tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/snoopers-charter-17833/articlesSnoopers' Charter – The Conversation2016-12-01T14:29:52Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/695912016-12-01T14:29:52Z2016-12-01T14:29:52ZSnoopers’ Charter: why journalists (and the rest of us) should be afraid<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148276/original/image-20161201-25689-f83st8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Brian A Jackson</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The “Snooper’s Charter mark two” – or <a href="http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2015-16/investigatorypowers.html">Investigatory Powers Act</a> – which has recently passed into law demonstrates again how successful Islamist terrorism has been in changing British society into a secret state. </p>
<p>With the passing of the Act we have taken a step into <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper">a new world of permanent surveillance</a> that was not deemed necessary in 30 years of “The Troubles”, four decades of the Cold War or during two world wars. Home secretary Amber Rudd’s comment that it is “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/investigatory-powers-bill-receives-royal-assent">world-leading legislation</a>” is worthy of Orwell’s doublethink. One might ask, what part of the world are we leading exactly: North Korea, Cuba, China and Saudi Arabia?</p>
<p>It provides the intelligence agencies with massive new surveillance powers including rules that force internet providers to keep complete records of every website that all of their customers visit. That information will be available to a wide range of other agencies, including the Department for Work and Pensions as well as the Food Standards Agency.</p>
<p>The first impact of the Act is on the freedom of the press. The legislation <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/snoopers-charter-and-section-40-costs-threat-set-to-push-uk-yet-further-down-reporters-without-borders-press-freedom-index/">has been described</a> as “a death sentence for investigative journalism” as it provides no protection for journalists and their sources. And journalists and the confidential sources who tip them off have, it is worth noting, over history been the most effective oversight mechanism for the secret state. </p>
<p>The Act gives the intelligence agencies enormous freedom to monitor and counter journalism. It is an existential threat to journalists <a href="http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/60524/">acquiring and protecting their sources</a>. But it does not only apply to journalists, it applies to other professions that have confidentiality as an essential part of their relationship with their “clients” – from lawyers to priests.</p>
<h2>Sleepwalking into surveillance</h2>
<p>The lurch in the direction of a <a href="http://www.moyak.com/papers/michel-foucault-power.html">panoptican state</a> has been swift. In 2013, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22292474">Liberal Democrats saw off attempts</a> to get Theresa May’s Snooper’s Charter mark one into law and it was seen, at the time, as a very un-British law. But last week, the much-enhanced Snooper’s Charter was passed into law. As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/19/extreme-surveillance-becomes-uk-law-with-barely-a-whimper">Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian put it</a>, extreme surveillance “becomes UK law with barely a whimper”.</p>
<p>Months of attempts by a coalition of Lib-Dem and SNP peers, Liberty, Open Rights Group and other civil liberties campaigners to get pro-journalism amendments through failed. The last weeks of the process descended into a farce as the Lords and Commons played what is known as “ping pong”, with amendments bouncing back and forth to no great effect. <a href="https://www.solicitorsjournal.com/news/201611/uk%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98world-leading%E2%80%99-spy-powers-%E2%80%98-beacon-despots%E2%80%99">Bella Sankey of Liberty said</a>: “This new law is world-leading – but only as a beacon for despots everywhere.”</p>
<p>There was little doubt that the Snooper’s Charter would pass into law as it was the prime minister’s pet project. I have it on good authority that even intelligence chiefs were surprised by how little concern Theresa May as home secretary had for the civil liberty implications of the Snooper’s Charter, which Amber Rudd will have been tasked to deliver. </p>
<p>But there is something even more astonishing. I would like you to stop and think for a moment of the famous photograph of Boris Johnson ludicrously hitched to a zip wire in mid-air, festooned with Union Jacks. I would then like you to turn your mind back to the referendum campaign with Johnson standing in front of a red coach marked: “We send the EU £350m a week. Let’s fund the NHS instead.” </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"762732523558408192"}"></div></p>
<p>Now, as foreign secretary, Boris Johnson is the person who is directly responsible for the government’s eavesdropping agency GCHQ, as well as MI6. If putting a man with an erratic moral compass and a reputation as a buffoon in charge of what is part of the world’s most effective surveillance operation isn’t chilling, then I do not know what is.</p>
<h2>Lack of accountability</h2>
<p>Proponents of the Act argue that the official accountability of intelligence has been ramped up. Use of the IPA will be monitored via the new <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473744/Factsheet-Investigatory_Powers_Commission.pdf">Investigatory Powers Commission (IPC)</a> which includes a bench of judges. But official accountability has had a poor record since it started in 1996 and while it has improved recently, it remains very patchy. The <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/">Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC)</a> was discredited by the release of the Snowden documents from June 2013 that showed it either did not know or wilfully colluded in hiding the <a href="http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/investigative-journalists-voice-alarm-over-totalitarian-scale-of-surveillance-by-uk-and-other-five-eyes-states/">exponential growth in surveillance operations</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/148281/original/image-20161201-25653-q5d5xo.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orwellian nightmare?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sstrobeck23</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>At the time, those of us who were critical made the point that the surveillance and bulk collection was <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-lashmar/no-more-sources">not supported in law and therefore illegal</a>. This was denied by intelligence chiefs at the time. But in October, in rare case of effective oversight, the <a href="http://www.ipt-uk.com/">Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT)</a>, the court that hears complaints against MI6, MI5 and GCHQ, ruled that these agencies had been <a href="http://www.ipt-uk.com/judgments.asp?id=35">unlawfully collecting</a> massive volumes of confidential personal data without proper oversight for 17 years. </p>
<p>In the past, somebody would have been held to account for this massive circumnavigation of the law. But the world has changed greatly. When the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson control the most powerful surveillance operation the world has seen, in a climate of growing intolerance, we must worry.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Lashmar covered covered the war on terror for The Independent newspapers. He is part of the Data Psst! research team funded by the ESRC for research into surveillance and privacy 2014-16. He is a member of the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Are we seeing Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984 coming to fruition?Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/692472016-11-23T12:17:28Z2016-11-23T12:17:28ZHow the UK passed the most invasive surveillance law in democratic history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147175/original/image-20161123-19696-167r7tw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You might not have noticed thanks to <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/2016-us-presidential-election-23653">world events</a>, but the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/snoopers-charter-2-investigatory-powers-bill-parliament-lords-what-does-it-mean-a7423866.html">UK parliament recently approved</a> the government’s so-called Snooper’s Charter and it will soon become law. This nickname for the Investigatory Powers Bill is well earned. It represents a new level and nature of surveillance that goes beyond anything previously set out in law in a democratic society. It is not a modernisation of existing law, but something qualitatively different, something that intrudes upon every UK citizen’s life in a way that would even a decade ago have been inconceivable.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/40d2ede4-adac-11e6-9cb3-bb8207902122">The bill requires</a> internet and telecoms companies to keep records of every website or app we use and all our phone calls and messages for 12 months. It leaves us in the unenviable position of leading the world in the legalisation of surveillance. And it will likely be used by more authoritarian regimes around the globe as evidence that mass surveillance, online hacking and encryption backdoors are perfectly fine.</p>
<p>Because of the way we now use the internet for almost every element of our lives, this is not like a few carefully chosen wiretaps on suspects. It’s granting the authorities the capacity to spy on pretty much everything done by pretty much everyone. And yet we have let this law pass with very few headlines and barely a breath of resistance from our politicians.</p>
<p>There are still some legal avenues to prevent it from coming into effect, most directly through the European Court of Justice (while the UK is still in the EU) and the European Court of Human Rights (which is separate from the EU). But more likely to be our saving graces are the inherent problems with implementing this poorly conceived legislation and the constantly developing technology that can potentially by-pass the law.</p>
<h2>A well scrutinised bill?</h2>
<p>The Home Office may well say that it has been one of the most highly scrutinised and analysed bills in recent history. And on the face of it, they would be right. The UK’s surveillance activities <a href="https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk">have been the subject</a> of <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/committee-reports/special-reports">a long series</a> of <a href="https://rusi.org/sites/default/files/20150714_whr_2-15_a_democratic_licence_to_operate.pdf">reviews</a> by a <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201516/jtselect/jtinvpowers/93/9302.htm">wide range of bodies</a>. What the Home Office won’t say is that they have responded to these various reviews with a mixture of sidestepping, ignoring, refusing and paying lip-service to their recommendations. </p>
<p>For example, the <a href="https://b1cba9b3-a-5e6631fd-s-sites.googlegroups.com/a/independent.gov.uk/isc/files/20160209_ISC_Rpt_IPBill%28web%29.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cqe_Vdy8dyfkoXKabJp7CEkwGg8xzL0fgiUWtB1kKc3uCm-qhPiInBAlaMuEvfxxmD4ZHDdfo1hp_hv4qOgSCvIQy769Fgv1eBl2qZS-IQy_sErFrlxvj39VRY-Tl2ZwyOmMSz94YA5qeOHZiTIC_xLc7fTX4amuIOk8PRxpucxUR1ijYYMr9wjEl83bsteNOMfDl4Nlu2kbsnC-Q6PB3bW2Q0954cd3OIIIYCYrWkx9tfUO2L34XytXEMoCyNk_oF_FUH8&attredirects=0">Intelligence and Security Committee’s recommendation</a> that “privacy protections should form the backbone of the draft legislation, around which the exceptional powers are then built” was responded to by changing one title from “General Protections” to “General Privacy Protections”.</p>
<p>The bill itself remains substantially identical to the one that was initially proposed and was highly criticised by many of the reviews. There are limits built in – such as the need for a <a href="https://ukconstitutionallaw.org/2016/03/22/byron-karemba-the-investigatory-powers-bill-introducing-judicial-authorisation-of-surveillance-warrants-in-the-united-kingdom-putting-the-double-lock-in-focus-part-i">judge and the home secretary</a> to sign off warrants to intercept communication – but whether they will be more than a rubber stamp is questionable and will need to be carefully watched. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/147177/original/image-20161123-19696-1lybav9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Most of those in parliament who knew how bad this was allowed themselves to be distracted. Conservative MP and civil rights campaigner David Davis was seduced by his <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/who-is-david-davis-a-profile-of-britains-new-minister-for-brexit/">new role as Brexit secretary</a>. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson was focused on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/2016/aug/10/tom-watson-a-piggy-caught-in-several-middles-as-labour-battles-on">conflict within the Labour Party</a>. And former Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti was <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/shami-chakrabarti-has-sold-the-final-bit-of-her-credibility-in-abstaining-on-snoopers-charter_uk_57fcd024e4b02213e9551cb5">seduced by a peerage</a> and the allure of a Shadow Cabinet role.</p>
<p>Quite why those who should have known better – in particular, Jeremy Corbyn and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott who have been the subject of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/undercover-with-paul-lewis-and-rob-evans/2015/oct/02/police-facing-hard-questions-over-covert-monitoring-of-jeremy-corbyn-and-other-mps">inappropriate and politically motivated surveillance</a> themselves – waved it through remains a mystery. The only real resistance came from what is left of the Lib Dems, the SNP and Green MP Caroline Lucas. It wasn’t nearly enough.</p>
<p>In the end, parliament failed through a combination of incomprehension and political cowardice. After all, who wants to be seen to prevent something that might save us all from a terrorist attack? Aside from this, the House of Commons was preoccupied with issues that were well established, such as protection for journalists, or staring them in the face, such as the confidentiality of their own communications.</p>
<p>That meant that they missed both the nature of the new style of surveillance and its impact on people’s lives. The biggest issues, such as the impact of mass hacking, were missed entirely or fundamentally misunderstood. For example, the data that will be gathered – known as “internet connection records” — was characterised as the equivalent of an itemised phone bill for the internet. <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-web-history-reveals-what-we-think-and-do-shouldnt-that-remain-private-50289">In reality</a>, it’s a record of our movements, interests, friends, health, sexual preferences and even our tastes in music. And even more information about us could be derived from that data.</p>
<h2>Saving graces?</h2>
<p>Legal challenges to the bill at the European courts of justice and human rights are certain to happen and quite likely to succeed. The courts have a strong recent track record of finding this level of intrusion <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-04/cp140054en.pdf">incompatible with fundamental rights</a>. Although, in the current anti-European climate, it is equally likely that the courts will be largely ignored by the UK government.</p>
<p>That leaves a technological solution, and here lies both the route around the bill and its fundamental problem. Some of the worst parts of the bill –- the internet connection records in particular -– will be both difficult and extremely costly to implement, and may take years. Technologically able people will find ways to bypass the bill. The use of encryption and anonymisation will increase in response to the clampdown, as will other ways to avoid being tracked and then tracked down. That includes most of the “bad guys” that are ostensibly the targets of this legislation.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://labourlist.org/2012/06/theresa-may-is-wrong-says-tory-mp-david-davis/">David Davis said</a>, before being distracted by Brexit, this kind of surveillance will only catch the innocent and the incompetent. The innocent should not be caught and the incompetent can be caught any number of ways.</p>
<p>What this surveillance is good for is monitoring entire populations for social control: monitoring naïve opposition groups, shutting down popular protests or dissidence, and political manipulation. In a world where Donald Trump can be elected President of the United States this is something that should disturb us greatly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Bernal received funding for his PhD research, which began his work on internet privacy from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He is on the Advisory Council of the Open Rights Group. He was a member of the Labour Party until the passing of the Investigatory Powers Bill, but resigned immediately after, in part as a reaction to their role in its passing. </span></em></p>The Snooper’s Charter has cleared parliament, but there might still be a way to stop the government collecting all our internet histories.Paul Bernal, Lecturer in Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/531882016-01-15T10:14:39Z2016-01-15T10:14:39ZBosses’ right to snoop on staff emails is an invasion of privacy and ignores the way we work<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/108211/original/image-20160114-2365-1mx4gxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Blazej Lyjak</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since Edward Snowden revealed the existence of <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/DS.pdf">internet surveillance</a> programmes such as XKeyScore, Prism and Tempora, there have been many discussions of <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/books/internet-and-surveillance-the-challenges-of-web-2-0-and-social-media/">digital snooping</a> and its implications for privacy, freedom and civil rights. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=divnPwm9rLo">Public discourse</a> has focused on the dangers of the emergence of a <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/920/">surveillance-industrial-complex</a>, in which secret services, global communications corporations and private security companies collaborate. </p>
<p>This focus has somewhat distracted public attention from another form of snooping that affects many of us in everyday life: employee surveillance. A <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35301148">recent ruling</a> of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has alerted us of the developments in this realm of surveillance: a Romanian engineer complained to the ECHR about his dismissal in light of his personal use of Yahoo Messenger on a company device during working hours. He had not just messaged professional contacts, but also his family. </p>
<p>The ECHR rejected the complaint that the company’s monitoring of the employee’s communications violated Article 8 of the <a href="http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/0900001680063765">European Convention on Human Rights</a>, which protects everyone’s “right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence”.</p>
<h2>Who’s watching you work?</h2>
<p>Companies’ surveillance of employees’ online communication is widespread. According <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2011/10/24/91-employers-use-social-media-screen-applicants">to a survey</a> of 300 company recruiters, 91% of British employers check job applicants’ social media profiles. Another <a href="http://www.amanet.org/training/articles/The-Latest-on-Workplace-Monitoring-and-Surveillance.aspx">poll showed</a> that in the US, 66% of employers monitor their employees’ internet browsing and about a third have fired workers for internet misuse. </p>
<p>But why is there so much <a href="http://www.matrizes.usp.br/index.php/matrizes/article/download/203/347">employee surveillance</a> today? Companies in general tend to favour the surveillance of communications of job applicants, their workplace and staff, property, consumers and competitors in order to ensure control over the production, sale and consumption of their commodities, thereby guaranteeing the accumulation of capital. Surveillance and control are <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/MarxSurveillance.pdf">inherent features</a> of capitalism.</p>
<p>The key point in the ECHR’s ruling is that there has been “no violation of Article 8 of the convention” because the court found “that it is not unreasonable for an employer to want to verify that the employees are completing their professional tasks during working hours”. </p>
<p>It is important to note that the ECHR’s judgment was taken acknowledging that the company monitored two Yahoo Messenger accounts of the dismissed employee, one used for professional and one used for private purposes. The implication is that employers are legally allowed to monitor all employee communications during working time on company-owned devices.</p>
<h2>Always on the job</h2>
<p>The ECHR’s legal judgment seems to disregard changes to working life in the digital age that do not allow us to strictly separate working and leisure time. Under the conditions of neoliberal digital capitalism, the boundaries between working and leisure time, the workplace and the home, <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/FuchsTrottierCPDP.pdf">labour and play</a>, production and consumption, and the private and the public have become <a href="http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/552/668">blurred and liquefied</a>. </p>
<p>Employees tend to also access and answer e-mails at home as well as on the way to work and back home. Many people search for job-related information on the internet out of regular working hours at home, in cafés, on the train – anywhere you care to imagine. <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/wp-content/surv.pdf">Social media profiles</a> often have no clearly private or professional character because <a href="http://fuchs.uti.at/books/social-media-a-critical-introduction/">social media</a> are convergence media – our online contacts and communication involve people from different social contexts, including our family life and friendship groups and involve our working life, politics, civil society engagement and the rest. </p>
<p>The general tendency is that there is a 24/7 always-on culture that benefits companies’ profits and turns ever more leisure time into labour time. </p>
<p>Given that under such conditions many employees tend to complete professional tasks out of regular working hours, it is ethically unreasonable to grant employers the legal right to monitor all employee communications on company-owned or other devices. It is also not reasonable to assume that all employees can carry around multiple privately and company-owned laptops, mobile phones and tablets that they use either for personal or professional purposes with separate private and professional social media and email accounts at clearly defined and separated times of the day in order to communicate with neatly separated groups of private and professional contacts. </p>
<h2>Need for flexibility</h2>
<p>An employee messaging a personal friend via social media on a device owned by the company he works for, using either his personal or professional ID, is taking a break from work. Given the complexity of today’s economy and the emergence of flexible working times, it is feasible to assume that employees’ breaks also need to be flexible. Company rules, regulations and legislation need to be brought up to date with these complexities. </p>
<p>The unfortunate reality seems, however, to be that many employers, legislators and judiciaries assume that large parts of the day have to be seen as labour time that employers are allowed to monitor. In my view, such surveillance practices do not merely undermine the right to privacy and the right to private and family life, but also the “<a href="http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/">right to rest and leisure</a>, including reasonable limitation of working hours”. They furthermore advance a workplace culture of suspicion, distrust and control that harms both employees and companies. </p>
<p>Adequate protection of workers’ rights in the digital age is a key political task. It can only be achieved by strengthening existing protections at the European and global level in the interest of working people, not by undermining such rights in the interest of corporations. In the digital age, labour time continues to be a strongly contested realm of human life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53188/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I received funding for conducting research on social media in the years 2010-2014 from the Austrian Science Fund FWF (see <a href="http://www.sns3.uti.at">http://www.sns3.uti.at</a>). I have furthermore been conducting Internet research funded by the European Union in the projects PACT and RESPECT (2012-2015) and netCommons (2016-2018)</span></em></p>Workplace surveillance is creating a culture of suspicion that harms employers and their staff.Christian Fuchs, Professor of Social Media, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/526242015-12-23T13:05:24Z2015-12-23T13:05:24ZWhy Apple is weighing in on a British government surveillance bill<p>Apple has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35153264">spoken out</a> against a proposed investigatory powers bill in the UK. In an official contribution to the consultation process, the US tech company has criticised the bill for undermining security and privacy of communications. But what it doesn’t criticise is also telling. The lack of an objection to the government’s bulk collection of metadata shows Apple’s commercial priorities.</p>
<p>Apple contributed eight pages of written evidence to the consultation on the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/473770/Draft_Investigatory_Powers_Bill.pdf">new draft</a>, which was put on the table in November 2015. The proposed law will replace the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/contents">2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act</a>, as well as a bunch of other laws that had for years been covertly interpreted as allowing bulk surveillance, hacking, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-are-right-to-fear-spy-database-of-everything-if-even-politicians-know-little-about-it-38792">creation of population databases</a>.</p>
<p>Having aggressively marketed its privacy credentials for the last two years, Apple’s contribution to the consultation is perhaps not surprising. Its criticisms concentrate on three areas, all of which closely relate to the company’s reputation. </p>
<h2>Hacking, with help?</h2>
<p>One of Apple’s concerns relates to provisions in the bill regarding “equipment interference”. This refers to the ability of intelligence services to hack both hardware and software – something the UK government only admitted to doing in a <a href="http://isc.independent.gov.uk/news-archive/12march2015">2015 Intelligence and Security Committee report</a>. </p>
<p>The new law would not only explicitly include this capability, but also extend it. Hacking would be allowed “in bulk” – this could, for example, be through a tampered update (maybe one that circumvents encryption) rolled out to all devices or software installations of a certain kind. Plus companies could be forced to collaborate with this interference, and then be subject to gagging orders. </p>
<p>Apple clearly objects to this: it would mean they cannot credibly maintain to customers that its devices and software cannot have not been tampered with. And the broader security argument behind Apple’s opposition is that any such tampering would likely create security holes that then become available to anyone – not just the “good guys”. </p>
<h2>Encryption and backdoors</h2>
<p>A legislative attack on end-to-end encryption has been on the cards in the UK since David Cameron said he did not want there to be <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmhansrd/cm141125/debtext/141125-0001.htm#14112532000001">“a means of communication … that we are not able to intercept”</a>. This would undermine some of Apple’s products – such as iMessage – which use end-to-end encryption so that only sender and recipient can read the message. </p>
<p>The new bill puts an obligation on communication service providers to have the “ability to remove any encryption applied by it”. This <a href="https://theconversation.com/investigatory-powers-bill-will-remove-isps-right-to-protect-your-privacy-50178">potentially requires</a> any end-to-end encryption to be provided only if a method to give government access to the contents is also built in. Apple argues explicitly against these kinds of backdoors. </p>
<p>In objection, Apple said: “A key left under the doormat would not just be there for the good guys. The bad guys would find it too.” This clearly refers to the <a href="https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/Papers/doormats.pdf">recent technical paper</a> by Cambridge computer scientist Ross Anderson and other grandees in cryptography and security, which argues that such backdoors should be avoided as they undermine overall security. </p>
<p>With Apple’s iMessage service, it can currently tell customers that it is impossible to intercept and decrypt messages even if the company wanted to. But the mere existence of backdoors would undermine this.</p>
<h2>Extraterritoriality</h2>
<p>Apple’s third area of concern is to do with “extraterritoriality”. Apple does not want to have to comply with warrants for information from governments wherever it is based or wherever its data is. </p>
<p>The complaint that it will have <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/21/apple-uk-government-snoopers-charter-investigatory-powers-bill">to cope with overlapping foreign and domestic laws</a> sounds a bit generic, however. After all, internet giants like Apple operate internationally on a scale that surpasses every individual country. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/106982/original/image-20151223-27851-15t2b3e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Listening in: GCHQ satellites collect data as part of global intelligence gathering operations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASatellite_dishes_at_GCHQ_Bude.jpg">Nilfanion</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than sparking “serious international conflicts”, <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1ec9cdfc-a7ff-11e5-955c-1e1d6de94879.html">as Apple claims</a>, this law suffers from the same intrinsic problems of extraterritoriality as any internet related legislation. Just because the internet and the companies operating on it barely experience national boundaries does not mean national governments and international organisations should accept that it is an anarchic situation. What we are watching here is really a battle between an old world power and a new one.</p>
<p>Apple prefers to avoid making judgements on individual countries and their surveillance regimes. Contrast this with Blackberry who are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/30/blackberry-pakistan-government-surveillance">pulling out of Pakistan</a> because of excessive surveillance demands, whereas in 2013 they decided to comply <a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/10/4510904/blackberry-makes-surveillance-concessions-ending-dispute-with-india">with quite similar requests from the Indian government</a>. </p>
<p>Britain, however, might think twice about making technological demands of Apple which give competing world powers an edge – either by creating a precedent in surveillance demands, or through undermining overall security.</p>
<h2>One glaring omission</h2>
<p>Apple likes to present itself as a privacy advocate, and uses that as a selling point. For an overall conclusion, it is worth comparing Apple’s criticisms of the bill to those by privacy organisations and experts. </p>
<p>There is a glaring difference: Apple does not criticise the mass collection of communications data (or metadata). Apple <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35153264">notes</a> that it still provides metadata when requested. So while end-to-end encryption provided by Apple protects the content, it does not protect the information on who has been communicating with whom.</p>
<p>The draft law is built on the premise that communications data is less worthy of protection than contents. But experts in computer science and privacy tend to disagree with this. In his evidence to the joint parliamentary committee, East Anglia legal academic Paul Bernal argued that the collection of either type of data is “differently intrusive”. </p>
<p>Similarly, in their <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/science-and-technology-committee/news-parliament-2015/investigatory-powers-bill-inquiry-launch-15-16/">evidence session on this law for the Science and Technology committee</a>, Ross Anderson and Joss Wright of the University of Oxford Internet Institute argued that communications data was often more useful than contents in law enforcement practice. </p>
<p>For all its championing of privacy, Apple is silent when it comes to these arguments. One reason for this may be that its business is not primarily about protecting communications data. So, while it lends powerful and convincing support to the technological arguments against encryption backdoors and bulk interference, Apple also remains a very smart business.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eerke Boiten receives funding from the UK government for the Kent Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, as well as from the EU for an Innovative Training Network in Cyber Security.</span></em></p>Having aggressively marketed its privacy credentials for the last two years, Apple’s contribution to the consultation is not surprising.Eerke Boiten, Senior Lecturer, School of Computing and Director of Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/431982015-06-15T05:11:47Z2015-06-15T05:11:47ZSnoopers’ Charter plans under fire from UK terror watchdog<p>The author of the <a href="https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk">latest report</a> on government surveillance practices is probably right when he says the document “won’t please everybody (indeed it may not please anybody)”. The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, David Anderson QC, has laid out his proposals for reforming the way intelligence services collect and use data about our online activities. And the prime minister has <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/blog/live/2015/jun/11/david-anderson-terror-watchdog-publishes-report-on-surveillance-powers-politics-live">reportedly already rejected</a> one of the key recommendations that judges – not ministers – should authorise the interception of communications.</p>
<p>The report is a substantive piece of work and deserves careful reading and consideration in full. It argues that people’s internet searches should only be captured where a rigorous assessment proves there is a strong case for doing so. This is not in line with government plans in the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/return-of-the-snoopers-charter-reflects-a-worldwide-move-towards-greater-surveillance-42504">Snoopers’ Charter</a>.</p>
<p>It also emphatically rejects the idea that government should have a backdoor into all <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-you-seek-to-switch-off-encryption-you-may-as-well-switch-off-the-whole-internet-36264">encrypted communications</a>. And it highlights the need to replace the current patchwork of communications laws with a single framework and a new oversight body.</p>
<p>It’s becoming clear why the government <a href="http://www.daviddavismp.com/david-davis-criticises-the-governments-attempts-to-delay-the-anderson-report/">delayed the report’s publication</a>. The opposition of David Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/11/spies-gchq-anderson-snoopers-charter-bulk-surveilllance-public-trust">to judicial rather than ministerial authorisation</a> of warrants was predictable. You can also understand why they might be a bit miffed that Anderson disapproves of blanket encryption backdoors. He argues the agencies don’t want it and that it would undermine security for everyone. </p>
<h2>Government disappointment</h2>
<p>You would expect the government to be positively dancing in the aisles for the report’s apparent support for the bulk data collection and retention. And its support for the notion that UK law in this area should have global reach.</p>
<p>However, their joy will be tempered by Anderson’s qualification that he is not offering a legal opinion that these practices are proportionate. On the contrary, he notes: “A number of such questions are currently before the courts.” He also insists bulk collection and retention would have to comply with the <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">European Convention on Human Rights</a> and the ruling by the European Court of Justice last year that <a href="http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-04/cp140054en.pdf">outlawed indiscriminate data retention</a>.</p>
<p>And on international communications, Anderson says capturing this data without the official agreement of other countries is an “unsatisfactory substitute for a multilateral arrangement … which must surely be the long-term goal.”</p>
<p>So Anderson’s report has turned out to be nothing like the useful excuse for pushing through the Snoopers’ Charter that the home secretary must have hoped it would be.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/84872/original/image-20150612-1491-15yzkir.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bulk data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the down side, I have to admit I share <a href="https://privacyinternational.org/?q=node/596">Privacy International’s disappointment</a> that Anderson did not condemn bulk data collection. The justification for this is rather weak and not in line with the deeper consideration of the rest of the report.</p>
<p>Anderson links the issue to the principle of minimising areas – in both the physical and digital worlds – where law enforcement doesn’t apply. He supports this position by reference to six real bulk data case studies in <a href="https://terrorismlegislationreviewer.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/IPR-Report-Web-Accessible1.pdf">Annex 9</a> of the report. None of these cases definitively demonstrate that bulk collection was the main reason those involved were identified in the first place. </p>
<h2>Information overload</h2>
<p>If the police or intelligence services have just cause to suspect someone of criminal activity, then being able to access and search the suspect’s data could reveal significant information about them. But authorities <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11251792/Only-a-fraction-of-terror-suspects-can-be-watched-247.html">simply do not have the resources</a> to sift through data about the lives of everyone in the country.</p>
<p>Time and again since the turn of the century, <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/nsas-call-record-program-911-hijacker-and-failure-bulk-collection">from 9/11</a> to the <a href="http://bit.ly/1e8qxXB">murder of Lee Rigby</a>, authorities have failed to prevent terrorist attacks by known dangerous individuals after being overloaded with information from bulk collection. Additionally, it is simply not proportionate to engage in bulk data collection, in the hope that it will be useful when the authorities decide to look into someone they disapprove of. It actually impedes already over-stretched authorities, who would be better off recruiting more and better-trained investigators and analysts.</p>
<p>The government would do well to note that the opportunity costs of bulk data collection and retention make the jobs of those tasked with protecting us more difficult, while simultaneously denying them the resources to be more effective. This undermines security for everyone.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/43198/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ray Corrigan is a signatory of the Necessary and Proportionate International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance.</span></em></p>David Anderson’s report on surveillance isn’t a charter for online privacy but it could create problems for a government set on capturing all our data.Ray Corrigan, Senior Lecturer in Technology, The Open UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.