26 Jan
2015
26 Jan
'15
6:56 p.m.
-- Needless to say I'm not sure how far I trust this, but...
<https://www.coursera.org/course/surveillance>
[from description:] (the links aren't real here)
It’s easy to be cynical about government surveillance. In recent years,
a parade of Orwellian disclosures have been making headlines. The FBI,
for example, is _hacking into computers
<http://www.wired.com/2013/09/freedom-hosting-fbi/> that run anonymizing
software <http://www.wired.com/2014/08/operation_torpedo/>_. The NSA is
vacuuming up domestic phone records
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order>.
Even local police departments are getting in on the act, tracking
cellphone location history and intercepting signals in realtime
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/08/cellphone-data-spying-nsa-police/3902809/>.
Perhaps 2014 is not quite 1984, though. This course explores how
American law facilitates electronic surveillance—but also substantially
constrains it. You will learn the legal procedures that police and
intelligence agencies have at their disposal, as well as the security
and privacy safeguards built into those procedures. The material also
provides brief, not-too-geeky technical explanations of some common
surveillance methods.
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The course started almost a week ago (just got the announcement!) & it's
free.
Enjoy,
Ed