13. Social Networks for Surveillance and Security: ‘Using Online Techniques to Make Something Happen in the Real or Cyber World’

This chapter examines the use of Social Networks for Surveillance and Security in relation to the deployment of intelligence resources in the UK. The chapter documents the rise of Military Intelligence agencies during both World Wars (such as GCHQ and MI5), and the subsequent use of these institutions to maintain order during peacetime. In addition to the way in which military organisations have used clandestine techniques such as double agents, spies, and various programmes designed for conducting Signals Intelligence, the Chapter offers an insight into how contemporary modes of communication (via mobile devices and the internet), shape the way in which intelligence agencies now gather information. The chapter also considers how the UK’s intelligence community responds to National Security issues such as international terror attacks, and how additional threats such as political subversion are framed in National Security discourse as being the legitimising factors behind mass surveillance. Thereafter, the chapter examines how online techniques are used by Britain’s intelligence agencies to maintain National Security, and how counter-intelligence strategies are being turned against the population to encourage political compliance. The chapter examines how online espionage techniques for entrapment, coercion, and misdirection, are being used to make something happen in the real or digital world.