2001:
- NSA's Stellar Wind, a.k.a. The Presidential Surveillance Program
- USA PATRIOT Act
- TSA created under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act
2002:
- DARPA's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program
- Homeland Security Act creates Department of Homeland Security
2003:
- Fusion centers begin forming
- Law enforcement agencies began using cell-site simulators, such as the Stingray
- U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) created
- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) created
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) created
2004:
- Palantir begins working with U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel
- National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) created
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) created
- Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
2005:
- NYT reports warrantless NSA wiretapping program
- Police start using drones
2006:
- PATRIOT Act reauthorization
2007:
- Protect America Act
2008:
- Section 702, PRISM, and Upstream were codified under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), which also granted retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that assisted with Post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping
- Palantir's first major government contract was awarded by the U.S. Department of Defense
2015:
- Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA): Facilitated corporate sharing of internet traffic data and cyber threat indicators directly with the federal government and intelligence agencies under legal immunity.
2016:
- Ring begins working with police departments
- Police first used geofence warrants
2017:
- Flock cameras begin installations in HOAs
- Clearview AI and other facial-recognition systems begin scraping billions of images from the public web and social media. Police and federal agencies (including ICE) have used it.
2018:
- Section 702 reauthorized
- Government agencies increasingly purchase commercially available data (location, utilities, etc.) from brokers, a practice critics call a warrant workaround
- Amazon acquires Ring and significantly increases Police Department partnerships
2019:
-Flock cameras begin contracting with Police Departments
2020:
- Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Drone Operations: CBP flying MQ-9 Reaper drones over domestic Black Lives Matter protests, highlighting federal aerial surveillance over American cities.
- Secret Executive Order 12333 Data Sweeps: Reports surface detailing bulk data ingestion (including financial and transaction data) under EO 12333, which operates outside FISA judicial review.
2021:
- CDC Location Data Purchase: Federal agencies (including the CDC) confirm purchasing anonymized mobility tracking data from commercial data brokers to monitor movement during pandemic lockdowns, highlighting the normalization of private broker data acquisitions.
2024:
- Section 702 reauthorized
- Federal agencies use commercial location data brokers to bypass warrant requirements
2025/2026:
- Flock grows to 100,000–130,000+ cameras in 49 states, contracts with about 5,000–7,000 law-enforcement agencies (a large fraction of U.S. departments), and on the order of 20 billion vehicle scans per month
- Flock's mass surveillance network creates a persistent, warrantless record of movements for millions of vehicles whose owners are not suspected of crimes.
- Flock is accessed by Federal agencies and stores data in a cloud with no oversight. Data could be used for any number of unknown purposes.
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Note: This list does not include some modifications to programs, Supreme Court decisions, etc. In this list, I am trying to document what the government has done to surveil the American people, rather than the outcome of every program.
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They’re normalizing automated surveillance of texts, emails, and photos without warrants or suspicion.
Basically treating every citizen like a potential criminal. And once the scanning infrastructure exists, expanding it to “hate,” “disinfo,” or political speech is just one law away.
And they’re doing it while admitting the system generates massive false positives that waste police time and harass innocents.
All sold as “protecting children.”
They want you to believe your voice doesn't matter.
Yet in just the last few days:
-LAPD canceled its Flock contract.
-Meta cancelled Muse Image AI after privacy outrage.
-One of the largest planned U.S. data centers was killed (PW Digital Gateway) by local opposition.
The surveillance state isn't inevitable.
It advances when people are apathetic.
It retreats when people fight back.
Public pressure works. Keep pushing.
A bill to protect children becomes a registry of adults. A registry of adults becomes a database of preferences. A database of preferences becomes a list of dissidents. The list of dissidents is the thing the state was building from the beginning.