PR Strategy: “TECH COMPANIES MUST DO MORE”
The problem:
Britain has declining ability to get US Internet companies to share information they’re not legally obliged to.
The cause:
Snowden revelations mean US companies keen to dissociated themselves from close and informal intelligence cooperation; first to go is the UK. Also, they are using more encryption.
The media narrative:
‘Tech firms must do more in the fight against terror’
TIMELINE
The Warm-up Phase
30 September
Home Secretary tells Conservative Party conference of ‘outrageous irresponsibility’ of Liberal Democrats in blocking greater surveillance powers for the police and security services, and says Britain will ‘face down extremism in all its forms’. Also, children’s lives put at risk by the Lib Dems.
Late October
Security minister James Brokenshire meets Google, Microsoft and Facebook in Luxembourg to ‘discuss ways to tackle online extremism’.
4 November
New head of GCHQ, says on front page of the FT: Web giants such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp have become “command-and-control networks… for terrorists and criminals”. They must do more to co-operate with security services.
14 November
Prime Minister addresses Australian Parliament before G20 Summit: Facebook, Google, Twitter must live up to their social responsibilities and do more to take down extremist material from the internet.
All Systems Go
Sunday 23 November
Home Secretary does the softening up – goes on television to say the terror threat is greater than ever and the “time is right” to give police and intelligence agencies greater powers to require tech firms to give more data to the government.
Monday 24 November
ISC releases its heavily redacted report on the Lee Rigby murder. It finds operational failings in the intelligence agencies:
• MI5 delays investigating Adebolajo following his arrest for suspected terror offences in Kenya;
• Failure to scrutinise his phone records – which showed contacts with overseas jihadists;
• GCHQ failing to report evidence linking Adebowale to extremists;
• Police failure to arrest Adebolajo just before the attack – on suspicion of drug-dealing – after they “lost his address”
ISC’s Chair ‘accused internet companies of providing a “safe haven” to terrorists – an unnamed tech firm had failed to recognise and hand over radical postings by Adebowale to the government – but said despite a string of failings by the security services, which had repeatedly monitored both men before the attack, there was nothing they could have done to prevent the murder of Rigby.’
Lib Dem committee member, Ming Campbell, says “It is a remarkable coincidence, some might say, that the home secretary should have chosen to make public her further proposals on the eve of the publication of the ISC report. No doubt the purpose of doing so was to link her proposals to the committee’s conclusions. The committee never considered those proposals.”
Tuesday 25 November
Prime Minister to ISC: ‘Tech firms must do more to fight extremism’
Leader of the Opposition agrees. (Well, he can’t be soft on terrorism, can he?)
Wednesday 26 November
Sun headline: FACEBOOK – BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS
To be published later today: draft bill extending police and agency powers of data access ‘to tackle extremism’.
Or you could just re-read: ‘Why this Army Wife Says ‘No’ to the Snooper’s Charter‘
{ 12 comments }
Phil 11.26.14 at 9:39 am
I should be outraged, but there’s a sneaking sense of relief that this lot are, at least, good at something…
SK 11.26.14 at 11:38 am
Are they really good, when it is so obvious? Perhaps we should be happy that at least they are not good at anything..
Chris E 11.26.14 at 11:48 am
” Home Secretary does the softening up – goes on television to say the terror threat is greater than ever and the “time is right†to give police and intelligence agencies greater powers to require tech firms to give more data to the government.”
On this particular issue, I had assumed that RIPA and other followup acts meant that the specific information being talked about (IP allocation) was already recorded, and that what May said was actually a reaction to the retrospective invalidation of the Data Retention directive.
christian_h 11.26.14 at 3:54 pm
I saw Rifkind on TV yesterday and gotta say it made me feel like doing something terrorist just so I didn’t have to listen to his smug condescension anymore.
Neel Krishnaswami 11.26.14 at 4:12 pm
I don’t know if there is legal cover or not, but it’s all recorded. Part of the Snowden leaks is that the GCHQ’s Tempora system has achieved what the NSA calls “full take” — every single packet sent on the UK Internet is stored for three days, and all the metadata is stored for longer.
Z 11.26.14 at 5:11 pm
All that the same week where Symantec and Kaspersky give credible evidence that the super-sophisticated computer virus Regin has been in all likelihood developed by GCHQ…
ZM 11.27.14 at 6:28 am
Maria,
Similar things have been happening in Australia this year. I don’t follow “national security” news as much as other news, but according to this upcoming event at uni things have happened a lot over the last few weeks – but I haven’t seen a timeline for what’s been happening in Australia like you have made.
“Could Australia Really Become a Police State?
No non-authoritarian country in the world has moved so far and so fast to put in place a security regime of the sort that Australia has adopted in recent weeks. What can the extensive experience of the international human rights system tell us in such a situation, and what has been the experience of other countries that have traded liberties for expanded government powers on this scale?
…”
I am guessing this is happening now probably because parts of the Middle East and Africa are falling apart, and tension in Asia is rising in certain matters, as well as with the effects of the financial crisis downturn having political impacts on advanced economies.
But it is interesting that governments seem to have this sense of national security emergencies right now, rather than earlier after September 11 and the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Temporary Name 11.27.14 at 7:10 am
Neato! And scary of course…
ZM 11.27.14 at 7:26 am
“Neato! And scary of course…”
I do not find it very neato. My iPhone started sending blank text messages from the messages app to a range of contacts or numbers for no reason and without me doing anything. This went on for several months and Apple couldn’t work out why the messages app kept doing this strange thing. Luckily the new iOS stopped the problem. But before all this annoying government surveillance it would not have concerned me, but because of the surveillance it was actually quite concerning when it happened.
engels 11.27.14 at 3:51 pm
Meanwhile
“Two newspaper executives have told the Observer that their publications were issued with D-notices – warnings not to publish intelligence that might damage national security – when they sought to report on allegations of a powerful group of men engaging in child sex abuse in 1984.”
The Temporary Name 11.27.14 at 7:07 pm
The description makes it thoroughly neato in a technical sense:
http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/regin-analysis.pdf
The “everybody knows governments must spy on other governments” line gets fairly ridiculous when it’s the ambition of government to spy on everything, all the time.
J 11.29.14 at 7:44 pm
I know it’s ‘just’ a movie, but Citizenfour –well, in addition to being thoroughly discouraging, also makes me wonder why they even bother going through the motions. (‘they’ = your PM) They don’t care/don’t think it matters what we think/want.
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