TemporaTempora is the codeword for a formerly-secret computer system that is used by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). This system is used to buffer most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables, so these can be processed and searched at a later time. It was tested from 2008 and became operational in late 2011. Tempora uses intercepts on the fibre-optic cables that serve as the backbone of the Internet to gain access to large amounts of Internet users' personal data, without any individual suspicion or targeting.
ADVISEADVISE (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement) is a research and development program within the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Threat and Vulnerability Testing and Assessment (TVTA) portfolio. It is reportedly developing a massive data mining system, which would collect and analyze data on everyone in the United States and perform a "threat analysis" on them. The data can be anything from financial records, phone records, emails, blog entries, website searches, to any other electronic information that can be put into a computer system.
PanopticonThe panopticon is a design of institutional building with an inbuilt system of control, originated by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the 18th century. The concept is to allow all prisoners of an institution to be observed by a single security guard, without the inmates knowing whether or not they are being watched. Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates' cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times.
