Electronic Communication Interception Technologies and Issues of Power

Introduction

For several decades, the practices surrounding the interception of communications have steadily occupied a prominent place in the news, giving rise to societal, political, legal and sociological debates. The risks of the democratic states’ abuse of practices reminiscent from totalitarian regimes have been repeatedly pointed out by the advocates of freedom in the western world. The further the communication technologies evolve, the more communication spaces are deployed, and the stronger the temptations to control what is said and written seem. Alongside targeted interceptions – aiming at one or a few individuals in particular – the possibilities for bulk interception have multiplied. These two practices have quite a long history. But the advent of the Internet society (“cyberspace”) has undoubtedly marked a turning point in the practices and ambitions of those who resort to interceptions. Despite requiring technically complex operations, the very architecture of cyberspace – a planetary network of continuous flows – facilitates the exploitation of these masses of data, which simultaneously provide information about individuals, observable one by one, and human groups. While communication technologies have multiplied and extended, interception technologies have also done so, be it for security, surveillance or control purposes, for economic, political or military espionage, or for other applications. The practice seems unabashed: all states practice legal interceptions. ...