Constant surveillance used to be relegated to airports, high-security zones, and movies like Mission: Impossible.
But what about in your local park? Or in your living room? Thanks to the proliferation of smart devices, Ring doorbells, CCTV, and facial recognition scans, surveillance has become part of everyday life.
Today, it’s harder than ever to move through the world without leaving a digital trail.
Albert Fox Cahn, a civil rights lawyer, privacy advocate, and the founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project(new window), uses real-world examples to explain the types of surveillance we face in the different spaces we move through each day, including:
- At home, where your own smart devices collect more data than you realize
- At work, church, or school, where monitoring is becoming more common
- In shops or arenas, where security can mask overreach
- In public, where closed-circuit cameras are everywhere
- In transit, where surveillance can be used to enforce political agendas
Cahn sat down with Proton for an in-depth interview about how to navigate the surveillance web and what you can do about it.
How to protect your privacy when you’re constantly monitored
Cahn explains that there are steps we can take to limit how much information we expose to this constant surveillance:
- You can avoid putting smart devices in your home (or at least install a VPN on your router(new window)).
- You can avoid shops or venues that ask for too much information or use facial recognition software.
- You can delete social media apps and texts to protect your privacy when you cross a border or simply leave non-essential devices behind.
But the biggest thing we can do is organize and demand better privacy protections from organizations and lawmakers.
More and more of our lives are being recorded, but surveillance is not inevitable. Together, we can push back against the normalization of mass surveillance and imagine a better future.
