Surveillance Technology: Watching People Everywhere

Published at the dawn of the Cold War, George Orwell’s 1984 offered a stark warning about the dire personal and societal impacts of mass surveillance. Orwell’s words proved prescient, as many of his dystopian predictions would begin to take shape in the ensuing decades. Governments and corporations have amassed unprecedented and largely unchecked information-gathering power, making true privacy an increasingly aspirational endeavor. Both authoritarian and democratic regimes have weaponized cutting-edge software to spy and suppress. Today, a software named Pegasus is many despots’ tool of choice. Developed by an Israeli firm for the stated purpose of combating crime, Pegasus can covertly breach a target’s device and track their calls, texts, and location. Less advanced malware requires an unassuming victim to open a virus-laden link or email to gain access; Pegasus’s ‘zero-click’ exploit bypasses this requirement completely. Governments have wasted no time abusing this power, spying on reporters, officials, and activists. Revelations about Pegasus have revived conversations about the dire and unexplored free speech consequences of this trend. 

• Israeli Software Helped Saudis Spy on Khashoggi, Lawsuit Says The New York Times, December 2, 2018
• Lawsuits claim Israeli spyware firm helped UAE regime hack opponents’ phones The Times of Israel, August 31, 2018
• Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide The Washington Post, July 18, 2021
• Response from NSO Group to the Pegasus Project The Washington Post, July 18, 2021
• What is Pegasus spyware and how does it hack phones? The Guardian, July 18, 2021
• FT editor among 180 journalists identified by clients of spyware firm The Guardian, July 20, 2021
• A Tech Firm Has Blocked Some Governments From Using Its Spyware Over Misuse Claims NPR, July 29, 2021
• The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon The New York Times, Jan. 28, 2022
• How Democracies Spy on Their Citizens The New Yorker, April 18, 2022

• ACLU wins suit against Memphis to halt surveillance of activists – November 2018
• Internal documents reveal Los Angeles police requested home surveillance footage of Black Lives Matter protests – March 2021
• Documents reveal LAPD tracks individuals’ social media handles, email accounts – November 2021
• Release of proposed Apple surveillance software to fight child sexual abuse delayed after nationwide privacy protests – November 2021
• US Court of Appeals dismisses Wikimedia lawsuit against National Security Agency, on grounds of ‘state secrets’ privilege – January 2022
• Reports reveal Minneapolis police surveilled activists covertly and with racial bias – August 2022
• Supreme Court denies ACLU’s request to consider whether secret surveillance court decisions should be open to public scrutiny – November 2022
• Investigation shows campus police across the country used surveillance program to monitor student protests – December 2022

Theoretical Foundations

• Skim this summary of the intellectual origins and ethics of surveillance by Kevin Macnish, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

History of American Mass Surveillance

• America’s ‘Big Brother’: A Century of U.S. Domestic Surveillance, David Hadley, Ohio State University—Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective
• A Brief History of Surveillance in America, April White, Smithsonian Magazine, April 2018
• If you’re interested in a more comprehensive history of surveillance in the U.S., check out Brian Hochman’s book The Listeners or read an excerpt here

Contemporary Crises

• ‘Panic made us vulnerable’: how 9/11 made the US surveillance state—and the Americans who fought back, Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, Sep. 4, 2021
• Skim Title II of the Patriot Act
• Read through the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s timeline of NSA spying and its dictionary on surveillance jargon
• You Are Now Remotely Controlled, Shoshana Zuboff, The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2020

• Global spyware such as Pegasus is a threat to democracy. Here’s how to stop it. David Kaye & Marietje Schaake, The Washington Post, July 19, 2021
• Police Social Media Monitoring Chills Activism, Gabriella Sanchez & Rachel Levinson-Waldman, Brennan Center, Nov. 18, 2022
• Mass Surveillance Chills Online Speech Even When People Have ‘Nothing to Hide’ Elizabeth Stoycheff, Slate, May 3, 2016
• The Conforming Effect: First Amendment Implications of Surveillance, Beyond Chilling Speech University of Richmond Law Review, Jan. 17, 2015
• Edward Snowden on Surveillance and Free Speech Watch parts, if not all, of this discussion from Oct. 29, 2019
• What’s the Evidence Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica, Nov. 18, 2015
• Remarks by the President on Review of Signals Intelligence Barack Obama, Department of Justice, Jan. 17, 2014
• [Skim] Hearing of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on How Disclosed NSA Programs Protect Americans, and Why Disclosure Aids Our Adversaries House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, June 18, 2013

1. When is surveillance justified, if at all? What differentiates ethical monitoring from abusive espionage? 
2. To what extent does an ideal balance between privacy and security exist? Is this trade-off a false one?
3. What should be done to regulate government surveillance? What protections should be afforded to civilians? Are such protections futile? 
4. Governments aren’t the only powerful institutions that engage in mass surveillance. Private tech behemoths harvest and commercialize troves of consumer data—a practice so widespread and systematized that experts dub it “surveillance capitalism.” How do government and corporate surveillance differ? Do they pose similar threats? Do they warrant similar solutions?
5. In what ways may recent innovations in artificial intelligence impact surveillance, especially relating to guarantees of privacy, Free Speech, and press freedom?

Click on these themes below: National Security + Social Media + Legal Action

Discuss: What does this confluence of stories with these filters tell us about Free Speech issues surrounding surveillance, national security, and privacy?