Publications

How does legislation and regulation in the United States structure the relationship between national security and privacy in the digital era? To answer this question, a database was created, consisting of all relevant federal laws and regulations (86 in all) issued between 1967 and 2016 .Each one was classified by the degree to which it represented a contradiction or congruence between national security and privacy. The findings reveal changes favoring national security over privacy in three different timespans before and after the digital era and indicate significant gaps in promoting national security and privacy in the civilian business sector. These findings may be due to three factors: 1) the changing role of business in promoting national security and privacy in cyberspace, including the lack of overlapping interests between the business sector and civil society; 2) asymmetrical power relations favoring the executive branch of government over that of Congress; and 3) the decisive effect of security agencies and technology monopolies hindering the advancement of cyberspace policies that would strengthen both national security and privacy. This article empirically tracks the dual and paradoxical role of the state in cyber issues; on the one hand, the state goes to great lengths to promote cybersecurity, safeguard privacy, and protect national security. On the other hand, the state exploits cyberspace to gather information while it violates privacy in order to attain “higher” national security goals.