What is Dragnet Surveillance?
The mass collection of data on entire populations rather than targeted surveillance of specific suspects, enabled by modern technology.
Dragnet surveillance collects everyone's data on the principle that it might be useful someday.
Examples
- NSA's bulk phone metadata collection (ended 2019, replaced by targeted collection)
- GCHQ's Tempora program (taps undersea cables)
- China's Great Firewall and social credit system
- Municipal CCTV networks with facial recognition
The "Collect It All" Philosophy
Former NSA director Keith Alexander advocated collecting all available data. The logic: you can't search for something you haven't collected.
Why It's Problematic
- Violates the presumption of innocence
- Chilling effect on free speech and association
- Massive datasets are targets for breaches
- Mission creep — data collected for terrorism is used for drug enforcement, tax, immigration
The Encryption Response
The privacy community's response to dragnet surveillance has been to make encryption the default everywhere — HTTPS, end-to-end messaging, encrypted email. Collect the data if you want; you can't read it.
Related Terms
Data Retention Directive
Laws requiring telecommunications companies and ISPs to store user metadata for a specified period, enabling retroactive surveillance.
Five Eyes Alliance
An intelligence-sharing alliance between the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand that cooperates on signals intelligence and mass surveillance.
PRISM
A classified NSA surveillance program revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013 that collects data directly from major tech companies including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft.
XKEYSCORE
An NSA surveillance system that enables analysts to search and analyze global internet data including emails, browsing activity, and social media content in near real-time.
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