Mass surveillance

Selling you out: Mass public surveillance for corporate gain

When most people think of mass surveillance databases, the first thing that comes to mind is the government or an agency like the NSA. But the government is not the only one in the business of creating massive surveillance databases.

Private companies have built businesses around the concept of creating huge databases of aggregated data collected through mass public surveillance. This is a form of “surveillance capitalism” where the focus is on monetizing new forms of data extraction rather than creating goods. The money is made, in large part, through charging a fee to federal, state, and local law enforcement to have access to the data and analytical tools to analyze all the information collected by these companies.

This model of business has been used with the collection of license plate data across the country and the monitoring of social media. It portends a future where our every movement, online and offline, is tracked, aggregated, and analyzed by corporations to provide law enforcement ready-made access to mass surveillance databases.