Movies, Books & Podcasts About Surveillance

 Last updated on February 25, 2026

We've collected movies, books, and podcasts that can help provide an understanding of state surveillance, infiltration, movement security, and lessons about how we might protect ourselves.

If you want to suggest any additions, please use the contact form.

Each section is sorted roughly by how important and relevant we believe each piece of media is.

State surveillance

Mass surveillance

  • 🎥 Citizenfour (2014) - Documentary of Edward Snowden's whistleblower leaks about NSA surveillance post-9/11 that went way beyond what the public was aware of.
  • 🎥 Snowden (2016) - Dramatization of the same story about Edward Snowden's leaks.
  • 📕 Permanent Record by Edward Snowden (2019) - His autobiography.
  • 📕 Privacy's Defender by Cindy Cohn (EFF) (2026) - Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Founation (EFF). This book covers the big fights that EFF has taken on around encryption, NSA spying, and national security letters gag orders.
  • 🎥 The Great Hack (2019) - About the Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal and the data from Facebook users that was used to influence the 2016 election. Though not direct state surveillance, it is a good example of corporate surveillance and how it has been used in politics.

COINTELPRO & other social movement surveillance

  • 🎥 Malcolm X (1992) - Dramatizations showing how Malcolm X was under constant FBI surveillance, with wiretaps, infiltrators, and agents documenting his every move. Depicts how multiple agencies coordinated surveillance efforts against Black leaders and the psychological toll of knowing you're always being watched.
  • 🎥 MLK/FBI (2020) - Documentary about surveillance against MLK in an attempt to discredit and disrupt his work.
  • 🎥 1971 (2014) - Documentary about the anti-war activists who accidentally discovered the FBI's files about COINTELPRO, leaked them to the press, and were never identified by the FBI.
  • 🎥 The Feeling of Being Watched (2018) - Documentary about a muslim community outside of Chicago under intense FBI surveillance pre-9/11.
  • 🎥 COINTELPRO 101 (2010) - Summary of the FBI's COINTELPRO surveillance program. Not very well-made but contains interesting information.

Spyware and state hacking

  • 🔉 Shoot The Messenger (2023) - Deep dive into Pegasus spyware and how military-grade surveillance tech is deployed against journalists and activists worldwide.
  • 📕 Chasing Shadows (2025) - A deep dive about spyware (including Pegasus) from the founder and director of Citizen Lab.
  • 🎥 Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus (2023) - Covers the journalists who collaborated for over a year to expose the human rights violations facilitated by NSO Group's Pegasus Spyware.
  • 🎥 Surveilled (2024) - Documentary about Pegasus spyware being used to target activists, journalists, and politicians. It has an annoying narrative style, but the information is useful.
  • 🎥 Zero Days (2016) - Documentary about Stuxnet and state cyber warfare capabilities. This malware is different than the spyware that would be used against social movements, but this film helps show the state's level of sophistication.

Social movement infiltration & informants

The FBI has a long history of infiltrating leftist social movements to disrupt and discredit them. Some of the items below are about infiltrating leftist groups, and some are about infiltrating far-right groups because those stories have things to tell us about our movement security.

  • 🎥 Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) - Story of a paid FBI informant who infiltrated the Chicago Black Panther Party.
  • 🔉 Alphabet Boys Season 1: Trojan Hearse (2023) - Series about a paid FBI informant who infiltrated the Denver Black Lives Matter chapter during the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.
  • 🎥 Informant (2012) - Documentary about Brandon Darby, an activist turned FBI informant and agent provocateur who worked in New Orleans post-Katrina and then entrapped two young activists and got them put in prison. Good lessons about flagging problematic behavior in organizing spaces. We can't know who is an informant but we can require folks uphold certain standards of behavior. Watch with library card.
  • 🎥 If a Tree Falls (2011) - Documentary about the Earth Liberation Front in the 1990s and Daniel McGowan's criminal case for property destruction. Shows multiple activists he worked with who chose to cooperate with the state and testify against him in exchange for plea deals.
  • 🎥 Eric & 'Anna' (2015) - Short film about Eric McDavid and the FBI informant 'Anna' who infiltrated his environmental activist group, pushed them toward illegal actions, and helped send him to prison for 20 years.
  • 🎥 You Are Being Watched (2016) - Independent anarchist documentary with real-world stories of movements infiltrated by informants and undercover police.
  • 🔉 SLAPP'd podcast (2025) - About surveillance, infiltration and the collaboration between police and private security at the Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
  • 🎥 The Informant: Fear and Faith in the Heartland (2021) - Documentary about a man who infiltrated a white supremacist group in Kansas to stop a bomb plot against a Muslim community. You can also check out 🔉 Truth and Lies: The Informant which is a podcast version of the same story.
  • 🎥 Imperium (2016) - Movie about an undercover FBI agent who infiltrates a white supremacist group. Based on a true story.
  • 🎥 Undercover: Exposing the Far Right (2024) - Movie detailing how a UK group, Hope Not Hate, has been infiltrating far-right groups for decades to expose their plans. Interesting in that it is a civilian organization.
  • 🎥 The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020 movie) and 🎥 Chicago 10 (2007 documentary) - Both about the trial of the leaders behind the massive protests at the 1968 DNC. Includes the story of the undercover FBI agents who infiltrated their ranks.
  • 🎥 Riotsville, U.S.A. (2022) - Archival footage of training the US military did for police departments in response to the protests against Vietnam. Prelude to the repression at the 1968 DNC.
  • 📝 The Militia and the Mole (2025) - Long-form article from ProPublica about an infilitrator who acted alone to infiltrate the AP3 right-wing militia.

Social movement repression

  • 🎥 To Kill a War Machine (2025) - Documentary about the group Palestine Action in the UK and their work to stop the genocide in Gaza before they were labeled a terrorist group. Good example of a strategic choice NOT to prioritize privacy and anonymity in your activism. (It's hard to find online because the group chose to stop streaming it, but you can watch it here.)

Fiction

  • 📕 Little Brother trilogy (2008-2020) - Young adult novels exploring how social movements can resist state surveillance. First two books are fun, but the third book offers great lessons for how movements can orient to cybersecurity.
  • 🎥 Lives of Others (2006; German) - Classic movie about East German Stasi, their massive surveillance regime, and how surveillance can tear apart relationships and stifle resistance.
  • 📕🎥 1984 - Book and movie about living under constant surveillance as a part of an entire system of oppression.
  • 🎥 The Matrix (1999) - Offers metaphors for surveillance capitalism
  • 🎥 V for Vendetta (2005) - Mass surveillance enabling fascist control. Explores anonymity as a part of resistance.
  • 📺 Mr. Robot (2015-2019) - Offers (fairly technically accurate) portrayal of hacking, cybersecurity, operational security, and surveillance evasion.
  • 📺 The Plot Against America (2020) - Alternate history where fascism comes to America in the 1940s and the US aligns itself with the Nazis. Shows how surveillance infrastructure targets minority communities first, using neighborhood informant networks and government "assimilation" programs.
  • 📺 Years and Years (2019) - TV series following a family through 15 years of near-future Britain, showing incremental surveillance normalization through biometric banking, refugee tracking chips, and social credit systems. Demonstrates how authoritarianism arrives through technological convenience.
  • 📺 Severance (2022-present) - TV series demonstrating how surveillance tech can fragment resistance by preventing workers from organizing or even understanding their full context.
  • 🎥 Minority Report (2002) - Predictive policing and pre-crime surveillance, increasingly relevant.
  • 🎥 Gattaca (1997) - Genetic surveillance, identity fraud as resistance to biological determinism.
  • 📺 The Man in the High Castle (2015-2019) - TV series showing how totalitarian surveillance operates. Particularly relevant for its portrayal of resistance networks operating under total surveillance states.

Technical

  • 📕 Defend Dissent (2021) - A practical guide to cryptography and digital security for activists, explaining how encryption protects civil liberties in the age of mass surveillance. Combines technical knowledge with real stories from protest movements.

Government cover-ups, leaks, and whistleblowers

While not directly about social movement surveillance, these films give us a glimpse into government abuses of power and cover-ups that can offer lessons to social movements.