Mass Surveillance.

The bulk, indiscriminate monitoring of a population's communications, locations, and online activity by governments or large private actors. It belongs to the Privacy & Data Protection category of cybersecurity.

The bulk, indiscriminate monitoring of a population's communications, locations, and online activity by governments or large private actors.

Mass surveillance is the collection and analysis of data about entire populations rather than specific suspects, typically performed by intelligence agencies, law enforcement, or telecom and ad-tech firms. The 2013 Snowden disclosures revealed NSA programs such as PRISM, which compelled US providers to hand over user data, and XKeyscore, a query tool over global internet traffic. Mass surveillance erodes privacy, freedom of expression, and source protection for journalists, even when most collected data is never reviewed. Defences include strong end-to-end encryption, metadata minimization, anonymization networks like Tor, transparency reports, and legal frameworks such as the GDPR or the EU Charter that constrain bulk data collection.

Defences for Mass Surveillance typically combine technical controls and operational practices, as detailed in the full definition above.

Common alternative names include: Bulk surveillance, Population-scale surveillance.