SIGINT Law in the US

[John Young]

Lawrence Sloan writes in the Duke Law Journal

  http://www.law.duke.edu/shell/cite.pl?50+Duke+L.+J.+1467

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"The various allegations surrounding ECHELON can be 
roughly grouped into two categories. The first set of 
allegations, coming primarily from Europe, concerns 
the use of the ECHELON system to conduct economic 
espionage on behalf of American companies. The second 
set of allegations involves the illegal use of ECHELON to 
collect intelligence about American citizens. This second 
set of allegations will be the focus of this Note. 

In a society such as ours, which considers privacy and 
freedom from intrusive government to be fundamental 
values, the prospect of the American government spying 
on its citizens is extremely troubling. These allegations 
raise questions about the sufficiency of the legal 
restrictions placed on the collection and use of signals 
intelligence. The use of national intelligence assets to 
conduct industrial espionage for the benefit of American 
companies over their foreign competitors is controversial, 
but that issue turns primarily upon matters of policy rather 
than law. 

This Note will focus on the legal restrictions on signals 
intelligence (SIGINT) activities and, thus, will set aside the 
primarily policy-driven question of using national intelligence 
assets to conduct economic espionage."

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