ABSTRACT

Surveillance is a very broad topic engaging numerous individuals and organizations worldwide and treated in many publications and on many conferences. This chapter focuses on computer-based surveillance, its technology, and its implications. In mobile phone networks surveillance of phone conversations is prevented, since subscribers have unique secret authentication keys used to create secret keys for encryption of phone communication. Internet surveillance targets are the Web, e-mailing, Facebook and other social media implemented as online social networking services, chat communication, e-commerce, banking services and other net based services, connected devices, and IoT (Internet of Things) objects. Web surveillance is Web usage monitoring and surveillance of Web content with some search engines. E-mailing seldom uses an anonymous communication solution and most e-mail messages are sent unencrypted. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is the original and still a frequently text-based Internet chat protocol, currently with about 300,000 daily users worldwide.