surveillance vs. monitoring

On March 30, 2010, I wrote a post about the difference between government control and government regulation. Today's post is along the same line. Although both surveillance and monitoring can be translated as 감시 in Korean, they are used in very different contexts in English.

Surveillance means a watch kept over a person/group, especially those who are under suspicion, such as a suspect or prisoner. Take a look at the following example:

• Congressional Republicans and Democrats alike demanded answers from the Bush administration on Thursday about a report that the National Security Agency had collected records of millions of domestic phone calls, even as President Bush assured Americans that their privacy is "fiercely protected." ... Fifty-two members of Congress asked the president to name a special counsel to investigate the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance programs (New York Times, May 12, 2006)

Monitoring means overseeing/regulating/observing/detecting something by checking it continually and keeping track of it. Take a look at the following:

• Autonomy, the UK search specialist, has launched a product that monitors what is being said on internet social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Autonomy argues that as social media come to affect more businesses, they need to spot potentially compromising blog posts, tweets or online comments. (Financial Times, June 16, 2010)
• Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told survivors in the central Indian city that he will head a panel set up to monitor the government's effort to decontaminate the site, which activists say has polluted the groundwater in the neighborhood and led to chronic ailments (Washington Post, July 9, 2010)
  

But note that surveillance in the field of public health may have nothing to do with suspicion. It means a type of observational study that involves continuous monitoring of disease occurrence within a population.

• Surveillance is systematic ongoing collection, collation and analysis of data and the timely dissemination of information to those who need to know so that action can be taken. Tobacco control surveillance includes prevalence of tobacco use, its health and economic consequences, its socio-cultural determinants and tobacco control policy responses and tobacco industry activities. (Excerpt from WHO, Tobacco Free Initiative)