Introduction

This report explores the relationships between civil society organizations and entities that conduct oversight of surveillance activities in eight countries: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This represents the countries of the Five Eyes alliance plus France, Germany, and the Netherlands. To a limited extent, the report also considers oversight in Norway. Our examination starts from the premise that oversight of surveillance can provide a critical check on surveillance powers and activities, and that oversight bodies and civil society organizations share the goal of ensuring that surveillance is conducted in accordance with the rule of law and with respect for human rights.

Our review has demonstrated that engagement between civil society and oversight bodies can be a productive tool for limiting the risks that government surveillance poses to privacy, civil liberties, and human rights. In many countries, the opportunities for civil society organizations to engage with oversight bodies are increasing. Government oversight can provide meaningful accountability for surveillance agencies and their activities, and can enforce safeguards to protect individual rights and the rule of law. In addition, because oversight bodies typically have access to classified information, they can conduct reviews and make findings in many settings that are inaccessible to public litigation or public debate in legislatures.

This report explores the ways in which civil society and oversight bodies can work cooperatively to promote robust oversight of surveillance. The report identifies and analyzes a variety of models of engagement between civil society and oversight that can serve this goal.

Engagement between civil society and oversight bodies can be a productive tool for limiting the risks that government surveillance poses to privacy, civil liberties, and human rights.

Our research for this report principally involved conducting interviews. In each of the eight countries we have explored, we conducted interviews of civil society representatives and of current and former staff for government oversight bodies. We interviewed representatives from almost all of the oversight bodies in these eight countries that both conduct oversight of surveillance activities and have engaged with civil society organizations. On the civil society side, we interviewed representatives from a variety of privacy, civil liberties, and human rights organizations that have engaged with these oversight bodies.

We first set out to examine the current state of engagement between civil society and oversight bodies, exploring the different models for engagement and the strategies that have been productive. Since the report explores engagement between civil society and oversight bodies, rather than litigation brought by civil society to challenge government activities, this report does not include a discussion of the type of oversight conducted by the courts through judicial review. Nor does it include the oversight conducted by specialized courts like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) in the United States or the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in the U.K. We next identify barriers to productive engagement between oversight and civil society, possible strategies for mitigating these barriers, and instances where engagement has not been productive. Finally, we outline specific practical recommendations for civil society organizations and for oversight bodies.