Law Commons^™

Surveillance Of Emergent Associations: Freedom Of Association In A Network Society, Katherine J. Strandburg

Katherine J. Strandburg

Recent events have combined to bring of the prospect of using communications traffic data to ferret out suspect groups and investigate their membership and structure to the forefront of debate. While such “relational surveillance” has been around for years, efforts are being made to update traffic analysis to incorporate insights from “social network analysis” -- a means of analyzing relational structures developed by sociologists.1-13 Interest in employing social network analysis for law enforcement purposes was given a huge boost after September 11, 2001 when attention focused on tracking terrorist networks.5,7,9,11,12,14-17 Traffic data, when stored, aggregated, and analyzed using sophisticated computer …