Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance
If we want to prevent ourselves from becoming silenced, compliant subjects in a corporatized society where everything we do passes through technology connected to a militarized surveillance grid, we should resist by declaring allegiance to all who dare defend their rights and freedoms by exercising them. Here are some suggestions for rolling back the surveillance state.
The FBI is suffering a crisis of credibility, making news headlines not for solving crimes but for agency shortfalls and mistakes. From Bureau officials lying to cover up leaks, to retaliation against internal whistle-blowers, to agents facing criminal charges on obstruction to leaking classified ma…
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Michaela Gabriella King faces a maximum of fourteen years in prison on computer felony charges. In 2016 the Franklin Regional High School computer nerd from Murrysville, about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh, uploaded a virus that flooded her school network.
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In a closely watched trial, Italian citizen Fabio Gasperini was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA. Computer experts claimed it was the first so-called “click fraud” trial to proceed to trial and would test the U.S. government’s ability to prosecute such cases.
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Faced with mounting social challenges, police authorities have begun to redirect their focus to groups of individuals that can be labeled as street gangs, a label that for many strips away concern for individualized justice. It’s easy to feel relieved when local police and the feds announce large-sc…
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The film Edward Snowden is the human side of the story of Edward Snowden who worked for the CIA and the NSA and revealed thousands of previously secret documents that showed massive surveillance that the NSA was engaged in. This received a lot of news coverage in daily newspapers and the excellent d…
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With a population just above 13,000 people, the quaint town of Lebanon, New Hampshire is nestled not far from the Connecticut river in the northwest corner of the state – a few miles from Dartmouth College. In July 2015, the local library set up a system to protect the privacy of patrons using its c…
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If you don’t want to take to the streets in protest, consider supporting the work of the many fine advocacy, legal, or activist organizations working to counter the surveillance state. Here’s a list of just a few groups dedicated to protecting our privacy and constitutional rights. Campaign for a Co…
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Start by reading the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse’s series of excellent and practical fact sheets, at www.privacyrights.org. They cover such topics as monitoring your credit reports, protecting personal information on your smart phone, understanding how information is revealed on line and how online…
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Albrecht, Katherine and Liz McIntyre, Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Purchase and Watch Your Every Move (New York: Plume, 2006). James Bamford, The Shadow Factory (New York: Anchor Books, 2009). Raymond J. Batvinis, The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence (La…
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An angry father near Minneapolis found this out firsthand, as reported in the New York Times, revealing a modern-day quandary: Communications and information technology have advanced with such speed that privacy safeguards lag far behind.
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This is the argument summary and a few other parts of an amicus brief that my colleague Professor Zak Wolfe and I wrote in 2010 on behalf of Kjonaas v. USA (the SHAC 7) in their petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court. We ask the Court to hear the case to modernize traditional tests to…
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It’s more convenient for police to discharge a Taser than to negotiate verbally or use other problem-solving strategies when dealing with the public. A 58-year-old homeless woman with a mental illness in Vermont will tell a similar story.
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