Hi everyone,
Some very niche content, but it will matter to some. Although I am of course a big computer nerd, I also spent some fruitful years judging intelligence agency requests. Back in the day (2004 or so), I even wrote a few lines of legislation for Dutch lawful intercept regulation.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled a number of times on government bulk interception/#SIGINT operations. In a new piece, I interpret recent and not so recent jurisprudence in light of the current cybersecurity, AI & cloud climate.
And this interpretation shows that “mere capture” and “mere storage” of data now infringes more on our rights than ever before.
In addition, I comment a bit on attempts by Dutch intelligence agencies to create a “pre-hacking” category, in which they can hack & install surveillance software with very limited authorization. Essentially they are saying that “mere hacking” is not such a great breach of your privacy, even if this entails installing spyware on your phone.
Do read on for further details in the piece “Revisiting Leander v Sweden and Big Brother Watch”.
Cheers,
Bert