1. What is surveillance?

Surveillance is the action of observing someone that has a purpose to gather evidence. It is also
meant by observation from distance by means of electronic equipment.Surveillance is used for a
number of reasons and by numerous objectives. It is the one of the most common methods law
enforcement uses to investigate suspects and gather evidence. It also includes law enforcement in
the military. Law enforcement and the government uses surveillance to detect, prevent, and
investigate crimes. Other than use for law enforcement, surveillance is also used to protect private
property, gain information on certain objectives, or find evidence on a person or organization. It
depends on who is employing surveillance methods. It means that surveillance has a different
meaning. Individuals or agencies can use sophisticated technology to conduct surveillance or
surveillance can be as basic physical observation. It can include high-tech cameras, audio
equipment, computer hacking, or it can involve in-person surveillance. But, the one most
common method of surveillance is to physically follow and watch targets.

2. What are types of surveillance?

There are two types of surveillance. They are covert and overt surveillance. Covert and
overt surveillance are very useful and effective tools for gathering information on a person or
group. This type is typically used as part of an investigation into workplace crime, insurance
fraud and other illegal activities. Covert is a hidden surveillance. This means that the people or
target doesn't know they are being monitored or watched. It can be using a lot of techniques
including mobile surveillance, static observation, and the placement of covert surveillance. All
these techniques are needed to have a highly skilled organization such as military or police
background and have many years of experience. They are also trained with the use of specialist
equipment, including GPS tracking systems and covert body cameras.

The next one is overt which means by use of devices which are visible and recognisable
such as CCTV systems. In a simple word, overt is an surveillance that is more open when
gathering data and information. This type is usually used for workplace crime. This is because the
example of overt surveillance is CCTV that people can actually see and know where it takes
place. But at the same time, it can gather data when anything happens such as theft, robbery and
so on.
 3. What are examples of surveillance?

● Electronic surveillance : includes wiretapping, bugging, videotaping, data mining, social media
mapping and traffic monitoring on the internet. It is the use of electronic and mechanical devices.
● Fixed surveillance: includes coverts surveillance which mean an individual in-person. It is also
referred to as “stake-outs”.n In this example, the investigator will observe a target in-person from
a distance to gain evidence from the suspect.

4. Can you monitor your employee computer activity? Give an example of how they do that?

We can monitor the employee's computer activity by installing software such as

SentryPC, Teramind,ActivTrak and Hubstaff. The software will have an ability to track activity
and generate reports. This can be a great way to provide detailed insight into what an employee is
doing on the company computer. Other than installing software, we can also use some hardware
devices to monitor computer activity. The example of the hardware device is like data diodes and
firewalls.

5. Does the government spy on its citizens? Give an example of how they do that?

Yes. When people use the internet, some information gets collected about them and used
for marketing purposes. They use some software in order to gather personal information or
organization silently without realizing it. The example of the software they use is Pegasus
Spyware. This software is zero-click mobile surveillance software designed to infiltrate iOS and
Android devices to secretly collect information. Pegasus has capabilities to collect data. It can
read text and emails, monitor applications usage, track location and access device microphone
and camera.

6. How is surveillance an ethical issue?

Surveillance is an ethical issue that can be serious if this issue is not being observed in
detail. This is because surveillance is an action of observing and gathering other people's
information without their permission and their willingness. So, this will be considered as ethical
issues. The example that shows that surveillance is an ethical issue is when the other parties are
observing our messages, calls and location. The purpose of doing that surveillance is to track our
location and activities. It is proper if our information is being shared and observed by proper
parties such as the police and government. However, what if our information is controlled and
observed by the wrong parties such as criminals? This will have a bad effect for us. So, this
shows that surveillance is an ethical issue because our information is being shared and observed
by other people.

7. What steps can you take to block or prevent public / government surveillance?

There are some steps that we can take to prevent public surveillance or government surveillance.
The first one is to use a virtual private network(VPN). VPN is used to protect network connection when
using public networks. VPNs encrypt our internet traffic and hide our online identity. This will make it
more difficult for public or government surveillance to track our activities online and steal data. The
encryption takes place in real time. The benefit of using VPN is we have secure encryption. This is
because to read the data, we need an encryption key. Without one, it would be impossible and take
millions of years for a computer to decipher the code in the event of a brute force attack. With the help of
VPN, our activities are hidden even on the public networks. The other step to block public or government
surveillance is we must consider physical security. Not only email and text messages that government
agencies are interested in. They also collect information such as location from us. The GPS system that is
built in our phone can be used by them to locate where we are and even predict where we will go next.
So, the steps to prevent this surveillance is disabling our phone’s GPS. Other than that, we know that our
phone is connected to cell towers. These connections can be the platform for them to gain our location
and also our information. The ways to prevent this surveillance is to turn our phone off or store it in a
special bag that can block radio signals. This step can prevent the public or government from monitoring
our phone and location.