Being watched
Subtitle: legal challenges to government surveillance
By: Jeffrey L. Vagle
Publisher: NYU Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 165
ISBN-13: 9781479809271
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Searches and seizures; Locus standi; Law and legislation; Electronic surveillance; Right of Privacy
Description: A history of the Supreme Court decision that set the legal precedent for citizen challenges to government surveillance. The tension between national security and civil rights is nowhere more evident than in the fight over government domestic surveillance. Governments must be able to collect information at some level, but surveillance has become increasingly controversial due to its more egregious uses and abuses, which tips the balance toward increased (and sometimes total) government control. This struggle came to forefront in the early 1970s, after decades of abuses by U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies were revealed to the public, prompting both legislation and lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of these programs. As the plaintiffs in these lawsuits discovered, however, bringing legal challenges to secret government surveillance programs in federal courts faces a formidable obstacle in the principle that limits court access only to those who have standing, meaning they can show actual or imminent injury: a significant problem when evidence of the challenged program is secret. In Being Watched, Jeffrey L. Vagle draws on the legacy of the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Laird v. Tatum to tell the fascinating and disturbing story of jurisprudence related to the issue of standing in citizen challenges to government surveillance in the United States. It examines the facts of surveillance cases and the reasoning of the courts who heard them, and considers whether the obstacle of standing to surveillance challenges in U.S. courts can ever be overcome.
Notes: "Also available as an ebook"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-159) and index.
Table of contents: title: You are being watched; title: A history of government surveillance; title: Getting through the courthouse door; title: The doctrine of Article III standing; title: Before the Supreme Court; title: Government surveillance and the law; title: The legacy of Laird v. Tatum; title: Technology, national security, and surveillance; title: The future of citizen challenges to government surveillance.