You might feel secure and secluded when using your computer to browse the Internet. But whatever you do online leaves traces. And these traces can be tracked by the government when certain laws apply. To learn more about those laws, take up this free online course Surveillance Law.

What is the course Surveillance Law about?

This course covers different aspects of government surveillance, and what laws there are to facilitate or limit it. Many of the popular websites are based in the USA, so the course focuses on American laws and the work of American intelligent agencies.

You will learn about important laws and various surveillance methods. As noted by a student who took this course before: “this class is a great way to scare people with all of the ways different levels of government can spy on their citizens”.

There will be also some practical tasks for you to accomplish, so that you can use the knowledge you got from the course.

What will this course on government surveillance include?

The course will consist of several lectures. Each lecture will be about 5-10 minutes long. At the lessons many captivating topics will be discussed, such as:

snooping on email

mobile phone location

hacking into devices

and also what happens when data is technically protected, and how the government can require decryption.

There will be quizzes, but they shouldn’t be difficult for you. You’ll be also taking part in the discussions which promise to be exciting as the materials of the course are cases that attracted public and media attention.

The instructor of the course is Jonathan Mayer, a lawyer at Stanford University and a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. He was also named one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2014, for his work on technology security and privacy. Jonathan puts his own lessons into practice, making it possible for you to take the course in a way that would protect you from the surveillance. To do this you should access the “preview” version of the course without creating an account. For even greater protection, you can load the preview using the Tor anonymizing network

Can I read something on government surveillance?

All the reading for the course will be provided to you free of charge. If you want more information on the topic, who can find it in these books:

The course Surveillance Law sounds awesome, what’s next?

Go to the course page to learn more about the course, watch the introduction video and enroll in the course!