Surveillance Watch – A map that shows connections between surveillance companies | Hacker News Reader

Surveillance Watch – A map that shows connections between surveillance companies

surveillancewatch.io

113 pointskekqqq27 comments

This is a very long list & is still missing obvious well-known surveillance companies like Experian & who knows how many others. I can imagine the task of documenting this network is going to be pretty intensive.

and this is more a corporate style that work on surface, what about underground or state funded organization

this map misses that Palantir tech is being used in Ukraine. [0][1]

is there a way to contribute to the map?

[0]: https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/palantir-the-secret...

[1]: https://www.surveillancewatch.io/entities?entity=palantir

EDIT: ah, I found the "Submit" button! nice.

Missing a lot of companies from the Snowden leaks, to put it diplomatically.

Learning about these companies is a good first step, but what can we do about it? How does this knowledge going to help?

I read the first 4-5. They either 'provide services' to govs/law enforcement, and/or are ran by govs.

So to answer to your question, Nothing. You can write 100 letters to your senator, MP, mayor, etc. The "system" will serve its purposes. Best case you will get a response that "national security, paedophiles, terrorists, bad actors", etc.

In some regions you can file a GDPR nightmare letter, which will be shut down because of EU DPR ("national security, paedophiles, terrorists, bad actors", etc.)(yes I copied and pasted from above.. there is a pattern here).

Historically (and Harari describes this far better in "Nexus") documentation and bureaucracy was created to exert control. Any information 'must' be captured, stored, processed, assessed, flagged. Before we only had letters and radio. Now we have more letters (bits and bytes/packets). The mechanism is the same. Collect, store, process.

Cross-referencing this with 1984, everything we do/say/send/etc. will never be forgotten, can and will be used against us. Politicians though can 'rewrite' history ('Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.').

I'm struggling to even learn about these companies. The UI looks really cool but not super great when it comes to readability or functionality.

So much of this surveillance could be avoided if we didn't get pressurised into electronic everything.

I don't even use email nor carry a phone anymore.

It is bliss, you should try for even one day — nothing to ring/ping/buzz.

When I watch people's addiction to these things, it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of inhumanity. Are you really even free?

Over the past years, my city has started only collecting street meters via phones... so I just stopped paying (no method to do so via cash [nor CC]). With fines, it still averages out...

—Forty-Something

I'm posting me reply here, as the original comment just stating "Holy cow, and 80% of them are Israeli companies" was for no obvious reason within minutes downvoted and now even flagged (at the bottom of the page).

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Israel’s private, for-profit surveillance industry is notorious for being the largest in the world, often collaborating with dictatorships and authoritarian regimes as long as the price is right.

I remember one undercover report (German) exposing how one Israeli company openly boasted about operating thousands of fake Facebook profiles, using them to manipulate public opinion in favor of their paying clients.

> Israel has transformed its military intelligence capabilities into the world's most sophisticated surveillance technology export industry. From Unit 8200's cyber warfare origins to NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, Israeli companies have become the global leaders in surveillance technology - selling oppression as a service to authoritarian regimes worldwide.

https://stateofsurveillance.org/articles/government/israel-s...

Other sources: - https://www.timesofisrael.com/facebook-targets-7-cyber-firms... - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/25/microsoft-bloc...

PS: Israel has also faced allegations of leveraging its expansive private intelligence networks—including orchestrated fake profiles—to influence public voting in high-profile events like the Eurovision Song Contest.

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PPS: I wouldn't be surprised the private intelligence sector is also actively monitoring HN and trying to sway it as demonstrated by the immediate downvoted/flagging of the harmless comment above.

> I'm posting me reply here, as the original comment just stating "Holy cow, and 80% of them are Israeli companies" was for no obvious reason within minutes downvoted and now even flagged (at the bottom of the page).

Because they were wrong? I checked myself and after sampling 20 randomly I got 3 Israeli ones not even close to 80% percent. So either he got much more, or I got much less than average.

I once approached an Israeli tech company (Gloat) when I was doing market research for a product I was building. The response was… interesting to say the least. It led me to do more digging behind the actual product they were building, what kind of positions they were hiring, and what customers they actually had.

All engineering positions were based out of Israel (nothing wrong with that), they had numerous high-profile clients and seemed very connected, but honestly the tech and their vision was pretty disappointing. At first I was shocked how, with such a rudimentary system, they could be so widely in use by these huge, reputable companies! I was naive. All in all, what disappointed me the most was the amount of resources that obviously went into this company and the presumptions that reeked from it; but in my opinion, there was no deserved substance to back things up. You can argue this is the case for many American VC companies but at least to their credit, they need to put the money where their mouth is a some point or another (whether that means making a viable product or generating more hype). With this company, the vibe I got from resources I interacted with, was that they were almost “owed” this market penetration in the industry and it was very discordant to me growing up in the US tech industry where you really needed to prove yourself, at least initially, and stay growing, open-minded, always hustling.

I think reflecting on it there is probably a lot of state protection of this company and state connections between private US and Israeli individuals that guarantee clients as long as the work is as at a certain level (and yes not saying they have developed some horrible suite of software, just… small-minded). And maybe with this breathing room, it allows the role play of being a cutting-edge tech company without the risk which makes it a dream job and therefore a political asset in the polarized state. And maybe at the end of the day it’s less about building a tech company that is the best but developing Israeli institutional knowledge and collecting data, building connections, everything that isn’t software and above my pay-grade. I’m not sure.

To contrast this, I met with an Irish tech company in the same space a couple weeks later called Teamwork, I believe. The CEO himself met with me, discussed my work, even jokingly offered to hire me. Despite this guy founding a successful company, at no point did I feel “erased” or made to feel beneath him. To take a step back, I’m not making the point that “non-Israeli tech company” better than Israeli tech company. Thinking it through, I’ll say that, it seems like Gloat and the other Israeli tech companies I’ve read about, are more existentially-driven. Like doing their work, building their business, and developing their tech is predicated on surviving… which makes sense when you think it through. At the same time, from a tech focus, I think it holds them back since it’s a form of egocentrism and if you’re not the best, you need diversity of opinions to be the best.

It's a good starting catalog. Missing a handful of entries, but the data is mostly superficial and incomplete. Looks primarily like a giant web scraping project.

This website is great, looks like they've done some comprehensive research here. It should be an excellent resource when I'm planning my next career move - plenty of interesting companies to send my resume to. Thanks guys!

The stupid dancing fuzz filter across the entire website renders the content almost completely illegible, and is a struggle to read. Shame.

Adding 'https://www.surveillancewatch.io/noise-anim.gif' to your favourite rule-based adblocker fixes this.

is it me or the website is so heavy ???? I think we can remove most of these animation

Who is behind this website? And How do we know they did a good job researching? Edit: I found in donation link that it goes to DAIR Institute

"Snoop on to them as they snoop on to us"

We can't. If someone tries, then they get arrested for doxing, harassing, "causing discomfort", etc. Have you tried to follow a politician around? Do you want to try and track their phone?

That’s a coward’s take, and even if you are taking the middle-ground route there are sufficiently legal ways. You just won’t find much enthusiasm about it among people here because the demographic of this platform is living comfortably.

It feels like ever since Snowden we've been watching and mapping and uncovering, and none of it has accomplished anything and it has only gotten worse. Why would I even care at this point what the exact topology looks like? It's much more straightforward just to operate from the assumption that absolutely everything I do on an electronic device (and much of my biometric activity within close proximity of those devices) is transparent, visible, catalogued, and archived.

We don't need more maps to this stuff. We need to seize the hard drives, gather any evidence of venal or traitorous motives on the part of the executives and decision-makers who built the systems, and take sledgehammers to the drives and servers and hard drives and recording devices and Flock cameras and all the rest.

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