To stop the Investigatory Powers Bill, campaigners will need to make a strong case for targeted, not mass surveillance

On Wednesday, after months of speculation and a flurry of off-the-record ministerial briefings and some pretty cringeworthy attempts at PR by GCHQ, the UK Government finally published its surveillance bill, which has been given the more innocuous title of the Investigatory Powers Bill.

The Guardian has produced a clear summary of the main points here. You can also check out BBC News for a less opinionated assessment.

Here’s a round-up (pun intended) of reaction to the Investigatory Powers Bill and how campaigners can  build a coalition to oppose the bill, but only if they take on the Government directly on the claims it makes on security and crime prevention.

An extended itemised phone bill or another step towards mass surveillance?

Not surprisingly, the Government’s assessment of the Investigatory Powers Bil was markedly different to that of privacy activists and human rights campaigners.

While Theresa May wants us  to  “try to think of the new powers [the requirement for all companies to keep a record of every citizen’s internet history for a year] as just an extended itemised phone bill”, Amnesty International UK were warning that the bill “would effectively legalise mass surveillance, which by definition inherently fails the test of proportionality required by international human rights laws that the UK government must adhere to.”

Liberty also performed strongly, promoting its 8 point Safe and Sound plan for targeted surveillance, which they say would keep us safe while respecting our privacy.

At Open Rights Group we punched above our weight, with Executive Director Jim Killock featured television and radio news programmes, including Radio 4’s World at One (jump to 15 min, 35 secs).

Where was Labour?

More surprisingly (and particularly disappointingly for me as a Labour member), there hasn’t been much evidence of the much talked-about ‘a new kind of politics’ from the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. I cringed as I read Andy Burnham’s response to May’s proposals, wishing Labour had at least chosen to express caution and reserve judgement:

“From what the Home Secretary has said today, it is clear to me that she and the Government have listened carefully to the concerns that were expressed about the draft Bill that was presented in the last Parliament … It would help the future conduct of this important public debate if the House sent out the unified message today that this is neither a snooper’s charter, nor a plan for mass surveillance.”

After Burnham’s initial comments on the bill in the House of Commons, Labour has seemingly made no effort to communicate to the public its position on the Government’s plans for new surveillance powers. In echoes of Nineteen  Eight-Four, there is no comment whatsoever on Labour’s Twitter account of the Investigatory Powers Bill. Given the serious nature of the comments  by Amnesty and Liberty, it’s disappointing Labour doesn’t feel the need to engage on the issue, at least not in public view.

Presenting a detailed operational case for targeted, not mass surveillance

As a member and activist with the Open Rights Group, you’d expect me to be suspicious of the Government’s plans for surveillance and to be instinctively sympathetic to the arguments Amnesty and Liberty have made about the risks the Investigatory Powers Bill poses to our individual rights and civil society. But I am not so naive as to believe that a majority of the public share my outlook. I voted for Ed Miliband to become Labour leader, after all.

From talking  to friends, family  and strangers about the work of the Open Rights Group, I know how easily arguments about the need for security, mixed in with frightening examples of horrible criminal activities, more often than not crush appeals to protect privacy and other human rights. If campaigners such as myself are to convince others to oppose the Government’s plans, we need to go beyond principled appeals to protect human rights.

In particular, campaigners need to show that a ‘collect it all’ approach, which puts all of us under surveillance, is not just legally and morally unacceptable, it does not actually keep us any safer.

So far the only person I’ve seen take on this argument is Peter Ludlow, former Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University in the United States. Here’s a clip of him refuting the effectiveness of the NSA’s bulk data collection / mass surveillance approach. While Ludlow is talking about the United States, surely it is possible to do something similar here in the UK?

This clip comes from the excellent documentary, Killswitch: The Battle to Control the Internet, which I highly recommend you support.

While Ludlow is a passionate speaker, it’s a shame he doesn’t back up his point of view with hard evidence, at least not on the documentary itself.

Fortunately, campaigners do have evidence which they can draw on to help them make the case for targeted and not blanket surveillance. Back in  2013, for example, The Guardian reported on a Senate hearing in the United States which suggested the NSA had been systematically overstating the effectiveness of bulk collection of metadata.

More recently, in January 2014, the United States Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB – great acronym, by the way) ruled that that the bulk phone records collection had not stopped terrorist attacks and had “limited value” in combatting terrorism more broadly. The board also ruled the programme as illegal but, as an unnamed ministerial source said to The Sun last week, “It would be totally irresponsible of government to allow the legal system to dictate to us on matters as important as terrorism. (link goes to The Register, not The Sun)”.

While David Anderson, in his review of the UK’s existing investigatory powers, accepted the case for continued bulk data collection, he did at least say the Government would need to set out a ” detailed operational case” before any new surveillance powers could be introduced.

Given the lack of strong political opposition to the Government’s plans, coupled with the public’s valid concerns over security, it would be foolish to think at least a plausible will not be presented. If campaigners here in the UK are to successfully oppose the bill, they must take a similar approach and try, as far as possible, to present a detailed case for the kind of system Liberty presents in its Safe and Sound plan.

Kneel To The Queen: Jeremy Corbyn’s First Week Highlights The Importance of Open Innovation

After voting for Jeremy Corybyn in the Labour Party leadership election, I’ve been watching with interest and no small amount of anxiety to see how he has fared in his first week as leader.

Jeremy’s first week has been significant in many ways but for me the most significant thing has been the way his leadership has revealed the continued influence of deference in our political system and wider society. For evidence of this, take a look at the media reaction to Corbyn choosing not to sing the national anthem at the memorial service for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Britain or querying the necessity of ‘kneeling to the Queen’ as a member of the Privy Council.

Whatever your views on the monarchy, this week’s developments highlight how at a foundational level Britain’s political system is far from neutral. As a result of its traditions and customs, it favours established political actors over those who would challenge the status quo. Within such a system, politicians who are comfortable singing God Save The Queen and kneeling before the Queen are conferred with respect while those who take issue with deferential customs  come across as peculiar at best or, at worst, a threat to the system and thus deemed not fit to exercise political power.

The biases exposed by Corbyn’s leadership confirm to me the importance of maintaining the internet as an open and neutral platform upon which innovation can flourish. Unlike politicians under the British political system, innovators are not required to ‘kneel to the Queen’ in order to effect change on the Internet. At its best, the internet provides a commons which everyone has equal access rights over and where innovators can try out new ideas without having to ask anyone’s permission before hand.

Sadly, there are signs that the internet is changing and becoming a less open and neutral platform. While the FCC’s Open Internet Order may protect the foundational principle of net neutrality in the short term at least, the move towards a ‘mobile first’ presents a serious challenge to the open internet.

Instead of freely building web services, developers are increasingly focused on building apps for iOS and Android. Both iOS and Android are, to differing degrees, closed platforms. As such, developers need approval from platform owners before they can innovate, in contrast to the open internet, where no such ‘permission to innovate’ is required. Given the plethora of apps available on both iOS and Android, it would be easy to dismiss the issue of permission as being nothing but a dry, theoretical concern. However, if you look carefully, you can see the detrimental effect permission culture is having on innovation.

Permission culture is evident in the area of adblocking technology. With iOS 9, the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, Apple announced it would allow for the first time the development of extensions for its Safari web browser which are capable of blocking content. Up until this point, users were free to install extensions on their desktop computers but not their smartphones. Similarly, earlier this month, Adblock Plus announced it has received permission from Google for the popular adblocking software to be me made available via the Play Store, having previously been banned.

While I am no great fan of adblocking technology, I am concerned that the developers behind the innovation had to seek permission from platform owners in order to reach a mass audience. Just as the biases of the the British political system make it more difficult for unconventional politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn to effect change, the move away from a neutral and open internet towards closed mobile platforms may make it harder for new innovations to emerge which threaten to disrupt the interests of established players. Whatever your views on Jeremy Corbyn and Britain’s constitutional settlement, I hope his brushes with the political establishment encourage others to continue to fight for an open and neutral internet where people are not required to seek permission to innovate.

Mind the Gap: Labour Values and the Leadership Election

Over the past couple of months I’ve found myself becoming increasingly interested in the Labour Party leadership contest. As a Labour Party member and someone who studied Politics at university and chose to specialise in Labour politics from the 1970s, you’d think this state of affairs would be a source of interest and enjoyment during the summer silly season. However, as is my wont, I’ve allowed myself to get too enthusiastic about the prospects for change and now my enthusiasm is turning into pessimism.

The reason I am feeling downbeat about the leadership contest is because of the gap between the Labour Party’s stated values and the policies the candidates are offering. With the exception of Jeremy Corbyn, each of the leadership candidates have stressed (to varying degrees) the need for Labour to learn the lessons from the recent general election defeat and adopt policies which more closely reflect current public opinion, whether that’s establishing economic credibility through support for spending cuts, supporting reductions in welfare spending (including using this term rather than social security) and tough action against migrants. While adopting these policies might get Labour elected (although personally I have my doubts), in my view they would appear to go against what Labour stands for.

I suspect like a lot of members, I’d never really paid much attention to the words printed on the back of my membership card, which are intended to summarise the Labour Party’s values. However, after reading the criticism levelled at Corbyn from Labour Party grandees for being too left wing, I decided to take a fresh look at what as a party member I have actually signed up for.

The back of my membership card reads:

The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us as a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect.

Even if we put aside the thorny issue of defining what we mean by democratic socialism (a gigantic tin of worms), it is hard to see how by broadly accepting the policy framework established by Cameron the ‘credible’ leadership contestants will be able to halt rising inequality, never mind make meaningful inroads to creating a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the the few.

While I still have reservations over Jeremy Corbyn, I do at least believe he has a distinctive vision for the future of the country which could, in time, be developed into a genuine alternative to austerity narrative the Conservatives have so successfully created.