V
viewpoints
DOI: 10.1145/1461928.1461940
Privacy and Security
international
communications Surveillance
Aren’t we all foreigners when our Internet traffic transits through
other countries and is subject to regional intelligence-gathering policies?
When yoU SenD email,
do you know through
which countries your
communication will
be routed? In a world
where countries use the Internet to gather intelligence from communications
traffic that transits local facilities, this
question has become increasingly im-
for intelligence gathering seems obvious. This surveillance is constantly
being expanded—to the detriment of
communications privacy. Countries are
increasingly adopting legislation that
provides for preventive surveillance
and the massive collection of communications data without either adequate
procedural limitations or strict over-
portant for Internet users—individuals
and businesses alike. Such interception
is an established investigative tool of intelligence services and law enforcement
agencies all over the world provided for
by domestic laws. For governments concerned with national-security threats,
the exploitation of all available sources
sight of the activities. In the worst case
governments stretch—or even ignore—
existing rules in order to facilitate intelligence gathering no matter what.
The fact that Internet traffic is supranational in character offers a promising
new avenue for intelligence gathering
by targeting international communi-
26 CommunICatIons of the aCm | feBRuaRY2009 | vol. 52 | No. 2
cations originating from, terminating
in, or simply passing through a given
country and subjecting it to the local
standards of legal interception. Unlike
the public switched telephony network
(PSTN), which delivered only the destined traffic to the international gateways, Internet traffic is not confined to
the territory of a state and is more likely
to cross borders while in transit. Not
long ago the overwhelming majority of
data flowed through the U.S., where the
world’s top Internet backbone providers’ switching equipment was located
(the situation has since changed somewhat). The U.S. was therefore in the position of being able to exercise control
over most of the world’s information
transmitted via the Internet.
In 2005 the U.S. National Security
Agency’s warrantless wiretapping, a
program authorized by the Bush administration, was disclosed. Afterward
the government pursued legislation to
expand surveillance powers. The short-lived 2007 Protect America Act and its
immediate successor, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, permit warrantless
interception of international communications during transit through the U.S.
and the targeting of non-U.S. persons
reasonably believed to be located outside the U.S. Under the latter U.S. act,
the highest level of protection is afforded to purely domestic communications,
interception of which would require a
warrant whereas international communications (with at least one foreign end-
illUstration by celia Johnson