Tech

As part of Bristol Wireless, I’ve been closely involved in campaigning against the UK government’s plans for mass communications surveillance under the Communications Data Bill, also known as the “Snooper’s Charter” by its opponents (posts passim).

It now appears that all this work might have been in vain. Amongst the revelations that have come to light as a result of US whistleblower Edward Snowden‘s disclosures to The Guardian and The Washington Post was the news that for many years, GCHQ, the British state’s eavesdroppers, have been running a programme called Tempora, which has been hoovering up internet traffic and communications data from undersea cables before they make landfall in the UK.

GCHQ has been sucking up this data from millions – if not billions – of internet and telecommunications users at the rate of 600 mn. phone calls and 39 mn. gigabytes of data a day.

In spite of this damning evidence, Foreign Secretary William Hague has been trotting out the same old “if you’ve nothing to hide, nothing to fear” mantra. I have some advice for Mr Hague: try telling that to the family of Stephen Lawrence, who have just discovered 20 years after his killing that part of the British state called the Metropolitan Police tried to smear and discredit the family after they’d mishandled Stephen’s murder investigation.

However, there is a bit of positive news that has emerged today: Liberty – the human rights organisation – has today announced that it has issued a claim against the British intelligence services over their suspected involvement in the PRISM and Project Tempora privacy scandal.

Liberty believes that its electronic communications – and those of its staff – may have been unlawfully accessed by the likes of the Security Services and GCHQ.

Liberty will be ask the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) whether the British intelligence services have used PRISM and/or Tempora to bypass the formal UK legal process which regulates the accessing of personal material. The human rights group has issued a claim in the IPT, contending that rights under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act (the right to respect for a person’s private and family life, home and correspondence) have been breached.

Furthermore, Liberty is also concerned that the British Intelligence Services have used PRISM and Tempora to evade legal checks and balances and monitor people in the UK and may be treating internet communications as international rather than domestic to evade closer scrutiny and receiving material from their US partners to evade scrutiny altogether.

James Welch, Legal Director for Liberty, said: “Those demanding the Snooper’s Charter seem to have been indulging in out-of-control snooping even without it – exploiting legal loopholes and help from Uncle Sam.”

Finally, all this Anglo-Saxon surveillance has not gone down too well with some on the European mainland. Earlier this week, German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger wrote the following in the international edition of Der Spiegel:

The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is. In a democratic constitutional state, security is not an end in itself, but serves to secure freedom.

Quite.

Contrast that civilised view with the control freakery displayed by UK Home Secretary Theresa May.

This is a revised version of a post originally written for Bristol Wireless.

In the midst of all the recent revelations about the US National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance programme and GCHQ’s Tempora snooping on telecommunications and internet traffic, comes a small but welcome bit of good news. the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a controversial Australian government data retention scheme that would have required Australians’ internet and telephone activities to be stored for up to 2 years for law enforcement purposes has been shelved by the federal government after an inquiry recommended that the scheme should not go ahead.

The committee looking into the proposal as part of an inquiry into national security delivered its report on Monday. Most of those making submissions to the inquiry did not support the proposal. The federal police and the Tax Office were among the few who did. The report was scathing about the lack of information provided by former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and her department, saying this had hampered the inquiry.

Peter Lee, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said: “It’s not so much a win for industry but more a win for commonsense,” whilst John Stanton, chief executive of the Communications Alliance, said the government’s response was “good news” for consumers and the industry.

After the report’s release, Australia’s current Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government would not pursue data retention legislation “at this time”.