Terrorism again used to justify anti-privacy laws
On Monday 29 June in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister responded to a question from his own Tory MP Henry Bellingham asking if social media companies “understand that their current privacy policies are completely unsustainable” after recent a terrorist attack in Tunsisia. Cameron responded by re-iterating his plans to pass anti-privacy laws.
This question is troublesome for a few reasons:
- It’s not even a real question. Bellingham in fact poses a statement of opinion, wrapped in the form of a question. It’s particularly twisted because it misrepresents a matter of opinion as objective fact: that internet companies must sacrifice their users’ privacy in order to prevent terrorism, and the companies who refuse merely fail to “understand” the situation.
- It suggests that social media privacy was responsible for the Tunisia attacks, or that weakened social media privacy policies could have prevented those attacks. The exact same was said of the Charlie Hebdo shooting. There is zero evidence to suggest that social media surveillance could have prevented this.
- Having your own ally present a question for you to agree with is a trick that some TV channels use to present a one-sided argument to the public while giving the illusion of fair debate. Bellingham knows the PM’s opinion on this matter, and so knows the answer before he asks the question. He just wants to use the Tunisia tragedy as leverage to pass anti-privacy law.
Cameron’s reply includes what can accurately be described as a complete lie:
Britain is not a state that is trying to search through everybody’s emails and invade their privacy.”
Britain’s Tempora system records everybody’s e-mail, which can be searched based on keywords. A GCHQ system called MUSCULAR hacked directly into Google and Yahoo for the express purpose of copying all e-mail in bulk, and GCHQ lawyers described the number of people targeted as “an infinite list”.
Britain is literally a state trying to search through everybody’s emails.
Their spy agencies idea of what constitutes “invading privacy” is extremely out of line with the commonly accepted definition of that term.
Britain’s Optic Nerve system recorded private Yahoo chat webcam conversations for 1.8 million users in six months. Between 3% and 11% contained nudity. Targets were not suspected of any crime and there was no requirement to minimise collection of domestic citizens.
Yahoo called this “a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy”.
GCHQ argued that this system complied with the human right to privacy because the massive amount of video involved meant they were only able to store one screenshot per five minutes.
This is the intelligence capability that David Cameron wants to protect.