Most governments don’t have the resources to manufacture the surveillance technology that’s required to hack into the computers of unsuspecting citizens. In recent years, surveillance software firms have stepped in to fill that gap, proliferating into what has become a $5 billion industry. In the TED talk below, ACLU Principal Technologist Chris Soghoian discusses the new methods that governments, including our own, are using to track their “targets” – which, in some cases, include journalists, activists, and dissidents.

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