This Gen Z-created tool helps fight digital surveillance

I DM my friends on Instagram. I ride the subway everyday. I am a journalist. Because of these simple matters of fact, I find myself the unwitting target of a sweeping surveillance network that knows who I am, what I say, and how I spend my time, online and off. And I'm pretty careful about what Big Tech gets out of me. 

Still, our daily habits are a treasure trove of surveillance information: The apps we use; public spaces riddled with facial recognition tech; AI assistants that know who we are and what we like; the places we shop, the smartwatches we wear, the phone you're probably reading this article on. Even the most careful are still leaking data out into the world, but how do we spot where we are particularly vulnerable, and what should we do to feel more secure?

A new campaign by youth digital advocacy organization Gen Z For Change hopes to offer a solution. Today, the group launches "Eyes on AI" — a designated landing page offering a first-of-its-kind surveillance assessment tool that lets you see exactly how the government and its Big Tech allies are collecting your data. 

Cheyenne Hunt, executive director of Gen Z For Change, told Mashable that the current political administration has presented an alarming surveillance threat to youth organizing, including to the group's leaders, many of whom are young people of color who have had negative interactions with government entities, like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And as digital organizers, they are navigating the irony of needing to use the very tools, like social media, that threaten their own safety.

"We've had to very quickly become keenly aware of the fact that we are being watched in a really intense and new way by the government and their partners and Big Tech," said Hunt. "And that collusion is out in the open." 

But everyone, not just organizers or journalists, is vulnerable, said Hunt. With Eyes on AI, individuals of all ilks are given the tools to assess their own risk. "Warrantless surveillance is entirely legal and artificial intelligence is powering it," the website informs visitors. "AI-powered surveillance tools are reading your data, learning your routine, and creating a profile of you to eat away at your privacy." 

The Eyes on AI assessment tool is designed to mimic the kinds of eerily perceptive games and memes that often go viral online, its makers tell Mashable, like horoscope mood boards, AI's that judge your Spotify stats, or the viral Rice Purity Test. Only in this case, that sense of knowing isn't played off as something fun and silly — its stakes are exceptionally high. "Your future is for sale," the campaign reminds viewers. 

"We have normalized surveillance and data collection, which is not normal and actually very, very terrifying," said Dominique Demetz, Gen Z For Change creative director and one of the coders of the project. Demetz explained that the Eyes on AI tool, which feels almost like being inducted (and subsequently rejected) from a top secret spy agency, is intended to unsettle you.

Immediately after clicking through, the "agent" on the other end knows your IP address. And you don't have to give it any other personal information for it to understand how you are being surveilled. All it needs to know is what apps you use, how you pay for groceries, if you get spam emails often, or if you're a current college student (it doesn't even need to know where you go to school).

That's intentional, explained Hana Memon, Gen Z For Change digital strategist, organizer, and Eyes on AI creator. In keeping with its own principals, the resource doesn't ask the user to supply any personally identifiable information that could be scraped and used by an outside party, such as race or immigration status, but it can still figure out a lot about you and your digital hygiene.

"The goal is to show how every part of your life, from how you travel, what religious apps you use, your healthcare provider, is all connected in a web of surveillance," Memon said.

The tool doesn't save any user inputs or reports. Everything is done locally and run in JavaScript, and Gen Z For Change is offering it up to the public on GitHub.

Eyes on AI pulls information from digital privacy watchdogs, like Surveillance Watch's interactive databases, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Atlas of Surveillance, and Tech Equity's labor resources, including explainers on bossware, or tech used to spy on employees. The tool was built over the course of several months, by a team of a little more than a dozen Gen Z organizers, coders, and activists.

Eyes on AI cleverly walks users through the numerous ways their lives are being recorded and sold to surveillance apparatuses. Then, they are given the option to download a full report, complete with recommendations to curb personal data collection, resources about surveillance threats, and a glossary of some of the top surveillance actors who may be dealing in their data, including ICE and other government entities. Your personalized threats are categorized by the tech itself, like if you're at risk due to automated license plate readers (ALPRs) or predictive policing. 

Gen Z For Change has evolved a lot since its initial conception in 2020 as a youth-led, social media-focused, movement builder. The organization sees strategic coding as a weapon against political and tech oligarchies that have unabashedly wielded their influence to amass power under what Hunt referred to as "Trump 2.0." The mass acceleration of AI, she said, has only made it worse. 

Gen Z For Change has been behind many of the viral tools used by online organizers. Last year, they launched a resource to help pressure hotels to refuse boarding ICE agents. The group's team and affiliated creator network were working behind the scenes to galvanize votes for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani. Previous coding campaigns include the Gen Z for Palestine resource hub, immigration resource toolkit F.I.G.H.T,, and abortion organizing tool S.A.F.E.R.

"Made with ❤️ by gen-z for change's meddling kids," the site reads.

On the ground, the organization is prepping for a massive activation that will see their creator network — a group of politically-connected creators with a collective 500 million followers — warning their viewers and loved ones about surveillance capitalism. Posters and billboards will be emblazoned across major cities. A massive 1984-style warning will soon be projected on the side of the Brooklyn Bridge, featuring Demetz's own leering eyeball. It'll be matched by a policy push at the federal level, too. The country still has no comprehensive privacy regulation on the books.

Lending their time — and retinal data — to the project, the team is implementing their own Eyes on AI recommendations to keep their work protected, including deferring to encrypted messaging platforms, sweeping their information from data brokers, and paying careful attention to how they move through public spaces.

"Young people have been used as lab rats by these companies," said Hunt. Gen Z For Changes wants to help the rats fight back.