Mass surveillance: A study of past practices and technologies to predict future directions

This paper aims to dispassionately examine the techniques and technologies of mass surveillance. We will study different approaches and technologies, including what each one surveils and how. We will also observe patterns and changes over time, and in doing so, we will seek to model the attributes exhibited by various methods. Finally, we will predict what next generation surveillance methods will look like, based on the attributes we have observed in past and current methods. Our key insights include: (a) mass surveillance methods share a number of common attributes, (2) we can analyze the expression of these attributes to predict future methods of mass surveillance, and (3) a likely next generation method will entail the monitoring of a communication platform with third‐party assistance to collect large amounts of private communication data for future analysis.