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Targeted surveillance
Targeted surveillance (or targeted interception) is a form of surveillance, such as wiretapping, that is directed towards specific persons of interest, and is distinguishable from mass surveillance (or bulk interception). Both untargeted and targeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair, of violating human rights, international treaties and conventions as well as national laws, and of failing to pursue security effectively.
A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. The report also makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" - which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" — and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [...] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites".
The United Kingdom's House of Lords also distinguishes between these two broad types of surveillance:
Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.
The current approach of the NSA and its related organizations is attempting to collect all signals of everybody at all times without any prior selection. So any current selection is only used for targets of special interest, human review or special resource allocation.
Such selectors include searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools such as Tor.
A leaked document revealed that for the XKeyscore program, using languages that are out of place for the region one is in, using encryption, and searching the web for 'suspicious stuff', were suggested as selectors.
In Operation Eikonal, German BND agents received "Selector Lists" − search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than a million such targets. These lists have been subject of controversy since in 2008 when it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project as well as French administration, which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005. Other selectors were found to target the administration of Austria. After the revelations made by whistle-blower Edward Snowden the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.
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Targeted surveillance AI simulator
(@Targeted surveillance_simulator)
Targeted surveillance
Targeted surveillance (or targeted interception) is a form of surveillance, such as wiretapping, that is directed towards specific persons of interest, and is distinguishable from mass surveillance (or bulk interception). Both untargeted and targeted surveillance is routinely accused of treating innocent people as suspects in ways that are unfair, of violating human rights, international treaties and conventions as well as national laws, and of failing to pursue security effectively.
A 2014 report to the UN General Assembly by the United Nations' top official for counter-terrorism and human rights condemned mass electronic surveillance as a clear violation of core privacy rights guaranteed by multiple treaties and conventions. The report also makes a distinction between "targeted surveillance" - which "depend[s] upon the existence of prior suspicion of the targeted individual or organization" — and "mass surveillance", by which "states with high levels of Internet penetration can [...] gain access to the telephone and e-mail content of an effectively unlimited number of users and maintain an overview of Internet activity associated with particular websites".
The United Kingdom's House of Lords also distinguishes between these two broad types of surveillance:
Only targeted interception of traffic and location data in order to combat serious crime, including terrorism, is justified, according to a decision by the European Court of Justice.
The current approach of the NSA and its related organizations is attempting to collect all signals of everybody at all times without any prior selection. So any current selection is only used for targets of special interest, human review or special resource allocation.
Such selectors include searching the web for the privacy-enhancing software tools such as Tor.
A leaked document revealed that for the XKeyscore program, using languages that are out of place for the region one is in, using encryption, and searching the web for 'suspicious stuff', were suggested as selectors.
In Operation Eikonal, German BND agents received "Selector Lists" − search terms for their dragnet surveillance. They contain IP addresses, mobile phone numbers and email accounts with the BND surveillance system containing hundreds of thousands and possibly more than a million such targets. These lists have been subject of controversy since in 2008 when it was revealed that they contained some terms targeting the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), the Eurocopter project as well as French administration, which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005. Other selectors were found to target the administration of Austria. After the revelations made by whistle-blower Edward Snowden the BND decided to investigate the issue whose October 2013 conclusion was that at least 2,000 of these selectors were aimed at Western European or even German interests which has been a violation of the Memorandum of Agreement that the US and Germany signed in 2002 in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. After reports emerged in 2014 that EADS and Eurocopter had been surveillance targets the Left Party and the Greens filed an official request to obtain evidence of the violations.