Why Human Informants Still Matter in the Age of AI Surveillance The most frightening thing about surveillance is not always the camera on the wall or the intelligence officer behind a desk. Sometimes it is the colleague who repeats your private joke, the neighbour who watches who visits your home, or the friend who suddenly asks too many careful questions. Recent research on Iran has examined the everyday culture of informing, known in Persian as Zirabzani or Mokhberi. However, this phenomenon is not uniquely Iranian. Many political systems, especially authoritarian ones, survive not only by watching citizens from above but also by encouraging citizens to watch one another. Although every society has its own language for those who report on others, the phenomenon is remarkably familiar across cultures. In Iran, they are known as Zirabzan. Across much of the Arab world, the term Mukhbir immediately evokes the image of a state informant. In Türkiye, people speak of an İspiyoncu, while in Russia the deeply pejorative Stukach recalls both Soviet-era denunciations and contemporary political informing. In China, gàomìzhě (告密者) and gàomì (告密) refer to secret informers and the act of informing itself, terms shaped by decades of political campaigns and continuing systems of social monitoring. The names differ, but they all point to the same underlying social reality: ordinary citizens who become intermediaries between society and the state. This is the part of surveillance we often miss. Public debate is now dominated by artificial intelligence, facial recognition and digital monitoring. These technologies matter. But they work best when they are combined with something older and more intimate: fear inside society itself. Informant cultures emerge when people begin to believe that ordinary relationships are politically risky. A conversation at work, a comment in class, a joke at dinner, or a post on