# Surveillance Capability Surveillance capability is the technical capacity to observe, collect, correlate, retain, analyze, or act on information about a person, device, account, network, or environment. ## Possible layers Capability may reside in endpoint software, accessibility services, identity providers, carrier infrastructure, network equipment, cloud telemetry, physical sensors, data brokers, or institutional legal process. ## Archival rule Capability is not use; use is not unauthorized use; unauthorized use is not actor attribution. Each proposition requires its own evidence and authorization analysis. ## Relationships [[Surveillance Architecture]] · [[Observability Asymmetry]] · [[Signals Intelligence]] · [[Authorization Gap]].