With the rise of modern technologies, the scope and scale of government surveillance has exploded. The use of digital communication has made communication more efficient, but also much more vulnerable. Governments, meanwhile, are increasing their capacity to exploit these vulnerabilities, and companies, their ability to thwart them. Both the PATRIOT act and the Snowden disclosures pushed the issue to the front of the national conversation. Today, the legal and policy debate—over what kind of surveillance tools are acceptable, against whom, and with with whose authorization—continues in full force.
Latest in Surveillance
A surprise Justice Department filing in a case charging Huawei with bank fraud and sanctions avoidance provides a rare glimpse into the larger question of Huawei’s relationship to China’s intelligence services.
The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice has released a report on the Drug Enforcement Agency's use of administrative subpoenas for bulk data collection and exploitation, without comprehensive legal review, in drug investigations involving Americans. The full report is available here and below.
News reports indicate that the NSA is considering shutting down the program. Due to changes in technology and threats, Section 215 may have become increasingly less useful.
The USA Freedom Act was supposed to preserve the core of the NSA’s telephone metadata contact-chaining program. Has it doomed it instead?
The security community should its time and talents making the digital world safer rather than demolishing what trust and security still remain in our technology, our devices, and our infrastructure.
GCHQ officials outline how to enable the majority of the necessary lawful access without undermining the values we all hold dear.
Over the next few days, a series of essays on Lawfare will capture some of the views presented at the Crypto 2018 Workshop on Encryption and Surveillance.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from New York Times reporter Charlie Savage, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has declassified its implementation report on Presidential Policy Directive 28: Signals Intelligence Activities (PPD-28). PPD-28 was signed by President Obama in January of 2014 and provides principles guiding “why, whether, when, and how the United States conducts signals intelligence activities.” The report was sent to Congress in early 2017.
On Sept. 13, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the United Kingdom’s bulk data-collection programs violate human-rights law by failing to incorporate adequate privacy safeguards and oversight—but that mass surveillance and intelligence sharing did not violate international law.
Last month the European Court of Human Rights found that various U.K. surveillance practices violate the Right to Privacy in the European Convention. The case is a great opportunity to better understand what is—and is not—similar about U.S. and EU legal frameworks in this area.