Europe – Page 10

UK Ministry of Justice sounding old, tired and defeated

I was at a meeting organised by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) today (Wednesday) in London where both Jack Straw and Michael Wills from the Ministry of Justice spoke. In the wake of the expenses revelations it was not surprising that both sounded somewhat conciliatory, but the degree of both overt and tacit admission of mistakes and changes needed was quite surprising. I had a bit of a set-to with Michael Wills on the apparent lack of knowledge amongst government ministers of the results of their own research on the (in)effectiveness of CCTV, to which he responded with the Melanie Phillips defence – i.e.: come and talk to ordinary people and they will tell you they want CCTV. This is a diversion for many reasons, not least of which is that unlike both the Daily Mail’s moral minority and the minister, I actually live in places where they only visit on official business and I also understand that what people mean when they demand CCTV is not the technology itself but a solution to the real and perceived problems of crime and anti-social behaviour that they face. They only demand CCTV because they see the programs on TV and are convinced that CCTV ‘works’ – however if you talk to senior police officers or anyone who has done research on this, they will tell you, yes, targeted mobile CCTV surveillance to deal with specific problems can be very effective (in terms of both cost and results) but mass camera surveillance is not the same thing. It is rather disappointing that a Justice Minister did not appear to understand the difference.

Jack Staw gave a weird speech. It was both full of matey bonhomie and characterised by stuttering hesitancy and vagueness. He made a number of historical errors, for example in claiming that the culture of secrecy was a product of the Cold War, when the first Official Secrets Act was a product of WW1. He also claimed that CCTV was all about ‘low-level disorder’ and ‘reassurance’, which will be news to all those (like his ministerial colleague) who still think it prevents crime. But he did rightly take some credit for Freedom of Information, including allowing parliamentary expenses to be included, even as it turned out, to his latter-day embarrassment.

Where it got very interesting was in his comments on the government’s consultation on the future of the DNA database following the damning verdict of the European Court. Contrary to Jacqui Smith, Straw indicated that he would be quite happy with the proposed 12 year retention period being reduced to 9 or even 6 years. He also claimed that there was a behind-the-scenes review of The Terrorism Act and other post-9/11 measures going on, which I don’t think many people in the room even appreciated. He admitted that the Labour government got many things wrong after 9/11 and that the environment had now also changed.

It was all very interesting, but you really got the feeling that this was a government on the way out anyway. The Tories will no doubt scrap the ID cards and register, but listening to the Shadow Justice Minister, Dominic Grieve, I got the impression that they don’t have much to offer apart from caution. That might be welcome for a while, but as a speaker from Google remarked, the debate is so far behind the reality of technological change that none of this will really matter very much unless there is a real culture shift. The ICO under the massively influential Richard Thomas, for whom this was very much a valedictory event before he steps down, has made great strides in this direction, but the government and opposition parties are still a long way away from understanding the need to establish a new basis for informational relationships between people, state and private companies that we desperately need.

USA, EU and UK all investing in advanced biometrics

News from various sources has revealed that the United State, the European Union and the United Kingdom are all preparing to invest further large sums in advanced biometrics and surveillance research.

According to an anonymous message to Slashdot, in the USA, Department of Justice requisitions for the coming year show “$233.9 million in funding for an ‘Advanced Electronic Surveillance’ project, and $97.6 million to establish the ‘Biometric Technology Center.'” The former is largely to deal with the problems of intercepting Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications – like Skype. The latter is what Slashdot calls a “vast database of personal data including fingerprints, iris scans and DNA which the FBI calls the Next Generation Identification” for the FBI. In other words, the architecture of the proposed ‘Server in the Sky’ system, which The Guardian revealed last year – for some notes on this and other systems under development, see here.

Meanwhile Owen Bowcott in The Guardian today has a story which puts together various bits and pieces from the EU’s FP7 Security theme research budget and UK security investment. In the UK, there is to be £15 million spent on updating UK biometric security for embassies, and more interestingly other unspecified ‘surveillance’ purposes, and in addition, rolling out of facial recognition systems to more UK airports. As we know, the controlled environments of airports where people are required to look at cameras, are one of the few place where this technology works properly.

This provides a rather tenuous link to the headline of the Guardian story which is an EU-funded study into brain-scanning (yet again) called Humabio (Human Monitoring and Authentication using Biodynamic Indicators and Behaviourial Analysis). There are lots of these about, and one of them may work sooner or later, but it is worth pointing out that people have been putting out ‘we will soon have brain scanning’ stories since the 1980s and like, nuclear fusion, it always seems to be 5 or 10 years in the future. Brain-scanning seems to be the technology of the future… always has been, always will be?

Surveillance: controlling people for the market

Larry Elliot, the Guardian’s main economics reporter, has written a great piece today which pretty much sums up what I and other surveillance studies scholars, as well as people writers like Hardt and Negri, Zygmunt Bauman and Naomi Klein, have been saying about the direction of global policy, but particularly in the UK, in recent years. In short, it argues that the current government has completely abandoned the main principles of a liberal democracy, which were to control the market for the common good, and instead has reversed the equation, and now, largely through surveillance, seeks to control people for the benefit of the market. Although this is hardly a new argument, Elliot’s piece is particularly succinct and clear. Worth a read…

In the recession, are humans too expensive?

One of the things that I have been following over the past few months has been the effect of the recession on security and surveillance. One of the observations I have made is that those investing in security at this time are turning more and more to surveillance in preference to expensive human guards.

The Journal, the regional newspaper of the north-east of England (and my local paper), has a report today which seems to add more weight to this hypothesis, arguing that “the economic downturn, which has had a devastating effect on the construction industry, has led to a growing trend of companies cutting costs by replacing building site security guards with hi-tech CCTV systems”.

However, like the last time I reported on a similar story from Boston in the USA, there is perhaps less to it than meets the eye. The piece is another business section puff-piece for a local company, this time Newcastle-based UK Biometrics, largely a fingerprint ID outfit, on the basis that it is claiming “a 10-fold increase in enquiries for its sideline technology, CCTV cameras which can be accessed via remote devices”. It turns out that the suggested reason for this also comes from the company. This doesn’t make them incorrect, however I tend to treat all local business news stories with a certain degree of scepticism.

There is also a fundamental problem with the reasoning for such decisions, if they are indeed being made, which is one of the big issues with CCTV more generally, which is that cameras, even if they ‘work’ (and what that means is controversial enough), do not provide an equivalent service to a human guard. It is not necessarily a question of better or worse, it is just not the same. CCTV is also nothing if there is no response to the images that are seen. Without operators, analysts and people on the ground to act on the images, there is little point in even thinking that CCTV systems will ‘replace’ what a guard does. If only the machines are watching, there is only the illusion of security; an empty show.

Goverment gives personal data to private companies

It has been revealed that the British government has been passing information gathered by the police on citizens to private companies. The Guardian todayshowed that data on climate change protestors found its way from the police to the ridiculously-renamed Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) to power company, E-ON.

Now, of course the government can argue that electricity supply is a matter of ‘resilience’, ‘contingency planning’ and ‘national security’, but then how can they justify it being in private corporate hands in the first place? How exactly can companies whose primary aim is to provide ‘shareholder value’ at all costs, many of whom are transnationals that have no commitment to the UK, be treated as if they were state organisations, and be given data from state databases? The boundaries between public and private are being increasingly eroded, and once, again it is the relationship between citizen and state which suffers.

The government cannot just give data, especially data which was collected in very questionable ways for highly dubious reasons in the first place, to whoever it thinks might find it useful. This kind of action shows that the the state is now quite often simply the servant of private enterprise, and the police no better than an adjunct to private security. It makes a mockery of regulation of surveillance power and data protection, and does nothing for our already-weakened trust in the state’s ability to protect our rights or or information.

The War on Photographers (continued…)

In the latest dispatch in the British state’s ongoing war on photographers (or was that supposed to be terrorists?), a father and son from Austria have been ‘ordered’ by two policemen to delete pictures of bus and tube stations from their digital camera. Klaus and Loris Matzka were told that it was ‘strictly forbidden’ to take such pictures and the police took their personal details including passport numbers and the addresses of the hotel where they were staying.

This is harassment and intimidation, pure and simple. Later The Guardian quotes the Metropolitan Police as sating that they “had no knowledge of any ban on photographing public transport in the capital.” This is a curious way to put it. It is not a question of the police’s knowledge of a ban. There is no ban. The police are well aware of this.

The Met in particular, are currently way out at the edge of their powers and pushing the envelope rather too far, but it seems with relative impunity. As I have written before, they seem to think it is suspicious to be interested in CCTV. It is also apparently suspicious (if not ‘strictly forbidden’) to take pictures of almost anything. But there’s much more. This is also the same force that invaded Parliament mob-handed to arrest Conservative MP, Damien Green, for it now seems, entirely political reasons. This is the same force whose officers have been captured on camera beating protestors – and who may have caused a passer-by to die of a heart-attack. This is the same force that keeps tabs on law-abiding protestors nationwide in case they might break the law, and that provides offices to private organisations running their own intelligence operations (ACPO). And, let us not forget, this is the same force whose incompetent surveillance operation resulted in the shooting of an innocent Brazilian man in the mistaken belief that he was a terrorist.

The Metropolitan Police needs to have a serious lesson in the liberties that they are supposed to be protecting, not restricting. Rather than learning the lessons of inquiry after inquiry, officers (and whether it is more than indvidual officers, one cannot say) appear to be out of control and making de facto policy by intimidation. Surely, this cannot be allowed to continue?

RIPA Reform

I’ve been looking over the government’s proposals for consultation on the reform on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), officially published on Friday. There’s actually very little that they suggest, apart from some minor and largely voluntary controls on the use of RIPA for trivial purposes by Local Authorities. The Times rang me up and asked me to knock off 500 words (in about an hour!) for a comment on the proposals… which I did… and here it is, unedited*:

Reforming RIPA

Back in the year 2000, opposition was developing to a new piece of legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Bill. But the controversy over the Bill which became the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) was all about provisions to bring electronic communications (e-mail) under the same regulatory regime as telephone and telex, and to demand encryption keys.

What was relatively uncontroversial then were the provision for the regulation of covert surveillance by Local Authorities. Now, councils are accused of abusing the RIPA for trivial purposes, such as dog fouling or littering, or using oppressive or intrusive methods that are not proportional or appropriate to the alleged offences, such as covert monitoring of children to establish where parents involved in an application for school places lived. And much seems to have been inefficient too: a survey of Britain’s 182 Local Authorities found that they have used RIPA surveillance on over 10,000 occasions, yet only 9% resulted in prosecution or enforcement action. But it is not just local government. The Surveillance Commissioner has criticized national ministries like DEFRA and agencies including Ofcom and the Charities Commission over their misuse of RIPA**.

Officials respond that RIPA merely restricts and records what organisations were already doing. Most of the surveillance, they argue, is of the level of two men in a car watching a known fly-tipping site, and that even this requires onerous form-filling – four pages for each request. And even the statistics mislead, because there simply were no statistics on surveillance by these organisations before RIPA.

If RIPA has enabled us to see both the levels and abuse of surveillance powers, it has done us this favour at least. But the Surveillance Commissioner found generalized lax practice, a lack of proper justifications and proportionality, and little training or accountability: RIPA is being used because the powers exist, not because there is any pressing justification to use surveillance in this manner.

RIPA was always expansionary in that it allowed more than was intended. It was also a rag-bag; even the original e-mail surveillance provisions were cut and pasted from another bill. Like so much of the legislation from this government, it was poorly drafted and justified in parliament at the time by reference to issues (like national security) which little relevance to what most of the Act was about. And its appeals body, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, is practically invisible, as the House of Lords Constitution Committee report on surveillance argued recently.

The Constitution Committee went a lot further than the government in this consultation document, arguing that surveillance powers should be reserved for the investigation of serious criminal offences and that should judicial oversight for all surveillance carried out by public authorities. Instead here, the government merely suggests moving sign-off powers higher up within the organizations. The Lords also suggested that there should have been proper provision for public accountability and post-legislative scrutiny in RIPA. Instead, this review is taking place due largely to government embarrassment over the constant stream of revelations.

Yet the government seems intent on extending surveillance and other powers still further; there has been a proliferation of databases, agencies, laws, and quasi-police. The new Communications Bill will extend surveillance powers over the Internet still further. The consultation document also reminds us in one section that there is still no meaningful regulation of the now ubiquitous CCTV cameras: they are outside of RIPA and, it seems, out of control. RIPA is merely one aspect of a very British tendency to manage things through surveillance before other means – which is a good working definition of a ‘surveillance society’. This has to be controlled, and in a rather more thoughtful and systematic way than these knee-jerk reviews in response to media concern.

*The edited version has now been published by The Times as ‘A very British tendency…’ They have just trimmed the attempt to broaden the argument at the end!

**This is what you get for writing something very quickly – in the editing, I compressed stuff that had originally said that Ofcom and the Charities Commission were using RIPA and that various organisations had been criticised into one sentence that implied that they were the organisations being criticised. Neither have been so criticised by the Surveillance Commissioner and I apologise to both for suggesting that they were.

Is sousveillance the answer?

Marina Hyde in the Guardian last week wrote a very interesting piece on the ongoing fallout from the death of Ian Tomlinson at the G20 protests in London. She argued that the appearance of mobile telephone camera foogtage, which revealed more about the way the police treated the passerby, showed that this kind of inverse surveillance (or what Steve Mann calls ‘sousveillance’) was the way to fight the increase of surveillance in British society.

I’ve been suggesting this as one possible strategy for many years too, however what Hyde didn’t really deal with is the other side of the coin: the fact that the authotorities in Britain already know that this is a potential response and are trying to cut down on the use of photographic equipment in public places. Anti-terrorism laws already make it illegal to photograph members of the armed forces, and in the new Counter-Terrorism Act, there is a provision to allow the police to isue an order preventing photography in particular circumstances. Further, it is now regarded as suspicious by police to be seen taking an interest in surveillance cameras.

The bigger issue here is the fight for control of the means of visibility, and the legitimate production of images. The British state is slowly trying to restrict the definition of what is considered to be ‘normal’ behaviour with regards to video and photography. In the new normality, state video is for the public good, but video by the public is potential terrorism; police photographing demonstrators is important for public order, but demonstrators photographing police is gathering material potentially of use in the preparation of a terrorist act.

However, I am not 100% in favour of the proliferation of cameras, whoever is wielding them. I think it’s essential that we, at this moment in time, turn our cameras on an overintrusive and controlling state. However a society in which we all constantly film each other is not one in which I would feel comfortable living either. A mutual surveillance society in which cameras substitute for richer social interactions and social negotiation, is still a surveillance society and still a society of diminished privacy and dignity. I worry that sousveillance, rather than leading to a reduction in the intrusiveness of the state, will merely generate more cameras and more watchers, and merely help reinforce a new normality of being constantly observed and recorded.

EU Telecommunications Directive in effect

From today, private lives in the UK will be a little less private, as EU Directive 2006/24/EC becomes part of national law.

Traffic data on e-mail, website visits and Internet telephone calls now have to be recorded and retained by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Specifically, the Directive mandates the retention of: the source of a communication; the destination of a communication; the date, time and duration of a communication; the type of communication; the type and identity of the communication device; and the location of mobile communication equipment.

This is coming into force despite the fact that many countries and ISPs still object to the directive. It has to be said that many ISPs are objecting on grounds of cost rather than any ethical reason. German courts are yet to determine the constitutionality of the directive and Sweden is not going to implement it at all.

As with many of these kinds of laws, it was rushed through on a wave of emotion after a particular ‘trigger event’ – in this case, the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005. There was a whole lot of devious practice in the Council of Ministers to get it passed too – if the Directive had been considered as a policing and security matter, it would still have needed unanimity, which means that the objections of Germany and Sweden would have vetoed the Directive. Instead, it was reclassified as ‘commercial’ on the grounds that it was about the regulation of corporations, and commerical matters need only a majority vote. How convenient…

The Home Office in Britain says our rights are safe because of RIPA, which is hardly cause for rejoicing. My main concerns, apart from the fact that this is yet another moment in the gradual erosion of private life, are that:

1. police access will rapidly become routine rather than specific, and this could be extended to many other public authorities – the original drafts of the Communications Bill would have extended the right of access to such data to all RIPA-empowered organisations (which includes most public authorities);

2. the data will be used illicitly by ISP employees for criminal purposes (remember that most identity thefts are inside jobs) – the records will be a blackmailers delight;

3. there will more ‘losses’ of this data by ISPs and others who have access to it. Remember the accidental revelation of user data by AOL in the USA?

Tech regs, not ethics, close London CCTV

Hundreds of CCTV cameras in London will have to be shut down, but this has nothing to do with concerns over privacy, liberty or the surveillance society, it is entirely due to technical regulations.

The cameras, which are mobile road cameras owned by Westminster City Council, used for multiple tasks including anti-crime activities and protest-monitoring, but they are supposed to be for traffic regulation and as such must conform to technical standards set by the Department for Transport (DfT) -in this case, a 720 x 576 pixel picture size (analogue broadcast standard). Westminster’s are 704 x 576!

This might all seem rather petty were it not for two rather important aspects. First of all the case reminds us how surveillance introduced specifically for one area (traffic management) can creep into other areas for which they were never intended or authorized. This can also work in many directions: some of London’s congestion charge cameras were originally installed as anti-terrorism cameras after the IRA attacks of the early 90s.

Secondly, however it also shows, counter-intuitively, how weak is the regulation of CCTV in the UK. The fact is that the cameras have been stopped because of a technical infringement, and indeed there is in general an extensive and growing list of technical regulations and recommendations for CCTV issued by central Government bureaucracy, yet CCTV remains massively under-regulated when it comes to conformity with human rights and civil liberties, let alone for any consideration of the wider and longer-term social impacts of pervasive video surveillance. The closure of this system highlights the powerlessness of the British people in the face of increasingly authoritarian government, not their strength…

(Thanks to Aaron Martin for sending me this one)