This document discusses the concept of a surveillance society and provides details on various types of surveillance. It describes how surveillance is used by governments and law enforcement to maintain social control and prevent criminal activity, but that civil rights groups are concerned this could limit political and personal freedoms. Different forms of surveillance are outlined, including computer monitoring, telephone tapping, cameras, social media analysis, biometrics, drones, and corporate practices. Both benefits and criticisms of widespread surveillance are presented.

1. Surveillance Society

2. Definition
• The monitoring of the behavior, activities, or
other changing information, usually for the
purpose of influencing, managing, directing,
or protecting.
• Most usually involves observation of
individuals or groups by government
organizations.

3. Positive? Negative?
• Surveillance is useful to governments and law
enforcement to maintain social control,
recognize and monitor threats, and
prevent/investigate criminal activity.
• Civil rights groups are concerned that mass
surveillance will result in limited or nonexistent political and/or personal freedoms.

4. Types of Surveillance
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Computer surveillance
Telephones
Surveillance cameras
Social network analysis
Biometric surveillance
Aerial surveillance
Corporate surveillance

5. Types of Surveillance
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Human operatives
Satellite imagery
Identification and credentials
RFID and geolocation devices
RFID tagging
Global positioning system
Mobile phones
Surveillance devices
Postal services

6. Computer Surveillance

7. • Vast majority of computer surveillance
involves monitoring of data and traffic on the
Internet.
• Real-time monitoring by Federal law
enforcement agencies.
• “Trigger” words or phrases
• Visiting certain types of web sites
• Communicating with suspicious individuals or
groups

8. • FBI software - Magic Lantern and CIPAV can
be used to gain unauthorized access to data;
can be installed physically or remotely
• vanEck phreaking – reads electromagnetic
emanations remotely from computing devices
to extract data
• Pinwale – stores and indexes large numbers of
emails of American citizens and foreigners

9. Telephones
• Widespread official and unofficial wiretapping
• AT&T and Verizon are paid by the FBI to keep
records easily searchable and accessible
• Speech-to-text software creates machinereadable text from intercepted audio
• Technology available to US, UK governments to
remotely activate microphones in cell phones
• “Multilateration” of cell phone towers used to
collect location data from cell phone use

10. Surveillance Cameras

11. • Video cameras used to observe an area
• Connected to a recording device or IP network
• Automated software organizes digital video
footage into a searchable database
• Homeland Security grants in US enable cities
to install cameras and to connect them to
central monitoring center
• “Golden Shield Project” – US companies install
cameras, facial recognition software in China
to track individuals. Goal is to have a picture
of every person in China in central database.

12. • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) funding research to link cameras to a
central monitoring station in a city
• Identix’s facial recognition software used at
Super Bowl 2001
• Traffic cameras in DC used for day-to-day
monitoring by DC police
• Trapwire - Closed Circuit TeleVision (CCTV)
cameras track people’s movements across city

13. Social Network Analysis
• Maps of social networks based on data from
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, traffic analysis
information from phone call records
• These maps are “data mined” to extract
personal interests, friendships, affiliations,
beliefs, thoughts, activities.
• DARPA, National Security Agency (NSA),
Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
invest in social network analysis.

14. • AT&T’s programming language “Hancock” sifts
through databases of phone call and Internet
traffic records.
• Employers report using social networking sites
to collect personal data on prospective or
current employees.

15. Biometric Surveillance

16. • Biometric surveillance measures and analyzes
human physical and/or behavioral
characteristics for authentication,
identification, or screening purposes.
• Fingerprints, DNA, facial patterns, voice
recognition, iris scanning, etc.
• Some technology can identify a person up to
500 ft. by facial features.

17. • Affective computing – computers recognize a
person’s emotional state based on analysis of
facial expressions, speed of talking, tone and
pitch of voice, posture, etc.
• DNA fingerprinting – analyzes major markers
in DNA to produce a match
• FBI spending $1 billion to build database for
people in US. Computers are in underground
facility as large as two football fields.
• Facial thermographs – identify fear, stress

18. Aerial Surveillance

19. • Aerial surveillance gathers visual imagery or
video from an airborne vehicle.
• Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), helicopter,
spy plane, micro-aerial vehicles (MAV),
forward-looking infrared devices.
• DHS testing UAVs to patrol US skies
• UK building up fleet of UAVs for its police
• MAVs can carry Tasers for crowd control or as
weapons

20. • DARPA programs automate much of the aerial
surveillance process.
• Self-piloting UAVs decide who is “suspicious,”
monitor them, coordinate with other UAVs,
notify human operators in centralized
monitoring station
• AI drones increase area that can be
continuously monitored, reducing number of
human operators

21. Data Mining and Profiling
• Data mining – application of statistical
techniques to discover relationships within
data
• Assemble data to create a profile, i.e., a
picture of patterns and behavior
• Economic and social transactions create data
• Web traffic and online purchases also used for
profiling

22. • Data analysis used by programs such as
ADVISE and TALON to determine whether the
person is a military, criminal, or political threat
• ADVISE – Analysis, Dissemination,
Visualization, Insight, Semantic Enhancement
R&D program authorized by DHS.
• TALON – Threat and Local Observation Notice,
activated after 9/11 by Dept. of Defense;
contains info on antiwar groups

23. • US is planning 43 “fusion centers”, a national
network of surveillance centers in over 30
states
• Fusion centers will collect, analyze data from
drivers’ licensing centers, hospital records,
criminal records, school records, credit
bureaus, banks, etc.
• Info will be placed in a centralized database
that can be accessed by all centers as well as
federal law enforcement and intelligence
agencies

24. Corporate Surveillance
• Monitoring of a person or group’s behavior by
a corporation
• Data usually used for marketing purposes
• Can be shared with government agencies
• Google stores identifying information for each
web search, scans content of Gmail webmail
service to tailor advertising

25. • Many US companies monitor e-mail traffic or
workers and/or Internet connections
• Companies use software to block non-work
related websites such as offensive sites, game
sites, social networking sites, entertainment
sites, shopping sites, and sports sites
• Some companies track keystrokes and time
spent at keyboards
• Infragard – FBI, DHS, corporations have
information-sharing partnership

26. Human Operatives
• Organizations that have enemies who wish to
gather information about the groups’
members or activities face the issue of
infiltration
• HUMINT – intelligence gathered by humans
rather than by electronic monitoring and data
mining

27. Satellite Imagery
• Local, state, and domestic Federal agencies
can access imagery from military intelligence
satellites and aircraft sensors
• These devices can penetrate cloud cover,
detect chemical traces, and identify objects in
buildings and underground bunkers
• Real-time video better than still images from
Google Earth

28. Identification and Credentials
• A card containing an identification number
• Some countries have national ID numbers
• IDs can be verified by passports, drivers’
licenses, library cards, banking or credit cards
• Machine-readable data can create an
electronic trail

29. RFID and Geolocation Devices

30. a. RFID Tagging
• Use of very small electronic devices applied or
incorporated into a product, animal, or person
for identification and tracking using radio
waves
• Some companies tag employees, who are
monitored while on job
• VeriChip (Applied Digital Solutions), injected
under skin, stores personal information in
“Global VeriChip Subscriber Registry”

31. b. Global Positioning System
• In US, police have planted hidden GPS tracking
devices in people’s vehicles to monitor their
movements
• Some cities require parolees to wear GPS
devices to track their movements when they
get out of prison

32. c. Mobile Phones
• Commonly used to collect geolocation data
• Multilateration – calculates 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

33. d. Surveillance Devices
• “Bugs” are hidden electronic devices used to
capture, record, and/or transmit data to a
receiving party such as a law enforcement
agency
• COINTELPRO – US domestic intelligence
program bugged homes, office, vehicles of
political activists, subversives, criminals

34. e. Postal Services
• Significance of surveillance of postal system
decreasing in favor of Internet and telephone
surveillance
• Interception of mail is still option for law
enforcement

35. Controversy over Surveillance

36. Support
• These tools protect society from terrorists and
criminals
• People must become accustomed to having no
privacy
• “If you aren’t doing anything wrong, then you
don’t have anything to worry about.”

37. Opposition
• “As long as we do what we’re told, we have
nothing to fear.”
• Political activists do not want the government
to know their names
• Mass surveillance may make future opposition
impossible
• Most people do have things to hide, e.g., job
hunter may not want present employer to
know this

38. Opposition: Totalitarianism
• Fear that society is moving toward a state of
mass surveillance
• “Laying the bricks one at a time for a police
state.”
• Blurring of lines between public and private
places
• Surveillance techniques are not equal, e.g.,
facial recognition requires no cooperation

39. Opposition:
Psychological/Social Effects
• Creates in people a feeling of always being
watched, so they become self-policing
• The State can control the populace without
having to resort to physical force

40. Opposition: Privacy
• Civil rights groups include Electronic Privacy
Information Center, Electronic Frontier
Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union
• Lawsuits include Hepting v. AT&T, EPIC v.
Department of Justice
• The Church Committee investigated domestic
intelligence programs such as COINTELPRO

41. Counter-surveillance,
Inverse Surveillance, Sousveillance
• Counter-surveillance – avoiding surveillance or
making surveillance difficult
• Inverse surveillance – reversal of surveillance
on other individuals or groups, e.g., citizens
photographing police
• Sousveillance – inverse surveillance, involving
the recording by private individuals, rather
than government or corporate entities

42. Assignment
• Look for the assignment on this PowerPoint in
the Activities section of the Surveillance
Society Project.
• As you go through the PowerPoint
presentation, complete the assignment and
submit it to your teacher/coach.