The Elements of a Surveillance State – Capabilities Plus Intent

An unsecured police database has provided a rare glimpse inside China’s surveillance state.
 
The database examined by The New York Times tracked hundreds of foreigners. But its significance extends far beyond the surveillance of foreign residents. As The Times reports, its existence illustrates how Chinese authorities aggregate vast amounts of information from surveillance cameras, medical records, utility bills, facial-recognition systems, and other sources to monitor and analyze individuals’ behavior.
 
The database included hospital visits, gas payments, frequently visited locations, and air and rail travel – down to seat numbers. It tracked one woman’s movements from her home to shopping malls, restaurants, and supermarkets, sometimes using facial recognition.
 
The power of China’s surveillance system does not rest on any single camera or database. It comes from joining countless streams of personal information into one comprehensive picture.
 
Now for the turnabout: Is the United States a surveillance state like China – or are we about to become one?
 
Consider recent reports on the domestic surveillance capabilities our government already possesses:
 
• Foreign communications: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, now awaiting congressional reauthorization, allows federal agencies to collect global communications. That collection inevitably sweeps in Americans’ messages, which the FBI has searched millions of times in recent years. Congress must debate a warrant requirement before federal agencies are allowed to search Section 702 data for Americans’ communications.
 
• Forcing businesses to spy on their customers: The “Make Everyone a Spy” provision of the most recent FISA reauthorization in 2024 dramatically expanded the definition of an electronic communications service provider. It can require owners and operators of commercial facilities and even churches housing communications equipment (including common services like free WiFi) to assist government surveillance – and remain silent forever under a gag order.
 
• Political and social-media activity: The Wall Street Journal reports that ICE has established a round-the-clock dragnet across Facebook, Instagram, X, and other platforms. Contractors prepare dossiers that can include a person’s name, address, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration, and criminal history. DHS has reportedly issued hundreds of subpoenas to identify anonymous critics, while agents have confronted Americans over online speech.
 
• DNA: According to Wired, ICE may have contributed almost 920,000 DNA profiles to the FBI’s CODIS database in 2025 alone. The broader DHS collection program includes people accused of no crime. Newly released CBP records show that it has even collected DNA from children as young as four.
 
• Air travel: The Securities and Exchange Commission purchased access to more than one billion airline-ticketing records, according to 404 Media. These records covered not only domestic U.S. flights and international flights involving the United States, but also travel between foreign countries. The airline-owned data broker reportedly made this information available without passengers’ knowledge and likely without warrants.
 
• Movements on the ground: Flock Safety cameras record millions of drivers in thousands of American communities. Flock has announced plans to combine license-plate-reader records with public records, open-source intelligence, and commercial “people lookup” data. This can transform a vehicle sighting into a dossier – and allow algorithms to generate suspicion from ordinary patterns of movement.
 
So, is the United States a surveillance state?
 
In terms of capabilities, yes.
 
In terms of intent, not quite – at least not yet at the comprehensive, integrated scale practiced by China.
 
It would take a concerted effort to bring all these elements together into a single system – integrated by artificial intelligence – to comprehensively surveil Americans through their faces, foreign communications, DNA, geolocation, movements, searches, and interests.
 
In short, what separates the United States from Chinese levels of comprehensive surveillance is not capability. It is the intent of government officials – and our trust that they will respect the institutional and constitutional restraints that stand in their way.
 
And in case you have been living off the grid in the Australian Outback for the last decade, trust is in short supply these days.

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