Has the science and technology committee struck a blow against the Investigatory Powers Bill?

As an organiser for Open Rights Group Birmingham, I have followed with interest and not a little weariness the twists and turns as the government’s draft Investigatory Powers Bill makes its way through the pre-legislative scrutiny phase.

Today, the House of Commons science and technology committee published a highly critical report on the bill, with its chair, Nicola Blackwood MP commenting:

The current lack of clarity within the draft Investigatory Powers Bill is causing concern amongst businesses. There are widespread doubts over the definition, not to mention the definability, of a number of the terms used in the draft Bill. The Government must urgently review the legislation so that the obligations on the industry are clear and proportionate.

In particular, the report highlights the following problems:

• The feasibility of collecting and storing Internet Connection Records ICRs – including the very real problem of keeping these highly personal records from (non state-sanctioned) hackers.
• Anxiety amongst communication  providers over the ability to use effective encryption, which Blackwood recognises is “important in providing the secure services on the internet we all rely on“. The committee particularly wants the government to provide greater clarity over the status of end-to-end encrypted communications, where decryption might not be possible by a communications provider that had not added the original encryption.
• Concerns amongst certain communications over ‘equipment interference’. For some providers, such as Mozilla (the makers of Firefox), this concern appears to stem from a genuine concern for its users’ privacy and the integrity of the internet. For other providers, the concern is more about how a perception of hacking could hurt their competitiveness in a global market for services.
• Uncertainty over costs. Coverage of the committee’s report has downplayed the risk associated with spiralling implementation costs, both for government and businesses. At last cost, the Home Secretary has put the cost of implementing the new ICR system at £247 million but the report notes that costs are likely to change (i.e. rise), given the uncertainty and rapid pace of technological change.

It’s worth noting that the committee’s remit was purely to look at the technical feasibility of the government’s proposals and how these might affect communications businesses, not whether the communications monitoring provisions or whether they are proportionate to the threats they are intended to deal with. These issues are expected to be addressed by the joint committe Joint Committee established to scrutinise the draft Bill as a whole.

I believe the criticisms levelled at the bill in this report are significant for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, by focusing solely on the technical feasibility of implementing the bill, it manages to side-step the highly polarised debate between privacy and security advocates. This report says, irrespective of your views on the merits of expanded monitoring of communications, you should be concerned as a citizen and taxpayer about the feasibility of implementing the government’s plans at anything approaching a sensible level of expenditure.

Secondly, by holding up the prospect that the Investigatory Powers Bill will do real harm to the growing UK tech sector, the report will hopefully encourage the government to modify its approach, if only to protect its supposed reputation for business confidence.

Both these signals – questions over the feasability of implementation and the likely damage to the UK’s growing tech sector – will not  in itself be enough to stop the Investigatory Powers Bill becoming law, but it’s a start.

The Joint Committee is due to deliver its full report on the Investigatory Powers Bill no later than 17 February. It will be interesting to see whether this committee takes a similarly critical stance on the merits of expanded monitoring provisions and the limited amount of time the committee was given to scrutinise the bill.

Cost of Investigatory Powers Bill could undermine UK Tech sector – full details of science and technology committee report

Science and Technology Committee of Parliament slams Snoopers’ Charter – Open Rights Group’s reaction to the committee’s report

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.

Why I’m Setting up an Open Rights Group in Birmingham

Next month, it’ll be five years since I left the weird and wonderful world of local government. In the years that have followed, I have explored different career paths, developed new skills, worked for a range of organisations and as a freelancer, moved from London to Birmingham and got married.

Why digital rights matter to me – a personal perspective

With the exception of getting married, what’s tied all these activities together and made experimentation possible has been digital technology and the open internet. Digital technology and the open internet has enabled me to discover new and interesting ideas beyond the mainstream media. It has given me the tools to express myself and develop greater confidence in my own thinking and outlook. Social media, particularly Twitter, has allowed me to connect with, learn from and partner with a wider range of people and organisations both for work purposes as well as independent pursuits such as Roots of Reggae and Bournville Social Media Surgery. And very significantly, throughout the last five years digital technology and the internet has been instrumental to me earning a living and developing my new career in communications.

While the circumstances of my initial career change in 2010 have played a role in deepening my relationship and sense of connection with all things digital, I also know from talking to friends, family members and colleagues that I am not alone. It’s become a platitude to say we now live in a digital world but when we look around us, it is hard to ignore the scale of social, economic and political changes that can be attributed, at least in part, to digital technology.

Bringing digital rights into the mainstream

Given the transformative effect digital technology is having on us as individuals and our society, I believe we need to find a way of bringing discussions and decision-making about digital technology into the civic and political mainstream.

By working hard to put across a persuasive case for being both pro-digital and pro-human rights I believe we can help decision-makers and people in positions of influence to realise the decisions we take in relation to digital technology and the internet have far reaching implications for our rights as citizens and the society we live in.

Moving from reactive campaigning to a positive vision of a digital society

Currently, a lot of attention has been given to the government’s revival of the so-called Snoopers’ Charter and the implications for privacy and freedom of expression arising from mass surveillance. Public scrutiny has also been applied to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), which is being negotiated in secret between the EU and the USA, and which potentially brings intrusive measures associated with copyright policy. While these high profile cases provide an opportunity to rally supporters and often see off the worst aspects of different proposals, we must do more than simply respond to threats when they arise, we need to come together and develop a movement that is capable to putting across a convincing, positive vision for a society that is both pro-digital and pro-human rights.

Introducing the Open Rights Group

After quite a lot of research and enquiry as to how people around the world have approached the issue of ‘digital rights’, I came across the UK-based Open Rights Group, whose vision of a digital society I share:

As society goes digital we wish to preserve its openness. We want a society built on laws, free from disproportionate, unaccountable surveillance and censorship. We want a society in which information flows more freely. We want a state that is transparent and accountable, where the public’s rights are acknowledged and upheld.

We want a world where we each control the data our digital lives create, deciding who can use it and how. We want the public to fully understand their digital rights, and be equipped to be creative and free individuals. We stand for fit-for-purpose digital copyright regimes that promote free expression and diverse participation in culture.

We believe people have the right to control their technology, and oppose the use of technology to control people.

Time to  build a grassroots campaign for digital rights

Following last month’s general election win for the Conservatives, which has resulted in the reintroduction of the Snoopers’ Charter in the Queen’s Speech, I decided I had to become more active on promoting digital rights. It was at this time that I became a paid up member of the Open Rights Group.

Now that I am a member of the Open Rights Group, I want to help more people become aware of the importance of digital rights and maintaining an open digital society that works for the many, not the few. To achieve this goal, I am in the process of setting up a local Birmingham Open Rights Group. The idea is to bring like-minded people together, both in person as well as online, and for us to work together to ensure digital rights become embedded into the everyday fabric of our society.

I’ve already started to reach out to friends and colleagues in Birmingham who I think might be interested in supporting the Open Rights Group. The next step will be organising an initial meet-up. This will help me to determine the current level of interest in digital rights in Birmingham (does anyone really care?) and for members of the group to decide on what the next steps should be. Look out for more information shortly about our first meet-up.

Would you like to help  set up an Open Rights Group in Birmingham?

Would you like to help set up an Open Rights Group in Birmingham? If so, please get in touch with me and we can get the ball rolling. I would be extremely grateful for any help you can provide – no matter how much or how little.