Electonic surveillance

WHY DO WE EXPOSE OURSELVES?

AMONG CRITICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL SURVEILLANCE, there are two allusions so commonplace they have crossed into the realm of cliché. One, as you have probably already guessed, is George Orwell’s Big Brother, from1984. The other is Michel Foucault’s panopticon — a vision, adapted from Jeremy Bentham, of a prison in which captives cannot tell if or when they are being watched. Today, both of these touchstones are considered chillingly prophetic. But in Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age, Bernard Harcourt has another suggestion: Both of them are insufficient.

Electonic surveillance


Victory! DOJ Forces Feds to Obtain Warrants to Spy on Cellphones with Stingray Surveillance

After initially attempting to hide their use of the cell site simulator devices, commonly referred to as a Stingray, the U.S. Department of Justice has announced a number of critical policy revisions regarding the device.

The new guidelines, implemented September 3, require all federal law enforcement agencies, as well as all state and local agencies working in concert with a federal investigation, to obtain a search warrant from a judge before being allowed to deploy the device.

These much-needed policy changes came after journalists and activists worked tirelessly to investigate and expose the use of these devices, often without a warrant, by federal and state law enforcement agencies.

Electonic surveillance

Mass surveillance: my part in the reform of GCHQ and UK intelligence gathering

Heather Brooke
It was an unusual group. An investigative journalist, a moral philosopher, an internet entrepreneur, a cyber-law academic, a government historian, a computer scientist, a technology exec, a long-time cop, an ex-minister and three former heads of intelligence agencies. I wondered not just how but if we could agree on anything, let alone an entire set of recommendations to reform UK communications surveillance.