Mass Surveillance
- •
What it is
- •
The systematic effort to monitor the behavior, activities, or information of an entire population (or a substantial fraction of it) — typically associated with government programs, but also carried out by corporations on a govenrment's behalf or on their own initiative.
- •
- •
Why it matters
- •
It's usually justified publicly as necessary for counter-terrorism or crime prevention, but oversight reviews of programs like the NSA's Section 215 found they had "little unique value" for actually stopping crimes or plots — largely duplicating targeted investigative work the FBI was already doing. In practice, mass surveillance has disproportionately been used against minority groups and political dissidents rather than against the threats used to justify it.
- •
- •
How it works
- •
Tracking online happens through multiple channels simultaneously — IP address, browser cookies, data voluntarily submitted to sites, browser/device fingerprinting, and payment method correlation — which is why compartmentalizing online identities and minimizing identifying information across the board matters more than blocking any single method.
- •
- •
Example
- •
Edward Snowden's 2013 disclosures revealed the NSA had, for years, been collecting records of nearly every American's phone calls under a program later found to have provided little counter-terrorism value beyond what targeted surveillance already achieved.
- •
- •