There can be no doubt that we live in a surveillance society. Surveillance is a necessary tool for the state to keep control of the population, knowing where you are, what you are doing and who you are with, is information the state needs to survive. What we see of this surveillance apparatus, the CCTV cameras etc., in and around our towns and cities is just the tip of the iceberg. There is a plethora of hidden devices, small pieces of equipment hidden away in unsuspecting places, listening, watching and recording, someone's activities, how do you know it is not you?
All this equipment is not due to spontaneous birth, it is manufactured by large and small companies across the globe, producing ever more tiny, ever more sophisticated, ever more intrusive means to track and record your every movement, without your knowledge. These companies are not the friends of the people, they are another branch of the population control and management system operated by the state. We should know more about these companies, what they are doing, and why, who is the money behind them. Like the arms companies, they are not for a free and democratic society.
This from Ears and Eyes:
When cops decide to spy on us using surveillance devices, they need to get the devices from somewhere. It seems that they often buy these devices from private companies. The companies that manufacture and market surveillance-related products and services to law enforcement agencies, governments, and armed forces, form what we can call the surveillance industry.Although on this website we limit ourselves to the study of hidden physical surveillance devices, the surveillance industry develops all kind of repression tools to be used by law enforcement and intelligence agencies worldwide. Internet monitoring, interception of cellular communications, counter-surveillance equipment and biometrics technologies are only a few examples.The companies participating in this industry aren’t spread evenly on the world map. In their 2016 report about the global surveillance industry, Privacy International commented on the geographical breakdown of the 528 surveillance companies taken into account in the report :These companies are overwhelmingly based in economically advanced, large arms exporting states, with the United States of America (USA), United Kingdom (UK), France, Germany, and Israel comprising the top five countries in which the companies are headquartered.Despite this, many of these companies export their products, so that surveillance devices manufactured in one country can sometimes be sold everywhere in the world.Due to the nature of the industry, these companies often work in relative secrecy and it is sometimes hard to obtain reliable information about their activities, their clients, and their products. Documents leaked by whistleblowers, such as the Spy Files, a large collection of documents about the surveillance industry published from 2011 to 2014 by Wikileaks, are a precious source of information.We think that understanding how the surveillance industry works, who sells the surveillance devices to the cops and what the devices look like will help us to oppose this surveillance. On this website, you will find a list of companies that sell physical surveillance devices to law enforcement agencies, a list of the trade shows and other events of the industry, a glossary of the specific terms of the surveillance industry, and a list of other resources on the subject.
