Twenty-Five Years of Mass Surveillance: Time to Take Stock

Among the legacies of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the authors point to the state's shift from targeted surveillance — wiretaps on specific lines, pen-register orders — to mass surveillance: tapping into the internet's backbone and sweeping up telephone and network metadata wholesale. It was originally sold as a necessary defense against terrorists, but over time it has moved far beyond national security.

Today mass surveillance has become an everyday instrument of law enforcement. ICE uses it in immigration operations and against protesters, facial recognition runs at venues like Madison Square Garden, and Flock's networks of license-plate readers blanket roads and parking lots.

The private and the public merge

Surveillance is the internet's business model: Google and Facebook constantly track users' behavior. The state, meanwhile, draws on this very same source — from the NSA, which leans on telecom companies, to sheriffs and ICE agents who buy geolocation data and access to private plate readers. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed to Congress that the bureau purchases data on Americans from brokers and intends to keep doing so. The more information companies collect in the name of “surveillance capitalism,” the more of it ends up in the hands of the police as well — and the advance of AI only makes the problem worse.

Blind faith in totality

The logic, embodied in an internal NSA presentation from the Snowden archive, is simple: whoever can “collect it all,” “process it all” and “exploit it all” will ultimately “know it all.” Yet, Schneier and Cohn note, the intelligence agencies have never produced a full cost-benefit analysis of these programs or any proof that mass surveillance specifically has prevented attacks. The rare examples of success fall apart on close inspection. The police and vendors of systems like Flock also traffic in anecdotes, passing off the number of database “hits” as crimes solved.

The constitutional price

Mass surveillance turns the Fourth Amendment inside out — the protection it once offered against searches without individualized cause — and comes into conflict with the First: the freedom of speech and assembly, which requires a zone of privacy. Over a quarter century, the share of Americans' lives genuinely protected by the Fourth Amendment has shrunk sharply. The authors are especially alarmed by the 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy: on page seven, the White House states outright its intention to turn formerly “foreign” tools against domestic activists.

The authors also recall the abuses that are bound to follow: at the NSA, spying on former partners earned the internal nickname “LOVEINT,” while on the ground police used plate readers to track, for example, women suspected of traveling for an abortion.

How to reverse course

The solutions, Schneier and Cohn argue, must be comprehensive: require a warrant before data is collected and used, whether it concerns metadata or information held by private companies. Section 702 has expired and should stay that way; the “Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale” Act would help, as would a comprehensive privacy law. Twenty-five years on, it is time to ask: are systems that watch everyone everywhere compatible with a self-governing democracy?

Source: Schneier on Security