Global Cybersecurity, Surveillance, and Privacy: The Obama Administration's Conflicted Legacy

To analyze the Obama administration's cyber efforts, this Article proposes a paradigm of stewardship with both discursive and structural dimensions. Discursive stewardship refers to the Executive's openness to dialogue with other stakeholders. Structural stewardship refers to the domestic and transnational distribution of decisional authority, including checks and balances that guard against the excesses of unilateral action. The Article concludes that the Obama administration made substantial progress in each of these realms.

However, the outsized role of law enforcement agendas and dearth of clearly articulated checks on transnational surveillance drove headwinds that limited forward movement.