Surveillance
680 Articles
FBI’s Push to “Fix a Typo” Would Really Expand Its Surveillance Authority
At last week’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Worldwide Threats, FBI Director James Comey reiterated his call for a major expansion of the FBI’s surveillance authorities,…
Law Enforcement Online: Innovative Doesn’t Mean Illegal
Even the Wild West needed a sheriff. And today’s law enforcement agents, to be effective, need more than a Colt .45 and a gold star. Criminal actors have an increasing ability…
Security and the Internet of Things
On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced a program to better secure the “Internet of Things” and also highlighted the opportunities networked devices provide for the…
Surveillance Is Still About Power
Since the Snowden revelations in 2013, surveillance has gone from a somewhat arcane term of art used mainly by scholars, spies, and tinfoil hat types, to a household word that…
When the NSA Merges Its Offense and Defense, Encryption Loses
How do you create strong encryption standards when the organization tasked to build them finds itself absorbed into an organization that dedicates huge quantities of resources…
The High Standard of Proof in the Encryption Debate
Since the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris set off another around of debate about exceptional access, a lot of ink has been spilled on the subject of whether or not there…
Questions Congress Should Ask About Section 702
After passing a surveillance reform bill last year, Congress appears poised to turn to examine another controversial surveillance authority — Section 702 of FISA. Using Section…
Why We Need to Reevaluate How We Share Intelligence Data With Allies
Last week, Canadians learned that their foreign signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), had improperly shared information with their American,…
Cryptopanic and James Comey’s Xanatos Gambit
For the past year or so I’ve been part of a cybersecurity working group at Harvard’s Berkman Center that on Monday released its first public report, Don’t Panic: Making Progress…
Moving Beyond the “Going Dark” Frame
For more than a year now, this site has posted dozens of articles critiquing the US government’s claims that it needs a method of accessing encrypted digital communications…
The Way Forward for Surveillance Reform Can Balance Human Rights and Government Needs
The fall of 2015 was marked by two key developments in the debate about laws on communications surveillance and the right to privacy. First, on October 6, the EU Court of Justice…
The European Court of Human Rights Constrains Mass Surveillance (Again)
In a decision that may someday be considered the penultimate nail in the coffin that European courts have been building for mass surveillance, the European Court of Human Rights…