This morning, The Sun carries an article making several claims about the draft Communications Data Bill that bear a striking resemblance to
“Mrs May says the new law would be a massive help in preventing another 7/7-style atrocity on Britain’s streets.”
However, the 7/7 inquest stated: “Post 7/7 enquiries revealed that between 22nd February and 15th June 2005 there were forty one telephone contacts between mobile phones attributed to Tanweer, Khan, and Lindsay and hydroponics outlets. It is unlikely these could have been detected by surveillance given the large number of untraceable “operational” phones used by the bombers and only attributed to them once their identities and details were known.”
“and could stop savage events like the gunning down of brave women police officers Nicola Hughes and Fiona Bone in September”
How would data prevent such a cold-blooded act by someone wanted for another crime that had taken place a month earlier? The officers were responding to a routine report of a house burglary – are we now saying before responding to routine calls, police officers will be expected to check the website browsing, social media messages and emails of every individual in the vicinity?
“Anybody who is against this bill is putting politics before people’s lives.”
When Parliament rejected 90 day detention, Tony Blair said “People will believe parliament was deeply irresponsible” while Hazel Blears (then a Home Office minister) said “It is right that people question and probe these issues but the three-month period is what the police and security service say is necessary.”
The Coalition was rightly applauded for not accepting this rhetoric and highlighting there was no evidence to support the claims being made. The rhetoric of today’s article is groundhog day for anyone familiar with the New Labour playbook of how to get terrorism legislation passed.
Mrs May said: “Criminals, terrorists and paedophiles will want MPs to vote against this bill. Victims of crime, police and the public will want them to vote for it. It’s a question of whose side you’re on.”
This is very similar to Tony Blair’s words on 90 day detention: ”the police and those charged with fighting terrorism said the 90-day power was needed to make the country safe….. We believe this is right for our country. We believe it is necessary to protect our country from terrorism and I’m only sorry you don’t agree.”
The approach of presenting the bill as aimed at only terrorists, paedophiles and serious criminals is something the Joint Committee raised with the Home Secretary, noting the purposes of the Bill go much, much wider than these offences.Sir Paul Kennedy, the Interception of Communications Commissioner, told MPs that the powers could be justified when investigating incidents such as fly tipping.
We have highlighted
numerous ways that public safety could be improved without requiring blanket data retention on every one of our emails, social media messages and website visits.
It’s also worth noting that the two examples cited in the article could be addressed by alternative routes.
Example 1: “A MAJOR criminal investigation was launched into a website used as a secret portal for viewing more than 2,000 indecent images of children. Both were jailed. But others escaped because internet access companies had no record of who had used the IP addresses.”
Being involved in the production or distribution of child pornography is illegal. It is a serious crime. In this case, it would be proportionate to go to internet service providers and ask for the IP address of any computer accessing the website, and for data to be retained about that use. Those people could be identified and prosecuted without needing to record every website visit of every person.
Example 2: An online counsellor called police to tip them off that an emotional man was feared to be on the verge of suicide. Cops found out where he lived by tracing the IP address and raced round to his home. It was only by chance that the internet service provider had a record of the man’s address and police were able to help him.
What happened to terrorism, paedophiles and serious criminals? There is a wholly separate argument about whether the state should try and intervene in preventing suicides in such a way, but in this case it is about the ability to track in real-time the identity of a single individual when some identifying information – in this case an IP address – is already known. The powers to track an individual already exist – and in this case none of the data used was details of emails, website visits or social media messages, which the bill proposes to log for everyone for one year.
Profit appears to trump privacy yet again, with some shops fitting secret cameras in mannequins to spy on customers’ shopping habits. The technology has been available for almost a year, and is already being used in three European countries and in the U.S.
The EyeSee dummy holds a camera behind its eyes which feeds images into facial recognition software that logs the age, gender and race of shoppers. This information is then used to provide retailers with information that can be used to improve their marketing strategies. The makers boast: “From now on you can know how many people enter the store, record what time there is a greater influx of customers (and which type) and see if some areas risk to be overcrowded. Read more
A new report by Boston Consulting Group on behalf of Liberty Global has attempted to answer the question we often ask – how much is our personal data worth?
We’ve previously warned that with free services, consumers are no longer the customer – they are the product, to be monitored, profiled and sold on. With 96% of Google’s $37.9bn revenue in 2011 coming from advertising and Facebook’s advertising revenue in Q3 2012 reaching $1.086bn, the value of our data has been the oil to the digital revolution.
According to the report, the value extracted from European consumers’ personal data were worth €315bn in 2011 and has the potential to grow to nearly €1tn annually in 2020. That’s nearly 8% of European GDP.
Hardly surprising that the lobbying efforts against greater privacy protection are well funded. One of the main findings was that if users understood what data was being captured and why, and if they could see direct personal benefit, they were willing to hand over their data. The problem is at present consumers simply don’t have that knowledge or the legal protection to ensure they have a choice.
The danger is that without strong consumer protection and competitive markets, privacy is at risk from dominant or monopolistic companies reliant on ever increasing volumes of data about us – and with little to deter them from over-stepping the mark.
We should also not underestimate the power of these commercial interests in lobbying to regulate or outlaw privacy-enhancing technology, particularly where those commercial interests coincide with Government moves towards increased surveillance online. Russia’s plans to outlaw anonymous web-browsing will not only undermine the rights of users and allow the Government to control what citizens see online, but it will also help corporate interests reliant on data maintain their market position.
A creepy new iPhone app is allowing Facebook users to scour through their friends’ ‘sexy pics’ and then store and share with others.
Sparking concern internationally, Badabing! uses image recognition technology to work out how much skin your friends are showing and allows users to browse through the pictures, share them with others or bookmark their favourites.
Read more
Debate has once again surrounded social media and the topic of whether individual’s should be able to post anonymously and give false details when creating a social media account. Andy Smith, head of security at the Public Sector Technical Services Authority, caused controversy by advising internet users that giving false details to social networking sites was a “very sensible thing to do”.
In an age where our personal information is becoming more and more valuable as a commodity, it is clearly sensible that people don’t share data unless it is absolutely necessary. The answer to the problem is that internet services need to reassess how much personal information they request from a user, for instance is it really necessary for a social network site to ask for your full birthday and gender?
Read more
Intellectual property in a digital age has been traditionally focused on issues like copyright infringement and patents.
One issue that has not been covered is the implications for personal data.Where previously companies would pay ‘mystery shoppers’ or members of the public in some way for the information about how people’s retail habits, they are now able to access data generated by customers using their cards and process it into marketing data.
Mastercard is the latest company to hit the headlines for its plans to mine customers data for insights that can be sold on.
The curious part is the company’s claim that they can use off-line data to help advertisers target you online. Arguing their system is proprietary, they don’t offer any detail on how this is possible without using some degree of personal information.
Read more
The internet of things is coming, and it’s not just the CIA who are 
excited.
Last week Intel, the chip manufacturer, predicted that by 2015 there will be more than 15 billion internet-connected devices and one third of these connected devices will be intelligent systems.
The CIA are already getting excited, with Director David Petraeus talking about the”transformational” effect on “clandestine tradecraft.” The proposed draft Communications Data Bill is so broadly drafted it’s been warned that a system to control your central heating could be covered by the legislation.
Read more
Today a petition will be handed in calling for the Government to abandon its current position on internet safety and to instead enforce a ‘default block’ system.
The Coalition for a Digital Economy have summarised five reasons why this is a bad idea, while Christian blog Crimperman outlines the serious parenting and freedom of speech issues involved.
As we’ve previously argued, default blocking is a dangerous system that risks lulling parents into a false sense of security, while being trivial to avoid for youngsters. That’s why two independent Government reviews have rejected it and said it should be parents who decide what their children see. It also requires a major intrusion into our privacy, only working with a system of total surveillance.
Read more
Eric Pickles may not have the most glamorous job in Westminster, but he has delivered an early Christmas present for civil liberties campaigners.
