As a member of the civil liberties organisation Liberty, it was with sadness that I read earlier this week week that Shami Chakrabarti is stepping down as director after 12 years in the role.
Shami Chakrabarti’s list of achievements – from overurning compulsory ID cards to challenging internnment of foreign terrorist suspects and, most recently, providing strong challenge over the government’s plans to scrap the Human Rights Act and greatly expand online surveillance – are all the more remarkable when you realise she joined Liberty the day before September 11 attacks in 2001. While I may still find myself despairing at the British political establishment’s respect for citizens and civil society, I can see that without Chakrabrarti’s principled leadership things could be a lot worse.
Chakrabarti has written a thoughtful piece for The Guardian to coincide with the announcment of her depature from Liberty. In it, she notes: “When fear stalks the land, blank cheques become all too easy and ever more dangerous.” This defintiely rings true of my recent experience campaigning against the Investigatory Powers Bill as part of the Open Rights Group. For me, the lowest point of the campaign (so far – it’s not over yet!) was when David Cameron sought to use the Paris Attacks to justify an attack on encryption, despite the fact that the terrorists had in fact coordinated the attacks using regular unencrypted text messages.
I was also struck by another of Chakrabarti’s observations: “We all love our own rights and those of friends, family and people like us. Other people’s freedoms seem cheaper until it’s almost too late.” Again, I have encountered this in my campaigning for the Open Rights Group. The common response of “nothing to hide, nothing to fear” when privacy concerns are raised in relation to the Investigatory Powers Bill reflects many people’s belief that they (and by extension, their friends and family) will never be adversely affected by expanded online and so we need not worry ourselves about the balance of power between citizen and state.
While I will be sad to see her go I can understand her reasons for stepping down, given the pressure and responsibility she must have felt over the past 12 years. I would like to thank Shami Chakrabarti for everything she has done to defend civil liberties and human rights.
In my last post, I argued that if campaigners (including myself) are going to take on the Government over its plans for online surveillance and win, we need to dismantle the claims they are making about these powers being necessary for security and crime fighting.
Since then, I’ve done some further online research and had some interesting conversations on Twitter and at last night’s well-attended Open Rights Group Birmingham meetup. This has helped me to develop my thinking on how to frame the argument in a way that convinces politicians and the general public to sit-up and take notice of what’s at stake with the Investigatory Powers Bill.
Winning the argument over the Investigatory Powers Bill – key lines
Security risks created by the Investigatory Powers Bill
The new requirement for tech firms to provide unencrypted communications to the police or security services if requested through a warrant has been widely interpreted as an attempt to weaken encryption.
As Tim Cook explains, “Any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone. Everybody wants to crack down on terrorists. Everybody wants to be secure. The question is how. Opening a backdoor can have very dire consequences.”
In addition to the weakening of encryption, the bill will create more opportunities for cybercrime. Requiring ISPs to store everyone’s Internet connection records for 12 months will create huge amounts of personal data, which will be highly attractive to criminals. How much more personal data could criminals could have stolen from TalkTalk, had the new collection system been in place? Timothy Brown, Executive Director of Security with Dell Software Group noted: “this only creates larger and more attractive targets for hackers and leaks.“
The bill proposes granting the security services broad powers to hack computer systems. Doing so will leave critical infrastructure at risk, as the same vulnerabilities used by security services will be exploited by criminals. As Tim Cook noted: “Any backdoor is a backdoor for everyone.”
Questionable security gains from expansion of surveillance powers
The bill gives authorities permissions to collect bulk data straight from the public internet cables. From this data, the metadata – the who, what, where and how long rather than the full contents of a communication – will be analysed. Amnesty International, Liberty and the European Court consider this to be mass surveillance.
Internet service providers (ISP) have called into question the cost of implementing a key element of the Investigatory Powers Bill, the mandatory collection and retention of every citizen’s Internet Connection Records.
The Home Office has budgeted for £175 million but this is only intended to cover the initial up-front equipments costs, not the ongoing cost of running the system.
Asked about the feasibility of implementing a system of mass data collection, James Blessing, the chair of the Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), said ISPs would find it “very feasible – with an infinite budget”.
Human rights and international reputation
Joseph Cannataci, the UN’s special rapporteur on privacy, said the draft Investigatory Powers Bill heralded a “golden age of surveillance” unlike any that had come before. He also said, “The snoopers’ charter in the UK is just a bit worse than scary, isn’t it,”
The Government’s approach, which enshrines and expands mass data retention, appears to run contrary to the European Court’s judgement and so would be subject to challenge.
Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Mass Surveillance Report, 26 January 2015 (accessed 12 November 2015)
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.
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?
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.
Francis Clarke 