Surveillance per se is about monitoring of behavior. However, the introduction of several advances in technology has brought to the fore its many other aspects, such as counter surveillance and inverse surveillance. Counter surveillance is the practice of avoiding surveillance or making surveillance difficult.

Before the advent of computer networks, it was basically about avoiding agents and communicating secretly. Counter surveillance has grown in scope and complexity due to the increasing prevalence of electronic security systems and
computer bases. The situation has grown even more complex due to the existence of the Internet. These developments led to counter surveillance to involve everything from knowing how to delete a file on a computer to avoid becoming the target of direct advertising agencies. Inverse surveillance, on the other hand, is the practice of reversalism on surveillance as in ordinary people performing surveillance works on people who usually does it such as the police. This has been made possible through the wide availability of gadgets that have surveillance properties such as cell phones.

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