Britain’s transformation into a high-tech surveillance state is often portrayed as a product of the digital age, whereas in actuality, it represents the continuation of a much older, darker tradition. Long before CCTV cameras, facial recognition software, and mass data collection, the British Empire had already perfected the art of watching, recording, and controlling occupied populations across its vast colonial holdings. Surveillance has always been at the heart of their colonial tactic, a system designed to gather information and impose authoritative and hierarchical systems on colonised peoples, fuelling division and neutralising dissent. What has shifted in recent years is the proliferation of privately developed technologies and the state’s increasing dependence on digital systems, collectively ushering in an intensified, almost hypercharged era of state surveillance. Since the early 21st century, the British government has advanced their counter-terrorism policies under the notion of national security, justifying the widespread deployment of high-tech weaponry and surveillance tools under the pretext that such measures will ‘protect’ us. This narrative of protection, alongside unprecedented technological and digital advancement, has enabled the state to expand and continue the legacy of the same mechanisms of social control that the British Empire’s domination always employed.

Following centuries of development and refinement in Ireland, their oldest colony, the same control tactics were subsequently perfected and implemented elsewhere as a means of domination. Their colonial rule in India during the 18th and 19th centuries relied heavily on systematic data collection for taxation, governance, and social control. Following the 1858 rebellion against the East India Company, British authorities intensified these efforts with new population classifications, reinforcing their long-established ‘divide and rule’ strategy. By codifying and weaponising the division of India’s religious communities and social classes, the British consolidated their authority through a surveillance apparatus that was administrative, ideological, and deeply intrusive. These early practices illustrate that the technologies underpinning today’s surveillance society have deep-rooted colonial foundations. This model of control expanded across further occupied territories, notably in Palestine, where British Mandate rulers built directly on surveillance techniques first refined in Ireland and India. After WWI, and particularly during the suppression of the Arab Revolt in the 1930s, Britain introduced ID cards, security fences, watchtowers, permit systems, and checkpoints, an interlocking regime designed to monitor movement, categorise populations, and suppress resistance. Unsurprisingly, these highly repressive security forces were publicly justified as necessary for safety measures and protection.

The UK’s recent use of surveillance as a tool of domination has become more technologically advanced and sophisticated. Since 2007, British military operations in Afghanistan have relied on unpiloted drones and similar aerial technologies, which have also been deployed in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. These operations allow entire populations across vast territories to be monitored continuously, while enabling lethal strikes to be carried out remotely without ground troops present. Such practices reveal a stark continuity. Britain’s adoption of high-tech surveillance in contemporary warfare is a mere continuation of its historic imperial nature, representing the digital escalation of long-standing colonial methods. Recognising this continuity underscores a deeper point: modern British surveillance is not merely a response to crime and security threats, but a representation of an entrenched imperial logic that normalises constant observation, concentrates state power, and renders entire populations governable through fear and technological supremacy.