If you’ve been following the controversy surrounding the U.S. government’s use of warrantless wiretaps, you may have heard a familiar refrain from government officials that new technologies were making it harder for them to conduct important surveillance. A report from a non-profit privacy watchdog organization offers the exact opposite conclusion: technology is making it easier and easier for the government to spy on its citizens, and laws to protect individual privacy are very outdated.
Founded by former EFF executive Jerry Berman in 1994, the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C., works to protect free expression and individual privacy on the Internet. Yesterday, the CDT released the report Digital Search & Seizure: Updating Privacy Protections to Keep Pace with Technology (1.19MB PDF file), which contends that there is a “widening gap” between the technology that the government uses to track citizens and the laws designed to protect citizens’ privacy. From the related CDT press release: “The government complains that new technology makes its job more difficult, but the fact is that digital technology has vastly augmented the government’s powers, even without legal changes like those in the PATRIOT Act. The capacity of Internet technology to collect and store data increases every day, as does the volume of personal information we willingly surrender as we take advantage of new services. Meanwhile, the laws that are supposed to prevent the government from unfairly accessing personal information haven’t changed in two decades,” said CDT Policy Director Jim Dempsey, the principal author of the report.
The report is concerned with three main topics and divided along those lines: online data, location technologies, and keyloggers. You may be already quite familiar with the first two subjects–Google has made the news recently by refusing to turn over search queries to the government, and criminals getting nabbed by their cell phones is nothing new. However, it’s that third concept that’s surprising to me. Little did I know that the U.S. government was already able to install keyloggers on individual machines (in person or remotely) with only a minimum “sneak and peek” warrant. I had heard the rumors about “Magic Lantern” a few years ago, but little did I know that the government has effectively been using keyloggers for at least five years. Who knew?
For those who follow technology news, there’s nothing jaw-dropping in the report, but it is a clear, concise evaluation of the new surveillance methods that government officials have at their command.
Peter Butler
Senior Editor
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