Surveillance of Communications: A Legitimization Crisis and the Need for Transparency
I have a new article out in the International Journal of Communication titled “Surveillance of Communications: A Legitimization Crisis and the Need for Transparency.” The article is open access and available here.
The surveillance of communications faces a legitimization crisis. The information and communication technologies (ICT) that facilitate contemporary communications, from mobile phones to social media platforms, can also facilitate surveillance. The position of ICT services in mediating communications places companies in a position to be under legal and extralegal pressure from law enforcement and other government agencies turn over details of user communications as well as remove content. The collection of communications data by governments has increased precipitously in recent years, in part due to changing technologies. As Bankston and Soltani (2014) document, surveillance historically required considerable costs and manpower. For example, where tracking the location of an individual might have involved multiple police officers in the past, today this data is often collected by telecommunications companies and then accessed by law enforcement on request, lowering the costs of bulk surveillance (ibid.).
Transparency is a critical step toward accountability of the mechanisms through which law enforcement and government agencies access communications data. Since 2010, a growing contingent of ICT companies have begun to publish transparency reports on the extent that governments request their user data, and some include requirements to remove content as well. However, governments have fallen short on providing the level of detail on surveillance programs that is necessary for informed debate. This article offers an overview of transparency reports currently published by ICT companies and discusses why increased transparency is a necessary but insufficient condition for accountability and supporting democratic debates on the practice and extent of surveillance of communications. Furthermore, this article discusses why governments are well-positioned to provide a greater level of transparency on the legal processes and technical means through which law enforcement actors and agencies access private communications data.