Surveillance notes

Mass surveillance

Today the entire population of many countries are subjected to untargeted mass surveillance. This surveillance includes:

• Phone calls from landlines and mobile phones (phone numbers, time and duration)
• Text messages
• Emails
• Websites browsed
• Search terms entered in search engines
• The contents of online accounts e.g. Facebook
• Online purchases e.g. Amazon, ebay
• Movements of people by tracking mobile phone thats are turned on
• Movements of poeple using CCTV and face recognition software
• Movements of people using flight bookings
• Movements of people using cashtill withdrawls
• Movements of vehicles using ANPR cameras

This surveillance is most commonly done secretly by government agencies, most notably the NSA and GCHQ, as revealed by Edward Snowdon. Detailed information about how governments carry out this surveillance can be found by watching the many lectures by Jacob Applebaum on youtube.com.

Company Surveillance

Many companies perform some of this surveillance on their employees.

• Phone calls from office landlines and mobile phones (phone numbers, time and duration)
• Emails using work email addresses
• Websites browsed
• Search terms entered in search engines
• Time of logging on and off coampany computers
• Breaks in keyboard and mouse activity
• Movement around company buildings that need security cards

Commercial Surveillance

Many companies perform surveillance on their customers:

• Email providers scan the contents of emails
• Supermarkets monitor products purchased on "loyalty cards"
• Online venders monitor products purchased
• Social media sites scan the cotents of postings made and read

They do this to:

• Collaborate with government agencies
• Target adverts at their customers
• Sell customer details so other companies can target adverts at them

• surveillance_methods

Countermeasures

Many people regard this surveillance as a violation of their basic human right to privacy and strive to protect their privacy. Alas, most people do not protect their privacy for one of the following reasons:

• They are not aware of extent of the surveillance
• They do not care
• They do not belive anything can be done about it
• They can't be bothered

Some actions that can improve privacy include:

Shops

• Pay with cash
• Don't use "loyalty cards" for items you want kept private

Personal Computers

• Don't use Microsoft Windows. It includes lots of surveillance
• Use Linux. Consider using Tails from a USB stick
• Install antivirus software e.g. AVG
• Install antiadware softawe e.g. adwarebytes

Internet

• Don't use social media like Facebook
• Go directly to websites instead of using a search engine if you can
• Don't use the Google search engine. Use duckduckgo.com
• Use the tor browser extension where you can
• Configure your browser to clear hsitory and cookies on exit and close it often

• tor introduction
• Tails introduction

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