You’ve probably heard the phrase a thousand times in movies or read it on a protest sign. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" It’s Latin. It’s old. Specifically, it’s from the Roman poet Juvenal, who was actually complaining about marital infidelity, not government overreach. Funny how meanings drift over two thousand years. Today, when we ask who watches the watchers, we aren't talking about unfaithful spouses. We are talking about the massive, often invisible systems of power—police departments, intelligence agencies, tech giants, and even the algorithms that decide if you get a loan or a job.
The truth? It’s a mess.
We like to imagine there’s a secret room somewhere with a "super-overseer" keeping everyone honest. There isn't. Instead, we have a chaotic patchwork of committees, whistleblowers, and frantic Twitter threads. It's a game of cat and mouse where the mouse sometimes has a law degree and the cat has a billion-dollar surveillance budget.
The Myth of the Perfect Oversight Committee
Governments love a good committee. Whenever a scandal breaks—like the Edward Snowden leaks or the more recent revelations about "Project Pegasus"—the immediate reaction is to form a task force. In the United States, we have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). People call it the "FISA Court." It was supposed to be the ultimate answer to the question of who watches the watchers in the world of spying.
But there’s a glaring problem. For a long time, the FISA court only heard one side of the story: the government's. It was a closed-door affair. If the FBI wanted a warrant to spy on someone, they asked the judge, and because there was no defense lawyer there to argue back, the judge almost always said yes. Between 1979 and 2012, the court rejected only 11 out of nearly 34,000 requests. That’s not oversight; that’s a rubber stamp.
Things shifted a bit after the USA FREEDOM Act in 2015, which introduced "amici curiae"—basically outside experts who can occasionally jump in to argue for civil liberties. But honestly, it's still a very lopsided fight. When the "watchers" have classified information that the "overseers" aren't even allowed to see, the whole system starts to feel like a performance.
When the Watchers are Lines of Code
We’ve moved past the era where the only people we had to worry about were guys in trench coats. Now, the watchers are algorithms.
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Think about predictive policing. Software like PredPol (now Geolitica) or various "risk assessment" tools used in bail hearings are designed to be objective. That’s the pitch, anyway. But these tools are trained on historical data. If a neighborhood was over-policed in the 1990s, the algorithm "learns" that this neighborhood is a crime hotspot and sends more police there today. It’s a feedback loop.
So, who watches the watchers when the watcher is a black-box AI?
Groups like the Algorithmic Justice League, founded by Joy Buolamwini, have been doing the heavy lifting here. They showed that facial recognition software from major companies like Amazon and Microsoft had much higher error rates for people with darker skin tones. This wasn't a government committee finding this out; it was a group of researchers and activists who refused to take the tech at face value.
The Role of the Rogue Insider
If you look at the last twenty years of history, the most effective oversight hasn't come from official channels. It’s come from people breaking the rules.
- Chelsea Manning: Leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, exposing the reality of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
- Frances Haugen: The Facebook whistleblower who showed the world that the company knew Instagram was harmful to teen girls' mental health but prioritized growth anyway.
- Daniel Ellsberg: The grandfather of the modern whistleblower, who leaked the Pentagon Papers and proved the government was lying about the Vietnam War.
These people are the "emergency brake" on the system. They are the answer to who watches the watchers when every legal and official avenue has failed. But it’s a high-stakes game. Whistleblowers often end up in prison or exile. The system is designed to protect its secrets, and when an individual pierces that veil, the system bites back. Hard.
Why "Public Transparency" is Often a Trap
You'll hear politicians talk about "transparency" like it's a magic wand. They’ll release a 500-page report with 400 pages blacked out with redaction ink. That's "transparency" in name only.
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Real oversight requires adversarial tension. You need people whose entire job is to be a pain in the neck for the people in power. In the UK, you have the Investigatory Powers Commissioner's Office (IPCO). In the US, we have Inspectors General (IGs).
Inspectors General are interesting. They sit inside agencies—like the DOJ or the CIA—but they are supposed to be independent. When an IG is doing their job well, the agency heads usually hate them. During the late 2010s and early 2020s, we saw a massive tug-of-war over these positions. When IGs get fired for finding things the administration doesn't like, we realize how fragile our oversight really is. It’s not a law of nature; it’s a choice.
The Fourth Estate is Fraying
We used to say the media was the ultimate watcher. The "Fourth Estate."
But the business model for local journalism has basically collapsed. While the New York Times or the Washington Post can still afford to spend two years investigating a single story, your local city council or police department might not have a single reporter covering their meetings anymore.
When local newspapers die, corruption goes up. Studies have shown that municipal borrowing costs even rise because investors realize there’s nobody left to watch how the money is spent. We’ve outsourced the job of who watches the watchers to a group of people—journalists—who are currently being laid off in record numbers. That’s a terrifying thought.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Accountability
So, is it all hopeless? No. But the old ways of watching aren't working.
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We are seeing the rise of "open-source intelligence" or OSINT. Think of groups like Bellingcat. They use satellite imagery, social media posts, and public records to track war crimes or government lies in real-time. They aren't waiting for a subpoena. They are using the internet’s own tools to turn the cameras back on the people in power.
This is the new frontier. It’s decentralized. It’s messy. It’s sometimes wrong. But it’s a form of oversight that doesn't ask for permission.
What You Can Actually Do
Most people feel powerless when they think about systemic oversight. You aren't going to audit the NSA tomorrow. But the question of who watches the watchers starts at a much smaller level.
- Support Local News: If you can afford one subscription, make it your local paper. They are the ones watching the people who actually affect your daily life—your mayor, your sheriff, your school board.
- Encourage "Sunshine Laws": Every state has Freedom of Information acts. Use them. Or support organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) or the ACLU who spend their entire budgets suing the government to make them show their work.
- Data Privacy as Resistance: The watchers need your data to function. Using encrypted messaging (like Signal) or privacy-focused browsers isn't just about hiding; it’s about raising the "cost" of surveillance. When it’s harder to watch everyone, the watchers have to be more selective and accountable.
- Demand Algorithmic Audits: If your local government wants to use AI for hiring or policing, ask if that software has been audited by a third party for bias. If they say it's "proprietary," that's code for "none of your business." Make it your business.
The phrase "who watches the watchers" isn't a question with a single answer. It's a permanent struggle. The moment we think we've solved it is the moment the watchers have won. Oversight isn't a department; it's an active, daily friction. It's the refusal to be a passive subject and the insistence on being a noisy citizen. Keep making noise.
Next Steps for the Curious:
- Research your state’s specific FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) guidelines to see how you can request public records from local agencies.
- Follow the work of the Brennan Center for Justice for deep dives into how surveillance laws are changing in real-time.
- Check out the National Security Archive at GWU; they specialize in declassifying the secrets the "watchers" tried to keep buried for decades.