Simply put, mass surveillance refers to when the authorities collect a huge amount of information about what a large number of people have done with their phones, computers or other 'smart' devices online. Sometimes, during the course of an investigation, the police have a list of specific suspects whom they have evidence to show might be involved in crime. To collect evidence, officers might tap the suspect’s phone, set up cameras outside their home or work place, follow them or read their text messages and emails. This is referred to as ‘targeted’ surveillance, because it’s aimed at a specific person who is suspected of particular offences. So long as there are safeguards to make sure that the authorities only use these powers on genuine criminal or terrorist suspects, this type of interference with privacy is allowed by human rights law. It is an extremely effective way of collecting evidence, but it also requires a lot of staff and money to monitor a suspect continuously.
In contrast to targeted surveillance, mass surveillance is not focused on particular individuals. Mass surveillance is sometimes referred to as ‘untargeted’ or ‘dragnet’ surveillance. It refers to a situation where hundreds of thousands or millions of pieces of information are collected each day in a given country about hundreds of thousands or millions of people. For example, all of the emails sent from Spain to the UK, or all of the phone calls made from the USA to France, or all the websites visited by everyone in Bulgaria. In some cases this information is collected by telephone or internet companies and passed on to security services. In some cases the security services themselves collect the information directly from phone and internet cables.
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In effect, mass surveillance means that nothing you say over the phone, no website you visit, no email or text message you send or receive, no post you make to social media (like Facebook or Twitter) and no place you go with your phone is private. Take a look at this website which shows how telephone companies can continuously track and record your real time location. Information about everything you do with your computer, tablet or mobile phone is recorded and stored. This information is available to phone and internet companies who keep it in their databanks. It is also available to anyone able to access their databanks. That includes the security services, but it also includes hackers and foreign spies who can break into databanks illegally.
Mass surveillance is a huge challenge to our privacy because almost everything that we do involves the internet somehow: shopping, banking, reading news, enjoying our hobbies, socialising, communicating with friends and colleagues, communicating with lawyers, doctors, psychologists, carrying out tasks for work, travel. Increasingly, we are also using 'smart' devices that connect to the internet like domestic appliances and even our cars, which create and store information about us. The internet is involved with every aspect of our lives. And mass surveillance makes everything we do over the internet visible. Mass surveillance has almost completely destroyed our privacy, which has a huge impact on our democracies. More on this later. If you want to learn more about how we're being tracked over the internet, take a look at this informative website.
