I spy with my little eye something beginning with you!
I was sitting in the bath the other night when I was startled to see a periscope rise out of the water at my feet. A glassy eye in the lens fixed on me as I clutched my flannel, desperate to preserve some dignity.
‘Do not be alarmed,’ said the periscope.
‘Why not?’ I asked. ‘You’re in my bath.’
‘Just routine government surveillance,’ the periscope assured me. ‘We do it to everyone. If you’re innocent, you’ve nothing to fear.’
Having nothing to fear was clearly not the point. My bath time with my rubber duck was being surveilled! If we knew spy agencies were dropping in on us mid-soak, we’d instantly see it as a grotesque invasion of privacy. But when they watch us online—tracking our browsing, monitoring emails, recording video calls, and even hijacking webcams—many of us shrug it off or live in denial.
The truth is chilling: the NSA and GCHQ have built a surveillance infrastructure capable of hoovering up vast quantities of our personal lives. From phone records to internet activity, these agencies can monitor almost every facet of our existence, often with the cooperation of tech giants like Google, Apple, and Facebook. Programs like the NSA’s PRISM and GCHQ’s TEMPORA, revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013, illustrate how they have direct access to servers and encryption keys. This isn’t hyperbole; it’s documented fact.
A periscope in every room
The metaphorical periscope isn’t far from reality. Spy agencies can and have hacked webcams to spy on individuals. Documents from the Snowden leaks revealed that GCHQ ran a program called OPTIC NERVE, capturing still images from Yahoo webcam chats—often without users’ knowledge. Between 2008 and 2010 alone, they collected images from millions of accounts, some inadvertently containing explicit content.
Such capabilities are the stuff of dystopian literature, yet they exist in supposedly democratic nations committed to privacy. Imagine what a true dictatorship could do with this technology. See postscript.
A history of invasive surveillance
State surveillance is as old as states themselves. From ancient Chinese informant networks to Elizabethan England’s use of spies to root out Catholic dissenters, the idea of monitoring the populace has always been intertwined with power.
In the modern era, programs like COINTELPRO in the US and MI5’s surveillance of peace groups in Britain highlight how surveillance often extends beyond protecting national security. COINTELPRO (1956–1971) targeted civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., attempting to discredit them through blackmail and intimidation. Similarly, MI5’s campaigns against groups like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) included burglary and infiltration.
If you’re innocent, they say, you have nothing to fear. But history suggests otherwise.
Surveillance is control
The true purpose of mass surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals or thwarting terrorist plots—though these are the justifications often cited. It’s also about control: maintaining the power dynamics of the state and its corporate sponsors.
Take Britain’s undercover police scandal. For years, officers infiltrated environmental and animal rights groups, sometimes entering relationships and even fathering children with activists under false identities. These were not violent extremists but innocent people campaigning for change. Some officers acted as provocateurs, inciting actions that led to arrests or further discrediting the groups.
There are allegations that one officer undercover in the Animal Liberation Front went so far as to plant a bomb in a department store. Another officer contributed to the infamous anti-McDonald’s leaflet that triggered the McLibel trial—the longest and most expensive libel case in British history.
Even families seeking justice for victims of police misconduct, like the Stephen Lawrence family, were subjected to surveillance. Their ‘crime’? Demanding accountability.
Innocence is no defence
The mantra ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ is a convenient fiction. Surveillance often targets not the guilty but the inconvenient. Consider:
– David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald (who broke the Snowden story), was detained at Heathrow under anti-terrorism laws. His real crime? Being connected to someone who exposed state secrets.
– The Guardian newspaper itself faced direct intimidation, with agents physically destroying hard drives in their offices to prevent further reporting on the Snowden files.
– Secrecy laws gag tech companies from informing users when their data is being accessed. In 2013, Lavabit, an encrypted email service used by Snowden, shut down rather than comply with demands it deemed invasive.
The message is clear: innocence offers no protection when surveillance becomes a tool for silencing dissent.
When privacy is commodified
State surveillance isn’t the only threat to our privacy. Corporate online tracking has turned our digital lives into a goldmine. Social media platforms, search engines, and advertisers collect vast troves of personal data, often with our tacit consent via inscrutable terms of service. This data powers targeted advertising but also feeds into government databases through partnerships or coercion.
Companies like Clearview AI, which scrapes billions of photos from social media to build facial recognition systems, show how corporate practices can blur into surveillance. With such tools in private hands, the line between state and corporate intrusion grows ever thinner.
The (surveillance) creep
Mass surveillance systems are rarely static. Once established, they inevitably expand. Today, governments justify these programs as necessary to combat terrorism. Tomorrow, they could be used to stifle protest, silence dissent, or consolidate power.
The Snowden revelations barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. As artificial intelligence advances, so does the ability to analyse vast amounts of data in real time. Imagine a future where every text, call, and movement is flagged, judged, and stored. Innocence won’t matter. Suspicion will.
Bath time for everyone
Surveillance is not just an issue of security; it’s about human dignity. Whether it’s a periscope in the bath or a webcam in the bedroom, the idea of being watched corrodes the basic trust we rely on to live freely.
The claim that ‘If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear’ rings hollow. It is a platitude wielded to justify the unjustifiable. Surveillance isn’t just about catching criminals; it’s about power. And power, unchecked, always turns inward.
So, clutch your flannel and keep your rubber duck close. Because in a world where surveillance is omnipresent, our innocence is irrelevant.
Postscript
This article was first drafted in 2013 and redrafted in 2024. At the time of posting in February of 2025, Meta and Amazon, two of the biggest collectors of private data, have aligned with the authoritarian Trump-Musk regime. The regime is in the process of seizing control of TikTok in the US, another huge source of personal data, and has taken control of the Treasury payment system, giving access to the financial data on every citizen of the US. Trump is purging the FBI and re-making it in his image. And of course, Trump and Musk now have control over all US intelligence agencies and the apparatus of surveillance and control.
Sources
1. ‘Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ’ – The Guardian, 2014.
2. ‘Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit’ – Der Spiegel, 2013.
3. ‘The Police Spies Who Fathered Children With Activists’ – The Guardian, 2015.
4. Snowden Leaks Compilation – Electronic Frontier Foundation.
5. ‘The Secretive World of Corporate Surveillance’ – EFF.