Summary: Cell phone companies now receive 1.3 million requests for information from law enforcement each year, including tens if not hundreds of thousands of requests to transform phones into surreptitious 24/7 tracking devices. Google — with its vast stores of citizens' e-mails, online chats, and Web searches — reports getting 6,321 government demands for information. History has proven time and again that government surveillance powers are inevitably abused without vigilant oversight. Yet as technology has granted both law enforcement and intelligence agencies a dizzying array of new ways to spy — on a scale that would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago — more and more spying escapes any meaningful scrutiny by the general public, and is often even invisible to Congress. In this month's e-Briefing, Julian Sanchez will survey the disturbing — and largely invisible — world of high tech government surveillance, and consider what it means for the future of privacy and freedom.
