ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book describes how in addition to providing judicial legitimacy to executive expansions of surveillance power, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was regularly stunted in its ability to place meaningful limits on the intelligences agencies with which the agencies would actually comply. It illustrates how attention to language choice and use is particularly important in the surveillance sphere where terms have been interpreted in ways divergent from their generally understood meanings, and where technological misunderstandings have been exploited. The book shows how metaphors and over-simplification of the technical challenges have been used to distract from legitimate concerns about the undermining of encryption tools essential for the protection of privacy. It discusses how the ‘double-lock’ system constitutes judicial ‘approval’ rather than judicial ‘authorisation’, the procedure does insert an independent third-party at the ex ante stage of surveillance operations.
