Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:
A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property
The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)
This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.
Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:
In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.
The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.
As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.
When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.
The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.
Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.
As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”
Well, here we are.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg this morning said that the Communications Data Bill — widely known as the “snooper’s charter” was “not going to happen”.
Speaking on his regular “Call Clegg” slot on London’s LBC radio, Clegg told presenter Nick Ferrari that the government would not pass a law allowing authorities to monitor individuals’ web traffic, describing the idea as neither “workable” nor “proportionate”.
(Watch at 19 minutes)
Clegg went on to suggest that a “middle way” could be found, possibly including the assignment of an IP address to each web-enabled device, to allow police to “do their job”.
This would appear to be a victory for the many, including Index on Censorship, who expressed concerns over the sweeping powers proposed in the Communications Data Bill. In an August 2012 policy note, Index said:
Population-wide collection and filtering of communications data is neither necessary nor proportionate. Monitoring and surveillance of this kind impacts directly and in a chilling manner on freedom of expression, inhibiting and restricting individuals in how they receive, share and impart information and encouraging self-censorship.
So we will celebrate the apparent end of the Communications Data Bill in its current form. But it is clear from Clegg’s words, and those of his Conservative coalition partners including Home Secretary Theresa May, that this is not an issue that will be dropped.
New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.
Padraig Reidy is Senior Writer at Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
Digital rights activists from around the UK met in Manchester for Open Rights Group’s first ever ORGCon North on Saturday.
John Buckman, chair of the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), delivered the keynote speech: “Britain, under the thumb of…”
He filled in the blank with references to the copyright industry, the new Royal Charter on press regulation, overreaching child protection restrictions, the EU, the US, and private web companies, all of which pose significant challenges to digital freedom of expression in the UK.
The rest of the day was split between four panel sessions and eight impromptu “unconference” sessions for which participants pitched ideas and convened small groups to discuss them.
I spoke on a panel about the right to offend, alongside ORG’s Peter Bradwell and The Next Web’s Martin Bryant. Overly broad and outdated legislation, most notably Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act and Section 127 of the 2003 Communications Act, are regularly used to criminalise freedom of expression both online and offline in the UK. Despite a successful campaign to drop “insulting” words from the grounds on which someone can be prosecuted for offence under Section 5, the fact that neither of these provisions address the speaker’s (or tweeter’s) intentions continues to chill freedom of expression in the UK.
Also troubling is the fact that other states, India and the UAE for example, point to these and other British laws as justification to prosecute offensive expression in their own jurisdictions. I argued that protecting everyone’s fundamental right to freedom of expression is more important than protecting the feelings of a few people who might take offense to satirical, blasphemous or otherwise unsavoury views. For freedom of expression to be preserved in society, potentially offensive expression requires the utmost protection.
Another panel addressed the proposed EU General Data Protection Regulation, which intends to strengthen existing privacy principles set out in 1995 and harmonise individual member states’ laws on data protection. Provisions in the proposal around consent, data portability and the “right to be forgotten” aim to give users greater control of their personal data and hold companies more accountable for their use of it. Many companies that rely on user data oppose the regulation and have been lobbying hard against it with the UK government on their side whereas some privacy advocates argue it does not go far enough.
There were also discussions on the open rights implications of copyright legislation and the UK’s Draft Communications Data bill (AKA Snooper’s Charter), which looks set to make a comeback in the Queen’s speech on May 8.
The “unconference” sessions addressed specific causes for concern around digital rights in the UK and abroad. I participated in a session on strategies for obtaining government data in the UK and another on the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008. This Act, along with the Protect America Act of 2007 legalised warrantless wiretapping of foreign intelligence targets. Digital rights activists took notice of the laws because the rise of cloud computing means even internal UK and EU data is potentially susceptible to US surveillance mechanisms.
Other “unconference” sessions focused on anonymity, password security, companies’ terms of service, activism and medical confidentiality.
The full OrgCon North agenda is available here. ORG’s national conference will take place on 8 June and will feature EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow who wrote the much circulated and cited “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” in 1996.
Brian Pellot is Digital Policy Adviser for Index on Censorship. Follow him @brianpellot
The potential for communication brought about by the web is matched only by its potential as a surveillance tool. UN Rapporteur on free expression Frank La Rue recently announced that his next report will be on state surveillance and the web. In the UK, the government has vowed to reintroduce the Communications Data Bill, known commonly as the “snooper’s charter” which aims to give the authorities unprecedented powers to store, monitor and search private data. In Australia, the government has proposed similar powers and also suggested social networks should allow back-door surveillance of users.
It’s not just state gathering of data that worries people, of course. Many people object to the hoovering up and monetisation of data posted on public and private networks by the many private web companies whose services so many of us now use.
The right to privacy and the right to free expression often go hand in hand. Surveillance is bound to curtail what we say, and enable what we say to be used against us.
In Stockholm last week, Google brought together experts from politics, business, policing and civil liberties to discuss the complex intermingling of free speech, security and surveillance online.
Hosted in a former church overlooking Stockholm Harbour, the latest “Big Tent” event was kicked off with a discussion between Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and Google’s Global Head of Free Expression Ross Lajeunesse.
Bildt raised a laugh while voicing confusion over the safety of “cloud computing”, asking “Where is the bloody cloud?”
But Lajeunesse insisted that cloud computing is the best way to guarantee safety from hacking and theft, adding that Google’s gmail is encrypted in an effort to protect users from surveillance.
Discussing China’s method’s of web censorship and surveillance (Read Index’s China correspondent here), Bildt put forward the interesting proposition that the authorities use of “50 cent party” a network of thousands of civilians paid to post pro government content in web conversations, was perhaps a sign the authorities had admitted that censorship had failed, as the government seemed to have conceded that you know had to argue your case rather than censor others.
Lajeunesse was hopeful for Chinese web users, simply saying that 700 milllion people who want access to information cannot be held back.
The reasoning behind state surveillance was discussed in a later panel. After Francesca Bosco, of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute gave a frankly terrifying account of cyber crime and web security (in brief, there’s a lot of crime and no real security), Brian Donald of Europol discussed the need for surveillance, citing examples of tracking people engaged in the trade of images of child sexual abuse. He countered fears of dragnet surveillance expressed by Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jacob Mchangama of Danish civil liberties group CEPOS, saying that he was in fact limited in his powers to fight crime by European data protection laws.
Galperin and Mchangama both also expressed concern over the policing and surveillance of not just of crime, but of speech online (a subject of considerable debate in the UK).
It seems like the back-and-forth on these issues will not be resolved any time soon. Security, surveillance and free speech have always been intertwined. But mass use of the web, as our lives move online, makes the debate on achieving a balance all the more urgent.
The Guardian today ran a front page story on tech company Raytheon’s RIOT search tool, which promises to integrate social media data to build a complete picture of people’s movements, using geotagged pictures, FourSquare check ins and and other means.
There has been some slightly offputting hyperbole about the software’s potential ability to “predict crime”, with frequent mentions of the Philip K Dick story and later Tom Cruise film Minority Report, in which psychics are used to predict potential crime, allowing police to arrest people before any damage is done.
This is largely down to the Raytheon representative’s boast in the promotional video obtained by the Guardian that RIOT can predict where people will be, based on previous behaviour.
When one looks at what he actually says and demonstrates, it’s seems to me that the programme can not really predict anything. It can identify patterns, from which users can make assumptions.
The example used in the video is that by far the most frequent time and place for the surveillance subject (a Raytheon employee) to “check in” on FourSquare is 6am at the gym. From here, a human user can reasonably assume that the subject will be at his gym at 6am most days. Not quite seeing into the future then.
And not exactly revolutionary, but merely a way of presenting data that users themselves have already volunteered into the public sphere.
Nonetheless, this technology is disquieting. More and more of our lives are recorded, day-to-day, online and publicly. Technology such as RIOT shows how easy it is to build up a very detailed picture of someone’s life, movements, interests etc. All this freely available data could have huge implications for users in the present and the future.
The UK government is currently in the process of redrafting the Communications Data Bill, which faced heavy criticism (not least from Index) for its far-reaching provisions which would force communications companies to retain data, and allow government agencies to track vast amounts of users traffic – not just publicly available social media messages, but emails, text messages phone calls and even letters. Should such a bill eventually go through with similar powers, it’s likely that other countries will follow suit.
Of course, some states are ahead of the game: yesterday it was reported that journalists working in Burma had received warnings from Google of potential email security breaches. Though the Burmese authorities have denied being behind the hacking, suspicions remain.
Surveillance inevitably has an effect on free expression, as people will not speak freely if they fear they are permanently watched and recorded. But we live in an age where tracking has become so easy, and so cheap, that without a principled stand against it, surveillance will become the norm.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer at Index on Censorship. He tweets at @mePadraigReidy
The British government’s Communications Data Bill is to be redrafted after the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said he would block the current bill.
The bill, which would give government agencies unprecedented access to email, web and phone traffic, has been described as a “snooper’s charter” by free speech and privacy groups.
Earlier today, a joint committee of MPs and Lords published a damning report describing the draft bill as “too sweeping”, and criticising the vague definitions of the powers given to the Home Secretary by the proposed law.
Writing for the Independent, MP Julian Huppert, a member of the Joint Committee on the Communications Data Bill, said: “After this report, there is absolutely no way that this Bill – with its incredibly wide powers and few safeguards – can possibly proceed.The Home Office has completely failed to show that it is needed, proportionate, possible or affordable. They must start from scratch.”
Index on Censorship has been heavily critical of the Communications Data Bill. In evidence submitted to the committee in August of this year, Index described the powers granted to the Home Secretary by the bill as “unacceptable”, and warned, “The decisions the UK Parliament takes on this bill willimpact on human rights both in the UK and beyond, not least in authoritarian states.”
The coalition’s plan to store information on every citizen’s use of email, the web, and phones have been dealt a serious blow by a parliamentary committee report. Padraig Reidy reports
