Mass surveillance

Mass surveillance is the pervasive surveillance of an entire population, or a substantial fraction thereof. Mass surveillance may be done either with or without the consent of those under surveillance, and may or may not serve their interests. For example, the monitoring of the population for disease in epidemiology would generally be viewed as a benign form of mass surveillance, whereas a network of secret police informers would be regarded as surveillance abuse.

Voluntary mass surveillance

One of the most common forms of voluntary mass surveillance is carried out by commercial organizations. Many people are willing to join loyalty card programs, trading their personal information and surveillance of their shopping habits in exchange for a discount on their groceries, although original prices are usually just increased to ensure participation in the program.

Involuntary mass surveillance

As a result of the digital revolution, many aspects of life are now captured and stored in digital form. Concern has been expressed that governments may use this information to conduct mass surveillance on their populations.

European Union

(This subsection documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.)

The legislative body of the European Union passed the Data Retention Directive on 2005-12-15. It requires telecommunication operators to implement mass surveillance of the general public through retention of metadata on telecommunications and to keep the collected data at the disposal of various governmental bodies for potentially quite long times. Access to this information is not required to be limited to investigation of serious crimes, nor is a warrant required for access.

Russia

The SORM (and SORM-2) laws enable complete monitoring of any communication, electronic or traditional, by eight state agencies, without warrant.

United Kingdom

Amongst the western democracies, the United Kingdom is perhaps the country subject to the most surveillance. Indeed, in 2004 the Government's own Information Commissioner, talking about the proposed British national identity database stated, "My anxiety is that we don't sleepwalk into a surveillance society." Other databases causing him concern are the National Child Database, the Office for National Statistics' Citizen Information Project, and the NHS National Programme for IT.

In 2004 it was estimated that the United Kingdom was monitored by some four million CCTV cameras, some with a facial recognition capacity, with practically all town centres under surveillance. Serious concerns have been raised that the facial biometric information which will be stored on a central database through the ID Card scheme could be linked to facial recognition systems and state-owned CCTV cameras to identify individuals anywhere in the UK, or even to compile a database of wanted citizens' movements without their knowledge or consent. Currently, in the London Borough of Westminster, microphones are being fitted next to CCTV cameras. Westminster council claims that they are simply part of an initiative against urban noise, and will not "be used to snoop", but comments from a council spokesman appear to imply that they have been deliberately designed to capture an audio stream alongside the video stream, rather than simply reporting noise levels. ^*

The British Police hold records of 5.5 million fingerprints and 2.5 million DNA samples on the National DNA Database. In London, the Oyster card payment system ^* tracks the movement of individual people through the public transport system, while the London congestion charge uses computer imaging to track car number plates.

Road vehicles are now tracked throughout much of the UK using a network of around 8,000 automatic number plate recognition cameras, while there are also proposals to track all road vehicles using vehicle telematics systems for road charging (see vehicle excise duty).

Many public payphones, at least in UK underground stations, contain 16" magnetic tape spools for recording all conversations.

Rest of Europe

Holland and Germany are reputed to have the highest levels of covert governmental mobile phone tapping. The article on telephone tapping states:

"There were proposals for European mobile phones to use stronger encryption, but this was opposed by a number of European countries, including the Netherlands and Germany, which are among the world's most prolific telephone tappers (over 10000+ phone numbers in both countries in 2003)."

In 2002 German citizens were tipped off about the scale of tapping, when a software error led to a phone number allocated to the German Secret Service being listed on mobile telephone bills. ^*

United States

In early 2006, USA Today reported that several major telephone companies were cooperating with the National Security Agency to monitor the phone records of U.S. citizens. This report came on the heels of allegations that the U.S. government had been conducting electronic surveillance of domestic telephone calls without warrants. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

Traffic cameras, installed in 18 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. and meant to help enforce traffic laws at intersections, have also sparked some controversy. http://www.edmunds.com/ownership/driving/articles/42961/article.html There have been reports that the NSA has been gathering information on financial records, internet surfing habits and has also been monitoring e-mails.

This NSA monitoring program is based on the ECHELON system which has been in operation for 10 years. This uses advanced antenna and computers technology. The ECHELON program has also been used to conduct economic espionage on France.

East Germany

Before the Digital Revolution, one of the world's biggest mass surveillance operations was carried out by the Stasi, the secret police of the former East Germany. By the time the state collapsed in 1989, the Stasi had built up an estimated civilian network of 300,000 informants (approximately one in fifty of the population), who monitored even minute hints of political dissent among other citizens. Many West Germans visiting friends and family in East Germany were also subject to Stasi spying, as well as many high-ranking West German politicians and persons in the public eye.

Most East German citizens were well aware that their government was spying on them, which led to a culture of mistrust: touchy political issues were only discussed in the comfort of their own four walls and only with the closest of friends and family members, while widely maintaining a facade of unquestioning followership in public.

Literature and movies critical of mass surveillance

Nineteen Eighty-Four, a novel by George Orwell depicting life under an omnipresent totalitarian state, and is probably the most prominent of the media listed; the 'Big Brother' who watches over the novel's characters is now used to describe any form of spying on or interfering with the public, such as CCTV cameras.
The Transparent Society by David Brin, discusses various scenarios for the future considering the spread of cheap web-cameras, increases in government security initiatives, and the possible death of encryption if quantum computing becomes reality
Minority Report, a story by Philip K. Dick about a society that arrests people for crimes they have yet to commit (made into a movie in 2002)
Blue Thunder, 1983 movie starring Roy Scheider
Brazil, a film by Terry Gilliam depicting an oppressive total information awareness society
Pizza, a short film by ACLU depicting ordering pizza by phone in a Total Surveillance Society.
Discipline and Punish by the critical theorist Michel Foucault is generally taken as being one of the paradigmatic works on theories of surveillance and discipline
Enemy of the State, 1998 film about the use of surveillance and the powers it provides a corrupt politician who could track a person who has evidence of a politically motivated crime that would expose a murder.

Literature and movies praising mass surveillance

The Light of Other Days is a science-fiction book that praises mass surveillance, under the condition that it is available to everyone. It shows a world in which a total lack of privacy results in a decrease in corruption and crime.
Digital Fortress, novel by Dan Brown, involving an NSA codebreaking machine called 'TRANSLATR', reading and decrypting email messages, with which the NSA allegedly foiled terrorist attacks and mass murders.

External links

Reference

Edward Higgs The Development of Central State Surveillance of the Citizen in England, 1500 - 2000

Alternatives to the surveillance state

The Privacy and Data Protection Act 2006 http://www.freewebs.com/privacyanddataprotectionact/privacyanddataprotection.htm

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