Surveillance facts for kids
Surveillance means watching someone or something. It may be secret, and many methods are used including telephone tapping to listen to the person's calls and putting an electronic listening device, a bug, into a room.
Governments and the military have built large facilities designed to listen in to communications between other governments and military groups. For example the U.S. has a large base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs, Australia, which listens to communication signals from all over the world.
Eavesdropping is also surveillance, but often without much planning. It means listening to things you aren't supposed to hear. It is a deliberate act, rather than simply overhearing someone else talking.
Surveillance methods
Surveillance is the secret or hidden watching of people or things with a purpose. That purpose may be crime prevention or general gathering of information for a polical purpose. The results of surveillance are sometimes called "intelligence". Surveillance collects information for police, intelligence agencies, military planners or commercial firms.
This may include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment (such as CCTV cameras), or interception of electronically transmitted information (such as internet traffic or phone calls).
Surveillance may include simple, relatively low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception. On the other hand, global surveillance is done by satellite cameras on a daily basis. Such satellites are called "reconnaissance satellite" or spy satellites.
The word surveillance comes from a French phrase for "watching over" ("sur" means "from above" and "veiller" means "to watch").
Images for kids
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A 'nest' of surveillance cameras
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Official seal of the Information Awareness Office -- a U.S. agency which developed technologies for mass surveillance
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A surveillance camera in Cairns, Queensland
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Surveillance cameras such as these are installed by the millions in many countries, and are nowadays monitored by automated computer programs instead of humans.
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A payload surveillance camera manufactured by Controp and distributed to the U.S. government by ADI Technologies
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A graph of the relationships between users on the social networking site Facebook. Social network analysis enables governments to gather detailed information about peoples' friends, family, and other contacts. Since much of this information is voluntarily made public by the users themselves, it is often consider to be a form of open-source intelligence
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Fingerprints being scanned as part of the US-VISIT program
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Micro Air Vehicle with attached surveillance camera
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HART program concept drawing from official IPTO (DARPA) official website
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A card containing an identification number
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Hand with planned insertion point for Verichip device
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RFID chip pulled from new credit card
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Diagram of GPS satellites orbiting Earth
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Graffiti expressing concern about proliferation of video surveillance
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An elaborate graffito in Columbus, Ohio, depicting state surveillance of telecommunications
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A traffic camera atop a high pole oversees a road in the Canadian city of Toronto.
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See also
In Spanish: Vigilancia para niños
