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Security Theater: How Governments & Corporations Weaponize Surveillance

by Cleo Collins for The 44 North, Third-Place Winner of our Inaugural Essay Contest


Artwork by Logan Brewer
Artwork by Logan Brewer
"For many people, privacy in this modern age is unfeasible, forcing you to give over every aspect of your life to the tech conglomerates we use every day, leaving nothing we hold sacred safe."

Introduction


“If you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” is a phrase thrown around far too often whenever privacy and security are discussed. It’s this saying that I believe is hurting us the most, not the fact that no matter where you go, you’re recorded and tracked, but that people are defending these changes—welcoming them with open arms and smiling faces.


Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen countries like the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, and the United States (U.S.) slowly turn into Orwellian surveillance states with every passing day. In the US, there are over 85 million surveillance cameras—approximately 2.4 cameras per 10 people (Bischoff, 2024). This article explores how the loss of privacy is impacting society, how governments and corporations exploit surveillance in the name of security, and how private companies like Flock Safety use artificial intelligence to surveil the masses.


The Erosion of Privacy


Across the world, people are being willingly surveilled. Not by governments or shady organizations, but by private corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, who use their vast reach to sell out consumers to advertisers, unknown third-party data brokers, and governments, increasing their bottom line (Chapman, 2024). Google tracks your movements via Google Maps, your interests through YouTube, and your conversations through Gmail. Apple and Microsoft harvest data from your devices, pinpointing your location, habits, and preferences. Amazon listens in on private conversations and builds profiles of what you might purchase and where you live using Alexa and Amazon Shopping. But these companies don’t just store their data. The result is a file on each one of us that tells the reader what we do, where we go, how to 

manipulate our behaviour, and predict our actions. No longer do governments have to rely on secret software to collect communications, emails, and browsing data; instead, they can simply issue court orders or exploit built-in backdoors to access the data we willingly hand over to these tech conglomerates. In 2025, there were 2,563 confirmed data breaches exposing sensitive information to criminals, and if that data isn’t stolen, it’s sold to advertisers who abuse it, targeting you with ads focused on every possible aspect of your life, from shopping habits to your emotional state, exploiting vulnerabilities.


What started as a place for academic discussion and freedom has turned into a veritable minefield of privacy violations. The internet has slowly become a place where, to remain anonymous, you must punish yourself with over-the-top security and a loss of convenience. For many people, privacy in this modern age is unfeasible, forcing you to give over every aspect of your life to the tech conglomerates we use every day, leaving nothing we hold sacred safe.


Facial recognition and AI-powered surveillance tools, such as those developed by companies like Amazon Ring, Clearview AI and Flock Safety, enable real-time tracking of individuals without their consent. False matches in these systems have already led to wrongful arrests, causing trauma to innocent men, women, and children. We’ve already seen police officers abuse these camera systems in the case of a Kansas police chief using Flock security cameras to stalk his ex-girlfriend, and now, with ring doorbells partnering with Flock security, providing third parties, including the government, access to the security feeds around your house without your explicit consent. People can log where you went, who you talked to, and what you did. Although this is important, we must first delve deeper into the privacy losses we are seeing in the digital space.


Privacy in the digital space


As of October 2025, an estimated 6.04 billion people use the internet (an estimated 73.65% of all living humans), and many of them use products or services from Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta, or Microsoft (DataReportal). In the case of Amazon, when its web service, called Amazon Web Services (AWS), temporarily went down, around 30% of the world’s internet experienced disruptions in some form or another, with many websites and apps stopping work altogether. To understand this issue, it is important to break down how Google, Amazon, and Apple exploit your data and strip away your privacy.


Google


Google is the third-largest tech company in the world, servicing billions of users every year. In fact, Google Chrome holds 90% of the global search market, and Chromium (Google’s open-source web browser project) serves as the building blocks for over 30 other web browsers, including Microsoft Edge, Opera, and Samsung Internet. This dominance isn’t just about market share; it is about control. When one company becomes the gateway to the internet, it can set the rules for what privacy means. Google has set those rules, saying it can collect, analyze, and monetize your data often without your explicit consent.


Every interaction with Google products, whether it’s through Google Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, or Android, is fed into a vast surveillance machine. Google can track your location, search history, voice commands, emails, and even offline activity through apps and third-party websites. This data fills Google’s advertising empire, building detailed profiles on billions of people. And these profiles don’t just predict your behaviour; Google and its partners can and do use this data to influence your decisions and even manipulate your emotions.


In addition to influencing decisions, Google has a long track record of privacy violations, dating back to 2016, when it quietly dropped its ban on personally identifiable information in its DoubleClick ad service, allowing them to combine web browsing records obtained through DoubleClick with data that they gather from their other services. In recent years, Google was found tracking users even when location data was turned off, secretly collecting data from millions of Chrome users in Incognito mode, and misleading users about how their data was used for targeted advertising.


Amazon


Amazon’s services don’t stop at selling products; they monetize your habits, preferences, geolocation data, and even your voice. Ring cameras help fuel surveillance around the world; Amazon created a neighbourhood watch surveillance system and partnered with Flock Security alongside over 2,000 police departments to share footage without explicit consent. Meanwhile, Alexa, the voice assistant installed in millions of homes, was caught storing children's voice recordings indefinitely and refusing to delete them after parents requested it (Federal Trade Commission, 2024). Beyond that, Amazon’s AWS cloud services have suffered multiple security breaches, exposing sensitive customer data due to lax security. Over the past few years, Amazon has been shifting their business model towards turning your private life into profit, making it a cornerstone of the corporate surveillance economy.


Apple


Apple is often referred to as a bastion of privacy because it’s difficult to hack into its devices, but privacy from malicious actors doesn’t mean complete privacy from everyone, and they routinely harvest and sell users’ personal data. In 2021, it was revealed that some iPhone apps listed on the App Store were collecting and selling data without explicit consent, while Apple’s own apps, such as Siri, were found recording private conversations without informing users (Belanger, 2025). While Apple has introduced stricter guidelines for the App Store, its closed ecosystem and control over app distribution raise concerns about true transparency. Additionally, the company’s refusal to fully embrace end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups further highlights its selective commitment to privacy, prioritizing law enforcement access over user security.


When Countries Weaponize Mass Surveillance


Given the many privacy violations companies commit, it’s equally critical to expose how governments exploit surveillance to control their citizens. Across the world, we’ve seen what happens when governments overstep their boundaries, using mass surveillance not just as a tool for security, but as a mechanism for social control. From targeting political dissidents to suppressing marginalized communities, these systems are used to monitor, manipulate, and intimidate.


The United States of America


What was once the land of the free is now the second-most-surveilled country in the world, where the average person is photographed over 75 times a day. This surveillance infrastructure was initially exposed in 2013 when Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, leaked classified documents revealing the U.S. government’s global mass surveillance programs. Tools like PRISM and XKeyscore allowed the NSA to collect and monitor private communications of individuals worldwide, including foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto. These revelations demonstrated the extent to which privacy had already eroded under the guise of national security (DiLascio, 2024; Bonifaz, 2024; History, 2018).


Since then, surveillance has only intensified. Amazon’s partnership with Flock Safety now provides governments and law enforcement with access to footage from Ring doorbell cameras, enabling real-time tracking of individuals from the moment they leave their homes. This system, combined with data from companies like MasterCard—which sells cardholders’ transaction data to third parties (Brooks, 2023)—allows the U.S. government to map citizens’ movements, purchases, and habits. Such surveillance is already being used by police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target marginalized communities, enabling racial profiling, wrongful detentions, and family separations under the pretense of national security.


China


It’s no secret that China is the most surveilled country in the world. With over 700 million surveillance cameras, there is one camera for every two people. China’s surveillance state is not just about monitoring; it is about control and oppression. The countries’ mass surveillance has easily enabled racial prosecution and abuse. Nowhere is this more evident than in the racial persecution of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. The Chinese government uses biometric surveillance, phone tracking, and predictive policing to monitor, detain, and imprison Uyghurs en masse, often without trial or due process. Reports from human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, reveal that surveillance data is used to justify forced labour, re-education camps, and family separations, turning Xinjiang into a mass-surveilled open-air prison (Human Rights Watch, 2019; Amnesty International, 2021).


The implications of China’s surveillance model extend far beyond its borders. By exporting its AI-powered surveillance technology to other authoritarian regimes, China is helping to build a global infrastructure of repression. The same tools used to oppress Uyghurs—facial recognition, social credit systems, and mass data collection—are now being adopted by governments worldwide, normalizing the erosion of privacy and human rights. What begins as a tool for “public safety” quickly becomes a weapon for silencing dissent, targeting minorities, and crushing political opposition.


How to protect yourself


Understanding how companies are selling your data is the first step. The second is learning how to protect yourself and gain control.


Start by reducing your digital footprint. Deleting social media accounts and removing unnecessary photos from cloud services limits the data corporations can collect. Switching to privacy-focused tools can also help: Browsers like Mullvad, Hardened Firefox, and Tor block trackers and resist fingerprinting, making it harder for companies to monitor your activity. Using VPNs will shield your activity from prying eyes, while gradually replacing Google services with privacy-focused, open-source alternatives can significantly reduce your exposure without sacrificing usability. While achieving full digital anonymity is near impossible, it should not dissuade you from trying. Gradually withdrawing from large tech companies will greatly improve your privacy and make it harder for them to track you.


Conclusion


The erosion of privacy is not hypothetical—it’s happening now. Governments and corporations, under the guise of security and convenience, have constructed a surveillance infrastructure that tracks, profiles, and manipulates individuals on an unprecedented scale. From the mass data collection of tech giants to surveillance states like China and the U.S., the consequences are clear: unchecked monitoring leads to abuse, discrimination, and the loss of fundamental freedoms.


Canada is not yet at the extreme end of this spectrum, but the trajectory is alarming. Each new camera and normalization of privacy violations pushes us closer to a future where anonymity is extinct.

About the Author

Cleo Collins is a high-school student from Ontario who is passionate about privacy, cybersecurity, and robotics. They enjoy building technology that makes a difference while keeping security and ethics at the core. When they’re not working on new ideas, they can be found spending time outdoors camping or hiking.


References

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