There is an interesting discussion going on Wikipedia about Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom and Mass surveillance in the United States and whether the term ‘Mass Surveillance’ is a sufficiently ‘neutral’ term to use on Wikipedia.

One could argue ‘electronic surveillance’ is more neutral, however as an alternate term as it has a certain detachment where as previously complex laws and regulations end up in the ‘electronic surveillance’ catch-all. E.g credit card fraud software as implemented by a bank, suddenly electronic surveillance. A car’s dashcam (technically Sousveillance) — electronic surveillance.

Possibly not mass surveillance

What about telecommunications surveillance or retention? The term ‘Telecommunication’ is a commonly perceived as a phone-centric term (see ‘Wire tap’ — a redirect to ‘Telephone tapping’). Another common term is ‘interception’, a term embraced by Glenn Greenwald now of ‘The Intercept’ focused both on Snowden’s intercepted documents, and which themselves discuss at length the interception programmes of the US and UK governments.

‘Interception’ suffers from a similar problem to that of ‘telecommunications’ — they are simply not broad enough in scope. When we bring on board knowledge of government back doors into tech giants like Apple and Google and related online services, cloud backups and their metadata become targets for bulk analysis — is it mass surveillance yet?

More like mass surveillance

To cite a Wikipedia page I worked on heavily and helped out the Open Rights Group with: Web blocking in the United Kingdom. Often piecemeal legislation comes together to create an emergent phenomena, and there is typically polarisation of opinion between government officials and civil liberties advocates whether the apparent emergent phenomenon (Mass Censorship / Mass Surveillance) exists as a matter of policy, or practicality in a non-subjective fashion. This is why ‘Web blocking in the United Kingdom’ is not ‘Electronic Censorship in the United Kingdom’, however since ‘surveillance’ is as much a pejorative as ‘censorship’ I’m left unsure of an alternative term.

The uncertainty of whether ubiquitous surveillance-like legislation and programmes are actually that, creates an ambiguity of motivation in which governments can both deny having mass surveillance programmes and demand further mass surveillance powers simultaneously.

Which is presumably how they like it.