CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Orwellianism For The Slaves: Zero Privacy In UK  Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:51 am | |
| The recent report
by the Interception of Communications commissioner, Sir Paul Kennedy
notes that 519,260 requisitions of communications data from telephone
companies and internet service providers were made in Britain last
year. It is very mysterious who is doing the bulk of this spying, since
no statistical breakdown is offered. But Sir Paul suggests the
procedures may be a bit much for local authorities and things ought to
be made easier for them.The Home Office is busy doing just that.
It is shortly to compel telecoms companies and internet service
providers to keep details of all your emailing, browsing and phonecalls
for up to 24 months. And it will specify in what form the information
is to be kept. It is heartening that press and public have woken up to
this snoopers' charter
just as the final piece of the picture is hammered into place. It is
being introduced in the form of a Statutory Instrument enforcing an EU
directive - which means it is unlikely to be even debated in parliament
and cannot be amended by our elected representatives. Perhaps that is
why this is being released while MPs are on holiday. They don't matter
to the process.The Home
Office is taking the maximum powers allowed under the directive - which
shouldn't be a surprise, as the directive itself was inspired by
lobbying from Charles Clarke
in the council of ministers when he was home secretary. The minimum six
months' retention is probably what we will see in Germany, which
resisted the exercise; the Home Office is taking powers for four times
as long.All this is the logical pursuit of the path set out in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000,
and most of the debate is founded on the false premise that this was a
special anti-terrorist power that somehow got out of hand when councils
started using it to pursue litterers. It just isn't true. RIPA was
always a snooper's charter, as the Guardian noted at the time.
Its function is to provide a bureaucratic mechanism by which hundreds
of different official bodies from MI5 to Ofcom can authorise their
staff to use surveillance. It is purposely obscure and hard to
challenge.The Interception
Commissioner doesn't exercise direct oversight of individual cases. He
could hardly do so for half a million of them.Read
his report and you'll see he is only interested in how well the
relevant bodies are maintaining procedural propriety by following
official Codes of Practice. He's not the only one who thinks
surveillance should be easier. The Telegraph reports:To
free up police time the Conservatives would axe the requirement for
RIPA clearance for CCTV surveillance, using automatic number plate
recognition software and public surveillance of a building. RIPA
authorisations would also not be required for commissioning covert
recording or bugging of a house or car, or using thermal or x-ray
surveillance of a building. Dominic
Grieve, the shadow home secretary - who I thought was a man of liberal
principle - is quoted as saying: "It is not right that we charge our
police with combating crime and disorder and then tie their hands
behind their backs in the name of Whitehall bureaucracy." This
is embarrassing claptrap from a man who knows better. The answer to the
over-bureaucratic control of surveillance is not to scrap control, but
to give it to the courts. If a policeman wants to look in your desk
drawer without your knowledge he needs a good excuse, and probably a
warrant. Looking at your browsing or your phone records reveals at
least as much private information. Doing it secretly is not very
different from burgling your house. It is a personal violation that
needs strong justification and strong oversight. To me that means a
judicial warrant.Rather than
"continued discharge of the functions of any public authority whose
activities include activities that are subject to review", a system is
needed that would serve a real public interest in liberty and privacy.
Not some broad-brush review of bureaucratic activities, not qualified
and approved in-house assessors of procedure and proportionality, but a
court to decide on the merits of each investigation before surveillance
was authorised. Given fair warrants we need not rely on the telecoms
providers appealing to surveillance tribunals behind closed doors, nor
would there be such a good excuse for mass surveillance
on the pretext of making life easier for everyone involved. It would be
clear that this is a serious matter and only permitted for good reason.In 1999 the president of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy, famously said:
"You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." That caused outrage. But
the context was technological capacity and consumerism. It wasn't a
moral statement about how to run the world. A decade on, UK legislators
and officials apparently see zero privacy as a legitimate aspiration of
government. They are wrong.
LNK |
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