Surveillance
Watching, recording, and tracking โ for safety or control. Used to be used for security. (see also Security)
How We Say It
sษrยทvayยทlษns
Where It Comes From
French surveillance โ watching over. From surveiller โ to watch closely. From sur- (over) + veiller (to watch). Entered English during the French Revolution to describe the watchful eye of the new state. Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975) made surveillance central to modern social theory.
How It's Been Used
Transformed by digital technology from observation of specific suspects to bulk collection on entire populations. The Snowden revelations in 2013 documented NSA programs collecting communications metadata at scale. 'Surveillance capitalism' โ Shoshana Zuboff's 2019 term โ describes the corporate business model based on continuous data extraction from users.