I wouldn’t want to start World war 3 over this, and I’m sure the usual suspects will be around accusing me of being a NuLab stooge…. but are we confident that there is a proposal to ‘monitor the internet’? I know that’s the way the Daily Mail and the Telegraph portrayed it – including a Mail suggestion snatched out of the air that it would ‘cost up to a billion pounds’ when we all know that £2.50 is ‘up to a billion’ – but has the Government said it is doing this?

As I understand what Smith said , and I have no particular insight, she said the Government would require certain organisations such as internet providers, to retain their records (themselves) for up to a year. Then in the event of the police making a case against possible terrorists they could request the evidence from the providers. That seems to be no different to the way they use mobile telephone information currently to track the contacts of those charged with terrorist offences.

I agree entirely that should this become law there would need to be very strong regulation and restrictions – but Smith said that too. And there is a danger that a future totalitarian regime would use this legislation for sinister ends, but I think experience shows us that the likes of Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin didn’t bother too much about the niceties of legislation anyway, and they would use whatever powers they wanted. Perhaps the paranoids are after you Lee.

Pains me to say it, fellas – but I agree with Lee.

Bob – don’t want to call you NuLab stooge or anything, but Hoon gave a great deal away simply with his demeanour. He was parroting a line, not arguing it – he was reciting the NuLab ‘we have to monitor you to keep you safe’ mantra and ended up having to take that line to its ultimate, and ridiculous, conclusion – ie, we’re going to give you lot the rubber-glove treatment wherever you go and whatever you do, because we’re defending your right not to be killed by a terrorist.

THAT line of argument is both extremism, and dramatic in the extreme, and hugely comic as a result – hubby and I both screamed laughing when he came out with that one. Comedy gold.

I agree that this is a worrying proposal but what we really need to be challenging is the whole ideological lash-up of the ‘war on terror’ too which has become a bit of a byword for a massive extension of state power and of course interventionist wars….

Little fuss is caused because people are afraid and despite the fact of them being killed in a terrorist attack being statistically a very small grain of sand on a big beach it still looms large in peoples mind because an attack is a frightful act…

…may I add that Hoon’s robotic reciting of the company line inadvertently underscored another important point – that Labour truly believes that the greta unwashed will start to believe that the government is in the right on the topic of the current preceived terriorist threat if only it repeats the ‘we’re only trying to protect you’ line often enough…

By doing so, the government conveniently skirts the facts of the terroism debate – that the present threat, if it does exist to the extent we’re told it does – has surely been generated at least in part by aggressive Western policy in the Middle East and latterly Iraq and Afghanistan. You don’t have to condone terrorism to imagine there is a relationship between UK-US foreign policy in those parts of the world and the terrorist response we’ve seen here. Perhaps Gordon Brown could start bringing his new-found global negotiating skills to foreign policy, rather than insisting on paying hopeless tossers like EDS Christ knows what to fumble around in our inboxes.

Anyway – Hoon’s’ ‘It’s all their fault’ whine struck me as a bit thin for the above reasons. I don’t think it is all their fault, Geoff.

[1] Bob, if that’s what it amounts to, it may well be no particular cause for concern… except that some bright spark might decide to abuse process, e.g. to uncover the fact that a Tory or Lib Dem candidate was “into” visiting porn sites on the Internet.

The Government has a track record of regarding information it collects on citizens as belonging to itself. It will use the data – any data – it collects in its own interests, not ours. And this applies to any conceivable government. The first thing government needs to do to build trust is to come clean about that – to admit that it is subject to constant temptation. There is no sign whatever that NuLab understands this.

And that’s before we come to the fact that it’s forever losing the stuff… at least the Tories would keep it safe in order to sell it to third parties…

I wouldn’t want to start World war 3 over this, and I’m sure the usual suspects will be around accusing me of being a NuLab stooge….

Bob,

Someone may still call you a stooge, but it’s constructive to have someone defending the government at times. We rage when sometimes we should try and understand.

That said, Mr. Hoon isn’t particularly well liked anyway. A true-believer at the alter of Blair. ;o)

Mike, I thought the point I was making was that the Government weren’t keeping the information, but they were requiring service providers to do so for a year so that they could obtain evidence if necessary… in the same way they do with mobile phone bills.

The analogy is that currently, presumably, ‘Government’ – by which we mean the police – could trawl through everyone’s mobile phone bills to find out if you were calling your Aunt Daisy, but we don’t think they are…. do we?

Companies like Google already collect, retain and use the information they store on us everytime we use their search engines, so we know they keep the info.

Kate – I wasn’t really commenting on the wretched Hoon. I didn’t see him, I was out listening to a bit of live music and having a beer.

‘Kate – I wasn’t really commenting on the wretched Hoon. I didn’t see him, I was out listening to a bit of live music and having a beer.’

Jesus, people – this is a terrible day already. First, I find myself agreeing with Lee Griffin, and now I find my social habits are more like his than Bob Piper’s. AAAAAAAARGH…

can i come with you next thursday, bob?

Companies like Google already collect, retain and use the information they store on us everytime we use their search engines, so we know they keep the info.

It’s a powerful argument to bring up Google. But the government has access to much more sensitive info. Indeed, if someone with access to a web of government agencies wanted to get one over you…

Bob, my problem is that – in this country – low-level administrators have wide-ranging access to sensitive data, without any rock-solid oversight.

I’d like some constitutional protections before supporting greater intrusions into our lives.

The government seems to want it both ways. They want power, but they always resist checks.

Bob:

I think the key political problem with initiatives like this, and ID cards, is New Labour’s sad and inglorious track record of treating the judiciary as an inconvenience to be circumvented at every possible opportunity.

I’ve got major doubt about the technical viability of this project anyway. Storage-wise its not a problem, you just have to chuck enough money at it, but moving the data from A to B (or rather GCHQ) will be a major headache and cause of bottlenecks.

But its not the collation of this information that’s a problem so much as how it will be used and the potential for function creep that we need to be concerned about.

It’s much the same issue as with the furore over councils using surveillance powers granted under RIPA.

For starters the Act itself is badly misunderstood and too easily misrepresented as being about the use of surveillance by the police and security services when its actually there to regulate all use of surveillance in any context, including its use by employers. Nevertheless, its still ’sold’ to the public by the press as an anti-terrorism measure.

There’s a big perception problem here which stems from the government failing to explain itself properly and engage in an open debate about the use of these powers.

But where the greatest concerns arise is in where and how authority to use these systems is vested – in senior police officers, civil servants and public officials. The suspicion that many people have, which the media play on, is that place powers of authorisation in the hands of those who use these systems creates a conflict of interest such that if, say, a senior police officer gets a request for authorisation from a junior detective, they may just take it as read that their subordinate has good reason for making the request without questioning it too closely, in which case the safeguards in the system become just a rubber stamp.

Whether that happens in practice is uncertain – I suspect that for the most part it doesn’t but there may be occasions when things do get waved through without being properly scrutinised.

The one thing that would help to reassure the public about these kinds of project, but which we’ve consistently tried to avoid, is placing the use of surveillance powers under full, independent judicial oversight. Many people would not be quite so nervous about the use of surveillance powers, CCTV and bulk data capture exercises like the one being proposed if only the primary safeguard were a clear requirement that in order to process the information it were necessary for the police (or whoever else) to obtain a judicial warrant having first provided evidence that they have good cause to be looking for whatever it is they’re after.

That said, its bloody typical of Hoon to come out with dumb comments like those he made last night. I don’t know moving him to the Transport, we might have been better off appointing him the new ambassador to North Korea.

Bob

Mike, I thought the point I was making was that the Government weren’t keeping the information, but they were requiring service providers to do so for a year so that they could obtain evidence if necessary… in the same way they do with mobile phone bills.

Not so, I’m afraid – the ISPs played merry hell over what that would cost them so the plan is now to put a massive data warehouse at GCHQ to store the information.

Firstly, Bob is correct in that the devil is in the detail, but any such proposal should not only be considered on its own individual merits – it should also be considered together with the context of all the other proposals that have been deployed or are on the table – which, as it stands, is a country where we are to be watched by the state from birth until death just in case someone is a terrorist.

Secondly, there is not only the devil in the detail of what will be recorded, but also in how it will be used.

Thirdly, Bob’s unwittingly given us an example of salami-slicing, of inch by inch destruction of our privacy (and other liberties): “we already do the same sort of thing with mobile phones, so let’s do it with other communications.” And, if it were technologically feasible to store the content of our communications, the Government would jump at the chance.

Fourthly,

Companies like Google already collect, retain and use the information they store on us everytime we use their search engines, so we know they keep the info.

Using Google is optional – being watched by the state is not.

Unity, Well if I’m wrong I apologise because that would be frought with all sorts of dangers. I was going by this report quoting the Home Secretary in the FT yesterday:

“Ms Smith insisted that there were no plans for an “enormous database” containing details of every e-mail, internet search, or phone or online conversation. She also ruled out giving local authorities powers to trawl through such data.

Instead she indicated that the most likely option was to increase the amount of data that internet service providers would be required by law to retain and, if required, hand over to state investigators, with increased oversight by the privacy watchdog of data stored by the government.”

Or ‘fraught’ even.

Lee,

If we let them, universally, collect this data, as sure as God made little green apples, it will be used, justified even, in non terrorist cases. Start with a high profile paeodophile case, catch someone resetting stuff on e-Bay and bobs your uncle, full scale surveillance of all. This, it seems to me, is a huge lurch towards a Police State. I also think it is a misuse of resources. If they have this amount of money floating around they’d be better spending it on Human Intelligence resources directly, y’know employing detectives and spooks, that sort of stuff. If they truly know, as they claimed to,that there are circa 2000 active terrorists, then up close and personal contact is what is required. And, with reasonable judicial oversight targetting these suspects – including if necessary intercept evidence – would make more sense to me. Anyway, would encryption not make most of this moot anyway?

Legislation creep should be in the next Labour Manifesto. Save yourselves from terrorists
and be assured that your neighbours – never you, oh no – will be prosecuted with the full force of the law for putting their recycling rubbish in the wrong bin. It is, after all, what they have given us.

I think Hoon played on peoples fears, and I really don’t like that. It has a certain dishonesty about it.

Great post, Lee. Agreed on all counts.

It’s a powerful argument to bring up Google.

Using Google is optional, and Google aren’t planning to lock anyone up for 42 days without charge.

The government seems to want it both ways. They want power, but they always resist checks.

That’s exactly right. But checks on executive power are old fashioned and the rules of the game have changed, haven’t they? And anyone disagreeing with that wants children to die.

We should be proud to be world leaders in the intense, personal surveillance of every drone citizen: China and North Korea have been left in the dust. All hail our Beloved Leaders!

“If they are going to use the internet to communicate with each other and we don’t have the power to deal with that, then you are giving a licence to politicians to kill people” … “The biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a politician.”

It is true though the INTERNET is dangerous , I was nearly killed by an exploding email.

I haven’t got time to read all the comments yet, but I will do..I just wanted to respond to this point by Bob…

“Then in the event of the police making a case against possible terrorists they could request the evidence from the providers. That seems to be no different to the way they use mobile telephone information currently to track the contacts of those charged with terrorist offences.”

You’re absolutely right, it is no different to that. The “voluntary” agreement that telecoms services entered in to during the immediate fear of terrorist actions throughout the Western world has paved the way for a line of credibility in the government’s argument. “Well you agreed that we needed to ask people to monitor telephone records, isn’t it just logical to extend that to the web?”

It is logical, completely, but only if one accepts that we should be “voluntarily” giving away such intricate information about our phone records, etc, in the first place. I for one don’t.

So when we get all of our internet communication monitored in the same way as our phone lines…what next? Do we wait another 5 years so that another building block can be added to the pile? “Well you agreed that we needed to ask people to monitor web access and emails, isn’t it just logical to extend it to..”

Geoff Hoon: “The biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist.”

Let’s say there are on average 30 people killed by terrorists in Britain every year. With a population of 60 million, that’s one in 2 million. Another way of putting it is that I’m likely to be killed by a terrorist once every 2 million years.

I think that’s a threat I can live with. And it’s certainly preferable to a 100% risk that the government is monitoring everything I do online.

“Let’s say there are on average 30 people killed by terrorists in Britain every year. With a population of 60 million, that’s one in 2 million. Another way of putting it is that I’m likely to be killed by a terrorist once every 2 million years.”

Much less if you live outside of London, indeed this is where I think people like Hoon miss the point. I’m not suggesting people in East Riding and Cornwall should be collectively saying “bad luck” to city dwellers that are the only people that have the chance of being killed by a terrorist in the UK, if we’re being realistic, but it’s hard to argue that we need to monitor the conversation between Esther (75) in Penzance with her daughter Barbara (50) in Oldham because if we don’t then a terrorist will come in to their house at night and blow them up.

Lee, you’re doing it again. It isn’t monitoring. Monitoring is keeping a continuous record. It is about access. What are needed surely are proper safeguards to ensure those records are not randomly obtainable and the police have to make out a full case to a judge in order to obtain the information.

There was no talk of mass scale, structured, monitoring before the government started talking about access. They go hand in hand. It can be hidden in harmless words and terminology but the reality is the government wants access to information on demand, and if that information isn’t available then the way is paved to ensure that information is available. If the government didn’t make it as good as law to require this information be kept…do you think companies would have gone through the costs to implement such systems if there wasn’t also a benefit to themselves?

As for the term monitoring, which is what perhaps you’re getting hung up on, does the fact there isn’t someone at a screen listening mean that it isn’t monitoring? I guess more accurately I should say “recording”, but the fact that this information can be delved in to by authorities for quite a wide array of reasoning means I don’t really care too much for splitting hairs.

But yes, I agree, safeguards are always needed, but can we trust this government to deliver should they be needed? Simple modern history with regards to data loss, and councils using RIPA to spy on people going fishing tends to suggest that they can’t.

“The biggest civil liberty of all is not to be killed by a terrorist.”

Either this wretched liar is a total idiot or he’s coming over all Pinocchio again.

A) We compromise our liberty, we’re not granted liberties.
B) There’s very little difference between being killed by a terrorist and being killed by anyone else.

Due to the nature of modern “terrorists” it’s very easy for officials to define their characteristics. In this case, their apparent subversiveness means that our Government “must” intrude upon our privary as a pre-emptive measure.

Ben

Remember Geoff Hoon has spent the past months as Chief Whip in very difficult times. Bullying and holding out thhreats of terrible cosequences have been his stock in trade. Give him a litle while to change his vocabulary.

Changing the way he thinks may take longer, of course. And until then, he is a menace in any office.

But this is the problem, the party line is there and has been drummed in to the loyalists over several years of failed fighting on this issue. Rather than be sensible and drop something that clearly isn’t in the good of the people, they seem to think that the next step is to repackage the argument and try again a different way. This is the main factor as to why I hate party loyalists and what the party system does to national politics. If they could and would act in a more objective and humble manner when they get kicked in the nuts over something like this, maybe people would have more respect for politicians. *shrugs*

Lee @ 27,

I agree with you. Fat lot of good it’s going to do us.

Bob,

Monitoring is keeping a continuous record.

Which is what they will be doing.

It is about access. What are needed surely are proper safeguardsSay, military grade safeguards?

ukliberty,

It seems quite apparent to me that not holding the data in the first place is what this ought to be about? Is it not time we told the government when to get off?

douglas,

We are victims of the Government’s rhetoric: they propagandised the threats from terrorism and identity fraud etc (that is not to say there are no threats, just they aren’t as big / important), and so they must appear to take on those threats in a highly visible way, and outdo the opposition parties; they have convinced themselves (and many of us) that technlogy provides all the answers ( “We rely on technology to provide us with solutions”, as Jacqui Smith herself said to the IPPR only last week), and so they intend to record every detail of our lives, no matter how inconsequential, on huge databases that lots of people will have access to, one-size fits all solutions (probably with profiling too, even though that doesn’t work), even though lots of small solutions each specific to one particular problem might do better; and they convince themselves that their experts are more expert than independent experts, despite evidence to the contrary (for example Britain’s Simple Shopper), clearly because their experts agree with them.

We are also victims of our deference to authority. Many people think that because people are in authority anything those people say must be true – again despite evidence to the contrary – and that they are more competent than any of us, and that technlogy has all the answers. I am not saying all public servants are stupid liars, far from it – but the only real difference between them and us is their level of access to information and advice. They are very jealous of this position, which is why they make it so hard for us to approach it. Much of the media is complicit in this.

We employ these people to make new legislation and propose new measures, so we shouldn’t be surprised when they do – what is frustrating is that they very often don’t take a step back and say, actually that won’t work and we would be better off doing something else – spending our billions of pounds in a more effective way. The rhetoric is inconsistent with their actions – I wondered out loud the other day if spending £12bn on the NHS would save more lives than Jacqui’s communications database, and how the public would prefer it spent (if at all).

Finally, there are some sound principles in the Data Protection Act, but the Government has their own opinion on what is “necessary”, “excessive”, and “adequate”.

(Please read this.)

[31] UKlibery wrote I wondered out loud the other day if spending £12bn on the NHS would save more lives than Jacqui’s communications database, and how the public would prefer it spent (if at all)

Copule of points. First, and this is truly banal, there is pretty obviously no consensus on how much money “the public” wants government to spend – a major reason why we have politics in the first place!

Second, this is a good example of “homo economicus” thinking. The logic is something like this: I don’t want to die yet and I don’t want anyone I care about to die yet, so the “how” of such death isn’t relevant – the government on the other hand thinks that “the public” finds some forms of sudden death more objectionable than others – more specificially, that it expects them to protect us from sudden death by terrorist outrage (and will blame them if it doesn’t) more than equally “preventable” deaths from road accidents, drug abuse etc.

None of which is to defend the government’s approach. As I have argued elsewhere on LC, the State is both friend and foe – and this database is an example of the latter. Even if the State could be trusted neither to lose the data nor to misuse it for its own ends (which it can’t), its very existence creates a marketable commodity and thus the temptation to sell personal data as an alternative to raising taxes or cutting public services.

As Benjamin Barber reminded us in “The Guardian” yesterday http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/economics-globaleconomy-creditcrunch
free market economics require a certain political underpinning in order to be effective. As Marx put it – “politics is determinant in the last instance” – just because Marx said it doesn’t mean it’s wrong!

The point I was trying to make was about the consistency of the Government’s rhetoric with its actions: if saving lives was really prioritised over playing politics, they would throw the £12bn at the NHS, because the NHS is far more likely to save more lives (the top priority, apparently) than the IMP.

And anyone who doesn’t think so is giving the Government a licence to kill! (Isn’t that right, Mr Hoon?)