Surveillance and data harvesting have become ubiquitous in the digital age, enveloping our personal and professional lives in ways that often go unnoticed. The revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden and exposes like the one addressed on VICE provide a deep dive into the capabilities of surveillance and its implications for privacy and security. This raises the critical question: When we capture everything, do we capture nothing of true value? Instead, are these efforts providing us courage in the face of pervasive scrutiny and potential persecution?

Sometimes, the world's most modern spies are just as reliant on conventional reconnaissance methods as their predecessors.

With modern surveillance tools, there is an inescapable gaze. (To learn more, scope the recent Flipper Zero and GrapheneOS workshops I've presented at PlebLab.)

Intrusions into personal phones can turn cameras on, access contact lists, read SMS messages, and track physical locations, even with GPS disabled.

Make no mistake, the depth of metadata collection, resembling a modern-day TAO team capable of chronicling every minute detail of daily life, is profoundly invasive and potentially feasible for capable citizens.

Even iPhones have become great surveillance tools.

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