Science of Surveillance

From every cell phone call to every credit card swipe, we leave an electronic trail. But at what price?
Explorer takes viewers into the disturbing world of surveillance technology and scans the latest and future technologies used to even spy on the private lives of citizens.
From London’s CCTVs to infra-technology equipped helicopters that search the streets of New York City, the documentary shows the inner workings of these surveillance systems.
In today’s information-overloaded and fear-driven society, surveillance technology seems to be deployed almost everywhere – and a surveillance mind-set is just as ubiquitous.
This program introduces the concept of a “surveillance society” and shows how cutting-edge tools are being developed to identify, monitor, and track both people and objects.
Viewers are empowered to explore the central paradox of surveillance technology, that it seems to bring advantages, making us safer and our lives more convenient, but at what cost to privacy and individual freedoms?
Surveillance (/sərˈveɪ.əns/ or /sərˈveɪləns/) is the monitoring of the behavior, activities, or other changing information, usually of people for the purpose of influencing, managing, directing, or protecting them. This can 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); and it can include simple, relatively no- or low-technology methods such as human intelligence agents and postal interception. The word surveillance comes from a French phrase for “watching over” (“sur” means “from above” and “veiller” means “to watch”), and is in contrast to more recent developments such as sousveillance.