Lee Rigby, a soldier from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was mown down by a car and hacked to death by two men in Woolwich, London two weeks ago. The public theatre of flowers in the street, weeping family press conference, and puzzled interviews of have-a-go heroes was still in progress when the right ‘response’ to the murders emerged as if from nowhere: ‘We must force Internet and mobile service providers to capture customer data and provide it to government agencies, no matter what the cost to democracy or in cold hard cash.’
What an utter non sequitur.
When an army family’s soldier is deployed, every call from an unknown number or ring on the doorbell is a cause for alarm. Last summer, when my husband’s battalion was in Helmand, I made the mistake of ringing a friend’s front doorbell instead of tapping on the back door, when I went round for coffee. I will never forget the look of pale horror on her face as she yanked back the door, heavily pregnant and with a child on her hip, to see at once who was outside. And how her face cracked into the silent movie version of happiness and relief to see it was only me, and not the welfare officer with news of the worst kind.
When your husband (or wife, or son or daughter) comes home, your gut untwists itself in an instant. The relentless mental subroutine of worry stops dead, and you forget what it was ever like to have that fear always buzzing in the background. So when Lee Rigby’s family got the call everyone dreads, over a month after their son had returned from Afghanistan, the feeling of sheer wrongness at losing him was strengthened by a sense of his death being almost an impossibility, now that he was finally home.
That said, there have been hints and mutterings for years of ‘chickens coming home to roost’, and British soldiers coming under attack from Islamic extremists in the UK. It was with a sickened sense of the inevitable that some of us greeted the news of the Woolwich murder. We all knew the fly-paper theory – keeping Al Qaeda’s fellow travellers occupied in Iraq or Afghanistan so they won’t trouble us at home – was just wishful thinking. It was always going to come to this.
And so, as in a more or less functioning democracy, the government has equipped itself with appropriate powers and adequately resourced its agencies to try to prevent domestic terrorism. Any additions to those powers, particularly at the expense of democracy, freedom and the rule of law, would be both proportionate and necessary, and only come to through public and accountable political processes. Right?
Wrong.
Lee Rigby’s body had not yet been released to his family when a network of political securocrats were grabbing spots on radio, television and in national newspapers to say the soldier’s death must revive the so-called Snooper’s Charter. The measure is a draft bill, dropped from the Queen’s Speech after a Lib Dem intervention last month, to require phone and Internet companies to store every customer’s data – social media, web and mobile phone use – for 12 months for access by the police and security services. If you don’t see the connection, since communications data hasn’t even been mentioned in connection with Lee Rigby’s killing, you’re not alone. This is an opportunistic power grab, pure and simple.
The Communications Data Bill is a Home Office project that’s knocked around for over a decade. It’s usually shot down because there’s no money to pay to store all the data on all the people, all the time. Existing powers mean about a month’s data is stored at any time, and accessed by law enforcement thousands of times a year. Labour and Conservative ministers have tried to shove blanket powers through in every way imaginable; full legislation, unscrutinised regulation, even quietly policy-laundering it through the European Council of Ministers and bringing it back home under the banner ‘Europe said we must’. Each time, it’s fallen not because either party gives a damn about the democratic values they claim to uphold and send the army out to fight for, but because industry says it can’t or won’t comply.
In the political securocrat’s playbook, it’s not necessary to understand the draft law or, God forbid, the privately held communications and storage technology that would implement it. It’s enough to simply parrot dismissive talking points that say law enforcement and security must get what they want, especially now that an attack has occurred. Funny, that. In my world, failure means punishment, not prizes.
The evening of the murder, John Reid, former Labour Home Secretary and current board member of G4S, threatened that the surveillance powers were crucial, but it would take “some huge tragedy” for people to understand that. Chilling, but also illogical, given the suspects were known to the security services and did not need to be swept up in a random data trawl.
Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile spoke out before Lee Rigby had even been named, saying while of course we mustn’t ‘rush to judgement’, the government should jolly well re-consider its abandonment of the Communications Data Bill.
Over a week later, and admitting he’d still not read the proposal (published in June 2012), Gordon Brown’s former security minister, Lord West, said on Radio 4 that it was “daft” not to give policy and security agencies extra powers. He went on to mischaracterise the existing powers, and seemed entirely ignorant of the recent parliamentary scrutiny committee’s report finding the proposals impractical, unnecessary and their official costings largely fictive.
It was left, surprisingly, to government minister Baroness Warsi to respectfully point out the obvious:
“But I think the wrong way to make legislation is on the back of a tragedy like this. It isn’t the moment to start looking at the kind of legislation we should or should not have. I’m sure at some point it will play into the debate.”
But lest there be any doubt of the Conservative Party’s ultimate intentions, Theresa May was reportedly furious when the LibDem leadership did one of maybe three ballsy things they’ve done in coalition, and managed to shelve the bill a month ago. I hear the relevant measures are most likely to be introduced via regulation, avoiding parliamentary scrutiny and circumventing the democratic process.
The only outsiders invited to work on the measure will be industry leaders – Internet and mobile service providers, Google, Facebook et al. While those companies’ interests sometimes overlap with citizens’, they are storing and analysing more and more of our personal data every day, and don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to saying no to government fishing expeditions. Citizens and non-industry experts will be kept out of the room when the deal is done, and even refused Freedom of Information access to the proceedings afterward. It’s a pretty rum version of the democracy the British armed forces are supposed to be defending.
The UK no longer has credibility when it comes to chivying other countries about using the Internet and communications networks to surveil and suppress their citizens. Exporting democracy and the rule of law to places like Afghanistan? That’s not our brand identity. What the UK leads on is exporting the policy, laws and, increasingly, the actual technology of political suppression and social control to some of the nastiest countries in the world.
So as an army wife who happens to know something about this issue, I am doubly sickened to see the rush to use a soldier’s horrible death in this way. It’s opportunistic, it’s ugly, and it undermines the values soldiers are sent to fight for abroad. Just as soldiers don’t get to question and refuse the campaigns politicians send them on, nor should politicians capitalise on the deaths of soldiers for shadowy political motives.
{ 49 comments }
Kieran Healy 06.05.13 at 1:49 pm
I remember that line in “A Very British Coup” when the senior civil servant says to Tim McInnery’s creepy junior snoop something like, “One day you will have everyone in the country under surveillance, Mr Fiennes. Will you be happy then?”
Hazel Meade 06.05.13 at 1:52 pm
That said, there have been hints and mutterings for years of ‘chickens coming home to roost’, and British soldiers coming under attack from Islamic extremists in the UK. It was with a sickened sense of the inevitable that some of us greeted the news of the Woolwich murder.
Kind of a tangential aside but I’ve always found the phrase “chickens coming home to roost” to have a connotation of glee and schadenfreude. It pretty much means you think that someone got what was coming to them.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/chickens-come-home-to-roost.html
It was among some of the more repulsive things people on the left were saying after 9/11 too.
The Raven 06.05.13 at 1:55 pm
Hmmm, looks like someone is using 1984 as a handbook again.
MPAVictoria 06.05.13 at 2:09 pm
“Hmmm, looks like someone is using 1984 as a handbook again.”
I wonder if Orwell knew he was writing an instructional manual for these maniacs.
NomadUK 06.05.13 at 2:10 pm
Kind of a tangential aside but I’ve always found the phrase “chickens coming home to roost†to have a connotation of glee and schadenfreude. It pretty much means you think that someone got what was coming to them.
It’s admittedly rather difficult to come up with a pithy phrase that reflects the fact that the supposedly elected representatives of a putative democracy were responsible for foreign policy disasters which can be directly linked to rather awful and completely predictable results back home, in a way which somehow absolves the electorate of their responsibility in the entire affair. Perhaps you can come up with a better one?
ajay 06.05.13 at 2:19 pm
5: “Blowback” is a good one.
That said, there have been hints and mutterings for years of ‘chickens coming home to roost’, and British soldiers coming under attack from Islamic extremists in the UK.
More than just hints and mutterings: there was a plot back in 2007 to kidnap and behead a British soldier – got broken up by the police and the leader got life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_plot_to_behead_a_British_Muslim_soldier
Maria 06.05.13 at 2:23 pm
Thanks, Hazel. Yes, ‘chickens coming home to roost’ has a shade to it that is both punitive and satisfied and, tbh, I wanted to include a taste of that meaning, too.
I couldn’t have articulated why as precisely as Nomad has – thank you, Nomad. There’s something about always seeing ourselves as both the righteous and the wronged party, no matter what predictable blowback occurs, and then condemning the people who point it out. Grrr.
Maybe I should have put apostrophes around it, but I like the weight, here, of all the term’s baggage.
Maria 06.05.13 at 2:24 pm
You beat me to it, Ajay.
Maria 06.05.13 at 2:26 pm
MPAVictoria, it gets worse. I was having a kitchen table discussion about communications data retention about eight years ago with someone in a smaller country who might have some power in that respect. I stopped after half an hour of giving out about it as I realised I was just giving them ideas!
MPAVictoria 06.05.13 at 2:34 pm
Maria, that is truly terrifying.
Ronan(rf) 06.05.13 at 3:23 pm
That’s a fascinating insight into how the policy ‘process’ works in this area. Just on this bit:
“Each time, it’s fallen not because either party gives a damn about the democratic values they claim to uphold and send the army out to fight for, but because industry says it can’t or won’t comply”
Has that opposition changed now? ( You say at the end that Google, Facebook et al are sitting in on the consultations, and seem more receptive, (I’m assuming), to the measures?)
Hazel Meade 06.05.13 at 3:41 pm
Maria/Nomad, but the person who the “blowback” was a British soldier. So are you saying that the British soldier got what he deserved for being in the UK military?
Maria 06.05.13 at 3:46 pm
Of course not, Hazel. That is a daft interpretation of what either of us has said.
Maria 06.05.13 at 4:05 pm
To avoid a pointless thread derailment, no more comments from anyone on the blowback/roosting topic, please.
Maria 06.05.13 at 4:18 pm
Hi Ronan,
Those companies are still very strongly anti the measures – see this; http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/may/30/snoopers-charter-web-five-letter?INTCMP=SRCH
Presumably their letter to the Home Office threatening not to implement the measures was leaked with someone’s say so.
The problems with (if anyone were suggesting it) relying on industry to fight our corner as citizens are several:
1) When money is basically all that is at stake, you’ve already acceded the points of principle. So the outcome becomes not ‘if’, but when and how.
2) The companies in question are building huge chunks of their business model on their ability to create, store, process, analyse and monetise vast amounts of personal data. Up to a couple of years ago, they could reasonably say to government ‘We can’t do this. It’s just not possible to serve up the data the way you want it.’. No more. That’s not just a problem of rhetoric or justification; increasingly they are creating and enriching the kinds of communications data many individuals would rather not be personally identifiable.
3) The other set of arguments they’re now using – ‘you can’t possibly expect us to obey UK laws on this; then we’ll have to obey different laws in every country we operate in’ – smack strongly of arrogance in the current climate of anger about tax avoidance.
So for reasons practical and principled, human rights activists’ common cause with the large US Internet firms can only go so far.
Ronan(rf) 06.05.13 at 5:46 pm
Thanks for the clarification Maria. I definitely agree on the larger points
Watson Ladd 06.06.13 at 12:16 am
What right is there to have information a third party has about me, not be shared? We expect the telephone company not to tap our calls, but because they must record whom we called and for how long, the police (at least in the US) can search that information without considering the privacy of the person targeted.
In the case of customer data ISPs in the US already record it for billing purposes. This hasn’t lead to a totalitarian state.
ezra abrams 06.06.13 at 1:46 am
starting with the death of Princess Diana, we see huge piles of flowers – large amounts of money that quickly turns into sodden, rotting vegetation that can’t even be recycled due to the plastic
Do the depositors have any idea what they are doing, and that a donation to a charity would be better ?
And, if the free market is so good (1) why hasn’t someone started portable outdoor memorial walls, that can be moved later to some suitable site ?
1) Those of you following the news know that in August of 2010, the IRS held a conference in Anaheim CA that included a motivational speaker who was paid 17,000 dollars to show people pictures of einstein as a motivational tool.
Before you condem the IRS, remember that the GOP wants Gov’t to be more like business.
Surely, 17,000 dollar fees to moron speakers is the epitome of Big Business, so we should expect the GOP to praise the IRS for this conf.
(of course, private business doesn’t have release as much info as gov’t agencys, so we don’t actually know if private firms are more efficient – the gop asserts this, but i don’t think they hve good data)
The Raven 06.06.13 at 6:01 am
In a similar behavior, on the heels of the Boston Marathon bombing, the NSA got a secret court order allowing the collection of three months of telephone connection records from Verizon.
Damn. Ought to have listened to the cipherpunks when we had the chance.
Maria 06.06.13 at 6:56 am
Watson, in this case there is indeed already an access regime to information already created during service delivery (and in fact that law has been in place since 2000). What’s now in question is the requirement that companies store or create other sets of information that are vastly greater and may otherwise have been destroyed (or just not collected). And also that it be stored for quite a long time. This is a lot richer than call termination data; it includes headers of emails, mobile phone location data, search queries, and so on. Basically every piece of digital information you create that excludes the content of an email or call.
A particular problem is the bagginess of the access regime. Basically, this data is considered not terribly private (even though nowadays it can be put together to effectively track and surveil an individual’s movements, contacts and personal concerns), so the world and his wife can access it, and with no effective judicial oversight. As with last time round (RIPA, 2000), the measure will be brought in with all sorts of hoopla of “It’s only for investigating Serious Crime, and only by the policy and security agencies”. But read the legislation and within months you’ll have parish councils and the Eggs Inspection Board (no joke) gaining access via self-certification.
You can stop a long way short of a totalitarian state and still be very scary.
Maria 06.06.13 at 7:03 am
Breaking news this morning is the leak of the court order telling Verizon to provide all its metadata to the NSA every day: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order
From where I stand, this is probably bad but not dreadful compared to the UK. At least a judge was directly involved.
John Quiggin 06.06.13 at 7:37 am
I just saw this. I think it’s safe to assume that this is a continuing order applying to all telecoms. That is, the US government is permanently logging all phone calls (number, location, time etc) made by or to anyone in the US.
Given this degree of routine surveillance, it’s also likely that very large numbers of people, including anyone regarded as politically dangerous, are being comprehensively monitored on a more intensive basis – calls and emails routinely intercepted and stored.
I don’t think the involvement of a judge tells us much.
1. FISA has historically been a rubber stamp
2. What evidence could possibly justify (or for that matter, justify rejection of) such comprehensive surveillance. Either you are for this or against it
Walt 06.06.13 at 8:24 am
I like the “But it hasn’t led to a totalitarian state” standard for judging public policy. Sure, now the government has broad tools to spy on its citizens with little oversight, but since we’re not literally living in Nazi Germany, it’s A-OK with Watson.
NomadUK 06.06.13 at 11:18 am
I like the “But it hasn’t led to a totalitarian state†standard for judging public policy. Sure, now the government has broad tools to spy on its citizens with little oversight, but since we’re not literally living in Nazi Germany, it’s A-OK with Watson.
Exactly. These are the ‘I have nothing to hide’ idiots that drive me crazy. What they never seem to realise is that they aren’t the ones who get to decide whether they have nothing to hide, or whether it was worth hiding.
Trader Joe 06.06.13 at 11:35 am
@22
2. What evidence could possibly justify (or for that matter, justify rejection of) such comprehensive surveillance. Either you are for this or against it
The goal of such surveillance is to bust up a network or a ring if such a thing exists. For things like drug trafficing, child pornography and general racketeering its common practice when one things they’ve identified a “node” of criminal activity to then surveil the “suspect” to develop a picture of the network in which this person operates.
These operations lead to others until eventually, hopefully, sufficient information is collected to then pursue accusations, charges and convictions. Enforcement officers would be first to admit that sometimes innocents get surveiled as part of this process – that’s why there is an entire process of jurisprudence that sits behind the policework.
I’d be hard pressed to say the system is flawless – but I suspect most of us give a quiet cheer when we learn police busted a child pornography ring and netted +100 perpetrators (as was the case recently).
The Raven 06.06.13 at 11:40 am
John, why would they get a court order, if they were already gathering the data?
By the way, I think I know what they want to do with the data: they want to build a social connections graph for the entire USA, or at least as much as they can manage. Three months of data ought to pick up most connections. At the end of this process they will know who our friends are, and the friends of our friends.
The Raven 06.06.13 at 12:04 pm
John, on second thought, I think you could be right: this could after all be the latest in a series of orders.
The Raven 06.06.13 at 12:12 pm
More notes: this order applies to Verizon’s Business Networks unit. I’m not sure what that unit does. And, of course, we don’t know if there are other orders.
Chris Williams 06.06.13 at 2:06 pm
So, Big Bluebird can collect this data, and keep it, and let the state have access to it as and when, but it can also stop non-state actors — ex-coppers working as PIs, credit agencies with risk-spotting programs, vengeful ex-spouses, the nIRA, organised crime, etc — from ever getting their mitts on it? Yeah, right.
Even assuming for a moment that we can trust the state now and for ever more, total surveillance should also be opposed because it fashions a weapon which non-state actors can also use.
lupita 06.06.13 at 5:06 pm
Economists had real time data on stock market prices, exchange rates, commodity prices, bond rates, plus updates on GDP growth, housing prices, unemployment, capital flows, and a very long etc. yet were clueless as to the workings of the economy. Why would security types be any better at analyzing the data of web searches and communications?
Rich Puchalsky 06.06.13 at 5:15 pm
“Why would security types be any better at analyzing the data of web searches and communications?”
Because what they want to do is find something on someone who they’ve already targeted. You never know when you might want to go back, find all of someone’s friends, and summon them to testify at a Grand Jury. Analysis isn’t the point.
Andrew F. 06.06.13 at 6:41 pm
There’s a significant distinction in US law between acquiring the content of communications that one reasonably expects to be private, and acquiring telephone records that would be kept as business records. The 4th Amendment requires a warrant for the former; it does not for the latter. Since at least 1979 (in Smith v. Maryland), US courts have held that the government may acquire telephone records without a search warrant.
So I do not agree that the order published in The Guardian means that the US Government is practicing comprehensive electronic eavesdropping on anyone without a warrant. While the scope of the information sought may be surprising, the nature of it is well within the power of the government to acquire without a warrant, and has been for a long time.
The law authorizing the government to request these call records (18 USC 1861) also specifically forbids the government from doing so solely on the basis of First Amendment activities. That same law also forbids the government from making these requests simply as part of a threat assessment. Instead they must be relevant to an ongoing investigation related to foreign intelligence activities or international terrorism.
Others have speculated that the scope of the records requested is likely related to network analysis tools used by investigators, which seems at least plausible, and perhaps to counter surveillance techniques used by intelligence services. It’s difficult to assess the strength of such an argument without more facts.
In some respects, the instinctive reaction I have to this resembles the reaction anyone would have to the prospect of thick layers of government security cameras and drones monitoring every centimeter of public property and able to instantly identify and track every person on that property. One has no reasonable expectation of privacy when one walks down a public street; but the amount of information being collected, and the ubiquity of government vision, is disturbing.
As with the proposed British law in the post, such a collection ability lowers the technical bar to government abuse of its powers. But, I also don’t think there’s a way to answer whether the lowering of that bar is wise in a particular instance without a full discussion of the costs and benefits of doing so.
The Raven 06.06.13 at 7:15 pm
I believe gathering this data on telephone traffic is actually against EU law. Exactly such information gathering was a part of the Nazi police state—”We know who your friends are” was a terrifying thing to hear from the Gestapo—, and it is therefore illegal to gather it in many European countries. Apparently the law does not extend to internet traffic.
Some choice remarks and comments from the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair and Vice-Chair.
“It is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress,†Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) told reporters at an impromptu news conference in the Capitol. “This is just meta data. There is no content involved. In other words, no content of a communication. … The records can only be accessed under heightened standards.â€â€”Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Chair, Senate Intelligence Committee
This is nothing particularly new. This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the FISA authority, and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.—Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Vice-Chair, Senate Intelligence Committee
“Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) continued her defense of the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of phone records, arguing Thursday that the leak of the agency’s order should be investigated.”—Talking Points Memo
The White House has also stepped up to defend the practice.
The Raven 06.06.13 at 7:16 pm
Ooops, sorry, messed up the quoting of those cites.
John Quiggin 06.06.13 at 7:51 pm
WaPo today confirms this program has been continuing at least since 2006, and implies that it applies to all providers not just Verizon
Rich Puchalsky 06.06.13 at 8:13 pm
Quote from Saxby Chambliss via TPM: “This is nothing particularly new. This has been going on for seven years under the auspices of the FISA authority, and every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this.”
So, at least two years under Bush, and five years under … wait. This does not compute. Everyone knows that Obama is better than Bush!
John Quiggin 06.06.13 at 8:34 pm
As regards court supervision, from Slate
Between 2010 and 2012, the court approved all of the 5,180 applications for surveillance and physical searches except for one that the government unilaterally withdrew. Despite receiving more than a 1,000 requests every year since 2002, the court has never denied more than four applications in a single year.
novakant 06.06.13 at 10:02 pm
You can stop a long way short of a totalitarian state and still be very scary.
Well, according to the definition used onWikipedia we do live in a totalitarian state:
Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life whenever necessary.
Of course this is not your old school “off to the gulag” totalitarianism but the 2.0 sugar-coated “Repressive Toleranz” totalitarianism. While the latter is slightly more pleasant in a Brave New World kind of way, both are essentially the same.
js. 06.06.13 at 11:21 pm
And now this (from the Guardian as well). Ugh. (Which is about all I can manage.)
Substance McGravitas 06.06.13 at 11:36 pm
Surprise surprise.
Watson Ladd 06.07.13 at 12:38 am
What exactly is the argument being made? What made the Gestapo fearsome was not their ability to outdo any gossip, but their habit of torturing and killing people they didn’t like. The risk of selective prosecution quite real, but in the US there are several layers of defenses, from the fruit of the poisoned tree doctrine, to graymail. New Zeeland has a secret domestic intelligence agency with unlimited power, except the power to arrest, and remains a democracy.
Ronan(rf) 06.07.13 at 12:47 am
And to Rich’s 31, you could add..
http://fcir.org/2013/03/25/excerpt-the-terror-factory/
Ronan(rf) 06.07.13 at 12:50 am
That’s quite the qualification Watson. *Unlimited* power, except the power to arrest? So the power to kill? Or can you be more specific on these powers….?
js. 06.07.13 at 1:07 am
Exactly. I’m not surprised, and I’d expect that large pluralities of people all over are not surprised. This I think only makes it worse—that we would simply come to expect this.
Watson Ladd 06.07.13 at 1:15 am
I must apologize: New Zealand’s two intelligence agencies do not have the powers I thought they did. I recalled reading this, but could not find the source when looking it up. My belief was that they could break into houses without warrants, but such evidence as they found would not be admissible.
The Raven 06.07.13 at 2:03 am
Watson, using records of your telephone connections the Gestapo could find out who your friends and family were and torture them, or threaten them, or blackmail you with knowledge of an illicit connection, or just identify the networks of their political opposition. For these reasons, gathering such data is still illegal in much of Europe.
We have added a new wrinkle; the mass-collected data can be machine scanned for incriminating evidence. The problem with such scanning, aside from probably being unconstitutional, is that it invariably incriminates some of the innocent. Since there are many more innocent than guilty, it most likely ends up incriminating more innocent people than guilty, and ties up police resources that could be better used investigating solid leads.
What is your point?
Substance McGravitas 06.07.13 at 3:32 am
Yes. I recently had reason to correspond with Sudan. Email was bouncing so I tried another email. I guess that’s a bad idea.
Last week the phone company cut off long-distance access for the fax because I was trying to get in touch with Azerbaijan. Suspicious!
Substance McGravitas 06.07.13 at 3:36 am
I guess America’s off limits for any country with privacy laws.
NomadUK 06.07.13 at 7:55 am
I guess America’s off limits for any country with privacy laws.
Nah, they’ll just be strong-armed into gutting those laws to satisfy the Americans. Seems to work pretty well.
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