10 Unsettling Ways Big Brother Is (Likely) Spying on You

Everywhere you go and everything you do, the government is spying on you. Okay, maybe that’s a slightly overdone statement. But we aren’t exaggerating by much. As technology has improved rapidly over the last several decades, so too has government surveillance ability. In the name of anti-terrorism and anti-crime efforts, governments across states, provinces, and countries have gotten smarter, shrewder, and more efficient at tracking their citizens.

Don’t believe us? Well, scroll down and read on for a bit to learn some unsettling insights. In this list, we’ll take a scary look at ten ways the government is actively spying on you. Maybe. Probably. Possibly. Allegedly. …Perhaps. (Don’t track us, NSA! We promise we’ll behave!)

Related: 10 Times Government Officials Made Startling Claims

10 You Went to the Airport

Have you ever taken an airplane before? Especially after the September 11 terror attacks? If so, the TSA has had its eyes (and maybe its hands) all over you. Some of this surveillance is no secret, of course. You hand over your luggage, your driver’s license, and your entire identity to be tracked and searched when you get to the airport.

And then you go through security and get tracked and X-rayed and who knows what else. Oh, and more recently, the TSA and other airport security agencies have taken to using incredibly advanced facial recognition technology designed to match your face to identity records. Um, yay?

Sadly, this surveillance doesn’t always work so well. A few years back, a father and son were flying through Fargo, North Dakota, when authorities rushed up to the man and put him in handcuffs. He hadn’t done anything wrong, but airport security personnel had actually mistaken his identity for a domestic violence suspect. Their surveillance methods tipped them off that he was the alleged criminal, so they had him arrested. But he wasn’t that guy at all. It was a terribly unsettling case of mistaken identity brought about by ineffective spying. Oops.^[1]

9 You Own a Computer

If you own a computer—and especially a laptop—somebody has most likely tried to spy on you at some point. Whether the government, hackers, or somebody else (or all of the above), you are probably being tracked in one way or another. And we’re not talking about tracking the websites you visit, though there is plenty of that, which we’ll discuss later. No, we’re talking about your webcam. Yeah. See that little camera that sits at the top of your laptop screen or computer monitor? Under certain circumstances, it can potentially be accessed remotely to see what you’re doing while online.

You don’t have to believe us on this, either. Just take James Comey’s word for it. Yes, the former FBI director himself once gave an interview in which he admitted to covering up the webcam on his laptop screen with tape. And we tend to take people in positions like that at their word. After all, if the FBI director is worried about being spied on through his webcam, he probably knows something we don’t. Be right back—getting some tape!^[2]

8 You Drove by a Camera

If you’ve ever driven down the street, you have assuredly driven right past a surveillance camera. Governments all across the world have been busy installing security and surveillance trackers at stoplights and intersections in all kinds of cities. Local law enforcement agencies then use those cameras to solve crimes. And they aren’t just looking at grainy camera footage, either. Many modern surveillance cameras use high-tech license plate readers that can identify your vehicle and associate it with registration records from just a split-second shot of your car. There’s nowhere to hide!

But just like our story up above about the airport, these surveillance technologies don’t always get things right. About a decade ago, a man in China was handed a ticket from local cops for allegedly talking on his phone while he was driving. He’d been caught on camera with his hand to his face, and so he got a citation in the mail for it. The only problem? It wasn’t a phone at all. He was simply scratching his face. But on the camera footage, it looked like a phone, and so he got a ticket. Whoops!^[3]

7 You Logged Online

Okay, let’s get back to computers. If you go online to any government website, you can track down their privacy policy, which is often housed under a variety of difficult-to-find submenus and hidden links. And on those privacy policies, these governmental websites straight-up tell you that they are collecting information about you.

Don’t believe us? Seriously, go to any website run by the federal government right now. The Department of the Interior, the Department of the Treasury, whoever else—take your pick. When you come across their privacy policies on those official federal websites, you’ll read something along the lines of this: “Treasury.gov collects your full internet protocol address, browser type, and location information for internal governmental purposes related to information and system security.” Scary, right?

And it goes on, as exemplified by the Department of the Interior: “When you visit DOI.gov, we will automatically collect and store the following information about your visit…” Face it, they already know a whole lot about you.^[4]

6 You Tested Your DNA

So many people have opted to do those DNA test kits. And while it can be a cool way to look into your family history and figure out your heritage, it’s also fraught with complications. For one, it’s possible to learn some, um, interesting things about your family tree when you use a DNA test kit. Did your weird uncle father a child (or two, or three) that you never knew about way back when? How about your very own dad—was he gallivanting around? Surprise! You suddenly have siblings you never knew about. But the issues stretch so much further than that.

Specifically, when it comes to spying, private companies that sell these DNA test kits may share their data with local or federal governments under certain circumstances, such as through warrants or opt-in genealogy databases. It’s not entirely clear how far this goes regularly, but on a case-by-case basis, it absolutely does happen. And the government can potentially access your DNA if they really want it. Don’t believe us? Just take a look at the case of the famed Golden State Killer. He was finally tracked down and caught decades after his terrible murder spree because a relative of his unknowingly uploaded their DNA into the world using a test kit.^[5]

5 You Own a Cell Phone

We might like to think that it’s just a joke when we talk about the government spying on us through our cell phones, but sadly, it isn’t. In fact, even though phone surveillance generally requires a warrant when it’s done aboveboard, that’s not always how things play out. After all, there’s never been any shortage of wiretapping scandals throughout American history, involving politicians, organized crime, and everything in between. So if you can admit the government was wiretapping people fifty years ago, why would you possibly think it had stopped in the 21st century?

We’re not being conspiratorial here, either. Between local and federal law enforcement, the government makes hundreds of millions of lawful requests related to people’s phone records, including call detail data associated with texts and calls. That’s all that we know about, at least. In 2017 alone, the National Security Agency was able to collect call detail records related to a reported 534 million phone calls and texts. Were yours among them?^[6]

4 You Take Medicine

Believe it or not, the government already knows quite a lot about the prescription medicines people take. See, there are these things called prescription drug monitoring programs, or PDMPs for short. They are basically state-sponsored electronic databases meant to track the prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances in America. The goal is to know what doctors are doling out, to which patients, and in what quantities. So they started tracking these things years ago. And now, here we are.

Basically, this all came about over the last couple of decades amid the explosion in fentanyl and opioid addiction following America’s painkiller crisis. While PDMPs in particular are overseen with support from the Centers for Disease Control, they aren’t the only government effort in play. The Food and Drug Administration’s Sentinel Initiative, launched in 2009, monitors large-scale prescription drug safety trends rather than individual patient histories. So yes, there is a beneficial side to all this. But really, ask yourself: do you want federal agencies involved in tracking patterns related to every prescription you’ve ever filled?^[7]

3 You Bought a Gun

You may think that you are purchasing a gun for your own private security, but when it comes to the government, there is very little about the process that is entirely private. Every time you purchase a gun in the United States from a licensed dealer, a background check is conducted, and records related to that check are generated and retained under specific federal and state rules. Law enforcement wants to know who is purchasing firearms, where those guns are sold, and whether they may later be used in violent crimes.

Freaked out yet? The same can be said for background checks themselves. Of course, the likelihood of a background check actually catching something before a crime is committed may be slim. But at the very least, it allows the government to look into who you are and what you’re all about every time you buy a weapon. No matter what your political leanings on guns might be, it’s just one more way the government gets its eyes on your life and its ears in your business.^[8]

2 You Got Mail

Believe it or not, the United States government knows about the exterior of every single piece of mail you’ve ever received. They have something called the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking Program. With it, they photograph the outside of every piece of mail that gets processed in the country. Think about that. That is a truly massive undertaking. For every one of the billions—about 170 billion in 2012 alone—pieces of mail that fly through the USPS, the exterior gets photographed, cataloged, tracked, and stored. Those images can then be made available to law enforcement if there’s some kind of federal mail-related crime that needs investigating.

As you might suspect, this program came about after the anthrax attacks in 2001, which killed five people using mailed packages. The specifics are pretty daunting. Images of your mail are typically held for at least a week and often up to 30 days before being destroyed. However, that period can be extended if authorities suspect a problem. And they do suspect quite a few problems. The USPS receives around 20,000 law enforcement requests related to mail monitoring every year, and most of them require little to no judicial oversight. Sorry, y’all. Courts have long ruled that there is no expectation of privacy when it comes to the exterior of mailed items. You’re out of luck there!^[9]

1 …And in Every Single Way

Now that we live in the 2020s, we can safely say that the internet is everywhere. The laptop that you are reading this on is obviously connected to the internet, as is your phone, your television, and heck, even your toaster and refrigerator. Increasingly, the “internet of things” has hundreds of millions of devices being manufactured to go online every single year. From your smartphone to your computer to your pill bottle that can alert you when you’re running low on medication, nearly everything is wired into the online world in this day and age. Cool, right?

Well, it’s also kind of a problem. There are roughly 40 billion different devices connected to the so-called Internet of Things as of 2025. That’s far too much stuff to keep track of when it comes to privacy awareness, tracking notices, and meaningful consent. Face it: your data is being collected in ways you don’t even know and could never fully imagine. From government agencies to private companies—and maybe even your sketchy next-door neighbor—plenty of entities are tracking what you’re doing, what you’re searching, and what you’re saying.^[10]