Surveillance is the systematic monitoring of populations, communications, and movements by state agencies, corporations, or other institutions. The distinction between targeted surveillance (monitoring specific individuals suspected of specific activities) and mass surveillance (collecting data on entire populations as a matter of routine) is politically consequential: targeted surveillance requires justification; mass surveillance treats everyone as a potential subject.
The history of political surveillance in the United States runs from the Palmer Raids (1919–1920) through the FBI’s decades of domestic monitoring, the NSA’s Project SHAMROCK (intercepting international telegrams, exposed by the Church Committee), and the post-2001 expansion of mass surveillance under the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of FISA. The evidentiary structuration paper in this library traces the genealogy of these technologies and their legal frameworks.
Digital surveillance has transformed the field by making mass data collection cheap, automated, and pervasive. Social media monitoring, cell-site simulators (Stingrays), facial recognition, and metadata analysis allow state agencies to map social networks, track movements, and predict behavior without the labor-intensive infiltration that COINTELPRO required. The effect on political movements is anticipatory: the knowledge that surveillance is occurring shapes what people say, where they meet, and whether they organize at all — a chilling effect that does not require prosecution to be effective.