Surveillance is when you monitor someone or a group of people through various means. You can surveil people through security cameras (such as cctvs) in public places. Spyware can be used to monitor what people do either on their computer or smartphone like with how proprietary oses such as Windows and MacOS monitor what their useds do on their PCs. Microsoft Recall which is apart of a program called Copilot which is included in new Windows 11 installs basically monitors and screen records what people do on their computers other than drm restricted media. A proprietary operating system is not the only thing that can spy, but proprietary applications can too. For instance, programs such as discord, spotify, google chome, firefox by default if not using arkenfox userjs files, even steam, and game consoles such as nintendo, xbox, and playstation when connected online (dualsense mic can listen in to you and send voice data to sony servers) monitor what people do within their applications. In the case of discord, it can even monitor processes on your computer and this is confirmed by the fact if you play a game (discord doesn't distribute games), it will broadcast that to other people.
After the event about the twin towers in New York on September 11, 2001, George Bush Jr. signed the Patriot act into US law which makes it legal for the government to legally tap and gather information on people's telephone and electronic information without a warrant. The patriot act got expanded with the CLOUD act which made it legal for the US government to compel American technology companies via a warrant or subpoena request data stored on servers regerdless if the data is stored on US or foreign soil. See anarchism to our solution to government.
During 2013, Edward Snowden exposed documents from the US governement that described government programs that survey and collect information on people. For example, PRISM was a government program with corporations such as Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google, and Yahoo collaborated with the US government to collect data on online services and data stored on these companies servers such as email, online conferences, vidoes, photos, online chat, etc. Apparentley, even low level NSA analysts were able to search and listen in to the communications of Americans and foreigners on US soil without any warrant. These analyst had the ability to read and listen to whatever email, telephone class, browsing histories, and Microsoft Word documents (use libreoffice writer or just use a text editor such as vim instead) that they had a hold of. However since Snowden leaked government info about the US government spying on people, he is considered by the US government to be a traitor and domestic terroist with him having to seek asylum in Russia. MORE: TODO
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