Overt physical surveillance is the direct observation of people or activities when the surveillance operators intend to be, or do not mind being, detected by their targets. This is common practice at demonstrations and gatherings to identify participants, whether to facilitate network mapping or to incriminate individuals for actions carried out during the demonstration.
Overt physical surveillance of just a few individuals is rare, and is often intended more to deter illegal activity by creating paranoia than to incriminate.
Used in tactics: Incrimination
Mitigations
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Anonymous dress | By dressing anonymously at a demonstration or other event, you can prevent overt surveillance efforts from identifying you. |
Used in repressive operations
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| Mauvaises intentions | During a demonstration, the investigators took 180 photographs from which they obtained 200 portraits of the demonstrators, including ten people they were able to identify[1]. |