Studies suggest that even "more "omniscient" technology is likely to be developed" in the near future (Lyon, 2002). Cookies were perhaps the first form of internet surveillance, developed in 1994 as a means for websites to track visitors logging in so they could provide more optimal service (Lyon, 2002). Now cookies have transformed the shape of communication and have further advanced the ability of criminals to survey individual user functions on the web.

The web is many things, an environment for "learning, conversing, coordinating and trading" but also "a means of trapping the unwary, of constraining the choices of the unsuspecting" (Lyon, 2002). From cookies web bugs developed, and increasingly other surveillance methods pop up daily. According to Lyons (2002) the web might be considered the "World Wide Web of Surveillance" (p. 345).

Lyons (2002) further defines surveillance as "processing personal data for the purposes of management and influence" and...
[ View Full Essay]