Preparing to Debate NSA Surveillance and Online Commercial Tracking

[Commentary] In 2014, President Barack Obama delivered a speech describing the Administration’s response to the policy and legal issues from the Edward Snowden revelations. In early February 2015, the Administration announced a batch of new reforms. Overall, I believe there has been far more progress than most people realize. I am pretty confident that Stanford lawyer and technologist Jonathan Mayer will disagree when we “debate” at the International Association of Privacy Professionals Global Privacy Summit on March 5.

To help lay the groundwork for an upcoming “debate,” it is useful to highlight some of the good news on surveillance reform since the Snowden revelations. There has been positive reform in areas concerning Section 215 of the program, Prism, increased transparency, White House oversight of the intelligence community, treatment of non-US persons, funding increases, and National Secuirty Letters.

[Peter Swire is the Nancy J. and Lawrence P. Huang Professor in the Scheller College of Business at the Georgia Institute of Technology]