PRIVACY AND COUNTER-TERRORISM:
THE PERVASIVENESS OF DATA
Paul Rosenzweig
Computing power and data storage capacity are increasing at an exponential pace. We can now envision systems that will create individual dossiers based upon the electronic trail you leave behind in cyberspace. This sort of "dataveillance" will allow the government to scrutinize the conduct of indi-viduals and holds great promise for preventing terrorist acts. But these techniques also hold great peril as they may foster and permit governmental abuse of privacy and civil liberties. Our current data privacy laws are outdated and do not take account of these technological changes. They need to be updated.
Traditionally, the concept of "surveillance" has been taken to mean an act of physical surveillance--e.g., following someone around or planting a secret camera in an apartment. As technology improved, our spy agencies and law enforcement institutions increasingly came to rely on even more sophisticated technical means of surveillance, and so we came to develop the capacity to electronically intercept telecommunications and examine email while in transit.
To these more "traditional" forms of surveillance, we must now add another: the collection and analysis of personal data and information about an individual. Call the phenomenon "dataveillance" if you wish . . .
42 CASE W. RES. J. INT’L L. 625 (2010).
