Surveillance has become so ubiquitous that it appears likely that Russia was caught in the act conspiring to fix the 2016 United States presidential election, and at least one of his staffers was basically overheard conspiring with them.
Politicians aren’t the only ones being watched. Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations detailing the US National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance have made clear that, these days, everyone should be thinking about privacy and security.
That includes academics, some of whom are undertaking sensitive, even dangerous, research. How can we work safely and ethically in an era of internet spying and wiretapping?
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This commentary refers to possibilities that are, to be candid, pretty alarming. It does suggest there are circumstances where researchers shouldn’t take a mobile phone with them into meetings/interviews with participants, and notes/data might be a source of risk if it is stored on a researcher’s machine (even in circumstances where the project’s output is published without personal identifiers).
