Surveillance tools

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title: "Surveillance tools" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["mass-surveillance", "mass-surveillance-industry"] topic_path: "general/mass-surveillance" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_tools" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

Surveillance tools are all means of technology provided and used by the surveillance industry, police or military intelligence, and national security institutions that enable individual surveillance and mass surveillance. Steven Ashley in 2008 listed the following components used for surveillance:

• Primarily electronic
  • Digital still and video cameras (CCTVs)
  • GPSs for tracking
  • Electronic toll takers
  • Computer surveillance
  • Phone tapping
  • Cell phone monitoring
  • Voice, facial features, walking gait and other biometric characteristics
  • Covert listening devices or "bugs", tiny, hidden microphone and short-range radio transmitter
  • directional microphones
• primarily chemical
  • Artificial noses
  • Chemical markers like UV markers
  • DNA sensors: Biochip etc., for screening tiniest traces of body material
• Other
  • Airplanes, unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites
  • Night-vision goggles or telescopes
  • Laser beam bounced off a window to record vibrations in the pane from conversations in the room
  • Discarded items containing personal information, like
    • phone bills,
    • credit-card statements and
    • computer hard drives (using digital forensics) The electronic means, especially when combined with Internet features (ubiquitous computing, IoT) and enhanced by artificial intelligence analysis methods readily lend themselves to mass surveillance. This is why countersurveillance measures like anonymization and end-to-end encryption have become critical. Devices like chemical markers, on the other hand are more suited and in fact designed mainly for monitoring individuals.

References

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