Impact

What Happened

On 5 June 2013, The Guardian published the first in a series of documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower who had worked with the NSA. The documents revealed wide-ranging mass surveillance programs conducted by the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s

What happened

The Clinton Administration kicked off the cypto-wars in 1993 with the Clipper Chip. The continued application of export controls restrained the deployment of strong cryptography in products at a key moment of internet history: as it began to be embedded in software and networking. 

What

What happened

In the aftermath of 9/11, Governments across the world rushed to legislate to expand surveillance. Governments

• Moved to limit debate and reduce consultations as they legislated with speed.
• Created new systems to collect data on all travellers, for the purpose of profiling and risk scoring

What happened

Governments continuously seek to expand their communications surveillance powers. In the 1990s it was in the context of applying telephone surveillance laws to the internet. In the 2000s a spate of new laws arrived in response to 9/11. Expansions were then sought to monitor over-the-top

What happened

Under pressure to be more accountable for their use of resources, but also due to the post-9/11 push to track and identify terrorists across the world, the humanitarian and development sectors began increasingly to look to identity registration, including biometrics, and the collection

What happened

Since the late 1980s governments across the world have been trying to build identity registries. By the early 1990s, there were similar policies being pursued by a number of governments across the Pacific region, with similar technologies from the same companies. In the mid-90s ID cards

[Photo By Ludovic Courtès - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0]

Last update: 14 December 2022

What is the problem and why it is important

Until the early '10s, the right to privacy had been sidelined and largely unaddressed within the UN human rights monitoring mechanisms, despite being upheld as a fundamental