AI Surveillance and Social Progress - Schneier on Security Schneier on Security Menu Blog Newsletter Books Essays News Talks Academic About Me Search Powered by DuckDuckGo Blog Essays Whole site Subscribe Home Blog AI Surveillance and Social Progress In the near future, AI -powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. And if we do something wrong—shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it—the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities… and maybe also to the general public. Think of these systems as automated speed cameras, but on steroids. Only they’ll enforce not just speed limits, but any other rule you can imagine. And you won’t receive a ticket weeks later by mail; you’ll be informed about and fined for your violation immediately. These systems will combine powerful AI, public and private surveillance via real-time facial recognition technology and digital tracking, mass databases and highly personalized enforcement. If deployed at scale, they will have profound chilling effects not just on personal freedoms, but democracy and social progress itself. China has been developing its surveillance infrastructure for years . The country has over 600 million surveillance cameras, increasingly powered by AI and facial recognition to enforce legal and social rules. Take the case of Lao Duan, a Chinese citizen blacklisted by the system after he lost his job and was unable to repay a series of loans. When he visited Beijing, the city’s AI surveillance system identified him by his face at a major intersection and displayed his face, name and citizen ID number on a large electronic billboard nearby with a message that he was an untrustworthy person. Similar systems are now being deployed across China and integrated with its infamous online monitoring, censorship and social credit systems. AI surveillance is now being experimented with in North America , South America , Europe , Asia and Africa . According to a new report , the US Department of Homeland Security is rapidly increasing its use of AI-based surveillance, including facial recognition and the monitoring of social media accounts, to keep tabs on immigrants, dissidents, journalists, legal observers and protesters. While the systems are ostensibly used to maintain security and public safety, the real aim is often social control. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle—a powerful tech giant that works closely with the Trump administration—has said : “Citizens will be on their best behavior because we’re constantly recording and reporting.” The chilling effects are the point. AI surveillance raises a range of public policy challenges: technical biases, unauditable systems, and inflexible automated law and social rule enforcement that can promote discrimination and undermine transparency, accountability and the rule of law. But we believe the most urgent and long-term impact will be its broader chilling effects. In a new book, Chilling Effects: Repression, Conformity, and Power in the Digital Age , Jon Penney explains how surveillance, technology and power can be weaponized to influence behavior at scale. Surveillance, personalization, uncertainty and authority are all key mechanisms to increase the scale and impact of chilling effects. They cause people to self-censor their words and actions, to become more conformist and compliant and thus easier to manage and control. And the effects are additive: the more mechanisms employed, and the more powerful the form, the greater the chill. Computerization has long allowed data collectors to track our locations, collect lists of whom we communicate with, and monitor our spending habits—unless we use cash. What’s new is an unprecedented fusion of each of these mechanisms, persistent and unrelenting. AI brings an analytical ability to spy on the contents of our communications, and to answer sophisticated questions about our whereabouts and activities: actions that previously required human analysts are now automated. The result will be a kind of supercharged societal level of chilling effects where fear, self-censorship and groupthink reign, and dissent, creativity and innovation become increasingly rare. In this atmosphere of fear and conformity, risky ideas, social activism and self-reinvention—especially by disfavored groups and targeted populations—are also chilled . This will have long-term effects on social progress. Consider the relatively recent societal normalization of same-sex relationships and the recreational use of marijuana. Over the decades, those ideas slowly progressed from being both immoral and illegal, to moral but still illegal, and finally to both moral and legal. But in order for any of that to happen, there had to be a counterculture that was able to experiment and eventually demonstrate to the world that morality could change over time. To the extent that AI surveillance chills this sort of experimentation in public or in private, social progress becomes impossible. There are no real historical precursors to this; these technologies are too new. Even the most notorious and large-scale domestic surveillance program in US history, the FBI’s use of wiretapping, physical mail opening, informants and paper index cards to track alleged communists during the 1950s and 1960s, appears genuinely archaic in light of modern AI-enhanced surveillance. So does East Germany’s human-centric surveillance network during the cold war. Only science fiction, from the likes of George Orwell or Aldous Huxley, comes close. But even Big Brother’s “ telescreen ” feels decidedly mid-20th-century by comparison. But we need not sit idly. Now that we recognize the danger of AI-enhanced mass surveillance, we can make the policy choices not to implement it. Bans on facial recognition and other forms of identification tech can slow development; robust new privacy and data protections can restrict data tracking and retention; AI regulations can curtail its most invasive uses; and structural reforms can help us scrutinize and break up powerful state/tech cartels that pave the way for technological excesses like AI surveillance. The chill of AI-powered mass surveillance will suffocate the very foundations of healthy democratic societies. But we can still choose a different path. This essay was written with Jon Penney, and originally appeared in The Guardian . Tags: AI , LLM , privacy , surveillance Posted on July 10, 2026 at 7:02 AM • 11 Comments Comments Untitled • July 10, 2026 8:01 AM if we do something wrong—shoplift, litter, jaywalk, you name it—the system will notice, retain it, tie it to your official government record, communicate that fact to you, and provide real-time alerts to any relevant authorities… and maybe also to the general public. I’m not convinced that the system will necessarily communicate with you. For certain kinds of wrongdoing, the system will simply make you an unperson – suddenly you’ll find that your credit card doesn’t work, your car won’t go, your electricity is off, your phone is dead … And, of course, punishable wrongdoing will include saying or writing anything that might be interpreted as disparaging of the Dear Leader … Q • July 10, 2026 8:02 AM “But we need not sit idly. Now that we recognize the danger of AI-enhanced mass surveillance, we can make the policy choices not to implement it. …” Yes, I agree. But how? Those currently in power don’t want to change the current path, they want to make new laws and use the tech to enforce them, and make exceptions for themselves to hide their misdeeds. So HOW? What is the first step? Voting doesn’t help. This extra AI power will just corrupt them more. No matter which “side” one votes for, it will make no difference. HOW? TimH • July 10, 2026 9:02 AM There will also be selective enforcement baked in, so a white list of people never get prosecuted, and a black list of political or personal undesirables who get specifically monitored to pursue the most minor transgressions. Also, review by humans isn’t scalable, so there won’t be a valid way to challenge a charge. The people with back doors into the system will rule without anyone knowing. cellurl • July 10, 2026 10:19 AM A bill aimed at “encouraging children outside” might work. Encourage ebikes and outdoor pickleball. A bill to encourage that. Clive Robinson • July 10, 2026 11:09 AM @ Bruce, Winter, ALL, In another case of sychronisity @Winter and myself were talking about this just a few hours ago on the last squid page, https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/06/the-chinese-control-the-majority-of-argentinas-squid-fleet.html/#comment-455900 Wannabe Techguy • July 10, 2026 11:22 AM @TimH We are of course already there. All Red-y • July 10, 2026 11:24 AM In the near future, AI-powered surveillance systems will be able to track everything we do in public, and much of what we do in private. AI powered systems are already doing this. Machine learning algos (pre-LLM) have been tracking everything digitally connected for some time. It’s what Snowden warned us about and under continued Republican control has only gotten worse. Fully funded and now ingrained into our digital bloodstream. As for what we do in private, it’s trivial for machine learning systems to infer that from aggregated crowd data with high probability. They don’t really care if a random hallucination puts you in a wrong category. It’s enough to map all digital interactions and predict behavior and markets. The ‘wisdom of crowds’ turned on its head. Rontea • July 10, 2026 3:28 PM Ah, my dear contemporaries, Man, that fragile creature, is now encircled not by priests or kings, but by algorithms and glowing eyes that never sleep. They promise order, but order without liberty is but a polished coffin. Petty sins—jaywalking or littering—become grand indictments, and the face of the citizen becomes the mask of the accused. How quickly society exchanges the vibrant chaos of freedom for the frozen harmony of fear! Progress, that sacred dance of bold thought and daring spirit, cannot endure in a hall of mirrors where every gesture is judged, every whisper recorded. The machines will teach men to bow before themselves, to police their own breath, until the kingdom of God on earth is replaced by the dominion of a spreadsheet. And yet, as always, salvation lies in the human heart—if we dare to remember that the dignity of man is not a function to be optimized, but a flame to be guarded against the wind of surveillance. Shockwave Rider • July 10, 2026 3:48 PM To live under the gaze of a mechanical eye is to embrace the futility of existence elevated to a universal law. AI surveillance does not merely record our errors—it baptizes them into eternity, stripping even the relief of oblivion. In such a society, the individual becomes a ghost haunting his own life, rehearsing gestures of obedience not out of conviction but because rebellion loses its metaphysical flavor when there is nowhere left to hide. The tragedy is not that we will be punished, but that we will slowly forget the taste of freedom, and that our conformity will no longer feel like a cage, only a habit. In the sterile theater of perfect surveillance, even despair will be monitored, cataloged, and rendered banal. Numbers Don't Lie • July 10, 2026 4:47 PM Compared to all other U.S. States, Ay – dee – ho is always the last, the 50th in just about everything, except, maybe in Public Office Corruption where I am certain they are the first. Using engineered evidence while ignoring ‘the rules of evidence’ is what the prosecutors have done because Ay – dee – ho is where they hate and it shows clearly. short u r l . at / yx37d Imagine being shot at by a mooze-lyme and then hunted down and chased through your neighborhood (even the doctored video shows it) but in a tyrannical government where pulling strings and bribing the government employees to make things go your way is a daily routine – you are ensured that the government fixers will never run out of ideas to stalk you and threaten every lawyer you try to hire. When, of all places in the world, you end up in a corrupt hole like that, you know that you’ve been abandoned even by God. lurker • July 10, 2026 7:41 PM Time to find a new planet? But right now there’s only one place to buy a ticket, and we know about the guy who runs that bus company … Subscribe to comments on this entry Leave a comment Cancel reply Blog moderation policy Login Name Email URL: Remember personal info? Fill in the blank: the name of this blog is Schneier on ___________ (required): Comments: Allowed HTML <a href="URL"> • <em> <cite> <i> • <strong> <b> • <sub> <sup> • <ul> <ol> <li> • <blockquote> <pre> Markdown Extra syntax via https://michelf.ca/projects/php-markdown/extra/ Notify me of follow-up comments by email. Notify me of new posts by email. Δ ← The Language of AI Could Change How Humans Speak Friday Squid Blogging: “Squidbleed” Vulnerability → Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis. Powered by WordPress Hosted by Pressable About Bruce Schneier I am a public-interest technologist , working at the intersection of security, technology, and people. I've been writing about security issues on my blog since 2004, and in my monthly newsletter since 1998. I'm a fellow and lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School , a board member of EFF , and the Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. This personal website expresses the opinions of none of those organizations. 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📌 来源: Schneier on Security | 📅 2026-07-10