Report Says UK Citizens Must Give Up Right To Privacy Because 'Terrorism', Reveals Huge Secret Government Databases
from the may-include-significant-quantities-of-personal-information dept
As Techdirt has noted previously, the UK body nominally responsible for overseeing the intelligence services, the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament (ISC), does little more than rubber-stamp what has taken place. The new ISC report "Privacy and Security: A modern and transparent legal framework" (pdf) is more of the same. Here is its own summary of the findings:
The UK's intelligence and security Agencies do not seek to circumvent the law.
And that's it: basically, the ISC is saying that all that is needed is a bit of a legal tidying-up. In terms of more detailed recommendations, the report suggests that the abuse of interception powers should be made a criminal offense -- currently it isn't -- and that a new category of metadata called "Communications Data Plus", which includes things like Web addresses, needs slightly greater protection than "traditional" telephone metadata.
However, the legal framework is unnecessarily complicated and -- crucially -- lacks transparency.
Our key recommendation therefore is that all the current legislation governing the intrusive capabilities of the security and intelligence Agencies be replaced by a new, single Act of Parliament.
The heart of the report's failure can be found in its discussion of bulk surveillance:
Our Inquiry has shown that the Agencies do not have the legal authority, the resources, the technical capability, or the desire to intercept every communication of British citizens, or of the internet as a whole: GCHQ are not reading the emails of everyone in the UK.
But of course, nobody said GCHQ was doing that. The problem is that it is ingesting disproportionate quantities of the Internet's traffic passing into and out of the UK, and then analyzing it -- in other words, engaging in indiscriminate mass surveillance. The report pretends to address that issue, writing:
GCHQ's bulk interception systems operate on a very small percentage of the bearers that make up the internet.
A "bearer" refers to one of the main connections to the Internet -- typically fiber-optic cables capable of carrying many gigabits of information per second. The issue is not how many such bearers GCHQ taps, but which ones. One of Snowden's earliest and most important leaked documents suggests that spying on even a "very small percentage" of the bearers gives GCHQ almost total oversight of everyone's Internet activities. Moreover, the following does not help:
We are satisfied that they apply levels of filtering and selection such that only a certain amount of the material on those bearers is collected. Further targeted searches ensure that only those items believed to be of the highest intelligence value are ever presented for analysts to examine: therefore only a tiny fraction of those collected are ever seen by human eyes.
Targeted searches can be re-directed at any moment, giving GCHQ's "human eyes" access to anything they want. It is that potential for anything that is done online in the UK to be snooped upon that is problematic.
To see why, consider a parallel universe where CCTV cameras were installed in every room in every building in the country, but all on the understanding that only a "tiny fraction" of the videos collected would ever be seen by human eyes. Since there is no way of knowing whether the footage from the CCTVs currently recording you will be looked at, you may well constrain your activities in case they are. That same logic applies to gathering most UK Internet activity -- the only reason we don't see the chilling effects yet is that most people are unaware of what is happening.
Perhaps the UK public takes at face value assurances that only "external communications" are collected and analyzed. But the ISC report confirms for the first time that UK citizens using leading Internet services like Gmail or Facebook do indeed count as "external", and are therefore fair game:
This appeared to indicate that all internet communications would be treated as 'external' communications under RIPA -- apart from an increasingly tiny proportion that are between people in the UK, using devices or services based only in the UK, and which only travel across network infrastructure in the UK.
The ISC report tries to justify this bulk collection of everyone's data on the grounds that targeted surveillance is not enough:
It is essential that the Agencies can 'discover' unknown threats. This is not just about identifying individuals who are responsible for threats, it is about finding those threats in the first place. Targeted techniques only work on 'known' threats: bulk techniques (which themselves involve a degree of filtering and targeting) are essential if the Agencies are to discover those threats.
Leaving aside the point that it is quite possible to discover unknown threats by working from existing intelligence -- in other words, using tried-and-tested techniques that have been successfully applied countless times in the past -- this ignores a key issue: that bulk collection is disproportionate given the threat it is supposed to address. This was a view expressed by one of the report's expert witnesses, Isabella Sankey, from the UK civil rights organization, Liberty. As she put it:
Some things might happen that could have been prevented if you took all of the most oppressive, restrictive and privacy-infringing measures. That is the price you pay to live in a free society.
The ISC did not agree:
While we recognise privacy concerns about bulk interception, we do not subscribe to the point of view that it is acceptable to let some terrorist attacks happen in order to uphold the individual right to privacy -- nor do we believe that the vast majority of the British public would.
But once you take that position, you justify all kinds of intrusive surveillance -- including installing CCTV cameras in every room in every building. After all, it is quite possible that doing so would stop a terrorist attack at some point, and so by the ISC's logic it is quite acceptable to require this massive intrusion into people's private lives. As for its claim that "the vast majority of the British public" would not view it as acceptable to allow some attacks to happen as the price of living in a free society, the ISC offers no proof of this, but evidently assumes that people in the UK have been reduced to such a quivering, fearful mass by the UK government's constant warnings about "terror" that they will happily hand over their freedom in the vain hope this will buy them safety.
Although depressing, it's hardly news that the UK government now considers pervasive surveillance to be justified and palatable, even. But the ISC report does contain one big surprise:
The Agencies use Bulk Personal Datasets -- large databases containing personal information about a wide range of people -- to identify individuals in the course of investigations, to establish links, and as a means of verifying information obtained through other sources. These datasets are an increasingly important investigative tool for the Agencies.
The report says that some of these databases contain "millions of records", and that they may be linked together. Even the generally accommodating ISC is worried:
Until the publication of this Report, the capability was not publicly acknowledged, and there had been no public or Parliamentary consideration of the related privacy considerations and safeguards.
Huge, secret databases, with access authorized internally, that can be used without restrictions, and for which there are no legal penalties if misused: this is clearly a recipe for disaster. Had it not been for Snowden's leaks, we would never have heard about this, since the ISC would not have been under any pressure to produce the current report. Even though it amounts to little more than a whitewash for the UK's intelligence agencies, it does reveal shocking new information that was not just unknown, but unsuspected.
The legislation does not set out any restrictions on the acquisition, storage, retention, sharing and destruction of Bulk Personal Datasets, and no legal penalties exist for misuse of this information.
Access to the datasets -- which may include significant quantities of personal information about British citizens -- is authorised internally within the Agencies without Ministerial approval.
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Freedom and privacy have a price, and it is a price that is well worth paying.
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"We don't look at everything."
"We need this data but we can't show you why"
Etc.
These were exactly the same arguments made in the US, when the Snowdon docs first appeared.
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Why?
What is is about the current sources of terrorism that is so special as to require this?
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Re: Why?
back to the middle ages where serfs had no rights and did what they were told when they were told and the privledged nobles could do whatever they wanted to anyone lower class than them.
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Re: Re: Why?
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Re: Why?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ
The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew
Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttv6n7PFniY
Brezinski at a press conference
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmUS--QCYY
The real news:
http://therealnews.com/t2/
http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverted-Totalit arianism/dp/069114589X/
http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Security-Single-Superpow er/dp/1608463656/
http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-Glennon/dp/0190206446/
Lo ok at the following graphs:
IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-the-nation-2011-6
https://www.youtub e.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349
Free trade?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju06F3Os64
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spectacle/dp/1568586132/
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."
Important history:
http://williamblum.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4#t=2551
America in the Technetronic Age 1968
https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://64.62.200.70/PERIODICAL/PDF/Encounter-1968jan/18-29/&a mp;chrome=true
search document for 'control' to help find.
Page 21 "At the same time, the capacity to assert social and political control over the individual will vastly increase. As I have already noted, it will soon be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and to maintain up-to-date, complete files, containing even most personal information about the health or personal behaviour of the citizen, in addition to more customary data. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities."
"Moreover, the rapid pace of change will put a premium on anticipating events and planning for them. Power will gravitate into the hands of those who control the information, and can correlate it most rapidly."
http://www.amazon.com/Between-Two-Ages-Americas-Technetronic/dp/0313234981
They want to try and maintain social and political control during this period of increasing global change.
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Any terrorist will now return to the one way they know to be absolutely secure. The military practices this and it's called messenger. An old idea that one person shows up with a message. You are not going to break that with spying on communications because they won't be using that. It's the one method that is secure for communications.
So we are down to why. So far absolutely no evidence has surfaced showing where these methods are effective in reducing the claimed terrorism threat. No captured terrorists have been shown to the public saying this is what we get for the invasion of privacy. No incident has show up where an actual bombing has been prevented solely from this spying. There appears to be no justification for it other than these government agencies believe the populace are a threat. The only reason they would believe that is because they are doing things they know to be illegal and would not stand up in court. Hence the fear.
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Re:
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Assume it is. How in the world could GCHQ call them to account for abusing the data without bringing it to the attention of the British people at some point?
/tinfoil
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The ONLY way we can put a stop too it, is to render it useless, or so expensive it's near useless. Strong encryption, educated users, and secured hardware.
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Wisdom from protest signs
The point of the laws is less to stop them, because as you said, they'll just ignore any laws that they find inconvenient anyway, it's to make it harder for them to get away with breaking the laws.
If they don't have to worry about hiding what they're doing, then it's pretty much a given that they will get much worse, as giving the okay to current efforts, will lead them to believe that just that little bit more is acceptable too. And then a little bit more past that, and so on, as always happens.
Now, I do agree that the best way to combat mass spying isn't through laws, which will be ignored, but increased security and informed people, which are a little harder to just bypass, but those limits, few as they are, do serve some purpose.
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But yeah, this entire report is the equivalent of doing a legal tap-dance around the subject while trying to justify it's continued mass spying.
Still one point I can give to the UK is they at least pretend they care.
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Google defines stupidity as 'behaviour that shows a lack of good sense or judgement. The quality of being stupid or unintelligent.'
UK Stupidity Agencies does have a nice ring to it.
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Journalists making noise and attempting to expose misdeeds?
- Find out what they have. Find the skeletons in their closets, blackmail them.
Citizens organizing a protest, thinking about more?
- Infiltrate their organizations, frame them for crimes, throw them in jail to rot.
Public upset about news that has slipped out?
- Entrap some dissident youth and slap it all over TV.
People starting to think about voting for an unapproved candidate?
- Invent evidence of sexual deviance, racism, sexism or some other social taboo.
These systems are to keep us all in line or remove us from the equation. No discussion, public pressure, revelation of misdeed or even change of law will stop these activities because they are driven by our basest nature - that of the pursuit of power. There are no means to unseat these vultures without revolt.
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their word means nothing...
2. DO.
NOT.
BELIEVE.
THEM.
*just like* i have ZERO faith in any bullshit oversight of various gummint institutions by various gummint institutions to uncover anything of consequence...
nine one one is the new godwin, but here it goes: do ANY kampers realize that nearly ALL the PRE-APPROVED members on the original nine one one (purposefully limited) commission have called for re-opening that investigation (which wasn't an investigation) ? ? ?
no ?
huh, funny that: THE most important terrorist attack which was the crowning impetus for implementing this police state, and nearly all the commish's are saying they were lied to and handcuffed and absolutely believe there should be a thorough investigation re-opened...
funny, you'd think that would be headline news...
3. of course, this doesn't even begin to address the end run ALL these spooks have done in getting you guys to spy on our guys we can't 'legally' (whatever, means nothing) do; and our guys will spy on your guys you can't 'legally' do...
wtf ? ? ?
WHO lets their KIDS get away with sophistry like this: oh, noes, mommy, *I* didn't get the cookies out of the cookie jar, li'l timmy did, i just put him up to it, gave him the stepstool to get the cookie jar, and ate all the cookies, but *I* didn't do it...
AND, they get away with horseshit like that ? ? ?
not in my moral universe they don't...
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Right vs. privilege
The problem with both the UK and US government's position is that these agencies actually believe that citizen rights are transitory and modifiable; we need to start asserting our right to privacy or this will become a de facto truth. All of these spying and government secrecy revelations should be sparking worldwide protests and ousters of the officials that hold to their surveillance state tenets.
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Human eyes
US spies make similar comments to this as well. I think it's a disingenuous thing to say, as it implies that unless a human being sees it, then it's not actually spying and is harmless.
That's simply an unsupportable position.
Which is an excellent reason to avoid setting foot in Britain. My problem is that the US government apparently thinks the same way.
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Re: Human eyes
That's simply an unsupportable position.
Thankfully it's easy enough to point out the massive hole in the argument for those that get tripped up by it and believe it's a valid one.
Simply ask anyone who supports that argument if they would accept a camera to be installed in their bedroom and/or bathroom.
If they say they would not, assure them that the footage from it would only be viewed with a 'very good reason', with 'good reason' to be determined at a later date. Explain that while they may not be any technical limitations on access to the video feed, and there would be nothing stopping someone who felt like watching from doing so, you promise that such a thing would of course never happen.
After the additional explanations, ask them if their answer has changed. If they still say no, hopefully the point will have been made by then.
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Unknown threats
So without bulk techniques, there's allegedly no way to discover any threat that you don't already know about. That begs the question - how did we discover any new threats before we had the ability to do bulk surveillance ?
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Re:
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1984, anyone?
Congratulations. You just invented the telescreen. And that scares the pants off me.
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Re: 1984, anyone?
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After all, that's the way the intelligence agencies do it...
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US MUST have the SAME Secret Databases
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Re: US MUST have the SAME Secret Databases
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