, more surveillance of the public, The Patriot Act, The PRISM Program, and increasing power to intelligence agencies (Free Press Journal, 2013). A change to the judicial process was made so that in order for these agencies to spy on suspected terrorists they did not have to go through traditional courts, they could go through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that would easily grant them a warrant to surveil a person’s identity physically and digitally (Sinha, 2013. Pg 874). Another overhaul was made in the way crime and terror was prosecuted, one could now be charged and jailed for having the intent to commit a crime or act of terror through monitoring of suspicious web browsing history or financial activities (Sinha, 2013. Pg 885). All of these newfound powers disproportionately affected Muslim Americans and did very little to stop terrorism (Greenwald, 2014). The American public which was in shock that an attack had come to their soil did very little to oppose the over reaches and expansion of the security state . People were scared and wanted to feel safe in their country at all costs. After-all, who could disagree with something called The Patriot Act? Only a terrorist?

It wasn’t until the revelations brought about by rogue NSA agent Edward Snowden in 2013, did the American public truly understand the scope of surveillance that was being conducted by intelligence agencies like the NSA. Through his leaks, Snowden revealed that the NSA had been mining data through backdoors of all of the popular consumer technology companies in the US. This allowed the NSA to easily snoop on anyone’s email, cloud files, search history, or access physical microphones and cameras on devices without the user knowing (Steele, 2014). Edward Snowden’s revelation were treated with much media flare for a relatively short amount of time, then quickly fell out of the news cycle. A concerted effort was made by the intelligence communities and media allies to paint him as a traitor and imply that his actions made Americans less safe (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2017. Pg 393). To this day not much has changed, the NSA still has backdoors in popular consumer tech, can still exploit physical hardware, and still collect phone records (Whitaker, 2019). People have accepted this surveillance in the name of national security and keeping themselves safe from terrorism.

Governments have enormous powers to be able to monitor ones physical and online life however, they do not have a monopoly on surveillance. Corporations surveil consumers at every chance they get, this allows them to tweak their products, cross sell users new products, and predict what one will do in the future. Predictions of purchasing patterns are so powerful that in once case, Target was able to predict that a person was pregnant solely based of the items they had previously purchased in their store (Siegel, 2016. Pg 47). Surveillance of consumers is done by legacy businesses that are evolving into todays data driven world and by high tech social media companies that were born out of this model. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn all use incredibly powerful algorithms to serve users content, the purpose of doing this is to keep users time on their sites for as long as possible in order to serve them more advertisements (Kao, 2021. Pg 1275). All the time spent on site, all the interactions made with posts, and who one connects with are all tracked and monitored in a practice that is referred to as dataveillance (Clavell, 2018. Pg 285). An entire industry has evolved out of exchanging the data that is captured and made available by these platforms, they are what’s known as data brokers. Data brokers can know more about us than we know about ourselves and use that information to target us with specific advertisements (Crain, 2018. Pg 89).

A new form of surveillance has emerged out of the datafication of social interactions. A reputation economy now exits that is based on the way individuals present themselves in the online world. The role of reputation in society has rapidly evolved as we increasingly rely on reputation to be employed, befriended, and listened to (Gandini, 2016. Pg 29). This cause people to surveil their own perceived image and make judgements on how others present themselves in digital spaces. In the past the only people that needed to worry about how they were viewed by the masses were those that were public figures. With the rise of social media everyone now can make a daily bid for fame in hopes of going viral, or inhabit a space where they are viewed as a micro celebrity (Gandini 2016, 30). Algorithms that monitor what users engage with and serve them content they know they will like keep people entertained and glued to their screens for as long as possible. The CEO of Netflix once joked that the biggest enemy of the company was sleep (Sulleyman, 2017). One might think that they are just being entertained on their weekly Netflix binge, but in reality they are watching a show that is full of product placement and sending valuable data back to Netflix HQ that can then be used by data brokers to sell them more products (Crain, 2018. Pg 90). People have accepted being surveilled in their personal lives and online interactions under the guise of receiving better entertainment and increasing their social capital.

A rapid expansion of the corporate surveillance assemblage has manifested into smart devices and smart homes through the internet of things (IoT). Products like Alexa and Google Home are placed inside peoples residences with always on microphones that offer users the convenience of not having to get up and turn on a light switch or adjust the thermostat. These devices surveil users through built in cameras, microphones, and the data that can be gathered from interacting with these products (Maalsen, 2019. Pg 120). These devices can be easily hacked as they contain numerous vulnerabilities and rely on the security settings that are in place on a homes local wireless network (Apthorpe, 2017. Pg 5). Knowing from Edwards Snowden’s revelations that agencies like the NSA can access the microphone or camera on a person of interests phone without their knowledge, it is not a stretch to assume that the same can be done with these devices.

Ring and Nest’s internet connected cameras provide customers with a greater sense of security by allowing people to place cameras on their front door to monitor the mail man or even inside their home to keep an eye on things while they are away. Ring cameras are installed on hundreds of thousands of doorsteps across the United States (Paul, 2019). The newest addition to this line of home security products is the Ring Always Home Drone, which is a small flying camera that can be operated inside and out of a home (Touchy, 2021). In 2019 it was uncovered that Ring had partnered with hundreds of local law enforcements agencies across the US, allowing police to access its platform in exchange for outreach to residents (Paul 2019). Ring also comes with an accompanying application called Neighbours which is a social network for neighbourhoods. The app encourages users to report suspicious people and activity in their neighbourhood, this has resulted in racially biased posts that could lead to the harm of marginalized individuals (Guariglia, 2021). Out of laziness and paranoia people have installed always on surveillance devices in their homes and neighbourhoods to protect them from what they perceive to be an incredibly dangerous world.

Not everyone has decided to accept corporate and government surveillance without question. A small minority of individuals and companies are making efforts to reduce the amount individuals are surveilled and tracked. Unfortunately to do this, it can be a laborious and complicated process where the burden is placed solely on the individual. Security experts have been gaining steam with the idea of a de-Googled phone, these are smart phones that have no Google software on them so users can not be tracked by the companies powerful surveillance network (Hernandez, 2021). Security experts take at aim at Google specifically because of their ability to perform cross device tracking, this allows Google to know who users are on whatever device they are using because it can link each individual devices fingerprint to a single account (Wlosik, 2020). Device fingerprints can be made up of unique identifiers like the IMEI number, MAC address, screen resolution, and IP address (Wlosik, 2020). Using sites like DuckDuckGo is another alternative to limit tracking done by Google, DuckDuckGo is a rival search engine that does not track nor keep a record of anything users search (Chang, 2013). Virtual Private Networks can also be used to hide ones web traffic and move anonymously through the web.

Apple has began taking a public stance against the data brokering industry that they helped create, touting a flagship new feature on their devices called “ask app not to track.” This feature allows users to block tracking from apps on a case by case basis (Mayo, 2021). Skepticism remains around this feature however because Apple is now involved in the advertising business inside some of their own apps like News+. Apple also released a new featured for users with paid iCloud accounts that is called Private Relay. Private Relay allows users to block tracking even further when using Safari by hiding users identity and web traffic from all parties including Apple (Williams, 2021). Limiting the amount one is surveilled is a laborious task that causes one to make a trade off of convenience for privacy. People who are not aware of the amount they are surveilled tend to criticize those who decide to do something about it as being conspiratorial and paranoid or trying to engage in something nefarious. The average person does not take measures to limit the amount they are surveilled because they feel they have nothing to hide (Stuart, 2017. Pg 695).

The increase of state surveillance post 9/11 and the ubiquity of corporate surveillance into all aspects of our personal and public lives has not been met with much backlash from the general population. These forms of surveillance tend to fade into the background due to them being difficult to observe and are kept out of the realm of public discourse barely being brought up or taken as a serious concern. In the age of COVID-19 however, we have seen large scale protests across the world due to a new form of surveillance in the way of vaccine passports (CBS News, 2021). The pandemic is something that has been highly politicized from the start and in our age of social media communication it has become increasingly challenging for those on opposite sides of the political isle to have meaningful discussions about issues they disagree on (Levy, 2021. Pg 867).

Skepticism about vaccine passports contain some valid criticisms, however it is logically inconsistent that people are fighting for their “freedom” against corporate and state surveillance only now, when it is inconveniencing them from going to the pub or seeing a film. People against vaccine passports feel that the measure is unlawful and unethical (Hall 2021, Pg 32). Where was this protest post expansion of the surveillance and security state? Where was this protest when Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had backdoors into all popular consumer technology platforms? Where was this protest when people realized the amount of information social media companies and data brokers had on individuals? Where was this protest when it was revealed IoT devices were sharing information with local law enforcement? On the other side of the argument however people have been willing to accept more surveillance without question in the name of keeping themselves safe from a serious illness. People that are all for vaccine passports dismiss those that are asking valid questions about the initiative as being “anti-science” or “anti-vax.” People have chosen to draw an arbitrary line in the sand on being surveilled by the state and corporations only at a time when it is politically advantageous for them to do so.

Surveillance from the state, corporations, and our peers is nothing new but something that has gotten much more ubiquitous in the last two decades. Looking to the future, surveillance is likely to get even more entangled with our lives as more elements of the physical world are digitized and companies like Palantir develop powerful platforms for connecting all the dots of our data traces. New technologies give us opportunities for greater freedoms in our personal lives but also greater ways to be tracked and controlled by those in positions of power. Small institutional steps to limit the amount of information kept on individuals are being made in places like the EU through the right to be forgotten. This is something that needs to be replicated at a global scale. A shift in consciousness needs to be made in our relationship to surveillance and privacy so that we view privacy as a right, not a feature. No one would accept being followed by a man with a camera and microphone everywhere they go but when it is done subtly through our devices under the disguise of better entertainment, convenience, and safety we don’t think twice.