
From watchtowers to smartphones, surveillance reshaped power, privacy, and daily life.
The first cameras used to spy on paranoia-era crowds predated cookies by decades, recording passersby on public streets for social control.
Surveillance tech backfired: facial-recognition algorithms trained on selfie biases misidentified a higher proportion of light-skinned individuals in early tests.
During WWII, encoded radar signals inspired micro-cameras hidden in everyday objects, turning mundane items into covert field surveillance tools.
Smartphones carry more potential surveillance data than entire 20th-century intelligence agencies collected, yet most people never learned how to suppress it.

From watchtowers to smartphones, surveillance reshaped power, privacy, and daily life.
The first cameras used to spy on paranoia-era crowds predated cookies by decades, recording passersby on public streets for social control.
Surveillance tech backfired: facial-recognition algorithms trained on selfie biases misidentified a higher proportion of light-skinned individuals in early tests.
During WWII, encoded radar signals inspired micro-cameras hidden in everyday objects, turning mundane items into covert field surveillance tools.
Smartphones carry more potential surveillance data than entire 20th-century intelligence agencies collected, yet most people never learned how to suppress it.
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