Stanford Center for Internet and Society

The USA Patriot Act of 2001 amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow the government to undertake broad-based surveillance of subjects within the United States if the government certifies that a “significant purpose” of the surveillance is to obtain foreign intelligence information. This replaced the previous, more stringent requirement that obtaining foreign intelligence information be the “primary purpose” of the surveillance. The District Court held that these amendments violate the Fourth Amendment by allowing the government to conduct traditional criminal surveillance without satisfying any probable cause requirement.

Mayfield v. United States, Civil No. 04-1427-AA (D. Or. Sept. 26, 2007)

In this week's Circuit Court column, I write about the legislative battle over changing our communications eavesdropping laws and a related issue of giving telcos immunity for illegally helping the government surveil us. This issue is so important, now that the nominee for Attorney General, Judge Michael Mukasey, says that the President does not have to obey the law if he believes it contradicts his national security responsibilities. Of course, you could argue that the laws are actually less important if the President isn't even going to follow them. However, if that's true, lawsuits against telcos may be the only way for the public to find out what our government is actually doing. Read more about one possible future of freedom and privacy here: What's at Stake in the Surveillance Debate in Congress

I'm in the process of completing an article that discusses whether and to what extent Muslim-Americans have altered their use of the Internet, after the 9/11 attacks, as a result of a concern that the government is monitoring the online activities of Muslims in the United States. The article, among other things, notes that the Internet has become a vital tool for al-Qaeda and as such is a target of government surveillance measures. This week's issue of the Economist contains an insightful article, entitled "A world wide web of terror," that helps explain why the Internet is al-Qaeda's "best friend." I recommend this article to anyone interested in the intersection of technology and national security.

'Surveillance and You' is the title of this years Civic Forum of the Science, Technology & Society Program at UT Austin. The one day event will host an expert panel of academics as well as former CIA officers and armed forces members.

This month's Reason contains an excellent article entitled, "The Pinpoint Search: How super-accurate surveillance technology threatens our privacy." The author, Julian Sanchez, notes: "A new wave of advanced surveillance tools is capable of detecting not just drugs but weapons, explosives, and illicit computer files, potentially flying under the Fourth Amendment’s radar all the while."

One of the most challenging problems for national security is predicting and stopping terrorist attacks before they happen. The government proposes that data mining is a useful tool for finding terrorists. By using database technology, statistical analysis and modeling, the government says it can search our email, phone calls, shopping habits, educational records, and find the needle (terrorists) in the haystack (the general population). One has to know a bit about the science and statistics behind data mining to evaluate this claim.

This article from this month's Sydney Morning Herald describes the means by which terrorists have used the Internet to communciate and avoid detection, as well as the difficulties that governments face in identifying terrorist activity on the Internet:

As my biography notes, I am presently researching the alleged chilling effect of post-9/11 government security measures on the use of technology, principally the Internet, by Muslim-Americans. I intend to use my blog as a means to discuss relevant reports and news articles, and to update interested individuals on my research progress and results.

That said, I'd like to bring your attention to two interesting items that I came across today. The first is an article on a Washington Post-ABC News poll released yesterday. According to the article: