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USA and their friends in the surveillance alliance Fourteen Eyes have demonstrated that they have the capacity, the desire and the experience to monitor who they want, when they want, anywhere in the world.

There are two types of mass surveillance. Commercial, which you can read about here . And mass surveillance carried out by states and rulers. Both are reprehensible, and our attitude is well-established: mass surveillance infringes individuals’ human rights , invades the personal privacy free societies are built on, and is also ineffective against the problems it’s claimed to solve. This is the ultimate core of our business. Our company was founded in 2009 because the surveillance laws were going in the wrong direction, and our message to those in power all over the world is the same now as it was then: there’s a difference between surveillance and mass surveillance. Don’t get involved with the latter: don’t carry out mass surveillance on your population or that of other countries. Use targeted surveillance if there’s a suspicion of a crime, in a proportional way and via independent court decisions.

We think human rights are worth preserving and defending. And it’s important to remember that they’re there to protect people against the state. They are a landmark to cling to, to prevent the worst parts of human history repeating themselves. They are there because people and those in power take bad decisions. Because governments change. Because no state should have total and uncontrollable power. Ultimately, the state should be there for the people and not the other way round

Even if a large part of today’s mass surveillance is global, it originates in different countries and changes depending on what country you live in. You can read about the consequences of mass surveillance here . But in this article, we’re going to take a look at some of the clearest examples of how widespread it has become in large parts of the world.

USA: with the capacity and experience of monitoring the entire population of the world.

There’s a problem with reporting the mass surveillance carried out by countries like the USA (at least if you want to stick to proven facts): they aren’t very happy about you talking about it. Of course there are exceptions. Like when self-satisfied managers like the CIA’s chief technology officer Ira ‘Gus’ Hunt give presentations and boast to journalists about how “we try to collect everything and hang onto it forever” . Or when a senior Defense Department official explains that not even the Pentagon’s employees can expect to have their privacy respected: “We want our people to understand: they should make no assumptions about anonymity. You are not anonymous on this planet at this point in our existence. Everyone is trackable, traceable, discoverable to some degree”.