The Impact of Information Security Technologies Upon Society

This paper's aims are concerned with the effects of information security technologies upon society in general and civil society organisations in particular. Information security mechanisms have the potential to act as enablers or disablers for the work of civil society groups. Recent increased emphasis on national security issues by state actors, particularly 'anti-terrorism' initiatives, have resulted in legislative instruments that impinge upon the civil liberties of many citizens and have the potential to restrict the free flow of information vital for civil society actors. The nascent area of cyberactivism, or hactivism, is at risk of being labelled cyberterrorism, with the accompanying change of perception from a legitimate form of electronic civil disobedience to an abhorrent crime. Biometric technology can be an invasive intrusion into citizens' privacy. Internet censorship and surveillance is widespread and increasing. These implementations of information security technology are becoming more widely deployed with profound implications for the type of societies that will result

Doe v. Ashcroft and Its Place in the Judicial Trend: How the Courts Have Advanced Civil Liberties in Step with Advances in Technology

As many jurists and scholars have noted, the United States has a long-standing history of encroaching upon the civil liberties of its citizens, especially during times of war or conflict.\ud \ud For instance, during the Civil War, President Lincoln unilaterally suspended the writ of habeas corpus in response to increased violence and the threat of Southern succession.During World War I, Postmaster General Albert Burleson used the Espionage Act to suspend mailing privileges for certain “non-mailable” materials, such as newspapers and other dissident publications critical of the war effort

The New Writs of Assistance

The providers of network services (and the makers of network devices) know an enormous amount about our lives. Because they do, these network intermediaries are being asked with increasing frequency to assist the government in solving crimes or gathering intelligence. Given how much they know about us, if the government can secure the assistance of these intermediaries, it will enjoy a huge increase in its theoretical capacity for surveillance—the ability to learn almost anything about anyone. This has the potential to create serious social harm, even assuming that the government continues to adhere to ordinary democratic norms and the rule of law. One possible solution to this problem is for network intermediaries to refuse government requests for aid and attempt to sustain those refusals in court. Although this proposal has received an enormous amount of attention, there is substantial cause for skepticism about how well it can work. Congress has given the government wide authority to demand information and assistance through tools like subpoenas, the Stored Communications Act, and Title III. Even when the government does not have specific statutory authorization, courts have interpreted the All Writs Act to authorize a great deal of open-ended aid, consistent with the well-settled Anglo-American history of third-party assistance in law enforcement. It is also far from unheard of for the executive to read restrictions on its surveillance authority narrowly, and its own inherent powers broadly, to engage in surveillance that is quasi- or extra-legal. A superior (or at least complementary) response to the problem is to restrict network intermediaries themselves by limiting how much they can learn about us and how long they can retain it. This approach treats enhanced state surveillance as a problem created by the intermediaries’ stockpiling of data, and proposes to solve it at the root—which would, as a useful side effect, solve a number of other problems created by that stockpiling, too

Restoring a Public Interest Vision of Law in the Age of the Internet

In November 2003, Mr. Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, lectured at Duke Law School on the importance of protecting individual privacy. In his remarks, Mr. Rotenberg recounted the successful campaign against the government\u27s Clipper Chip proposal. He argued that successful public interest advocacy in the Internet age requires the participation of experts from many fields, public engagement, and a willingness to avoid a simple balancing analysis. He further concluded that privacy may be one of the defining issues of a free society in the twenty-first century