{"id":38838,"date":"2012-08-07T12:40:56","date_gmt":"2012-08-07T11:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=38838"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:23:10","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T16:23:10","slug":"surveillance-technology-human-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=38838","title":{"rendered":"Communications Data Bill: Technology is making dystopia not just possible, but cheap"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The boom in surveillance technology sales is chilling free speech. We need to wake up to this reality, says Mike Harris<\/strong><\/p>\n

This piece originally appeared on the Independent Blogs<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Wide-eyed internet visionaries told us technology would free its users from the iron grip of states, with the internet blind to borders and not respecting the dictats of bureaucrats. Instead technology is making dystopia not just possible, but cheap. Unthinkingly we\u2019re sending our most private data across the internet thinking it a private space. Exploiting this weakness, Western technology companies have spotted a market for surveillance equipment that allows governments to hoover up data — and use it to spy on their citizens<\/a>. Much of this technology has been exported to authoritarian states, but as we are discovering, if you allow British firms to flout human rights abroad, the rot begins to set in at home.<\/p>\n

Gamma Group is run from a\u00a0non-descript\u00a0warehouse unit in a commercial park on the edge of Andover. This blandness is a deceit. Gamma\u00a0sell\u00a0a product called FinFisher, a piece of software that infects a computer and takes full control of it, allowing\u00a0Skype\u00a0calls to be intercepted and every keystroke the user types to be sent across the internet to another computer. The software is so sophisticated human rights groups initially couldn\u2019t even prove it existed.\u00a0\u00a0Now, the University of Toronto\u00a0Munk\u00a0School has\u00a0published research<\/a>\u00a0said to show\u00a0that\u00a0Bahraini\u00a0activists have been targeted using FinFisher.<\/p>\n

After opening emails with titles like \u201cTorture reports on\u00a0Nabeel\u00a0Rajab\u201d\u00a0(a leading human rights activist now\u00a0imprisoned<\/a>) their computers were\u00a0reportedly\u00a0infected and their personal data sent to an undisclosed third party. The government of Bahrain<\/a> denies it was behind the\u00a0apparent\u00a0deliberate sabotage.\"spacer\"spacer\u00a0However, opposition activists are now panicked fearing their security has been breached.\u00a0In response, Gamma Group reportedly\u00a0said in a 23 July email that it can\u2019t comment on any individual customers and that Gamma complies with the export regulations of the UK, US and\u00a0\"spacerGermany<\/a>. It added that FinFisher is a tool for monitoring criminals and to reduce the risk of abuse of its products the company only sells the product to governments.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile in Sweden\u00a0telecoms\u00a0giant Teliasonera has,\u00a0according to a television documentary,\u00a0sold surveillance equipment to almost the entire roll call of degenerate post-Soviet regimes: Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Belarus.\u00a0In response to the documentary, a spokeswoman for Teliasonera\u00a0said that \u201cpolice tap into information from telecom networks to fight crime\u201d and \u201cthe rules for how far their authority goes are different from country to country.\u201d\u00a0When pressed about complicity in human rights violations, she reportedly declined to comment on why security agencies were being given access to telecom buildings in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n

One Teliasonera\u00a0source\u00a0told news\u00a0show Uppdrag\u00a0Granskning: \u201cThe Arab Spring prompted the regimes to tighten their surveillance \u2026 There\u2019s no limit to how much\u00a0wiretapping\u00a0is done, none at all.\u201d\u00a0Teliasonera\u2019s\u00a0equipment gives security services the capacity to monitor everything in real time — from the location of mobile phone users, their calls and\u00a0SMS\u00a0messages, to their emails and Facebook messages.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Irina\u00a0Bogdanova\u00a0told Index on Censorship, she believes that surveillance equipment was used to locate her brother, former political prisoner Andrei Sannikov<\/a>, using the signal from his mobile phone. Sannikov, a presidential candidate in 2010\u2019s rigged elections, was stopped whilst hidden in the back of a vehicle travelling across Minsk. During his trial recordings of his private phone calls were played to the court. In a rigged legal system, the KGB didn\u2019t need to do this, but it was a clear signal to other opposition figures<\/a> that the state is watching their every move.<\/p>\n

I can vouch for the effectiveness of surveillance in distilling fear. I flew into Belarus the day\u00a0Oleg\u00a0Bebenin, a human rights activist, was found dead in\u00a0suspicious circumstances<\/a>. After making\u00a0a series of\u00a0calls to London to tell colleagues I thought\u00a0Oleg\u00a0had been murdered, my mobile was cut off whilst I was stood alone in the streets of Minsk. My contacts in Belarus also had their mobile phones disconnected.<\/p>\n

The British government has the powers under the Export Control Act 2002 to stop the export of any equipment that can be used to breach human rights, but with many surveillance products it has\u00a0seemingly\u00a0chosen not to do so. The situation is so grave that Privacy International<\/a> is preparing to take the government to court to force it to take action. Yet, it isn\u2019t just the use of this technology abroad which is of concern. The debate is moving much closer to home.<\/p>\n

In Britain, the government is proposing legislation (the Communications Data Bill<\/a>) that will grant the Home Secretary the power to blanket retain data on every citizen for an undefined purpose. It won\u2019t\u00a0require\u00a0judicial approval — but potentially every text message, every Facebook message, every phone call, every email from everyone in Britain\u00a0would\u00a0be stored on behalf of Her Majesty\u2019s Government.\u00a0If the Bill passes,\u00a0companies\u00a0will have\u00a0to collect data they don\u2019t currently collect and the Home Secretary\u00a0will\u00a0be able to ask manufacturers of communications equipment to install hardware such as \u2018black boxes\u2019 on their products to make spying easier. This\u00a0proposed\u00a0scale of state surveillance<\/a>\u00a0will\u00a0add the UK to the ranks of countries such as Kazakhstan, China and Iran. This total population monitoring\u00a0would\u00a0break the fundamental principle that a judge and court order is required before the state invades the privacy of its citizens by holding their personal data.<\/p>\n

Five years ago the mobile phone you carried in your pocket could pin-point you in an urban area with a margin of error of approximately 50 metres; on the latest phones it\u2019s around 2.5 metres. Yet, we still haven\u2019t woken up to the possibility of technology enabling states to monitor individuals on a scale unimaginable to even the wildest of science fiction writers just a generation ago. This surveillance is being used right now in authoritarian regimes to silence opposition, as the market for this technology grows with little interference from Western governments, it will become cheaper. Once it becomes almost priceless for Western governments to monitor all our data, the arguments for allowing private communication could become drowned out by the desire for public order and safety. Then the chill on free speech will be complete.<\/p>\n

Mike Harris is head of advocacy at Index. He tweets at @cllr_mikeharris<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The boom in surveillance technology sales is chilling free speech. We need to wake up to this reality, says Mike Harris<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[581,21],"tags":[4756,571,3003,4058,269,390,722,2469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38838"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39273,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38838\/revisions\/39273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}