Domestic Surveillance of Public Activities and Transactions with Third Parties: Melding European and American Approaches

Résumé

[abstract] In most countries, government surveillance of activities that take place in public is not regulated or only lightly regulated. Similarly, in most countries police efforts to obtain records of everyday transactions usually requires, at most, a finding that the record is “relevant” to an investigation. Arguably, these rules should change now that technology – cameras, drones, computers, and the like – has made both visual surveillance and transaction surveillance easier and cheaper. Technology allows creation of “panvasive” systems that scan across and record the activities of large groups of persons and mining the accumulated data.