25 Years of Mass Surveillance Is Enough
Bruce Schneier and Cindy Cohn argue post-9/11 mass surveillance expanded far beyond its counterterrorism justification and should be reevaluated for costs to rights.
An essay by Bruce Schneier and Cindy Cohn (originally in Lawfare) traces the post-9/11 shift from targeted surveillance to mass collection of telephone and internet metadata. It cites the Section 215 bulk phone records program, struck down in interpretation by the Second Circuit in 2015 and curtailed by the USA Freedom Act, and the NSA's Upstream program under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which ended content searches in 2017. The authors note mass surveillance now serves routine law enforcement and immigration actions, with FBI Director Kash Patel confirming purchases of Americans' data from brokers, and private systems like Flock license plate readers and venue facial recognition feeding government access.
- Post-9/11 shift moved government from targeted wiretaps to mass metadata collection
- Second Circuit rejected Section 215 bulk collection; USA Freedom Act 2015 ended indiscriminate program
- NSA Upstream content searches ended 2017 under FISA court pressure; collection continues
- FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed purchasing Americans' data from data brokers
- Private surveillance (Flock ALPR, venue facial recognition) increasingly pipelines into government hands
From the original article
13 min read at schneier.comThis essay was written with Cindy Cohn, and originally appeared in Lawfare. One of the many legacies of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 is the government-wide shift from targeted surveillance—such as individual wiretaps or pen register/trap and trace orders—to mass surveillance techniques—such as tapping into the internet backbone or mass collection of telephone or internet metadata.
By Bruce Schneier · schneier.com
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