What is Wrong with Mass Police Surveillance?

One of the most significant changes in policing over the last several decades is the increased use of technology—from CCTV cameras to drones, facial recognition software, and expansive databases. While police appeal to how surveillance can enhance public safety, privacy advocates warn of a profound transformation in how individuals and communities are monitored, often occurring without adequate public oversight or consent. Police surveillance is normatively significant because, although it has a chilling effect on, identifying precisely what is wrong with it can be surprisingly elusive. This paper aims to determine what, if anything, is wrong with mass police surveillance and to clarify what ethical considerations should be weighed against its potential public safety benefits. I begin by examining two common objections to police surveillance. The first argues that it violates individual privacy, while the second critiques its indiscriminate nature, impacting the innocent as well as the suspicious. I critique privacy-based objections, arguing that they are overly individualistic and fail to account for the full range of harms caused by surveillance and that a principle of discrimination offers insufficient grounds for objection. I then propose an alternative framework for understanding the harms of mass police surveillance, one that shifts focus from individual rights to the institutional context. Surveillance, I argue, consolidates institutional power and enables institutional domination. Given the deep flaws of policing institutions—including their entanglement in systemic racism, inequity, and unjust criminal legal systems—we have strong reasons to oppose lending them additional power through surveillance technologies. Furthermore, police surveillance does not operate in isolation; it is part of a broader governmental data ecosystem. To lessen the risk of exploitation and domination by the state more broadly, we must scrutinize and limit the expansion of police surveillance practices. The (intuitive) upshot is that the moral weight of surveillance is parasitic on the political and institutional context in which it is implemented, contrary to privacy-focused objections.