Re: 6/00 - SEC’s Automated Internet Surveillance Plan Appears to Respect Privacy and Constitutional Concerns
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cybersecuritieslaw.com
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SEC’s Automated Internet Surveillance Plan Appears to Respect Privacy and Constitutional Concerns
by Bruce T. Carton and James H. West
For several years, a growing number of attorneys, accountants and investigators in the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Enforcement have spent time hunting for online securities fraud. Under the direction of the SEC's Office of Internet Enforcement, this group, informally known as the “CyberForce, ” has laboriously searched the reaches of the Internet using essentially the same tools available to any member of the public: a computer, commercial search engines, and a list of key words and phrases that SEC investigators hope will lead to fraudulent online schemes.
The inefficiency of having professionals in the persistently short-staffed Division of Enforcement surfing the Internet, coupled with advances in technology, prompted the SEC to consider whether it could automate the online search and detection responsibilities of the CyberForce. 1 In November 1999, the SEC announced, to little notice from the public, that it would seek proposals from vendors to develop a system capable of automating its Internet searches. 2
Four months later, the legality and propriety of the SEC’s automated surveillance plan suddenly exploded as an issue debated by privacy advocates, members of Congress, and even SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. 3 In March and early April 2000, the plan was attacked — in most cases based on clear misunderstandings of the scope of the planned surveillance —as being simultaneously in violation of the Fourth and First Amendments, the Privacy Act of 1974, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.
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