Human Rights Principles and Communications Surveillance

The International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance was cooperatively written by privacy organizations and advocates around the world.  I'm posting the full statement (for which the Electronic Frontier Foundation created a website) for itself but also, since we're a resource blog here, for the list of signatures on the document which gives a nice roundup of key groups active in this international concern. The hyperlinked list of  224 "Signatories" follows the fairly brief series of statements.

Publishing these principles is not the end of the conversation by any means. The site also collects news articles and essays from contributors worldwide about the Principles-- reactions to, discussions about, etc.

Congressional Research Report on Government Cell Phone Tracking

A recent  Congressional Research Report Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology and the Law has just been released.


Summary
This report will briefly survey Fourth Amendment law as it pertains to the government's tracking programs. It will then summarize federal electronic surveillance statutes and the case law surrounding cell phone location tracking. Next, the report will describe the GPS-vehicle tracking cases and review the pending Supreme Court GPS tracking case, United States v. Jones. Finally, the report will summarize the geolocation and electronic surveillance legislation introduced in the 112th Congress.

January journal roundup

A few end of year 2007 special issues to point out:

The fourth issue of Social Semiotics (Volume 17, December 2007) is heavily devoted to Michael Jackson (Framing Michael Jackson: Celebrity on Trial) exploring "many questions about celebrity scandal, cultural performance and identity, intersecting with ideas about race, gender and sexuality," according to Jenny Kitzinger and Sujata Moorti in the issue's Introduction.

Communication Research and the Study of Surveillance is the topic of The Communication Review (Volume 10, Number 4, 2007), edited by Kelly Gates and Shoshana Magnet.

Paul J. Lavrakas edits Public Opinion Quarterly's (Volume 71, Number 5, 2007) special issue titled: Cell Phone Numbers and Telephone Surveying in the U.S. While the issue focuses on the use of cell phones in surveys, it leads off with a historical piece on two of the most influential researchers on survey methods with telephones, Warren Mitofsky and Joseph Waksberg.

The Journal of Mass Media Ethics, which explores questions of media morality, devotes a special issue (Volume 22, Number 7, 2007) to the question, "Who Is a Journalist?" Edited by Wendy Wyatt, the issue features an interesting article on the role of "fake news" (The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) in media criticism, among others.

And while not a theme issue, Comm history buffs should check out Critical Studies in Media Communication's (Volume 24, Number 5, 2007) Critical Forum which is devoted to Daniel Czitrom's Media and the American Mind with short pieces by Jack Lule, Sue Curry Jansen, David Park, Jefferson Pooley, and Peter Simonson, followed by a response to the contributors from Czitrom himself.