It’s been quite a year for technology-related law and digital rights.
Each season seemed to bring some new legislation or information affecting how technology interacts with our lives.
The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) first sought to change the Internet for worse in January, but they were stopped in their tracks when Americans remembered what a mass movement could do.
Later, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act
came on their heels in the Spring hoping to better “protect” America from cybersecurity threats by allowing companies and organizations to routinely monitor your communications and share that information with the government. Fortunately, President Obama threatened to veto the bill, and its cousin in the Senate failed to pass.
And just last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill that would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act to mandate that the government must get a probable cause warrant before accessing your emails – which I bet you thought was already the case.
There were even victories in the courtroom, such as a case in January that ruled the government cannot place GPS tracking devices on someone’s car without first obtaining a warrant.
Yet, despite these success stories, there has also been an abundance of worrying news concerning our digital communications.
Since earlier this year, William Binney, a former National Security Agency (NSA) “crypto-mathematician” with 32 years of experience under his belt, has been vocal about the agency’s domestic surveillance programs. He’s estimated that up to 20 trillion “transactions,” or records of digital communications, have been collected by the NSA, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he has publicly stated he believes the agency has copies of “most” emails in the United States.
Coincidentally, James Bamford, a journalist known for his writings on the NSA, revealed in Wired magazine in March the agency is building the largest data storage center in Utah.
And just in September, the House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), a law that at least 13 senators fear created a loophole allowing for the dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communications.
With such a slew of different laws and rulings affecting our lives in the digital realm, it is easy to lose track of what is happening.
However, staying up-to-date on these matters is paramount if we hope to protect our rights, and the victory against SOPA/PIPA is evidence for this.
There is no doubt in my mind that if SOPA and PIPA were not subject to a vast education campaign, they would have passed. Once people finally understood what was happening, they began expressing their disapproval to their Congressmen.
And when those Congressmen saw how much their constituents disapproved of the bills, SOPA and PIPA lost support quickly.
Democratic willpower saved the Internet, one of our most important innovations, from being fundamentally changed.
Unfortunately, there won’t always be education campaigns for bills.
Most of the time, we’ll have to exercise some democratic vigilance to keep laws that could harm us from passing and to create bills to protect our rights.
Yet, our power as voices in a democracy will never falter.
For one, we can vote for those who have proven themselves capable of protecting our liberties, unlike the last election in which every single Representative re-elected in Louisiana voted to reauthorize the FAA.
And even with these men in power, it is still possible to affect their decisions by pressuring them to protect our rights from violations by our government.
The FAA reauthorization still has to pass the Senate in December.
If we can pressure our Senators to withhold reauthorizing the bill or at least amend it to protect our privacy, then maybe our digital rights can see another victory this year.
Maybe we can continue into the 21st century utilizing the capabilities new technologies grant us without sacrificing our liberties along the way.
