By John & Nisha Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
December 17, 2025
For generations, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" has been treated as a playful reminder to children to be good because someone, somewhere, is watching.
Today, it reads less like a joke and more like a warning.
The Surveillance State is making a naughty list, and we're all on it.
Long before Santa's elves start loading his sleigh with toys for good girls and boys, the government's surveillance apparatus is already at work-logging your movements, monitoring your messages, tracking your purchases, scanning your face, recording your license plate, and feeding it all into algorithmic systems designed to determine whether you belong on a government watchlist.