Cyber Crime and Cyber Terrorism

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Big Data and social surveillance
if requested. Service providers, for example, collect personal data on the base of private 
agreements (privacy policies) with the consent of the user and for their specific pur-
poses (
Reidenberg, 2013
) but governments exploit this practice by using mandatory 
orders to obtain the disclosure of this information. This dual mechanism hides from 
citizens the risk and the dimension of the social control that can be realized by moni-
toring social networks or other services and using Big Data 
analytics
technologies.
Another relevant aspect of the control deriving from Big Data is the amount of 
it. Analyses focused on profiling enable to predict the attitudes and decisions of any 
single user and even to match similar profiles. In contrast, Big Data is not used to 
focus on individuals, but to analyze large groups and populations (e.g., the political 
sentiment of an entire country).
Although, in many cases, intelligence activities have little to do with general data 
protection regulations—since they are authorized by specific legislative provisions 
introducing exceptions to general principles (
Cate et al., 2012; Swire, 2012; Bailey, 
2012; Wang, 2012; Brown, 2012; Tsuchiya, 2012; Pell, 2012; Cate and Cate, 2012; 
Svantesson, 2012; Tene, 2012; Schwartz, 2012; Abraham and Hickok, 2012
; See 
also 
Brown, 2013; European Parliament, 2013b
), regulations on data protection and 
privacy can play a relevant role in terms of reduction of the amount of data collected 
by private entities and, consequently, have an indirect impact on the information 
available for purposes of public social surveillance.
The interaction between public and private in social control could be divided in 
two categories, both of which are significant with regard to data protection. The first 
concerns the collection of private company data by government and judicial authori-
ties (see Section “Array of Approved eSurveillance Legislation”), whilst the second 
is the use by government and judicial authorities of instruments and technologies 
provided by private companies for organizational and investigative purposes (see 
Section “Use of Private Sector Tools and Resources”).