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,[1] and of failing to pursue security effectively.
[3] The United Kingdom's House of Lords also distinguishes between these two broad types of surveillance:[4] 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.
[17] 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[18] as well as French administration,[19][17] which were first noticed by BND employees in 2005.
[20] 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.
[17][22] The investigative parliamentary committee was not granted access to the NSA's selectors list as an appeal led by opposition politicians failed at Germany's top court.
Instead, the ruling coalition appointed an administrative judge, Kurt Graulich, as a "person of trust" who was granted access to the list and briefed the investigative commission on its contents after analyzing the 40,000 parameters.
[27][28][29] Klaus Landefeld, member of the board at the Internet industry association Eco International, has met intelligence officials and legislators to present suggestions for improvement, like streamlining the selector system.
[36] Liberal Democrats home affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael asks that, "mass spying on the British people should be replaced with targeted surveillance of specific individuals suspected of wrongdoing".
[40] After Privacy International launched a legal case against Britain's security services, Thomas de la Mare QC of the group states there is a danger that "de facto constant surveillance", such as the services' orders for bulk data from telecom companies on request, could become "the most potent instrument of repression", and argued during the hearing, that such non-targeted forms of surveillance have turned investigations on their head.
[45] Computer scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have developed an algorithmic framework for conducting targeted surveillance of individuals within social networks while protecting the privacy of "untargeted" digital bystanders that "outputs a list of confirmed targeted individuals discovered in the network, for whom any subsequent action (e.g., publication in a most-wanted list, further surveillance, or arrest in the case of terrorism; medical treatment or quarantine in the case of epidemics) will not compromise the privacy of the protected".
[46][47] In January 2017 it was reported that German federal agencies are using a new program called "Radar", developed by the BKA and the University of Zürich, that aims to help evaluate the risk posed by persons.
[53] According to documents obtained from Edward Snowden and published by Glenn Greenwald, the NSA and GCHQ have been automating targeted operations, allowing for "industrial scale exploitation" that can potentially infect "millions" of machines with malware.