infosec.exchange
Martin Seeger (@masek@infosec.exchange)
# Surveillance Considered Harmful
There is an interesting detail emerging from the attempted terrorist attack on Flydubai Flight 1073.
According to current reports, the co-pilot had already been barred from flying by Oman Air because of concerns about extremist views. Yet somehow he ended up flying for Flydubai. And somehow an Omani citizen, from a country whose pilots are not allowed to fly into Israel, ended up in the cockpit of a flight to Tel Aviv (Source: https://apnews.com/article/cf64a228799e6e788e834cac2a489ab2).
This happened in a region containing some of the most heavily surveilled societies on the planet. Saudi Arabia, where the aircraft eventually landed, is a particularly extreme example: internet activity, social media and private communications are subject to extensive state surveillance (Source: https://freedomhouse.org/country/saudi-arabia/freedom-net/2025). Other Gulf states are not far behind in the scale and reach of their surveillance.
And yet here we are. This points to a more fundamental problem with surveillance as a weapon against terrorism.
What does a terrorist actually want?
*Physical destruction is only the means. The real target is psychological: fear, distrust, disruption and ultimately the fragmentation of society. A terrorist cannot destroy a society through physical violence alone. But it may be sufficient to make that society afraid enough to start damaging itself.*
And this is where mass surveillance becomes dangerously counterproductive. A functioning society depends on trust: trust between citizens, trust in institutions, and the assumption that most people around us are not our enemies. Terrorism attacks exactly that trust.
Mass surveillance does, too.
It tells everyone that everyone is potentially suspicious. It normalizes observation, suspicion and self-censorship. In trying to make society more resilient against individual terrorists, we risk weakening the very social cohesion that makes a society resilient in the first place.
The irony of Flight 1073 is therefore hard to miss.
**We have built extraordinarily powerful machinery for watching millions of ordinary people, while apparently failing at the much more mundane task of asking why a pilot previously considered an extremism risk was sitting in the cockpit of an airliner bound for Israel.**
Surveillance considered harmful. Not merely because it invades privacy. But because it can fail even at the trivial things while quietly weakening the society it was supposed to protect.
![[jason-got-it.jpg]
michael: third way figured it out? *third way?* this is a real low point. yeah, this one hurts.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:f6zdygfrquhktuq3nka4mgak/bafkreicvzs7tuk2sk2cir5tntf43fi6u7t77ezooyz6gpj4dhxgnckvcla)
