Surveillance Capitalism

They’re Always Watching: Inescapable Surveillance

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They’re Always Watching: Inescapable Surveillance

What Is Surveillance Capitalism? (2025–2030)

Surveillance capitalism is the system we live in today — where human behavior is the product.

Every click, purchase, and location ping becomes part of a predictive model.
Tech companies know us better than we know ourselves — and we let them.

Examples of current surveillance systems:

  • Behavior tracking via cookies and devices

  • Facial recognition in public spaces

  • Biometric authentication everywhere

  • Smart city monitoring networks

  • Data monetization across platforms

👉 Newdawn 2098 begins where today’s data economy ends — when surveillance becomes life infrastructure.

What Is Surveillance Capitalism — and How Did It Begin?

Introduction: The Trade We Made Without Knowing

What happens when surveillance stops being something done to you and becomes something you carry inside your mind? When privacy isn’t a right you surrender but a concept that simply ceases to exist? When the line between observation and thought disappears entirely?

In 2025, we trade privacy for convenience daily. We accept cookies for website access. We share location data for navigation. We allow our conversations to be analyzed for better targeted ads. Each trade feels small, reasonable, harmless.

In Newdawn 2098, privacy is a historical curiosity—something grandparents remember, something studied in sociology courses, something as obsolete as rotary phones or cash currency.

This is the story of how we went from “I have nothing to hide” to “I have nothing that isn’t seen.” It didn’t happen through force. It happened through a million tiny acceptances, each one rational, each one understandable, each one irreversible.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people in 2098 don’t miss privacy. They never knew they needed it.

Why did we accept surveillance as progress?

Because it made life easier.

Facial recognition replaced IDs. Biometric scans replaced passwords.
“Smart” systems optimized everything — homes, health, work, even relationships.

Meet Sarah Chen – The Early Adopter

A BridgeView resident thriving under total transparency.
Her home predicts her needs, her health improves, her productivity soars.
She doesn’t see what she’s lost — the freedom to exist unobserved.

Character perspective – The Early Adopter: She enthusiastically adopted every smart system. Her home anticipates her needs perfectly. Her health monitoring prevented three potential issues before they became serious. Her productivity tracking helped her get promoted.

She tells friends who worry about privacy: “I’m healthier, more successful, more secure. What did I lose? The ‘right’ to be watched? I was being watched anyway. Now it works for me.”

She’s not wrong. Her life improved measurably. The question is what she doesn’t see—what thoughts she doesn’t think, what choices she doesn’t make, because everything is seen.

When Did Surveillance Become Infrastructure? (2030–2050)

Phase One: Today’s Surveillance Capitalism: The Foundation (2025)

Right now, we’re living in what scholars call “surveillance capitalism”—economic systems built on harvesting human behavior data for profit. It’s everywhere:

The Data Harvest: Every click, every purchase, every search, every location, every conversation near your phone—all collected, analyzed, monetized. Tech companies know you better than you know yourself. They predict your behavior, manipulate your choices, and sell access to your attention.

Google knows what you’re thinking before you finish typing. Amazon knows what you’ll buy before you know you want it. Meta knows your political leanings, relationship status, emotional vulnerabilities. TikTok’s algorithm understands your psychology with frightening precision.

The Justifications: We’re told it’s for:

  • Better user experience (personalized recommendations)
  • Improved security (fraud detection, threat prevention)
  • Enhanced services (traffic prediction, health monitoring)
  • Free access (ad-supported platforms instead of subscriptions)

And these justifications aren’t entirely wrong, which makes the trade easier.

The Creep: But surveillance expands beyond voluntary tech use:

  • Facial recognition in public spaces
  • License plate readers tracking vehicle movements
  • Biometric data collection (fingerprints, iris scans)
  • Smart city sensors monitoring everything
  • Workplace surveillance tracking productivity
  • School monitoring systems watching students
  • Health apps sharing medical data
  • Financial surveillance analyzing spending patterns

The Current Questions:

  • Should companies own our personal data?
  • Can we have privacy and security simultaneously?
  • Where’s the line between helpful and invasive?
  • Who watches the watchers?

In 2025, these questions still have debates around them. By 2098, they’re answered—through acceptance, through infrastructure, through the fact that resistance became impossible.

Newdawn explores how we got from here to there.

From Cookies to Biometrics (2030-2050)

When Surveillance Became Infrastructure

The Normalization (2030-2035): What was concerning in 2025 becomes normal by 2030. Facial recognition is standard in all public spaces. Smart cities monitor every movement, rationalized as traffic optimization and crime prevention. Biometric identification replaces passwords everywhere.

Privacy advocates resist, but they’re fighting against convenience. Why carry ID when your face is your passport? Why remember passwords when your fingerprint works everywhere? Why fear cameras when they catch criminals?

Each advancement is sold as improvement, and often it is. Crime drops. Traffic flows smoother. Services become frictionless. The trade seems worth it.

The Integration (2035-2045): Surveillance stops being external cameras and becomes embedded in everything:

Smart Homes: Your home knows your habits, preferences, routines. It adjusts temperature before you’re cold, orders food before you’re hungry, monitors your health constantly. Every room has sensors. Every device listens. You’re never unwatched because your home is watching for you.

Workplace Monitoring: Productivity tracking becomes standard. Your employer knows when you’re working, when you’re distracted, how efficient your every movement is. Bathroom breaks are timed. Keystrokes are logged. AI analyzes your email tone for engagement levels.

Health Surveillance: Wearables become mandated by health insurance. Your heart rate, sleep patterns, exercise levels, stress indicators—all monitored continuously. Miss your fitness goals, your premiums increase. Healthy choices are rewarded. Unhealthy ones are punished.

Financial Transparency: Every transaction is tracked not just for records but for pattern analysis. AI flags “concerning” spending. Banks predict financial troubles before you miss payments. It’s framed as helpful—they want to prevent your failure. But they see everything.

The Creep into Intimacy: By 2045, surveillance has penetrated spaces once considered private:

  • Smart beds monitor your sleep and intimate activities
  • Smart toilets analyze your waste for health insights
  • Voice assistants hear every conversation
  • Always-on cameras in homes for “security”

Privacy within your own home becomes impossible. The justification: if you’re not doing anything wrong, why does it matter?

Can Thoughts Ever Remain Private? (2050–2070)

Phase Two: Neural Interface Data (2050-2070)

The Integration Revolution: The Ascendance changes everything. Neural interfaces don’t just augment cognition—they generate unprecedented data. Your thoughts, emotions, attention patterns, decision-making processes—all logged, analyzed, stored.

What Neural Interfaces Reveal:

  • Attention Tracking: What you focus on, for how long, with what emotional response
  • Emotional States: Real-time mood analysis, stress levels, excitement, fear, arousal
  • Thought Patterns: Not specific thoughts (yet) but cognitive styles, problem-solving approaches
  • Preference Prediction: What you’ll want before you consciously want it
  • Deception Detection: Cognitive signatures when you lie, hide information, or feel guilty
  • Loyalty Indicators: Subconscious responses to corporate symbols, authority figures, system challenges

The Corporate Justification: The Conclaves frame neural data collection as optimization:

  • “We can help you be your best self”
  • “Predictive mental health care prevents crises”
  • “Cognitive enhancement requires monitoring for safety”
  • “Understanding your thought patterns enables better job matching”

And again, these aren’t entirely lies. Neural monitoring does catch mental health issues early. It does improve enhancement safety. It does optimize performance.

The Control Mechanism: But neural data enables unprecedented control:

Loyalty Scores: Your subconscious responses to corporate messaging are analyzed. Do you feel positive associations with your Conclave? Do you experience cognitive dissonance around authority? Your loyalty score updates in real-time based on thought patterns.

Pre-Crime Systems: AI analyzes cognitive markers associated with rule-breaking, dissent, violence. It flags individuals showing “concerning patterns” before any action occurs. Prevention through prediction.

Behavioral Modification: Your interface can “suggest” thoughts that align with productivity, loyalty, compliance. You can’t tell the difference between your thoughts and algorithmic suggestions anymore.

Emotional Regulation: Feeling angry about inequality? Your interface adjusts neurotransmitters to calm you. Feeling rebellious? Suggestions guide you toward acceptance. Your emotions are optimized for system compatibility.

The Underground Response (2060-2070): This is when serious resistance emerges. People begin removing their interfaces—a dangerous, often fatal process. Others learn to “noise” their neural data with random thought patterns. Some develop meditation techniques to hide thoughts in mental static.

But these are tiny minorities. Most people either don’t realize the extent of neural monitoring or have accepted it as the price of enhancement.

Character perspective – The Monitored: Meet David Torres, CliffsTop professional, enhanced since 2055. He’s successful, optimized, integrated. He knows his thoughts are monitored but rationalizes: “If I’m not thinking anything wrong, why does it matter?”

Then one day, during a Conclave meeting about policy changes that will hurt lower-tier workers, he feels a flash of anger. His interface detects it. His loyalty score drops fractionally. He notices managers treating him differently, subtly. His next promotion is passed over.

He didn’t do anything. He didn’t say anything. He just felt something. And that was enough.

Now he carefully regulates even his emotional responses. He’s learned to think “correct” thoughts. He’s optimized himself for the system. He’s successful again.

But sometimes, late at night, he wonders: are his thoughts still his? Or has he become what they wanted him to be?

What Happens When Even Emotion Is Monitored?

Phase Three: Total Information Awareness (2070-2098)

The Perfected Panopticon

What the Conclaves Know About You: By 2098, the surveillance apparatus is complete. Combined neural interface data, biometric tracking, behavioral analysis, and AI prediction create a system that knows you better than you know yourself:

Physical:

  • Location history (every place, every moment, for your entire enhanced life)
  • Health data (every heartbeat, every biochemical state change)
  • Consumption patterns (everything eaten, bought, used)
  • Sleep and biological rhythms
  • Sexual activity and reproductive health
  • Aging markers and life expectancy predictions

Cognitive:

  • Thought patterns and cognitive styles
  • Learning speed and knowledge retention
  • Problem-solving approaches
  • Creative potential and innovation capacity
  • Intellectual interests and curiosities
  • Attention span and focus capability

Emotional:

  • Baseline emotional state and variations
  • Stress responses and triggers
  • Fear, anger, joy, sadness patterns
  • Emotional regulation capacity
  • Relationship attachment styles
  • Psychological vulnerabilities

Social:

  • Communication patterns and social network
  • Influence level and leadership potential
  • Cooperation vs competition tendencies
  • Loyalty to individuals and institutions
  • Social conformity vs independence
  • Tribal affiliations and group identities

Predictive:

  • Future behavior probability models
  • Risk assessment for various outcomes
  • Potential for rule-breaking or dissent
  • Life trajectory predictions
  • Probability of various life events
  • Compatibility for roles, relationships, opportunities

The System Integration: All this data flows to Conclave AI systems that:

  • Predict your needs before you’re aware of them
  • Flag you for opportunities or concerns
  • Optimize your life path for Conclave benefit
  • Detect dissent before it manifests
  • Modify your behavior through interface suggestions
  • Control you so smoothly you don’t notice

What Does Total Surveillance Look Like in 2098?

Life Under Total Surveillance: What does it feel like to live in 2098’s surveillance state?

For the Compliant: Honestly? Pretty good. If you align with the system, surveillance feels like assistance. Your life runs smoothly. Opportunities appear. Problems are solved before they emerge. You feel supported, guided, optimized.

The loss of privacy isn’t felt because you never experience its absence causing harm. You’re not thinking rebellious thoughts, so you’re not being punished. The monitoring is invisible and benevolent.

For the Questioning: Differently. You notice the suggestions that guide you away from certain thoughts. You catch the micro-adjustments to your emotions. You realize you’re self-censoring, not just speech but thought itself.

You develop paranoia: Is this thought mine or suggested? Am I choosing this or being guided? Do I actually believe this or have I been optimized to believe it?

You can’t tell anymore. The line between self and system has dissolved.

For the Resistant: Hell. If you actively resist, the system knows. Your loyalty score plummets. Opportunities vanish. Your access to services becomes “glitchy.” Your interface starts “malfunctioning”—random pain signals, interrupted thoughts, emotional dysregulation.

You’re not arrested. That would be obvious. Instead, your life becomes increasingly difficult until you comply or remove your interface. If you remove it, you lose citizenship, fall to lower tiers or Underground.

Resistance isn’t impossible—it’s just made not worth it.

How Does the Loyalty Score System Control Society?

The Loyalty Score System: Social Credit Perfected

How It Works: Every enhanced citizen has a Loyalty Score—a constantly updating assessment of your value to the Conclaves and your compliance with social order. It determines everything:

Your score is calculated from:

  • Work productivity and efficiency
  • Consumption patterns (buying approved goods, avoiding black markets)
  • Social connections (who you associate with, what their scores are)
  • Emotional stability (regulated emotions score higher)
  • Thought patterns (conformist thinking scores higher)
  • Health behaviors (taking care of Conclave investment in you)
  • Content consumption (approved media vs concerning materials)
  • Physical location (going where you’re supposed to be)

Your score determines:

  • Housing: Higher scores qualify for higher-tier districts
  • Employment: Better jobs require better scores
  • Healthcare: Score affects treatment priority and quality
  • Education: Children’s opportunities depend on parental scores
  • Mobility: Elevator access and travel permissions
  • Services: Everything from restaurant reservations to loan approval
  • Social Status: Displayed to others when you interact

The Behavioral Loop: The genius is that the score system is mostly invisible. You don’t see your exact number. You just experience its effects. Opportunities open or close. Life gets easier or harder. The system trains you to self-police.

Character perspective – The Score Chaser: Meet Jessica Park, ArchWay Pass resident desperately trying to raise her family to BridgeView. She’s obsessed with her loyalty score. She monitors every action for score impact:

  • She forces smiles during frustrating moments (emotional regulation)
  • She consumes only approved media (correct information)
  • She ends friendships with low-score individuals (social optimization)
  • She reports “concerning” conversations to authorities (loyalty demonstration)
  • She volunteers for extra shifts (productivity increase)

Her score rises. She gets promoted. Her family moves to lower BridgeView. She achieved her goal.

But her husband barely recognizes her. Her friends are gone. Her children imitate her performative happiness. She’s successful, elevated, and utterly hollow.

Was it worth it? She tells herself yes. The system says yes. But late at night, monitoring disabled for sleep, she cries for reasons she can’t name.

Can Thinking Become a Crime?

Pre-Crime: When Thinking Becomes Criminal

The Ultimate Control: The most disturbing aspect of 2098’s surveillance isn’t that it monitors actions—it’s that it monitors intentions, predicts future behavior, and intervenes before anything happens.

How Pre-Crime Works: AI systems analyze:

  • Thought patterns associated with rule-breaking
  • Emotional states that precede violence
  • Social connections to known dissidents
  • Content consumption patterns
  • Stress indicators and destabilization markers
  • Historical patterns from millions of enhanced individuals

They predict: “This person has 73% probability of committing workplace sabotage within 30 days.”

The Intervention: You don’t get arrested for thoughts. Instead:

  • Your loyalty score drops, making life harder
  • Your interface “suggests” calming thoughts
  • You’re randomly selected for “stress reduction therapy”
  • Your work assignments change to lower-stress roles
  • Your social connections are subtly disrupted
  • Your behavior is modified before you act

Most people never know they were flagged. The intervention is invisible. The crime never happens. The system works.

The Ethical Horror: You’re punished for something you haven’t done and might never do. You’re controlled based on probability, not action. Your potential for thought-crime is managed through adjustment, not through choice.

Free will becomes statistically irrelevant. If the system predicts you’ll do something, it ensures you don’t, not through prevention but through behavioral modification.

Who Is Punished for Thoughts They Never Act On?

Character perspective – The Almost-Criminal: Meet James Rodriguez, Emerald Fields worker who was angry. Constantly angry. Angry at the wealth above him. Angry at the exploitation. Angry at the system. His neural data showed patterns consistent with individuals who’d committed sabotage.

Pre-crime flagged him. He never knew.

Suddenly his interface started suggesting “helpful thoughts” when he felt angry. His work schedule changed, reducing contact with like-minded frustrated workers. He was assigned to “voluntary” meditation programs. His emotional regulation improved.

Within six months, he wasn’t angry anymore. He accepted his situation. He became a model worker. The system saved him from himself—or so the Conclaves frame it.

But James doesn’t remember who he was before. The anger is gone, but so is something else. Something that made him him. He’s optimized, but he’s not the same person.

Did he commit a crime? No. Did he lose something fundamental? He can’t tell. The modification was too smooth.

Who Still Remembers Privacy — and Why Do They Resist?

The Analog Underground: Resistance Through Absence

Those Who Refuse: Not everyone accepts the surveillance state. Some resist through the most radical act possible in 2098: disconnection.

The Analog Movement: They live without neural interfaces, without smart devices, without digital presence. They communicate face-to-face, write on paper, navigate by memory. They’re deliberately technologically primitive.

Who They Are:

  • Former enhanced individuals who removed interfaces (survivors of dangerous procedures)
  • Those who refused enhancement from the start (increasingly rare)
  • Ideological resisters who value privacy over advancement
  • Artists and philosophers who need unmonitored thought
  • Paranoid survivors who understand what’s been lost

Where They Exist: Primarily in the Underground, where surveillance infrastructure doesn’t reach. Some hide in plain sight in lower tiers, passing as citizens while maintaining analog life.

What They Preserve:

  • The memory of privacy
  • Unmonitored thought and authentic emotion
  • The possibility that humans can exist unseen
  • Alternative ways of living
  • The proof that resistance is possible

Their Challenge: They can’t participate in mainstream society. No interface means no good employment, no access to upper tiers, limited services, constant suspicion. They trade prosperity for privacy, comfort for autonomy, ease for freedom.

What Does It Mean to Live Unseen?

Character perspective – The Analog Archivist: Meet Zara (from our earlier Underground profile), who’s built an analog library in the deep Underground. Physical books, handwritten journals, unplugged computers with encrypted data. She collects pre-surveillance knowledge, preserves privacy concepts, teaches younger generations what was lost.

She tells newcomers to the Underground: “Up there, they know everything about you. Down here, you can still have secrets. Not because we’re hidden—they know we’re here. But because monitoring us isn’t profitable enough. We’re beneath their attention. That’s our freedom.”

She’s sacrificed everything for privacy most people don’t want. She lives in darkness, poverty, danger. But when she thinks, she knows the thoughts are hers.

Is that worth it? She believes so. Most people above would think she’s insane.

Can Freedom Exist Under Total Surveillance?

The Philosophical Question: This is the heart of Newdawn’s surveillance exploration: Can you be free if every action, thought, and emotion is known and can be modified?

The Surveillance State Argues: Yes

  • You’re free to make choices within the system
  • Monitoring enables better choices, not fewer
  • Optimization is liberation from suboptimal decisions
  • Privacy wasn’t freedom—it was loneliness
  • Being seen completely is being known completely, which is intimacy

The Resistance Argues: No

  • Choice under observation isn’t free choice
  • Self-censorship is self-imprisonment
  • Optimized behavior isn’t authentic behavior
  • Privacy enabled self-discovery and growth
  • Being seen completely is being controlled completely

The Uncomfortable Reality: Most people in 2098 don’t care. They never experienced true privacy, so they don’t miss it. The abstract concept of freedom matters less than concrete comfort. Surveillance society works, by most measurable metrics.

Crime is down. Efficiency is up. Life expectancy extended. Happiness (as measured by neural data) is optimized. The system delivers what it promises.

What it takes is harder to measure: potential, spontaneity, privacy, authentic emotion, unobserved thought, the capacity for surprise, the space for becoming someone unexpected.

These losses aren’t quantifiable. Which makes them easy to dismiss.

Why Does This Matter in 2025?

We’re building Newdawn’s surveillance state right now:

Neural Interfaces: Neuralink and competitors are developing brain-computer interfaces. The initial medical applications will expand. The question isn’t whether these will monitor thoughts but how we’ll govern that monitoring.

Data Collection: We’ve already normalized constant surveillance through smartphones, smart homes, wearables. We trade privacy for convenience thousands of times daily. Each trade seems small. Together they’re total.

AI Analysis: We’re building AI systems that predict behavior, flag concerning patterns, optimize outcomes. The tools for pre-crime exist. We just call them “risk assessment algorithms.”

Social Credit: China’s social credit system is the prototype. Corporate equivalents exist—Uber ratings, credit scores, background checks, productivity monitoring. We’re creating the infrastructure for loyalty scores.

Behavioral Modification: Platforms already modify behavior through interface design—infinite scroll, notification timing, algorithm curation. Neural interfaces will make this direct rather than mediated.

The Normalization: Each step seems reasonable. Medical necessity. Public safety. User convenience. Economic efficiency. None of them feel like surrendering freedom because freedom’s erosion is gradual.

What Questions Aren’t We Asking About Our Data?

The Questions We Should Be Asking

If we build these systems, can we control them? Neural interface companies will own your thought data. What prevents them from using it however they want? What prevents government access? What prevents leaks or hacks?

Is informed consent possible? Can you consent to neural monitoring when you don’t understand what will be done with the data? When opting out means losing competitive advantage, employment, citizenship?

Can we unwind this? Once surveillance infrastructure exists, it never disappears. Security systems become control systems. We can’t uninvent this technology. So what safeguards prevent abuse?

Who decides what’s concerning? Pre-crime systems require defining deviance. Who decides what thought patterns are concerning? What if dissent becomes pathologized? What if resistance is treated as mental illness?

What happens to human development? Privacy enabled self-discovery, experimentation, mistakes, growth. If all behavior is optimized from birth, do humans still develop authentic selves? Or do we become what the algorithms designed?

Where Can You Explore the World of Newdawn 2098?

What’s the Ultimate Lesson of Surveillance?

Explore the Surveillance State

Surveillance is the invisible force controlling Newdawn 2098. Discover characters navigating this:

  • The Monitored: Those whose success depends on surveillance acceptance
  • The Analog Resistance: Those who choose privacy over prosperity
  • The Score Chasers: Those optimizing life for the system
  • The Pre-Crime Flagged: Those punished for thoughts, not actions
  • The Archivists: Those preserving what privacy meant

This is surveillance fiction that doesn’t warn about the future—it shows what we’re already building. Character-driven stories exploring what it means to be seen completely, to optimize yourself for monitoring, to resist when resistance seems impossible.

Enter The Gateway. Explore the surveillance systems. Understand the control mechanisms.

Because recognizing what we’re building is the first step to building it differently.

Or building it with eyes open.

Related Lore:

  • Neural Interface Data: What the Conclaves Know
  • The Loyalty Score System: How Citizens Are Ranked
  • The Analog Underground: Life Without Surveillance
  • Pre-Crime Systems: Punishing Future Actions

Continue Reading:

  • When Corporations Became Governments: The Conclave Control System
  • AI Didn’t Destroy Us—It Transformed Us: The Ascendance and Data
  • The Vertical Society: How Surveillance Enforces the Hierarchy
  • Identity in the Age of Modification: Who Are You When You’re Always Seen?