Surveillance abuse

Short description: Unsanctioned or illegal monitoring of a person or group

Part of a series on

Global surveillance
Disclosures

* Origins
* Pre-2013
* 2013–present
* Reactions

Systems

* XKeyscore
* PRISM
* ECHELON
* Carnivore
* Coronavirus apps
* Dishfire
* Stone Ghost
* Tempora
* Frenchelon
* Fairview
* MYSTIC
* DCSN
* Boundless Informant
* Bullrun
* Pinwale
* Stingray
* SORM
* RAMPART-A

Agencies

* NSA
* CSE
* BND
* CNI
* ASIO
* DGSE
* Five Eyes
* FSB
* MSS

People

* Michael S. Rogers
* Keith Alexander
* James Bamford
* James Clapper
* Duncan Campbell
* Edward Snowden
* Russ Tice
* George W. Bush
* Barack Obama
* Julian Assange

Places

* The Doughnut
* Fort Meade
* Menwith Hill
* Pine Gap
* Southern Cross Cable
* Utah Data Center
* Bad Aibling Station
* Dagger Complex

Laws

* Five Eyes
* UKUSA Agreement
* Lustre
* U.S.
* USA Freedom Act
* FISA amendments
* EU
* Data Retention Directive
* Data Protection Directive

Proposed changes

* U.S.
* FISA Improvements Act
* Other proposals

Concepts

* Mass surveillance
* Culture of fear
* Secure communication
* SIGINT
* Call detail record
* Surveillance issues in smart cities

Related topics

* Espionage
* Intelligence agency
* Cryptography
* Tor
* VPNs
* TLS
* Human rights
* Privacy
* Liberty
* Satellites
* Stop Watching Us
* Nothing to hide argument

* v
* t
* e

Surveillance abuse is the use of surveillance methods or technology, including targeted surveillance and mass surveillance, to monitor the activity of an individual or group of individuals in ways that violate social norms, laws, or human rights.

## Contents

* 1 Patterns
* 2 Examples
* 3 See also
* 4 Further reading
* 5 References
* 6 External links

## Patterns

To align with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, use of communications surveillance must be lawful, have legitimate aims such as public safety or national security, be necessary and proportional to the legitimate aims, be monitored against abuse by judicial authority, respect due process, and provide appropriate public transparency, among other principles.[1][2][3]

Governments have abused surveillance technologies to target protestors and dissidents in ways that result in restricting their civil and political rights, profile people on the basis of ethnicity or race in ways that support discrimination, and undermine people's right to privacy, among other impacts.[4]

## Examples

During the U.S. FBI's COINTELPRO operations between 1956 and 1971, there was widespread surveillance abuse which targeted political dissidents, primarily people from the political left and civil rights movement. The Church Committee investigated and reported on these abuses in 1975–1976.[5]

The 2013 Snowden disclosures included evidence of "LOVEINT", the practice of U.S. National Security Agency employees using their extensive monitoring capabilities to spy on a love interest or spouse.[6][7]

In the 2010s and 2020s, the Pegasus Project revealed governments' espionage on journalists, opposition politicians, activists, business people and others using the private Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli technology and cyber-arms company NSO Group.[8] In 2025, Citizen Lab found evidence that the Italian government had targeted three European investigative journalists with Paragon Solutions spyware on their devices.[9]

The Chinese government's persecution of Uyghurs in China (2014–present) has involved deployment of mass surveillance systems, including cellphone surveillance and biometric data, in ways that support political repression and violate human rights.[10][11]

Surveillance abuse also happens on a smaller scale. In 2005, government workers in Liverpool used street CCTV pan-tilt-zoom cameras to spy on a woman in her flat.[12][13] In Robbins v. Lower Merion School District (2010), parents in Pennsylvania sued their son's school for allegedly watching him through his laptop's webcam while he was at home and unaware he was being observed.[14]

A device which may be used to abuse surveillance, called an IMSI-catcher or Stingray phone tracker, acts and looks similar to a cellphone tower but tricks mobile devices into connecting with it. After connection, an operator can intercept phone calls and text messages from anyone in the relevant area or as part of an investigation of a particular person nearby.[15] These devices have been exported to countries with histories of abusing surveillance technologies.[16]

Canada's Communications Security Establishment (CSE) has spied on Canadians through the public wireless internet connections in an airport in the country. Through this they gathered information on who people called or texted and where they were when they communicated with others. The CSE searched through approximately 10-15 million downloads daily.[17][18][19]

## See also

* Emergency data request
* Stalkerware

## Further reading

* Davis, James Kirkpatrick. (1997). Assault on the Left: The FBI and the Sixties Antiwar Movement. Westport, CT: Praeger.
* Donner, Frank J. (1980). The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America’s Political Intelligence System. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
* Donner, Frank J. (1990). Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
* Fijnaut, Cyrille and Gary T. Marx. (1995). Under Cover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective. The Hague: Kluwer Law International.
* Lievrouw, Leah A. (2011). Alternative and Activist New Media. Cambridge, UK: Polity. https://archive.org/details/alternativeactiv0000liev.
* Marx, Gary T. (1988). Under Cover: Police Surveillance in America. Berkeley: Twentieth Century Fund/University of California Press.
* New York Civil Liberties Union. (2006). Who's Watching.
* O'Reilly, Kenneth. (1988). "Racial Matters:" The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960—1972. New York: Free Press.
* Staples, William G. (2000). Everyday Surveillance: Vigilance and Visibility in Postmodern Life. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

## References

1. ↑ "Necessary & Proportionate: International Principles on the Application of Human Rights Law to Communications Surveillance". Electronic Frontier Foundation. May 2014. https://necessaryandproportionate.org/principles/.
2. ↑ "Necessary & Proportionate: International Principles on the Application of Human Rights Law to Communications Surveillance - Background and Supporting International Legal Analysis". May 2014. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/Privacy/ElectronicFrontierFoundation.pdf.
3. ↑ "Legality, Necessity and Proportionality". https://privacyinternational.org/our-demands/legality-necessity-and-proportionality.
4. ↑ "A/HRC/60/45: The right to privacy in the digital age - Report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights" (in en). 29 August 2025. https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/thematic-reports/ahrc6045-right-privacy-digital-age-report-office-united-nations-high.
5. ↑ "Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (The Church Committee)". https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/investigations/church-committee.htm.
6. ↑ Gorman, Siobhan (August 23, 2013). "NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests". https://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/08/23/nsa-officers-sometimes-spy-on-love-interests/.
7. ↑ Brandeisky, Kara (2014-01-17). "Four Questionable Claims Obama Has Made on NSA Surveillance" (in en-US). https://www.propublica.org/article/four-questionable-claims-obama-has-made-on-nsa-surveillance.
8. ↑ Brackett, Sara Ann; Roberts, Jen (2025-09-30). "((404 Accountability not found: Spyware accountability through software liability))" (in en-US). https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/404-accountability-not-found-spyware-accountability-through-software-liability/.
9. ↑ Kinetz, Erika; Santalucia, Paolo (June 12, 2025). "US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists, Citizen Lab finds". AP News. https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/us-backed-israeli-companys-spyware-used-to-target-european-journalists-citizen-lab-finds/.
10. ↑ "China: Phone Search Program Tramples Uyghur Rights" (in en). 2023-05-04. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/04/china-phone-search-program-tramples-uyghur-rights.
11. ↑ Goudarzi, Sara (2022-10-27). "China’s high-tech surveillance drives oppression of Uyghurs" (in en-US). https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/chinas-high-tech-surveillance-drives-oppression-of-uyghurs/.
12. ↑ Cavailaro, Andrea (2007-03-31). "Privacy in Video Surveillance [In the Spotlight"]. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine 24 (2): 168–166. doi:10.1109/MSP.2007.323270. ISSN 1558-0792. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4117949.
13. ↑ "Peeping tom CCTV workers jailed" (in en-GB). BBC News. 2006-01-13. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4609746.stm.
14. ↑ "Abuses of surveillance cameras". 2010-04-12. https://www.notbored.org/camera-abuses.html.
15. ↑ Braga, Matthew. "The Covert Cellphone Tracking Tech the RCMP and CSIS Won't Talk about." The Globe and Mail. N.p., 15 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Oct. 2015.
16. ↑ Cox, Joseph (2016-08-26). "British Companies Are Selling Advanced Spy Tech to Authoritarian Regimes" (in en-US). https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-uk-companies-exporting-interception-tech-around-the-world/.
17. ↑ Alexander, Julia (8 July 2013). "How the Canadian Government Can Spy on Your Online Activities". http://torontosun.com/2013/07/08/how-the-canadian-government-can-spy-on-your-online-activities/wcm/8fe99b8a-2172-48ee-b2dc-5f8704916b42.
18. ↑ Brown, Jesse (May 1, 2014). "Where Is Canada's Rage over Digital Surveillance?". https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/where-is-canadas-rage-over-digital-surveillance/article_a648bc84-35e8-5e94-b7e4-001e25e9286a.html.
19. ↑ Hildebrant, Ambera; Dave Seglins and Michael Pereira (February 25, 2015). "CSE Monitors Millions of Canadian Emails to Government". http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cse-monitors-millions-of-canadian-emails-to-government-1.2969687.

## External links

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Abuse

Types|

* Anti-social behaviour
* Bullying
* Child abuse
* neglect
* sexual
* military
* Cruelty to animals
* Domestic abuse
* Elder abuse
* Gaslighting
* Harassment
* Humiliation
* Incivility
* Institutional abuse
* Intimidation
* Neglect
* Persecution
* Professional abuse
* Proxy abuse
* Psychological abuse
* Physical abuse
* Religious abuse
* Sexual abuse
* Stalking
* Structural abuse
* Verbal abuse
* more...

Related topics|

* Abusive power and control
* Child grooming
* Complex post-traumatic stress disorder
* Dehumanization
* Denial
* Destabilisation
* Exaggeration
* Isolation
* Just-world hypothesis
* Lying
* Manipulation
* Minimisation
* Narcissism
* Psychological projection
* Psychological trauma
* Psychopathy
* Rationalization
* Traumatic bonding
* Victim blaming
* Victim playing
* Victimisation

* v
* t
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Privacy

Principles|

* Expectation of privacy
* Right to privacy
* Right to be forgotten
* Post-mortem privacy

Privacy laws|

* Australia
* Canada
* Denmark
* England
* European Union
* Germany
* Ghana
* New Zealand
* Singapore
* Switzerland
* United States

Data protection authorities|

* Australia
* Denmark
* European Union
* France
* Germany
* Ireland
* Isle of Man
* Norway
* Philippines
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland
* Thailand
* United Kingdom

Areas|

* Consumer
* Marital
* Medical
* Workplace

Information privacy|

* Law
* Financial
* Internet
* Personal data
* Personal identifier
* Privacy-enhancing technologies
* Social networking services
* Privacy engineering
* Secret ballot

Advocacy organizations|

* American Civil Liberties Union
* Center for Democracy and Technology
* Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
* Future of Privacy Forum
* Electronic Privacy Information Center
* Electronic Frontier Foundation
* European Digital Rights
* Global Network Initiative
* NOYB
* Privacy International
* Privacy Rights Clearinghouse

See also|

* Anonymity
* Cellphone surveillance
* Cyberstalking
* Data security
* Global surveillance
* Mass surveillance
* Privacy engineering
* Human rights
* Identity theft
* Panopticon
* Personality rights
* Search warrant

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