(April 2018) In the past few decades, methods of communication have dramatically changed. The development of new technology, especially the birth of the internet, has transformed the way individuals communicate with each other and increased the amount of information that can be collected by several orders of magnitude. In particular, communications – emails, instant messages, calls, social media posts, web searches, requests to visit a website – may transit multiple countries before reaching their destination. The dispersion of communications across the internet vastly increases the opportunities for communications and data to be intercepted by foreign governments, who may then share them with other governments.

As methods of communications have dramatically changed, so too has intelligence gathering. Intelligence agencies have developed increasingly advanced ways of accessing, acquiring, storing, analysing and disseminating information. In particular, they have developed methods for acquiring communications and data traveling the internet. The costs of storing this information have decreased dramatically and continue to do so. At the same time, technology now permits revelatory analyses of types and amounts of data that were previously considered meaningless or incoherent. Finally, the internet has facilitated remote access to information, meaning the sharing of communications and data no longer requires physical transfer from sender to recipient.

The new scope and scale of intelligence gathering has given rise to a new scope and scale of the sharing of that intelligence between governments, particularly in response to threats to national security. Despite these dramatic changes, in many countries around the world, the public remains in the dark regarding state surveillance powers and capabilities, and whether those powers and capabilities are subject to the necessary safeguards pursuant to domestic and international law.