US, the empire of mass surveillance

For decades, the United States has conducted indiscriminate mass surveillance of its citizens, as well as of foreign governments, companies and individuals.

Various surveillance projects implemented by Washington have been unveiled one after another in recent years, exposing more evidence of the US’ pervasive and ubiquitous surveillance of the world.

According to a recent report by Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has expanded far beyond its role as an immigration agency to become a “domestic surveillance agency”.

The ICE has developed a dragnet surveillance system that allows it to collect detailed dossiers on nearly every person in the US at any time without any judicial, legislative or public oversight, stated the report titled “American Dragnet: Data-driven Deportation in the 21st Century”.

From 2008 to 2021, the ICE has spent approximately $2.8 billion on surveillance, data collection and data-sharing initiatives, the report said, noting that the agency has been able to access utility record information of over 218 million customers across all 50 states.

The ICE is not the only agency in the US that has overreached its authority and abused citizens’ private personal data.

In fact, mass surveillance in the US has become institutionalized. Following the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the US enacted numerous laws to expand the government’s surveillance powers for national security reasons.

US Congress greenlighted the Patriot Act in 2001, which covers Section 215, one of the most controversial programs for domestic and international surveillance.

In 2008, Congress approved Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows the government to collect communications concerning foreign intelligence targets without a warrant.

Following the disclosure by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden and Wikileaks of the US government’s abuse of power to collect millions of its citizens’ private data, the ensuing public outcry prompted Congress to prohibit the notorious bugging project PRISM.