The Surveillance State: Big Data, Freedom, and You

Start by considering the tension between surveillance and the rule of law. While the pace of technological change is extremely rapid, laws are slow to keep up. Worse, the institutions responsible for creating laws often have internal conflicts about the role of privacy and security - as illustrated by a dramatic face-off over John Ashcroft's hospital bed.

Go inside what is likely the most extreme surveillance state in the history of civilization. It is estimated that, when you count casual informants, as many as one in six East Germans was a spy - keeping tabs on neighbors, friends and family. Survey the history of this insidious surveillance state and think about the lessons it can teach us today.

See what measures the American government took during the Cold War to prevent our devolution into a Stasi-like state. While the CIA and the FBI had several unauthorized surveillance programs in the 1950s and 1960s, Congress and the Supreme Court stepped in to oversee the intelligence world with several powerful measures in the 1970s.

After 9/11, the CIA and the FBI were faulted for not sharing intel in advance of the attacks. But the two agencies faced stringent legal restrictions on sharing information, going back to the 1978 FISA legislation, which erected a "wall" between intelligence gathering and criminal investigations. Review the reasons for and the history of this legislation and the changes that happened after 9/11.

Survey the U.S. intelligence community as a whole. Find out how it is structured, how it functions, and how it relates to the rest of the government. Review its methods of gathering and analyzing intelligence, including some of the key challenges in the process.

The government and private industries are using a vast cache of information about each of us: our travel patterns, our web browsing habits, our purchasing preferences, and more. Efforts in law and policy trail behind new developments in technology, and here you'll examine the potential inherent in such deep and widespread data - as well as the threat it poses to privacy and anonymity.