In an increasingly networked world, personal information is widely collected and widely available. And, as the storehouse of personal data has grown, so have governmental and commercial efforts to use the data for their own purposes. […]
When the Congress reviewed the situation after 9/11, they didn’t like what they saw. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The resulting structure is more or less a federation intended to maximize the effectiveness of intelligence collection and dissemination among 17 member agencies while maintaining independence of action among each. […]
If not for the FISA legislation, maybe the FBI could have apprehended the terrorists responsible for 9/11 before it happened. […]
In the past, the wall was necessary in order to prevent judges from dismissing criminal cases due to investigations that had collected evidence illegally. But after 9/11 everything changed. Especially the wall. […]
To make certain that criminal investigations weren’t aided by foreign intelligence surveillance data, Congress built a legal wall. From their perspective, they had good reason to do so. […]
In recent years, as we have seen the notion of trusting our educated platonic guardians no longer suffices. The result was the creation of a system of oversight and audit that we have been in the process of fine tuning ever since the 1970s. […]
Through the means of investigative journalism and official committees, we now know a lot about surveillance in America, in particular, the abusive side of it. In part shocking, these examples also probably give us an insight into the reason for having such widespread surveillance system in the first place. […]
Think of the psychological effects a pervasive system such as the Stasi state must have had on the population. It speaks to the paranoia that builds up once you start to think that some enormous, invisible, sinister organization is out to get you. […]
From monitoring phone conversations to taking odor samples, East Germany’s surveillance system left no stone unturned to spy on its population. […]
We need to think about the balance between transparency and effectiveness. Effective oversight of the surveillance state requires the surveillers to be at least somewhat transparent. At the same time, complete transparency would easily frustrate legitimate security objectives. […]
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