Earlier this year, following the tragic events of early January in Paris, the French governement pushed a bill to put a legal framework around Intelligence Services activities. Far from protecting civil liberties, this bill seem to be the translation of Snowden's revelations into law.
One very active researcher I have met at Queen Mary University of London during my Masters on Internet and Telecommunications Law was Julia Hornle. Although not very helpful to resolve my personal issue when my essay was lost by the lecturer during my first online tester module, she has done extensive work on EU and cross border internet regulation and online gambling. [If you wondered, I was lucky to have the email of that lecturer confirming he had received the essay. SO after a long battle, I came out with a higher mark.]
So it was with great pleasure that I heard her presentation on the more specific issue of Law enforcement and internet jurisdiction.
Law enforcement agencies encounter many challenges when prosecuting authors of crime to investigate and gather information. One challenge is to access data stored in another jurisdiction, another is to access data of entity when the head quarter is based in another jurisdiction. (How Cyber Jurisdiction Affects Cybercrime Prosecution) Public International law is based on the connection factor of territoriality. The
The two main cases that applies here are the recent case of Microsoft Ireland v US (access authorisation to data stored in Ireland of a US entity, Microsoft, having its head quarters in the US. The other case is Yahoo Belgium access of emails.
(Jurisdiction over user data – what is the ideal solution to a very real world… )
Were discussed the 1935 Harvard research principles
and Budapest Convention with regard to the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. Anna Maria Osula exposed the limits of the slow process of the MLAT.
The situation is different for Criminal law investigation of a crime against state intelligence. The recent case of NSA and UK GCHQ data access have been criticised.
How much data is safe online with the accession in cloud?
Art 29WP opinion erects a distinction between sovereignty/ prosecution and law enforcement/collection of evidence
Use of encryption and wire tap barrier to access communication are privacy barriers. Recently the UK government has tried to bare the use of encryption.
We live in a rapidly transforming world. The way we collect information, read news as well as communicate with each other has changed comprehensively over the last decade. The days when printed media were a primary source of news are gone. We live in a world of smart phones that provide immediate access to information enriched by visual content such as pictures and video. I rarely buy newspapers anymore. I largely obtain my news from Twitter. Even TV is less of a news source for me, although it still maintains its appeal for a large audience due to content other than news.
All of this is to say that the situation we now find ourselves in is quite complex; a series of interdependent and mutually re-enforcing edifices which support mass state surveillance have metastasized over the past decade: in the legal sphere, through the ad-based services we use, and due to a deficit of viable, easy to use online tools that incorporate true end-to-end crypto. Without a business model that can support end-to-end crypto and a robust court challenge to the current widespread (mis)interpretation of the fourth amendment by the judiciary, the future looks very bleak. Think Blade Runner meets Minority Report.