page_title: Surveillance
section_title: Identification and credentials
hierarchical_section_title: Surveillance / Methods / Identification and credentials
caption_attribution_description: 2015 Social Security card featuring name Jane Carole Doe
context_page_description: Surveillance is the monitoring of behavior, activities, or information for the purpose of information gathering, influencing, managing or directing. This can include observation from a distance by means of electronic equipment, such as closed-circuit television, or interception of electronically transmitted information, such as Internet traffic. It can also include simple technical methods, such as human intelligence gathering and postal interception.
  Synonym: Observation.
  Surveillance is used by governments for intelligence gathering, prevention of crime, the protection of a process, person, group or object, or the investigation of crime. It is also used by criminal organizations to plan and commit crimes, and by businesses to gather intelligence on their competitors, suppliers or customers. Religious organisations charged with detecting heresy and heterodoxy may also carry out surveillance.Auditors carry out a form of surveillance.
  Surveillance can be used by governments to unjustifiably violate people's privacy and is often criticized by civil liberties activists.
context_section_description: One of the simplest forms of identification is the carrying of credentials. Some nations have an identity card system to aid identification, whilst others are considering it but face public opposition. Other documents, such as passports, driver's licenses, library cards, banking or credit cards are also used to verify identity.
  If the form of the identity card is "machine-readable", usually using an encoded magnetic stripe or identification number (such as a Social Security number), it corroborates the subject's identifying data. In this case it may create an electronic trail when it is checked and scanned, which can be used in profiling, as mentioned above.
caption: A card containing an identification number
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