Facebook received 32,716 requests for information from U.S. law enforcement between January 2017 and June 2017.1 These requests covered 52,280 user accounts and included 19,393 search warrants and 7632 subpoenas.2 In the same time period, Google received 16,823 requests regarding 33,709 accounts,3 and Twitter received 2111 requests regarding 4594 accounts.4 Each company produced at least some information for about eighty percent of requests.5 In just six months, law enforcement agencies turned to technology companies to gather evidence for thousands of investigations. Of the many conclusions that one might draw from these numbers,6 at least one thing is clear: technology companies have become major actors in the world of law enforcement and national security. In his recent article, Professor Alan Rozenshtein dubs these technology companies “surveillance intermediaries” — entities that sit between law enforcement agencies and the public’s personal information, and that have the power to decide just how easy or difficult it will be for law enforcement to access that information.7
Surveillance intermediaries hold extraordinary power when they decide how to respond to government requests for information — power that may or may not be to the public’s benefit. While intermediaries must comply with statutory and constitutional law governing law enforcement requests for information,8 Rozenshtein explains that they still hold a large degree of discretion when processing those requests: discretion in how critically they evaluate the legality of requests, in slowing down the process by insisting on proceduralism, and in minimizing their capacity to respond to legal requests by implementing encryption.9 This discretion means that surveillance intermediaries determine, at least in part, the government’s access to information about our personal relationships, professional engagements, travel patterns, financial circumstances, and much more. They also impact the government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks, solve murders, and locate missing children. In short, companies such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter are now responsible for decisions that have major consequences for our privacy, on the one hand, and our safety, on the other. This power is not the product of purposeful design — technology companies were not created in order to shield our information from, or deliver our information to, law enforcement agencies. Rather, the role of surveillance intermediary is one that technology companies happened to fall into by virtue of their omnipresence in our day-to-day lives.
As Congress and the judiciary are called upon to regulate technology companies under antitrust legislation,10 they may also turn their attention to these companies’ roles as surveillance intermediaries. It may not be ideal for private corporations to exercise so much power in determining the balance between privacy and security when it comes to government access to a wealth of information on individual people — but this is precisely the sort of determination that Congress and the judiciary are called upon to make all the time. In order to regulate the discretion of surveillance intermediaries, it is vital to understand the incentive structure driving intermediary behavior: How do surveillance intermediaries decide when to cooperate and when to resist? And how do these decisions vary between companies and over time? Understanding the answers to these questions is critical to predicting the behavior of large technology companies — in their role as surveillance intermediaries and beyond.
Much of the scholarship on surveillance intermediaries attempts to generalize their behavior, asking whether we can expect them to assist or resist government requests for information — in other words, do intermediaries mostly tend to cooperate with the government or obstruct the government? While there is surely value in this high-level analysis, this Chapter argues that such inquiries miss some of the finer nuances of the incentive structures driving intermediary behavior. The truth is, there are times when surveillance intermediaries cooperate with the government — perhaps too much — and there are times when surveillance intermediaries resist the government — perhaps too much — in response to situational incentives that may change over time and across companies. Regulators that seek to change the behavior of surveillance intermediaries to optimize for privacy and security must fully appreciate these incentives and the resulting diversity among intermediaries in order to develop an effective regulatory scheme.
Section A begins by highlighting two opposing views of surveillance intermediaries: that they serve to assist government surveillance by centralizing data storage, and that they serve to resist government surveillance by obstructing efforts to collect that data. Section A resolves this tension by presenting a more complicated portrait of surveillance intermediaries, a portrait that admits variation in responses to government surveillance requests over time, across companies, and in response to a variety of situational incentives. Section B considers several case studies of surveillance intermediary behavior in order to elucidate the complex web of incentives that generates the variation in their decisionmaking, as emphasized in section A. Finally, section C argues that there is reason to be hopeful: Certain institutional characteristics of a system in which large technology companies act as surveillance intermediaries provide significant advantages in both the privacy and national security realms. If regulators can find a way to align these companies’ incentives with the public good, the resources and insights of intermediaries can be le-veraged to improve both security and privacy.
Technology companies’ approaches to their roles as surveillance intermediaries — and how easy or difficult they make it for the government to obtain data — vary significantly between companies and over time. Some commentators believe that this arrangement, on balance, leads to an inappropriate amount of cooperation between intermediaries and law enforcement.11 The centralization of communication through technology companies is thought to be a convenience for the government,12 allowing it to “indulge its temptation to play Big Brother” by working with a small number of companies.13 These companies can be persuaded to cooperate with law enforcement by appealing to their patriotism14 and desire to maintain positive relationships with their regulators15 — even in the absence of appropriate legal process.16
One example supporting this argument is AT&T’s cooperation with the National Security Agency (NSA) in the years following 9/11. Leaked NSA documents from this time describe AT&T as an eager partner in surveillance beginning just “days” after such surveillance commenced in October 2001.17 By striking a “partnership” with a single “highly collaborative” company, the NSA was able to gain access to an enormous amount of internet traffic.18 According to the AT&T engineer who initially revealed the company’s cooperation with the government, AT&T built an entire room in its headquarters that appeared to be solely dedicated to “copying the whole Internet” for the NSA.19 AT&T did this despite the fact that the program was run without a clear legal basis from 2001 through 2008, at which point Congress passed a statute authorizing the program and granting full retroactive immunity for its participants.20 It is clear that AT&T went above and beyond to facilitate government surveillance without much concern over the legality of that surveillance.
This story paints a bleak picture of AT&T undermining the legal structure built to protect its users’ privacy rights. It shows that surveillance intermediaries are capable of providing the U.S. government with an enormous amount of data, far exceeding what they are legally required to turn over. It is an ominous incident in the history of intermediaries that should raise concerns about the incredible amount of power that a company like AT&T holds.
Other commentators, including Rozenshtein, have concluded that the rise of surveillance intermediaries is likely to impose constraints on government surveillance,21 for better22 or worse.23 This is thought to be particularly true in the wake of the 2013 Snowden disclosures, which indicated that major technology companies were heavily involved in government surveillance.24 The backlash to this revelation had a direct financial impact on U.S. companies, particularly due to the loss of foreign customers.25 In order to save their reputations, technology companies have been publicly demonstrating their commitment to privacy and civil liberties over the past few years.26 While there are surely ideological reasons27 behind this shift, many commentators point to the strong profit incentives underlying this post-Snowden behavior.28 A commitment to privacy is highly valued among customers at the moment and can serve as a valuable marketing tool.29
Evidence for this perspective can be found in the volume of litigation pursued by major technology companies challenging the government over requests for information in the years since the Snowden disclosures. Even putting aside the NSA and national security–related requests, surveillance intermediaries have been challenging law enforcement — including local law enforcement — on subpoenas and search warrants. In 2016, Microsoft quashed a search warrant from the Southern District of New York seeking data stored on servers in Ireland related to a narcotics case, arguing that the warrant violated the presumption against extraterritoriality.30 That same year, Apple challenged the use of the All Writs Act31 in the Eastern District of New York for a narcotics case,32 and again, famously, in the Central District of California for a terrorism case.33 In 2017, Facebook lost a challenge against the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office for search warrants related to a disability fraud case.34 Finally, in October 2017, the U.S. government, facing a lawsuit by Microsoft, developed strict guidelines on the use of gag orders by U.S. Attorneys.35 These are just a few examples of major face-offs between surveillance intermediaries and the government, demonstrating the existence of a resistant band of technology companies fighting against perceived government overreach.
The rise of intermediary-initiated litigation paints a much more optimistic picture of surveillance intermediaries. It indicates that major technology companies are critically reviewing the legal orders they receive from the government and pushing back on government overreach when necessary. This resistance might make us foster confidence in our data stewards and the surveillance intermediary system.
Scholars who believe that surveillance intermediaries pave the way for lawless Big Brother–esque government surveillance are justified in their fears; as AT&T’s post-9/11 behavior demonstrates, it is possible for intermediaries to quite literally “copy[] the whole Internet” and turn it over to the government on a handshake agreement.36 Then again, scholars who believe that surveillance intermediaries are well-positioned to challenge government overreach have good reason to be hopeful; the rise of intermediary-driven litigation post-Snowden demonstrates that technology companies can and will stand up for the privacy rights of their users. The trouble with the existing scholarship on surveillance intermediaries is that neither position is wrong — but by focusing on this assistance-versus-resistance dichotomy, scholars overlook the nuances in intermediary decisionmaking that illustrate their incentive structures.
One such nuance is that a single company’s commitment to resistance against or cooperation with the government cannot be assumed to remain static over time. Consider, for example, the history of Western Union’s relationship with the government: During World War II, Western Union sent copies of all international cables to U.S. intelligence agencies in a handshake agreement known as Operation Shamrock.37 When the war ended, this program continued for another thirty years without any legal basis.38 The 1976 Church Committee Report exposed this state of affairs,39 among many other major privacy violations committed by U.S. intelligence agencies,40 in a shocking moment of history quite similar to the Snowden revelations. Operation Shamrock came to an “abrupt end,” and there is no indication that Western Union had any relationship with the U.S. government for decades after that.41 But, in the wake of 9/11, Western Union again began working with the government, in a relationship that was characterized by “informal cooperation rather than legal compulsion.”42 Western Union customers may have thought that the company would never again enter into a questionable legal arrangement with the government after Operation Shamrock — but they would have been wrong.
Another nuance is that all surveillance intermediaries cannot be assumed to respond to any given circumstance in a uniform manner. While many companies may have tended to cooperate with the government after 9/11 and resist the government after Snowden, this trend is certainly not true for all surveillance intermediaries. Although some news outlets incorrectly reported that tech companies like Google and Facebook willingly gave intelligence agencies direct access to their users’ data post-9/11, there is no evidence that this was the case.43 In fact, at least some tech companies — including Yahoo and Twitter — challenged national security–related requests long before the Snowden disclosures.44 Similarly, it is not true that all technology companies have become privacy advocates in the wake of the Snowden disclosures. In 2017, telecom companies successfully lobbied Congress to remove their privacy obligations to their customers.45 Internet service providers such as Comcast and Verizon led this effort, and they received support from tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Amazon.46
Do technology companies facilitate or frustrate government surveillance? The answer is that they do both, and this fluctuation should give one pause. Reasonable minds may differ as to what the ideal balance between cooperation and resistance might be, but it seems unlikely that this balance should be left to the judgment of a private corporation.47 Whatever the appropriate amount of cooperation — or resistance — is, this is an important public policy issue, and it should be decided with regard to the public’s best interests and wishes. When creating regulations, it is critical to understand why surveillance intermediaries make the decision to resist or cooperate, and to attempt to align those incentive structures with a balanced approach to security and privacy.
In order to regulate the degree to which surveillance intermediaries resist or assist law enforcement, it is critical to understand what incentives they consider when deciding how to respond to a government request for information. Current scholarship on this issue focuses on how intermediaries have reacted to two major national events: 9/11 and the Snowden revelations.48 While there is little doubt that these represent critical turning points in the behavior of surveillance intermediaries49 — and in our law enforcement and national security apparatus as a whole50 — there are many other subtle incentive structures at play in intermediary decisionmaking. By teasing out a more complete picture of why surveillance intermediaries make decisions, we can see that intermediaries are not a monolith: each company is likely to assist and resist law enforcement agencies to different degrees and in different ways across varying situations and over time. This section reviews four major incentive structures driving intermediary behavior, but it is far from a complete list.
In addition to these incentives, it is important to note that, doctrinally speaking, the only valid purpose of a for-profit company incorporated in Delaware is to generate profits for its shareholders.51 Most public surveillance intermediaries fall into this category.52 Although this rule is more or less impossible to enforce, it is nonetheless the bedrock principle that is supposed to animate every decision made by corporations like Facebook and Google. While in practice companies may have a range of motivations, the profit motive can be seen as driving each of the incentives discussed below, at least in part. One might argue that this profit motive is not necessarily aligned with — if not fundamentally at odds with — the behavior one would hope to see from an entity expected to advocate for our privacy and civil liberties.
1. Current Events. — As the aftermaths of 9/11 and the Snowden revelations highlight, one major incentive in intermediary decisionmaking is reacting to current events, and particularly to public criticism of the intermediary.53
“[W]e shouldn’t rely on surveillance intermediaries to cure any democratic deficits that may exist in surveillance policymaking. . . . Surveillance intermediaries often have idiosyncratic ideological views on surveillance. The market does not provide a sufficiently precise incentive for surveillance intermediaries to bring government surveillance in line with popular preferences. Surveillance intermediaries may use the opportunity to oppose government surveillance to generate trust that may ultimately prove unearned . . . .”
Rozenshtein, supra note 7, at 180 (emphasis added). When that event is something that affects all intermediaries, as 9/11 and the Snowden revelations did, we can perhaps expect many of them to react similarly: for example, as noted above, many surveillance intermediaries began resisting government requests for information after the Snowden revelations by bringing the government to court.54
However, there are often events or public criticisms that affect only a single company. When that happens, only that intermediary will be incentivized to adjust its behavior — for example, it might challenge a government action that other companies comply with.
Take, for instance, Google’s reaction to the severe public criticism it faced in the 2000s for its relationship with China.55 Google launched Google.cn in January 2006.56 This Chinese version of its search engine openly complied with Chinese censorship laws,57 “filter[ing out] keywords like ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy,’”58 and otherwise significantly limiting search results.59 Media outlets and human rights organizations publicly condemned Google for this move; for example, the free speech advocacy group Reporters Without Borders stated “[t]he launch of Google.cn is a black day for freedom of expression in China.”60
Just days before the launch of Google.cn, Google publicly refused to comply with a U.S. government subpoena for its users’ search queries.61 In an effort to prove the efficacy of the Child Online Protection Act, the government requested data on the search queries of millions of Google users.62 Google refused to comply with the subpoena, on the grounds that it was “unnecessary, overly broad, would be onerous to comply with, would jeopardize its trade secrets and could expose identifying information about its users.”63 This resistance was partially successful: Google had to turn over some of the requested records, but not all.64 In Google’s Transparency Report,65 this episode is highlighted as the company’s first big stand for transparency and user privacy.66 As the Department of Justice noted in its response to Google’s lawsuit, several other surveillance intermediaries — Microsoft, Yahoo, and AOL — complied with similar subpoenas without objection.67
The timing of Google.cn’s launch and Google’s first major stand for privacy in the United States did not go unnoticed. Many commentators suggested that Google decided to resist the U.S. government’s subpoena in order to bolster its privacy credentials in the United States.68 Here we see a surveillance intermediary making the decision to resist an overbroad government subpoena, likely at least in part due to negative publicity it received on a completely separate issue.
2. Technical Structure. — Another incentive relevant to intermediary decisionmaking is the technical structure of the company or the company’s products. Intermediaries have made different technical design choices, which in turn impact their decisionmaking with regard to surveillance.
Consider Microsoft’s successful challenge to a government search warrant for data stored abroad. In 2013, Microsoft refused to comply with a federal search warrant for a narcotics case in Manhattan.69 The search warrant sought emails that Microsoft had stored on a server in Ireland.70 As such, Microsoft insisted that it could not turn the data over to the U.S. government — to do so would violate the presumption against extraterritoriality.71 The District Court sided with the government,72 but the Second Circuit found in favor of Microsoft.73 As a result, under Second Circuit law tech companies can no longer comply with U.S. search warrants that request data stored abroad — U.S. courts do not have the jurisdiction to authorize the search of such data, and the Stored Communications Act74 does not allow tech companies to disclose content information without a valid legal request. The Supreme Court granted certiorari, and the case will be decided in 2018.75
Microsoft has made it clear that it is interested in pursuing impact litigation to preserve the privacy of its customers, and this case is one of its efforts to do so. But something that isn’t quite so obvious is that Microsoft is uniquely situated to comply with the Second Circuit’s decision. This is because Microsoft has a “regionalized” cloud system, with data centers located all over the world.76 It makes an effort to store user data in a data center close to that person.77 As a result, Microsoft employees can easily tell where in the world a specific piece of data is stored — if the government requests data located outside of the United States, they simply don’t turn it over.
Other companies, such as Facebook and Google, have structured their clouds very differently. Although both companies have customers all over the world, neither has pursued a regionalized cloud model akin to Microsoft’s.78 Facebook has data centers in only three countries — the United States, Sweden, and Ireland79 — and Google in only eight — the United States, Chile, Taiwan, Singapore, Ireland, the Netherlands, Finland, and Belgium.80 As a result, data stored by both companies tends to be “pinging around a globally distributed network” to reach their users.81 So when Facebook and Google comply with government requests for data, it is not so clear where in the world that data is coming from.82 Compliance with the Second Circuit’s ruling is therefore less straightforward for Facebook and Google than it is for Microsoft.
The lesson here is that we cannot assume that surveillance intermediaries are interchangeable in the lawsuits they choose to pursue — there is a reason why Microsoft is the company that pursued a case about extraterritoriality, and not Facebook or Google. Here, Microsoft asked the Second Circuit to make a rule that it knew it would be able to comply with under its regionalized cloud system. Companies with nonregionalized cloud systems, like Facebook and Google, would not have brought this case to court, because they would have been asking for a rule that presents a technical difficulty for them. In this way, the technical design of intermediaries and their products dictates, at least to some extent, what kind of law enforcement requests they might challenge in the first place.
3. Business Model. — A third incentive behind intermediary decisionmaking lies in the business model of each company. A surveillance intermediary will be incentivized to act in a way that promotes its own business model — and, better yet, a way that distinguishes its business model from that of its competitors.
Consider Apple’s 2016 challenges to the government’s use of the All Writs Act to compel Apple’s assistance in unlocking iPhones for two government investigations. Because Apple encrypts all iPhone data, unlocking an iPhone is the only expedient way for the government to gain access to its contents.83 The All Writs Act is used to “fill[] gaps where Congress has been silent,” allowing a court to issue writs it “might need to effectuate its judgments.”84 By 2016, Apple had complied with such writs at least seventy times in the past.85 Nonetheless, it successfully challenged the use of the All Writs Act in the Eastern District of New York for a narcotics case,86 and it brought another such challenge in the Central District of California for a terrorism case.87 Although Apple’s challenge in the Central District of California was cut short when the government obtained an alternate means of unlocking the iPhone in question,88 the case generated significant publicity89 and started a nationwide conversation about the balance between privacy and security.90 In the midst of this resistance, Apple released a public letter to its customers emphasizing the importance of strong encryption.91
Apple’s decision to resist the All Writs Act so publicly served to highlight an iPhone feature that differentiates Apple from many of its peers: the use of encryption so strong that even Apple cannot access its users’ devices. Data security through strong encryption is central to Apple’s business model.92 This is in stark contrast to many other Silicon Valley companies, which primarily generate profit by analyzing and selling their users’ data — in order to do that, these companies cannot block their own access to user data through encryption.93 Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has publicly criticized this alternative business model in the past: “They’re gobbling up everything they can learn about you and trying to monetize it. We think that’s wrong. And it’s not the kind of company that Apple wants to be.”94 Apple’s resistance to the All Writs Act was therefore likely motivated by its desire to differentiate itself from its peers.
4. Interests of Corporate and Individual Users. — Finally, surveillance intermediaries may react differently to the concerns of individual users and corporate users — especially when individuals use a free version of their product and corporations use a paid version. Because corporate users often generate more revenue for an intermediary and have significant bargaining power when purchasing an enterprise version of the intermediary’s product, their concerns are more likely to be heard over the concerns of individual users.
Take, for example, Google’s summer 2017 announcement that it would stop scanning the contents of Gmail messages to generate targeted advertisements.95 Privacy advocates and individuals had been sharply criticizing Google for this practice since Gmail launched in 2004,96 but Google continued to engage in email scanning for thirteen years. According to journalists and privacy advocates, Google’s change of heart did not occur in response to the decades-long objection of individual users.97 Rather, Google was responding to the discomfort of its corporate users.98 Although Google insisted that its enterprise product, G Suite, did not scan email contents for advertising purposes, corporate users remained uncomfortable with the notion that Google scanned the contents of Gmail messages at all.99 In order to assuage these fears, Google decided to stop scanning Gmail across the board, in a move that reflected “Google’s seriousness in winning over corporate customers.”100
Although this example was not generated in response to a government subpoena, it is easy to see how this behavior carries over to Google’s role as a surveillance intermediary. Further, Google’s decision reflects how corporations react differently to individual versus corporate user privacy concerns. It is also important to note that this individual-versus-corporate user dynamic does not exist for every surveillance intermediary: while companies like Google and Apple work with both individuals and corporate users, and may be incentivized to behave differently when presented with the concerns of one class of user over another, other intermediaries, such as Facebook and Twitter, have primarily individual users.
The surveillance intermediary model is not perfect, particularly when it comes to the lack of consistent alignment between intermediary decisionmaking and the public interest. However, there are a number of positive institutional features of this system that might lead us to want large technology companies to act as our surveillance intermediaries. If regulatory authorities can navigate the complex web of incentives governing intermediary decisionmaking, the surveillance intermediary system can be leveraged to improve both the efficacy of legal protections for individual privacy and the efficiency of processing lawful requests for information.
Consider, for example, Microsoft’s 2016 lawsuit against the U.S. government.101 Microsoft alleged that the government routinely attached secrecy orders to search warrants and other requests for information, often for an indefinite amount of time, even when the facts of a case did not support the need for secrecy.102 As a result, Microsoft was compelled to turn over user information to the government but was not able to notify its users when it did so. Microsoft claimed that the routine use of indefinite secrecy orders violated its customers’ Fourth Amendment rights and Microsoft’s own First Amendment rights.103 In October 2017, the Department of Justice issued new secrecy order guidelines for U.S. Attorneys’ Offices.104 According to Brad Smith, Microsoft’s President and Chief Legal Officer, the new policy “helps ensure that secrecy orders are used only when necessary and for defined periods of time.”105 Microsoft then dropped its lawsuit, but Smith assured its users that it would continue fighting for their privacy rights:
We applaud the Department of Justice for taking these steps, but that doesn’t mean we’re done with our work to improve the use of secrecy orders. We have been advocating for our customers before the DOJ for a long time, and we’ll continue to do that. We will continue to turn to the courts if needed. And we are committed to working with Congress.106
This lawsuit and the resulting policy change are an example of surveillance intermediaries at their best: Microsoft noticed a pattern of the government overusing secrecy orders and mobilized its considerable resources to change this practice. What’s more, it did so of its own volition — indeed, a critical issue with the government’s use of secrecy orders was the fact that the public could not know how often they were used without Microsoft cluing us in.
This case reflects a number of positive aspects of the surveillance intermediary system. First, the existence of surveillance intermediaries between the government and end users is a helpful mechanism for our legal system: “[W]hen surveillance intermediaries resist government surveillance, they . . . amplify[] the ability of Congress and the courts to regulate the surveillance state.”107 This is a point that a range of commentators seem to agree on, including former government attorneys most concerned with public safety108 and scholars focused on protecting privacy and civil liberties.109 Technology companies are able to generate public information about the Executive’s surveillance programs, ensuring that all members of Congress are informed about law enforcement activities.110 They can also demand court orders before complying with law enforcement requests for information, “put[ting] more and more . . . surveillance activity before the courts.”111 In short, surveillance intermediaries have the power to strengthen and reinforce the oversight power of Congress and the judiciary in the realm of the Executive’s surveillance programs.112
Second, and relatedly, technology companies almost certainly know more about law enforcement requests for information than any other entity — including the government. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter receive court orders from federal, state, and local governments. They can learn the idiosyncrasies of different offices, differentiate “normal” requests from aberrant ones, and identify concerning patterns. Indeed, even on the federal level there is room for a range of behavior from judges and U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across the country.113 No single organization has as large and clear a window into surveillance trends as these technology companies, and therefore no other organization is better positioned to respond to these trends.114
Third, technology companies are better situated to pursue surveillance-related litigation than any individual. There are a number of reasons why it is unlikely that any one person would be able to successfully sue the government over routine subpoenas and search warrants: At the outset, there are significant standing issues that might render such a suit impossible in the first place.115 Further, individuals simply do not know enough about the degree and manner in which their personal data is collected by the government.116 Finally, individuals are unlikely to have the resources to pursue effective litigation against the government.117 In contrast, technology companies have the standing, knowledge, and resources required to challenge government orders when necessary.
Fourth, large technology companies have the resources to invest in robust policy teams that can devote themselves to evaluating the validity of law enforcement requests for information, responding to emergencies, and developing long-term litigation strategies when necessary. To take an example from outside of the surveillance context, consider the approach that companies such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have taken to preserving freedom of speech online.118 Despite the fact that these platforms have broad immunity from liability for user-generated content,119 they each go through enormous effort and employ thousands of people in order to preserve free speech norms for their users to the greatest extent possible.120 This is an example of the good-faith effort technology companies put into their work as private institutions with quasi-public functions — at the same time, this is a project motivated by “the necessity [to meet] users’ norms for economic viability.”121
Finally, the existence of large technology companies as surveillance intermediaries is an enormous benefit to law enforcement agencies.122 The evidence from these companies is often incredibly important to criminal cases and national security investigations,123 and being able to turn to a small number of well-organized companies is critical to the efficiency and success of those pursuits.124 While some have taken this to be a negative — that the Facebooks of the world make it all too easy for the government to slip into a dystopian Big Brother–esque surveillance state125 — there are many reasons to consider this benefit for law enforcement agencies to be a benefit to the public. Data held by surveillance intermediaries has been indispensable to cases relating to terrorism, murder, and other serious crimes.126 This information can be acquired in a cost- and time-efficient way when surveillance intermediaries have invested in an infrastructure for responding to court orders.
By providing a degree of transparency to government requests127 and making independent assessments of their legality,128 surveillance intermediaries can provide a valuable backstop to the Executive’s law enforcement powers and set a ceiling on government overreach. At the same time, by providing clear law enforcement guidelines,129 proactively assisting law enforcement with certain investigations,130 and expediting responses to urgent requests,131 intermediaries are also able to set a floor of assistance that law enforcement officials can expect from technology companies. Setting a ceiling and floor for compliance with government requests for information is an incredibly valuable role for surveillance intermediaries to play — and technology companies are well equipped to do it.
Surveillance intermediaries are not a monolith. This is an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of companies with different user bases, business models, income streams, and public relations strategies. Surveillance intermediaries play a significant role in our law enforcement and national security apparatus, and their behavior in that role varies significantly over time and between companies. As Congress and our courts move toward regulating large technology companies, they would do well to understand the complex web of incentives that govern intermediary behavior. If they are able to do so, we can harness the resources and insight of intermediaries for the public good. If they fail to do so, however, and instead subscribe to the belief that intermediaries tend to either resist or assist the government, they will miss the important nuances driving intermediary behavior.
Recommended Citation:
Developments in the Law — More Data, More Problems, 131 Harv. L. Rev. 1715, 1722 (2018).