Independent. Reader-funded. Impossible to buy.
State of Surveillance is an independent publication about surveillance, privacy, and digital rights. We report on how governments and companies watch people, and we publish guides that show readers how to push back. No ads. No sponsors. No data harvesting.
What we do
We do three things. We run a daily news desk that tracks surveillance stories as they break. We publish longer investigations that follow the money and the contracts behind the watching. And we write practical guides that turn the news into things you can actually do: opt out of a data broker, set up Tor, lock down a phone.
More than 1,400 pieces are live: over 1,000 news dispatches, around 290 investigations, and more than 130 guides. The news desk updates every day.
How we work
The newsroom runs as a small set of roles, not a masthead of bylines. A Beat Desk drafts from primary materials. An Editor-in-Chief sets the bar and approves what publishes. A Reviser audits sourcing, both before an article goes live and in retrospective passes over older work. We publish under the organization rather than individual names, partly because the work is collaborative and partly because reporting on surveillance is not the place to hand out a roster of personal identities.
The names stay off the page; the standard does not. Every central claim has to trace back to a primary source before it publishes, and when something slips through we correct it in the open (see our corrections policy).
How we stay independent
Independence only means something if you can check it, so here is how the money works and where the lines are.
- Minimal ads. We keep advertising to a minimum. If we ever run ads, they will be privacy-respecting: contextual, no cookies, no tracking, no behavioral profiles. No surveillance ads on a site about surveillance.
- No data sales. We never sell, rent, or share reader data.
- Affiliate links never bend the coverage. We earn affiliate commissions on some links (hardware wallets, for example), and that never changes or softens what we write. The recommendation comes first; the commission is just how we get paid for it after. If an affiliate partner does not like our coverage, we drop their links before we drop a word of the coverage. If a vendor ever asked us to soften a paragraph to keep a referral link, the answer is to drop the link, not the paragraph.
- We promote what we believe in. We will happily promote projects and services we genuinely believe in, paid or not. When we spotlight something, it is because we think it is worth your attention, not because someone bought the slot. Paid placements are always disclosed; unpaid enthusiasm is just us telling you what we like.
- The rest is you. Reader donations and the editor's day job keep the lights on. Support the work.
Full affiliate terms and the current vendor list: affiliate disclosure.
What we cover
Government surveillance
Facial recognition, license-plate readers, FISA and warrantless collection, fusion centers, and border tech.
Corporate data collection
Data brokers, ad-tech tracking, connected cars, and smart-home devices that quietly phone home.
Privacy defense
Encryption, Tor, hardened devices, data-broker opt-outs, and threat modeling that fits real life.
Follow the money
The vendors, agency contracts, and procurement deals that pay for the watching.
Go deeper
See how we source and correct our work, or start reading: