After 9/11, concerns arose about the potential long-term damage to civil liberties from increased government surveillance and the erosion of boundaries between public and private data. The USA PATRIOT Act expanded electronic surveillance powers, allowing more access to communications and financial records with reduced oversight. While increased monitoring aims to prevent terrorism, the collection and sharing of extensive private information between government agencies and corporations threatens personal privacy without effective constraints.

1. AFTER 9/11:
A SURVEILLANCE STATE

2. HOW 9/11 DIFFERS FROM PAST CRISES
• Caused potential long-term damage to the fabric of civil liberties
that may persist long after the emergency passes
• Constitutional protection of rights is being dismissed
• Present crisis bears even more dangerous potential then earlier
wartime emergencies
• Emphasis on new information technologies and more intrusive
and extensive surveillance was inevitable
• Security failure

3. AL QAEDA
• A contemporary product of globalization
• The “dark side”
• Utilize the most up-to-date technologies of communication
• Instant transfer of ideas, capital, and financial resources

4. DISAPPEARING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE
• US government has tried to dissolve certain boundaries in
response to 9/11
• Want to break down firewalls that were put up to protect the
private sector from government control
• Proved useful in the investigation of terrorist trails
• Government sought access to web of info on everyone
• Right to privacy viewed as a fundamental element of a free
society
• Increasingly in question

5. DISAPPEARING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE
• Daily lives of people are being tracked and recorded
• Closed circuit cameras on the ground
• Satellites
• Electronic listening posts
• Sophisticated search engines
• Daily economic transactions
• Detailed medical records

6. DISAPPEARING BOUNDARIES BETWEEN PUBLIC
AND PRIVATE
• New info technologies allow transfer and matching of info
• Problem: how to constrain control to protect personal privacy
while retaining the benefits of new technologies
• Without effective barriers, data matching and linkage threatens
personal privacy

7. SURVEILLANCE BEFORE 9/11
• National Security Agency (NSA) maintained electronic
eavesdropping partnership, UKUSA alliance
• ECHELON links all the computers in the UKUSA agencies
• Flagged messages routed to countries that entered the key
word flag
• CARNIVORE
• Super search engine deployed by FBI

8. SURVEILLANCE BEFORE 9/11
• Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)
• Relies on worldwide monitoring of large financial
transactions
• Software capable of detecting suspicious patterns of
transactions
• Flags transactions that might require closer attention or
criminal investigation

9. ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE POWER IN THE
USA PATRIOT ACT
• Signed into law on October 26, 2001
• Significantly expand the electronic surveillance powers of
federal law enforcement authorities
• Communication surveillance
• Relaxes restrictions around required warrants and court
orders
• Section 216 extends court orders to cover email and internet
use, and extends them to cover the entire US

10. ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE POWER IN THE
USA PATRIOT ACT
• Service providers immunized from legal liability for surrendering
customers’ privacy
• Cooperate in “good faith” with government
• Promised reasonable compensation
• Same agencies gain access to communications records
• Requirements for notification of the subjects have been reduced

11. ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE POWER IN THE
USA PATRIOT ACT
• Foreign intelligence investigations
• Lowers barriers between criminal investigations and foreign
intelligence information
• FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
• Government operates under lower threshold for gaining
authorization for intrusive surveillance against targets
suspected of espionage and foreign intelligence
operations in the US

12. ELECTRONIC SURVEILLANCE POWER IN THE
USA PATRIOT ACT
• Expanded authority of the treasury to regulate and probe the
activities of financial institutions in pursuit of money laundering
• Extend US jurisdiction to prosecute money laundering offenses
abroad
• Extend the cooperation of financial institutions to report cash
transactions over $10,000, file “suspicious activity reports,” and
follow more rigorous “due diligence” requirements

13. SURVEILLANCE IN PRACTICE
• New investigative guidelines
• FBI allowed to conduct online research for counterterrorism
purposes
• Prohibit the FBI from using this authority to keep files on
citizens based on their constitutionally protected activities
• Protection is waived if activities suspected of being
associated with terrorist activities

14. SURVEILLANCE IN PRACTICE
• Libraries and bookstores
• FISA court orders requiring pen register and trace-and-trap
disclosure is now extended to email on online
communication
• Section 215 of the PATRIOT ACT requires any person or
business to produce any books records, documents, or
tangible items
• Provide records of books borrowed/purchased by
persons under suspicion

15. SURVEILLANCE IN PRACTICE
• Homeland Security Act
• Department of Homeland Security will be permitted to
exempt from the FOIA information about critical
infrastructures received from the private sector
• This would remove large amounts of information that is now
potentially open to public access

16. TOWARD “TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS”?
• NSA is barred by law from snooping on Americans
• Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
• Set up pioneer computer network among defense scientists
called ARPANET
• Eventually evolved into the Internet

17. TOWARD “TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS”?
• Total Information Awareness (TIA)
• “knowledge is power”
• System for detecting, classifying, identifying, and tracking
terrorists
• Mine data from all possible sources, public and
private, American and foreign
• Might not be necessary

18. TOWARD “TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS”?
• US had bits and pieces of info concerning the threat from Al
Qaeda and their attack on American soil
• Didn’t put the pieces together
• TIA may swamp analysts with too much information, most
irrelevant
• Cause more harm than good

19. A SECURITY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
• Homeland Security is quickly shaping up
• Corporations in the banking, retail sales, chemical
manufacturing, and nuclear power industries are balking at
government efforts to impose tougher and more expensive
security standards
• The people of the US want security, but tend to be suspicious of
government regulation and intrusion