Privacy and Surveillance in a Digital Age

Dear Colleagues,

Technology has long provided both a threat to privacy—as well as an impetus (and resource) for new forms of privacy protection. In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, for example, the rise of photography helped convince Louis Brandeis of the need for an individual “right of privacy,” and the emergence of wiretapping led him to argue for greater constitutional protection against state surveillance. At the same time, modernization—and the technological developments that come with it—also creates new opportunities for individual anonymity, and also give journalists (and others) tools they can use to hold state actors or others accountable—by, for example, capturing vivid evidence of government abuse in photographs, or video or audio-recordings.

The digital technology in the 21st century only intensifies both the threat that technology presents to individual privacy and autonomy—and the opportunities it provides for generating innovative means of assuring individual anonymity and government accountability. With powerful cameras, and increases in computer memory, government can capture extensive footage of our lives in public spaces. Even when we act in the privacy of our homes, government might track our Web browsing or engage in massive interception of e-mails or text messages. And widespread worries about terrorism and other mass casualty attacks sometimes may make such government surveillance measures seem necessary to many citizens. But advances in digital technology simultaneously provide new opportunities for privacy protection: While government can use cameras to conduct surveillance of citizens, surveillance can also occur in the opposite direction: Citizens can use cellphones (and perhaps even drone-mounted cameras) to video- and audio-record police and other government officials. The Internet allows individuals to more widely disseminate videos and other information about official misconduct, and internet and encryption technologies also create other opportunities for individual anonymity.

This Special Issue provides an opportunity to explore the legal and policy challenges raised both by the ways that technologies of the digital age can intensify government surveillance of individuals, and also by the ways it can allow individuals to shield themselves from such surveillance, or capture and disseminate information about their governments. Possible topics include, but are not limited to: questions about how traditional legal concerns (such as those of police searches) should apply to computer and Internet technology; about what powers government should have to overcome the encryption that officials worry will cloak criminal evidence, but that many individuals rely upon for protecting the privacy of law-abiding activities; about how the law should regulate drone recording or other advances in video- and audio-recording; about the challenges raised to privacy by “big data,” and about whether (and when) technological surveillance by government should be subject to different legal rules than similar surveillance by businesses or other non-state actors.

Prof. Marc Jonathan Blitz
Guest Editor

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• privacy
• surveillance
• electronic surveillance
• wiretapping
• eavesdropping
• video surveillance
• digital technology
• constitutional law
• search and seizure
• police investigations
• cyberlaw
• Internet law
• CCTV
• drones
• unmanned aerial surveillance system
• location tracking
• encryption
• big data